Bob Coy's Errors Regarding "COEXIST"

So after a few posts on this blog -- including some posts to Twitter -- I connected with @TheActiveWord, from which come the prosthelytizing views of one Pastor Bob Coy.

It's been an interesting week or so, seeing the views being broadcast from the Twitter handle, mostly using YouTube as a video medium...but alas, the one time I addressed them with criticism, they failed to engage in the conversation.

Then I came across another of Rev. Coy's unconscionable vlog posts, for which any rational American Patriot would have some pointed questions.

Here is the video, regarding the popular "COEXIST" bumper sticker:




The most obvious error that Rev. Coy makes is regarding any scriptual text as the literal "word of God." This Biblical literalism we see here in our United States remains one of the most unAmerican and, indeed, poisonous viewpoints to our God-given religious rights, protected as they are in our secular democratic republic.

Specifically, Rev. Coy engages in the logical fallacy of "false choice": He claims that since only one of these scriptural texts he mentions "must be right", and that they would seem to be (he claims) mutually exclusive, that the whole "COEXIST" idea is without merit.

Of course, Rev. Coy is free to employ logical fallacies in his arguments -- he just shouldn't expect rational people to accept such arguments.

Because, in fact, the idea without merit in this discussion is Rev. Coy's idea that any scriptural text is the literal word of God. Such a view finds very little traction in academia or mainstream Christianity -- a fact that Rev. Coy will either ignore or deny vehemently, depending on how much he wants to appeal to his fellow extremists.

Meanwhile, American Patriots might want to compare and contrast Rev. Coy's views with the Human Rights protected by our U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And thank God for the First Amendment: I personally believe that our God-given right to religious freedom cannot be protected adequately in any nation with a state religion. Toward this, I strongly support the Rev. Barry Lynn's organization, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

In conclusion: The "COEXIST" bumper sticker is a clever, American, and meritorious meme that deserves the widest dissemination in our Marketplace of Ideas -- whereas the Rev. Coy's criticisms thereof defy any sense of reason. My advice to the Rev. Bob Coy is to de-radicalize his thinking with more theological scholasticism.

(He can start by recognizing that the Torah is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. Oops.)

That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

Scott Doty
Santa Rosa, CA, 2010-01-17