In Reply to: to Moonshiner posted by Acheick on April 02, 2006 at 23:32:07:
What I think is that you are living in La La land if you believe in such black and white statements that Christianity grew by the blood of its martyrs whereas Islam grew by killing its opponents. That demonstrates to me that you have accepted the political and religious propaganda that is widely disseminated as part of the U.S. war effort. That really surprises me about you. I thought you were more of a critical thinker than that, having come out of years in a narrow, closed-minded belief system.
In another post you state: "the regular non-Christian posters are here in full force and doing quite fine" What a preposterous statement. As far as I can tell from recent posts, there are only 3 regular posters who identify as non-Christian here: myself, Zither and susie. I'm not entirely sure about CB, who seems to be of many minds, but at least understanding of the non-Christian point of view. So you think 3 posters entails a "full force"? All we have been trying to do is carve out a little safe place here in which to discuss alternative view points, which really seems to upset a certain stripe of Christian. It seems to me that people here who hold to Christian beliefs of one sort or another are far more numerous, and I get along with most of them just fine.
In that same post, you claim that at least 4 Christians stopped posting here because they were attacked by non-Christians. I don't recall any non-Christian being banned from this site for being disrespectful towards believers. So perhaps it is their own sensitivities and inability to converse with unbelievers who hold differing opinions on many subjects that is keeping them away. In fact, I would say that the majority of posts by non-Christians have expressed more tolerance, acceptance, compassion etc, than many posts by Christians.
When I first read a recent post by susie to Zither, saying that she only realized how much Americans hate atheists when she started posting on this board I thought she was being a bit extreme. But the more I think about it and consider some of the recent conversations here I realize she was right on. What I think is that there are certain people who can't stand the fact that irreligious people are allowed to post here, because they have made a value judgement about those people.
In the weekend edition of my local paper there were two thought-provoking articles on religion in general and atheists in the U.S.. I couldn't find it online to post here, but the author of the second article pointed to forthcoming journal articles about how atheists are discriminated against in the U.S. One of those articles is in this April's American Sociological Review and it contains the result of a survey by the University of Minnesota that found that atheists are the least trusted minority in the U.S., less trusted than Muslims, recent immigrants, and homosexuals. The survey suggests that many Americans associate atheists with immorality, an association motivated by the old canard that ethics necessarily depends on religion, that you can't be good without God. Of course, that is patently false.
The other journal article is forthcoming in the May edition of the New York University Law Review. It provides evidence that atheists are discriminated against in child custody cases. It cites examples of anti-atheist discrimination in 17 states. The laws of many states, including those of the last 3 presidents, also prohibit atheists from holding public office.
The author of the newspaper article containing those references writes: "... by offering atheists less protections under the law we diminish our respect for the principle of religious freedom, or more broadly construed, freedom of conscience." He includes a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are 20 gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
So why all the fuss about a couple of atheistic/agnostic posters here, who are hardly a "full force"?
And this Op-Ed piece by Salmon Rushdie, though a year old, is still relevant to this discussion:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050320/asp/opinion/story_4506104.asp