The Volokh Conspiracy

This guy speaks for us agnostics even less than Michael Newdow. Sadly, the bloggers on this board will likely make him a representative of agnostics/atheists as Lyndon LaRouche or David Duke are your run of the mill Democrats/Republicans.

Back to my war on Christmas.

Read about it on the Onion.

And then briefly on WorldNetDaily before someone looks up the definition of "sarcasm" and pulls the link.

Sadly, the bloggers on this board will likely make him a representative of agnostics/atheists as Lyndon LaRouche or David Duke are your run of the mill Democrats/Republicans.

I know how you feel. It's like having Pat Robertson thrown at you if you're a church-going conservative. None of it fair.

Back to shoving my beliefs down others' throats.

Reasonable minds can disagree about how to apply the Religion Clauses in a given case. But the goal of the Clauses is clear: to carry out the Founders’ plan of preserving religious liberty to the fullest extent possible in a pluralistic society. By enforcing the Clauses, we have kept religion a matter for the individual conscience, not for the prosecutor or bureaucrat. At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. The well-known statement that “[w]e are a religious people,” Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952), has proved true. Americans attend their places of worship more often than do citizens of other developed nations, R. Fowler, A. Hertzke, &L. Olson, Religion and Politics in America 28—29 (2d ed. 1999), and describe religion as playing an especially important role in their lives, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Among Wealthy Nations U.S. Stands Alone in its Embrace of Religion (Dec. 19, 2002). Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?

If atheists really want to promote their creed, they should be advocating for an American version of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Grand Supreme Ayatollah. Based upon results, that would kill off religion better than any attempt to do a Grinch job on Christmas.

Man, Hank, I came here just to post that link. Didn't somebody around here predicted this would happen?

Newsflash: Atheist Activist Unpopular, Unhinged. Next: Libertarians in the News...

Ya, know... tolerance means I can respectfully listen to an invocation at an event as an expression of that person's effort to deal reverently with the world. It means I can live with saying "under God" in the Pledge of Allegience because some Congress put it there (giving benefit of the doubt) with fair intent. It means I don't mind other people not saying "under God" when they recite the pledge. It means I can respectfully listen to an invocation that isn't religious, and I can look at the joy public displays at Christmas time bring to people and not be offended.

What is missing amongst the vocal on all sides is tolerance. And the world is the worse off for it. ... Fortunately, all it takes is a change of mind.

Someone who believes in God considers this belief so fundamental to his/her existence, life, code of conduct and obedience to law, that for him/her, an atheist represents the very contradiction of everything they hold dear. I know several atheists, some of whom I actually love and respect very much. But do I want someone who is diametrically opposed to all I believe, as my lawmaker? If I am a REpublican, and support what that party stands for, would I go out of my way to support the election of a DEmocrat. or vice versa? Some of these polls aimed at measuring prejudice make no sense whaatever.

Robert, the simple answer is that as a Congressman your job is to protect your constitutents from cognizable threats/harms -- not save their souls or prepare them for eternity.

Although, Jesse Helms, in my four years of living in North Carolina, did prepare me for eternity. I became gay just because I didn't like him.

In all seriousness, I don't know any militant atheists. I do know a lot of people though who have no interest in state/federally funding religious institutions. Unfortunately, they get unfairly lumped in with the nutjobs everytime that the GOP needs a quick enemy.

Of course, we won't have a legitimate debate on any of this, not as long as Bill O'Reilly is preparing legions for the War on Christmas. (Which, by the way, was perfectly responded to on the Daily Show both last week and this week.)

Let's just agree to hate those who want to convert people... of course, that will mean that those who believe they are commanded to convert will be offended. But aren't they all just, you know, jerks?

Sorry. I thought I put my comment above on the library thread.

That dude is a nut, for sure. But I wonder, am I a hateful dude if I question the wisdom of our elected leaders believing the apolcalypse and the anti-christ are nigh and the epicenter of the END is Israel?

Having grown up southern baptist I'm well aware that the conventional wisdom among many evangelical christians is that we are in the last days, and that current events in the middle east portend the imminent coming of Christ. I've always personally felt that such believers probably aren't going to be the best policymakers. For example, who cares about carbon dioxide emmissions when the tribulation is about to unfold?

Now, of course it's not fair to impute these ideas to politicians who haven't directly expressed them, but I think it's something worth injecting into Eugene's ongoing debate. Part of the reason some may feel less than comfortable voting for folks who describe themselves as evangelicals is the very common belief among them that the world is close to ending.

To sum it up, prophesy isn't a sound basis for policy. But when you have politicians who proclaim themselves as believers in "every word" of the bible, I think you have to take a closer look at what they believe the bible says. To be sure, a lot of voters vote for Bush and other evangelicals precisely because his religious beliefs may intersect with his policy choices. But that's precisely what worries me. And I think that's a separate concern from simple religious prejudice.

I'm a big supporter of Israel as the strongest democratic government in the middle east. And I detest the bigotry exhibited by Mr. Darby. But I think there's a question that must be asked of people who are fundamental believers in any religion (not just Christianity), "to the extent that your policies are based on your belief in the impending apocalypse, you and I may have some disagreements. Could you clear up your thoughts on how believing in a certain prophetic end game might affect your decisionmaking?"

We all may tsk tsk over intelligent design and creationism and evolution, but ultimately it may be more important to know what our leaders think about the end of the world than its beginning.

If a person is an atheist, why would he need to obey the law?...
DOes an atheist have any reason to say: Hitler was wrong because he persecuted the Jews. Why was he wrong?

Am I the only one who noticed the resempblance in names between Pat Robertson and Robert Patterson? But let me get back to the point.

Apparently, Bob is of the opinion that an atheist can have no moral principles of his own, no ethical responsibilities, no ability to make a judgment between right and wrong because he lacks a religious conviction that leads to these concepts. Apparently, ethics does not exist independent of the Judeo-Christian wolrd. Makes one wonder how the humanity survived prior to the Christian conversion of Rome, doesn't it?

What a load o'horseshit. It is simply amazing to me how some people get up in the morning. But it does explain a few things. It explain why most evangelicals and many other Christians cannot and will not think for themselves--they need guidance from those who know. The fact that most of their authority figures are greedy, bigoted hypocrites, who would just as well steal, gamble and rape as they would spread the word of god, seems to matter little to these sheep, because without their leaders they'd be lost, completely unable to distinguish right from wrong. A wonderful example of a self-indictment.

Bob, let me point out to you that even the Biblical legal canons were predated by a number of legal codices, not the least of which is the Code of Hammurabbi. None of these were based on religious principles--if anything, they were edicts created by individual leaders, usually tyrants, of sorts. In fact, much of the Christian ethics is based on non-religious ideas of its predecessors. Sure, it was bent to Christian needs--e.g., the fabrication of Aristotelian monotheism. But the point is that the philosophical writings of non-Jewish and non-Muslim writers before the second millenium CE were not even remotely religous in nature.

This kind of garbage makes me really angry. Just makes me want to feed some Christian ass to lions :-) Simply unbelievable!!!