My fear is that non-religious people, like you and me, have no notion that
we are in the middle of a holy war, with Bush and his folks on one side, and
UBL on the other.

You're making an assumption that Bush and Osama are on opposite sides in a holy
war. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bush and Osama are on the same
side. They are the personifications of the religious totalitarianism that has
corrupted our species since the beginning of recorded history. It is the
freedom loving non-religious people who are on the opposite side. They both
want us marginalized at least or dead at most.


Rich Goranson, Amherst, NY, USA (aa#MCMXCIX, a-vet#1)
EAC Department of Applied Rattan Use

"Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking, which
leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy." - Robert Anton
Wilson

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 00:41:51 GMT, "Mike Russell"
<REgeigyMOVE@pacbellTHIS.net> wrote:

Christopher A. Lee wrote:

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 23:32:55 GMT, "Mike Russell"
<REgeigyMOVE@pacbellTHIS.net> wrote:

drift@lost.net wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 21:23:43 -0700, "Adam Russell"
<REMOVETHIS_adamrussell@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

<drift@lost.net> wrote in message
news:7c54d019u0n6vu43qhv5vmaamu7n3a8k4c@4ax.com...

There is lots of room for God in America: the churches.

Hear hear. If they cant learn what Jesus was preaching in the
church then there's no use trying to teach it in public school.

Right. It would only divert already scarce quality teaching time
away from it's goal: educating kids. Leave the preaching in
privately
funded churches.
drift

I think that saying that they should be able to learn about Jesus in
private misses the point entirely. They believe that they must
spread the word to save the world.

They believe wrong.

They could say the same about you, and with equal validity.

No. Because their rights to spread the word stop when it abridges
other people's rights not top have it..

They're not even sincere - if they were they would go about it in a
less stupidly offensive way. It's called marketing: use your
audience's triggers not your own. But they're too sociopathic to try
to understand their audience's position so they project their own.

Likewise, the Jesus folks could question your sincerity, intelligence,
methods, and fitness to live in human society. This does not advance your
point.

And they'd be just plain nasty.

It's all about live-and let-live.

Which they seen unable to do.

I don't go looking for them to tell them that the core of their very
being is wrong. Why can't they show the rest of us the same courtesy?

They urgently want to make sure that the entire world - or at least
the part that won't go to Hell - is bathed in the word of Jesus.

That's their problem. They should live with it instead of making it
ours as well.

"Their problem". It becomes "our problem" when they get one of their own
into the White House, and one of their own at Attorney General. Failing to
understand what makes them tick makes us secular types much more vulnerable.

No. We know what makes them tick - most of us are ex-theists and those
who aren't (like me) are aware that there are other subjective points
of view. But their conditioning makes it impossible to have any kind
of discussion with them. They are convinced the lies they say about us
to our face are true, and anything that contradicts their conditioning
just washes past them in a puff of cognitive dissonance. They are
immune to the real world, logic etc.

Your protests amount to a statement that you will work against their
goal,

Nope. It's simple human reaction: when they push us we resist.

I think you'll agree they will interpret your rational dismissal of religion
as proof that you are intrinsically opposed to them.

They're wrong. Period.

which is fine, but you will have better success if you understand
their goals and motivations, instead of pretending that their
religion is a private matter.

It's not a pretence. Their religion is their own business. You seem to
imagine that we should let them walk over us because in their
imagination their religion applies to everybody else? That we should
show them the courtesy they don't show us?

Not at all. But they will walk all over you if you treat this matter as if
it could be easily dismissed by mere logic. And yes, courtesy is good when
it is mutual, but courtesy vanishes altogether if each side gives only as
good as it gets.

The fighting is because we don't let them walk all over us.

It is impossible to discuss reality with them. Including the real
reasons why we react the way we do.

They need to learn how to cope with the real world, where their
religion is just one of many whose believers are just as sincere,
certain and justified as they are themselves.

I think we need to learn about them. Start by learning that Bush is "one of
them", and he can come close to being re-elected merely with the votes of
ardent churchgoers.

We know that.

Because they are the best organised voting lobby. Christian Central
illegally using to tell the ministers what sermon to preach, and then
giving "impartial" voter guides. The Republican Party needed their
votes so it sold its soul to them and now they have taken it over.

But it's not just fundy voters. It's sycophantic mass media as well.

And more importantly who don't have to put up with the imposition of
somebody else's religion.

Fine - this goal was accomplished for us once by the founding fathers, but
it can be lost, and may already have been lost.

Then there will be blood in the streets. Seriously. People will fight
back.

Personally, I think it will get worse before it gets better. We've got
a President whom God told to smite Afghanistan then Hussein (Haaretz
interview with then Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas). We've got a
climate distinctly unfriendly to the brain drain scientists etc we
rely on because we don't produce enough ourselves (in part due to
emasculation of science education), who don't want their kids to be
taught creationism. Heck, even Silicon Valley bedroom communities like
Pleasanton and Hollister had to fight creationist school boards.

When the brainwashed fundies who imagine the country was prosperous
because it was favoured by God look for people to blame, the last
people will be themselves. They'll look for scapegoats.

That's what it's all about. People wanting to get on with their own
lives vs Taleban wannabes who won't let them.

Good point about the Taliban. The Muslims extremists are indeed the mirror
image of our own Christian fundamentalists, and an equal amount of effort
must be spent understanding their attitudes and actions.

Part of the problem is that it wasn't Moslem extremism per se that
caused terrorism. Our leaders have lied to us, and blamed that when
it is only part of the story. We are hated in certain parts of the
world because of interference in their domestic and regional affairs.
Al Quaeda have actually had one of their demands met without much
publicity. Removal of troops stationed in the Islamic holy land
"temporarily until Hussein was removed from Kuwait but we went back on
our promise once they were there". Their other big issue was
Palestine. They didn't attack us "because they were Moslem" - but
because they had a major grudge. The Moslem bit enabled them to die as
martyrs for their cause.

My fear is that non-religious people, like you and me, have no notion that
we are in the middle of a holy war, with Bush and his folks on one side, and
UBL on the other.

You underestimate us.

Bush made it a holy war because no President is going to admit that
successive administrations have lied to us about our actions in other
people's countries. I lived my first 40+ years in England and still
get my world news from overseas, not compliant domestic media.

It was obvious to anybody with any understanding of the rest of the
world that Bush piled mistake on top of mistake. A prime example:
using the word "crusade" against countries that still smart from
Western interference because we want their oil. Another: Using Madison
Avenue to produce commercials showing that America isn't "anti-Islam"
by showing successful Americanised Moslems whom the target audience
view as decadent and impure.

But it's not just Bush. The real reason the Iranians hated us was well
known in Europe but not the US. It went back to the coup we organised
to replace Mossadeq who had nationalised the Iranian oil fields for
the benefit of his country, with the Shah and how we kept him in
power. We didn't hear about the secret police etc, the suppression of
any dissent (except in the mosques where not even the Shah could clamp
down on it) etc in the media. But we all knew people who had worked
there on contract (oil, computing, medical etc).

The specter of UBL is held in front of Americans, empowering Bush and his
ilk, in exactly the same way that the specter of Bush is held before Arabs
by the likes of bin Laden. Liberals, and other moderating voices in the
Arab and Muslim world, could simply vanish in the middle

More than that. The mass media is tightly controlled to spout that
line.

You are correct that religion is the real enemy. Pretending that religion
may be dismissed with a wave of the rational hand, by quoting all the
blather about religios freedom we all learned in school is naive. Fear,
dislocation, and chaos, and the resulting irrationality and turning toward
religion, is thriving in the modern world.

Hopefully we will realize what is happening, understand it, and work to
defuse it, before it is too late.

That still doesn't give evangelical fundies the right to force their
beliefs on me.

Brooks Gregory wrote:
...

Please point out where the Constitution says there is to be a
separation of Church & State. Hint, it doesn't.

1st ammendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the

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.
--

Mike Russell