How is religion "encroaching" on everyday life?

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Wrong. Morality is based on subjective (and evoloved) emotional responses to external stimuli. Such things as my aversion to violence and my desire to take care of my kids has nothing to do with “faith” or with anything I think I “should” do. It’s exactly what I want to do. “Moral” behavior (more precisely, a desire to avoid engaging in “immoral” behavior) is as biologically innate as desires for food and sex. I don’t have moral “beliefs,” I have a moral aesthetic. Moral perceptions are like taste in music. If I like it, it’s good, if I don’t like it, it’s bad. There are no objectively “right” or “wrong” answers. Morality is an effect, not a belief. You either feel it or you don’t. No faith required. I am the final arbitrator. I am right because I say I’m right. No one else’s opinion, including God’s is relevant.

That is, unless an individual lacks the empathic response (as in the case of sociopathic personalities). In that case, I can understand why those people would need religion as a prosthetic – an artificial and inferior substitute. Trying to be good only by following a religious code is like trying to see with a glass eye.

Oh, and it’s impossible to CHOOSE a religious morality without arrogantly and arbitrarily deciding that it’s the “right” thing to do and that this religion is better than that one. We’re all making it up out of our asses at the end of the day.
[/QUOTE]

People’s ideas of taking care of their kids varies quite a bit from too indulgent, over protective and controlling, to regular whuppins’ I’m sure a huge part of that is environment. People can learn to overcome false perceptions instilled by a bad enviorment can’t they? I’m a little confused about the difference between a moral aesthetic and a moral belief.
When people say, I used to think x was okay but now I realize it isn’t, you can call that a shift in moral perception but isn’t it also a belief.
For me part of the personal journey is that gradual change in how we see things and how we act. If it is not a belief itself it is certainly affected by them. Isn’t it?

[Revenant_Threshold]

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Atheists are caught in the usual bind. All morality is based on faith; that is, by appeal to principles that cannot be empirically established.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree. Religious morality is based on faith at two points; that that morality is correct, and that the effects of that morality happen. If you believe, for example, that morality is as God describes it, you need to have faith that that’s right and faith that God is actually happy with what you do. Neither are empirically testable.

OTOH, Atheism can need faith at one point or neither. If your morality is based on people being happy, or people being free to do what they want - these things are in fact empirically testable. We, unlike many theists, get to actually see whether our decisions have the effects we’re after. For the second part it depends on what your system says; if your system says “People should be happier because happiness is better”, then sure, that’s a level of faith. Or you might have one that says “People should be happier because people like to be happy” - something that makes no question on any objective truth, and something that’s observable. No faith needed.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
People’s ideas of taking care of their kids varies quite a bit from too indulgent, over protective and controlling, to regular whuppins’ I’m sure a huge part of that is environment. People can learn to overcome false perceptions instilled by a bad enviorment can’t they? I’m a little confused about the difference between a moral aesthetic and a moral belief.
When people say, I used to think x was okay but now I realize it isn’t, you can call that a shift in moral perception but isn’t it also a belief.
For me part of the personal journey is that gradual change in how we see things and how we act. If it is not a belief itself it is certainly affected by them. Isn’t it?
[/QUOTE]

I see what you’re saying, and yes, moral perceptions can be and are affected by culture, especially when fear and false information/erroneous beliefs are involved. For instance, if one is enculturated with a false belief that people X are inferior to, less “human” than people Y, we might not see it as immoral for people X to be treated differently, even to be exploited or killed. We have incomplete and/or false information.
I think the personal changes you’re talking about come as a result of more information. Taking your example , “I used to think x was okay but now I realize it isn’t,” one could easily rephrase that as “I used to think that X didn’t hurt anybody but now I know that it does.” More information triggers a different emotional response. It’s a shift in awareness, not belief.
Speaking of the general rather than the specific, though, the basic instincts like that to protect and nurture our offspring are innate, Cultural factors influence how we do those things but they do not create the impulse itself.

[sqweels]

[QUOTE=mswas]
Murder, rape, incest, theft, adultery, cannibalism, graft.*
[/QUOTE]

It seems to me that the idea that things are bad is deeply instinctive, or has been a no-brainer from the start.

[cosmosdan]

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
I see what you’re saying, and yes, moral perceptions can be and are affected by culture, especially when fear and false information/erroneous beliefs are involved. For instance, if one is enculturated with a false belief that people X are inferior to, less “human” than people Y, we might not see it as immoral for people X to be treated differently, even to be exploited or killed. We have incomplete and/or false information.
I think the personal changes you’re talking about come as a result of more information. Taking your example , “I used to think x was okay but now I realize it isn’t,” one could easily rephrase that as “I used to think that X didn’t hurt anybody but now I know that it does.” More information triggers a different emotional response. It’s a shift in awareness, not belief.
Speaking of the general rather than the specific, though, the basic instincts like that to protect and nurture our offspring are innate, Cultural factors influence how we do those things but they do not create the impulse itself.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. I think people at stages of development seek guidance and guidelines. A religion is a cultural effect within the cultural effect of our society isn’t it. There are lots of subcultures that teach different things are right or wrong. Religion is one. Hopefully people grow to the point where they realize that they must take responsibility for their choices. If you decide to let someone else tell you what is right or wrong, then you are responsible for that decision. If you find your ideas no longer match the group you are in, have the integrity to step out and move on.

I do agree that morality doesn’t come from our religion.

IMHO JC and other teachers were trying to change our moral perception. Your neighbor is the person who shows mercy rather than just a tribal allegiance. Everybody loves there kids and those who are good to them. Thats easy. Try loving your enemies. Stuff like that.

[Apos]

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
For the second part it depends on what your system says; if your system says “People should be happier because happiness is better”, then sure, that’s a level of faith.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t really even see how this is faith. I believe happiness is better, but not because I haev faith that happiness is better, but because I VALUE happiness for myself and for others. Where’s the “faith”?

[Shodan]

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Shodan, does it bother you at all that the best defense you have to support your point of view is that the other side is equally as bad? I’d like to think that making important decisions involves more than just flipping a coin.
[/QUOTE]

I know you’d like to think that, but there is no logical basis to do so. It’s all faith.

Does it bother you that your own morality is just as faith-based as, for instance, Fred Phelps’?

@Diogenes the Cynic

Wrong. Morality is based on subjective (and evoloved) emotional responses to external stimuli.

IOW, gay-bashing is perfectly justified. If I have a subjective emotional response to the presence of gayness, then I am just as justified as you in basing a morality on it.

ALL behaviors are “fine” unless and until a given behavior can be shown to be damaging in some way to the public interest. No behavior has to justified a priori. Only attempts to restrict behavior have to be justified.

OK, justify a ban on gay-bashiing that is not based, ultimately, on “because I feel like it”. A ban on gay-bashing is an attempt to force a morality on someone else. Ergo, you have to come up with some non-subjective principle on which to base it. If you want to claim some moral force for “the public interest”, then you have to justify that in some way. What if I don’t give a shit about the public interest? Is it merely force that you have to revert to to force your morality on me?

Or skip it. We have done this in the past, and your usual response is to repeat over and over that your own subjective opinion ought to dictate other peoples’ behavior because that’s how you feel.

@Apos

Values are not factual principles subject to being false or unjustified claims of knowledge. Claiming to know that the Bible is true in the sense that it accurately reflects events that really happened is not the same sort of claim as claiming that genocide or torture is immoral. This sort of bait-and-switch argument no longer fools people.

Nor does yours.

Bible-based morality is claiming that it is based on the values contained in the Bible. If all values are unfalsifiable, the values of Bible-based morality are unfalsifiable.

So claiming that a morality based on Scripture is the same as the claim that genocide or torture is immoral. Both are arguing based on values. And there is no logical way to establish that one set of values is “better” than any other. QED.

Quote:
Thus they argue that Biblically-based morality is bad because it cannot be justified without a faith-based appeal to the Bible,

You clearly have not been listening very closely to anyone’s arguments. Biblically-based morality is bad because it does not justify itself period: by and large, it offers no justification for its claims, and indeed offers few if any moral principles to begin with, just commands. That’s not to say that it is always wrong (no one thinks it is wrong about the wrongness of theft, though of course the Bible’s idea of who it is wrong to steal from is pretty constrained), but rather that bare assertions without explaining the value or the moral reasoning is untrustworthy as a guide to morality.

All morality is bare assertions about values. That’s how it works.

Most moral arguments seek to find first common premises: decency, fairness, liberty, etc. that people already share, and then reason from those: pointing out how people are violating or misapplying these things. We assume that most human beings have these same basic values, and by and large, outside of sociopaths, I think we mostly all do, and so moral arguments are both possible and useful.

This is a mix of begging the question, and an argument from popularity.

What I am saying is that there is no rational basis to say that the common premises are valid, and it is meaningless to say that someone is a sociopath if he refuses to agree.

The Nazis all believed that Jews ought to die. That was their common premise. On what basis are you willing to argue that they were wrong in any sense that can hold water? Because other people disagree? So what? In what sense “ought” I to do anything that the majority wants?

Regards,
Shodan

[sqweels]

[QUOTE=mswas]
What I was disagreeing with is the blithe dismissal of religion’s role in the moral life of our culture.
[/quote]

Sure, it has played a “role” in the development of our culture, so has genocide. That doesn’t automatically justify it’s continued influence. Principles of Enlightenment and multiculturalism also play a role, and they are often at odds with conventional religion.

I think social cohesion is a big part of religion’s function.

Religion has also been the source of bitter divisions and oppression of individuals.

Perhaps when all of the world is able to consider itself as a unified culture, religion’s function will cease to be applicable, but at this point in time I think it is as relevant as it ever was.

There’s a huge irony here. Can’t you see how religion, more than anything else, is what’s standing in the way of the development of a unified culture?

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Your question makes no sense. The codification of religious laws IS part of human history. You’re asking if history is irrelevant to history. Your question is gibberish.
[/quote]

See, this is one of the problems with some of the standard atheist tropes. I am rebutting an argument put forth by ‘Der Trihs’ that basically says that religion is irrelevant to history, you chime in and tell me it’s all biological, but don’t go quite so far as to claim that it’s irrelevant to history. So I go through the paces trying to expose this irrational argument, and you tell me that ‘my’ question is gibberish. It is gibberish because it’s a response to the arguments put forth by the type of person who thinks that an imperious assertion such as:

Der Trihs My proof is all the evil and madness committed in the name of religion, counts as proof.

What do you mean by “systemization?” If you’re talking about cultural “legalism,” then I’m saying that the most basic social contracts (don’t kill people in your tribe, don’t shag their wives, don’t steal their shit) are a result of evolution. They are an effect, not a cause.

I am not so sure that it is as biologically determined as you think. Certainly there is an interplay, but to say ‘It’s all biology’ is about as descriptive as saying ‘It’s all God’. At a certain point we have to have multiple categories and give them distinct boundaries that are perceptible to a majority cross-section of the people speaking the same language otherwise they are not speaking the same language. Religion specifically at its root is social cohesion. Government in the past was a religious institution, for the bulk of history. It seems to me to be sheer dogma to dismiss the effect of religion on the moral/legal development of humanity. If it was all biologically determined why bother making laws in the first place? Every cause is an effect and every effect is a cause. I don’t understand why it is so important to many people who are SUPPOSED to be rationalists to dismiss the importance of an ubiquitous institution that was present in ALL, not MOST, not SOME, but ALL societies.

No. Human behavior is deterministic but that doesn’t mean it’s all pre-determined. The determinant variables are ongoing and ever-changing throughout the life of the individual. The right kind of stimulus or information can change an atheist into a theist and vice-versa. That still doesn’t really make it a “choice” in the strictest sense of the word. It’s still just a result of how the ping pong balls hit you.

I would argue that religion is one of the determinant variables, one of the most dramatic ones, and that anyone participating in this culture cannot reasonably argue that they are exempt from its influence.

MGibson Aren’t all of your examples modern conventions? Inventions of the modern era when we replaced the notion of religion with ‘ideology’. Voyager postulated that communism is a political religion, as many people I know just accept this as an accurate description of communism.

I think that many people here are working with a convenient catchall category called religion, where they can dump a great number of the societal aspects that they have dubbed distasteful, and that religion is implicitly, ‘all that is distasteful’, rather than a description of a particular societal function, which is a cultural organization dedicated to maintaining social cohesion.

I guess where we disagree is you seem to think of social cohesion as a passive process. I think it is active and conscious, and requires constant maintenance by dedicated individuals.

Apos You make a good argument, but there is a difference. One of the stated purposes of religion is to take care of the moral health of society. This is not one of the stated purposes of art. It is not exclusive to art, but art is first and foremost about the creative health of a society, and as such can often be destructive to the status quo, ie, immoral or amoral.

[Apos]

That’s not really relevant to the comparison. And I don’t see how you can just call religion “about” cohesion: it’s caused, inspired, even demanded and plenty of disruption too. The point is that morality can exist without and almost certainly pre-dates, religion. Religion is affected by and affects moral thinking, but so do all sorts of things. Trying to credit religion with everything we now see as good is as silly as trying to damn it with everything that’s bad.

[Revenant_Threshold]

[QUOTE=Apos]
I don’t really even see how this is faith. I believe happiness is better, but not because I haev faith that happiness is better, but because I VALUE happiness for myself and for others. Where’s the “faith”?
[/QUOTE]
That was actually my point, so I must have put it badly, sorry. I would say it’s faith if someone says “I believe happiness is better, because being happy is objectively a better state to be in”. Your example isn’t faith, since as in my second example you aren’t making any claims on the objective nature of the universe, and you can actually measure (to an extent) happiness in that way.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

[QUOTE=Shodan]
I know you’d like to think that, but there is no logical basis to do so. It’s all faith.

Does it bother you that your own morality is just as faith-based as, for instance, Fred Phelps’?
[/quote]

Morality is an emotion, not a belief. You might as well try to argue that being hungry is an “opinion,” or that horniness is “faith-based.”

IOW, gay-bashing is perfectly justified. If I have a subjective emotional response to the presence of gayness, then I am just as justified as you in basing a morality on it.

No, because I decide what is moral, not you. My aesthetic is the only one in the universe that matters. Morality is ultimately completely solopsistic. Trying to discuss what moral values are “valid” is like trying to argue about what kind of flowers are objectively more beautiful. There is no such thing as objective “right” and “wrong.”

OK, justify a ban on gay-bashiing that is not based, ultimately, on “because I feel like it”.

What do you mean by “gay-bashing?” If you mean physical violence, then the reason for banning it is the same as banning any other physical violence. If you just mean speech, then by all means, spew away. Legalism is not the same thing as morality, though.

A ban on gay-bashing is an attempt to force a morality on someone else. Ergo, you have to come up with some non-subjective principle on which to base it. If you want to claim some moral force for “the public interest”, then you have to justify that in some way. What if I don’t give a shit about the public interest? Is it merely force that you have to revert to to force your morality on me?

Again, you have to define what you mean by “gay-bashing.” If you mean physical violence then the gay part is irrelevant to its criminalization. If you only mean speech, then no one is trying to ban it.

And again, you’re conflating morality with legalism. Just because I may think something is immoral doesn’t mean I necessarily think it should be illegal. This whole angle is a red herring. I haven’t said that I have a right to enforce my morality. I’m only saying that each individual’s perception of morality is subjective, involuntary and solopsistic. A perception that something is immoral is not the same thing as attempting to make it illegal.

Or skip it. We have done this in the past, and your usual response is to repeat over and over that your own subjective opinion ought to dictate other peoples’ behavior because that’s how you feel.

Nope. I’ve never said that. You always just persistently misunderstand me. My individual aesthetic dicates my moral perceptions of other people’s behavior. You keep equivocating moral perception with legalism. There are times when my moral response to the behavior of others may make me feel compelled to try to convince them not to do it, or make me feel compelled to persuade or agree with others to make a behavior illegal (usually it’s the other way around for me, though. I tend to want fewer legal restrictions on behavior rather than more), but much of the time I don’t believe that any legal sanction is warranted. I may wrinkle my nose at the moral stench of a Klan rally, but I would also feel morally compelled to protect their right to do it.

[Apos]

[QUOTE=Shodan]
Nor does yours.
[/quote]

What a cogent argument!

Bible-based morality is claiming that it is based on the values contained in the Bible. If all values are unfalsifiable, the values of Bible-based morality are unfalsifiable.

The Bible by and large doesn’t really talk about values: it simply reports commands. This is similar to stating factual conclusions without explaining what the evidence is. Those conclusions could be in tune with our values, or they might not be: that’s why the Bible is not a particularly useful guide to morality. It really doesn’t much say. You’ve simply dodged that line of critique to engage in a fantasy one.

So claiming that a morality based on Scripture is the same as the claim that genocide or torture is immoral. Both are arguing based on values. And there is no logical way to establish that one set of values is “better” than any other.
All morality is bare assertions about values. That’s how it works.

You’re both getting it and not getting it. But in the meantime, does this mean you’ve conceded that you screwed up by calling moral values “faith?”

Anyway, the issue is: what are the underlying values, and how do we get from them to the moral claims?

This is a mix of begging the question, and an argument from popularity.

No it’s not, but I guess if you aren’t thinking through the argument, and are simply skimming, I could see how you might think that. We’re not begging anything or ad populumn anything precisely because we are not trying to establish any sort of objective truth. What people’s values are to begin with is the be-all and end-all of the issue period. They are the only question on the table.

What I am saying is that there is no rational basis to say that the common premises are valid, and it is meaningless to say that someone is a sociopath if he refuses to agree.

We’re not trying to have them declared valid though, so this entire critique is just intellectual sloppiness. A sociopath is someone without empathy. Most of the values we all share in modern societies are based on empathy. So it is both valid and meaningful to call people sociopaths.

The Nazis all believed that Jews ought to die. That was their common premise.

No, that was their conclusion (again, incredibly sloppy work here). Their premises were, in fact, not all that different from most people’s, but they also believed (on faith in many cases) a whole bizarre story about how Jews were destroying society and how that had to be stopped and how Jews were not really people in the same sense as “you and me.” Many people could and WERE argued out of these positions by appeals to experience and evidence that refuted these nutty beliefs and ultimately came down to people’s similar values.

On what basis are you willing to argue that they were wrong in any sense that can hold water? Because other people disagree? So what? In what sense “ought” I to do anything that the majority wants?

If you are a sociopath, then there really ISN’T a sense that you ought to do what the majority wants. At that point it really DOES come down to mere power and violence. This is what Locke means when he writes about the beasts that society has no hope other than to simply control.

I’m not sure I get your complaint here. Are you claiming that you DO have some argument that would convince a sociopath that rape is wrong?

Again, have you now conceded and agreed with me here that moral values are not faith beliefs?

[mswas]

[QUOTE=Apos]
That’s not really relevant to the comparison. And I don’t see how you can just call religion “about” cohesion: it’s caused, inspired, even demanded and plenty of disruption too. The point is that morality can exist without and almost certainly pre-dates, religion. Religion is affected by and affects moral thinking, but so do all sorts of things. Trying to credit religion with everything we now see as good is as silly as trying to damn it with everything that’s bad.
[/QUOTE]

I didn’t say ‘Good’, nowhere in any of my posts have I used the word, ‘Good’. You are arguing with someone you have argued with in the past. I have said that religion is a social mechanism by which a society fashions its moral cohesion. I am talking about mechanisms and systems, I am not talking about subjective opinions as to whether or not the result was either ‘good’ or ‘evil’.

Now, I am not much on the classics, but I read somewhere that Cicero when he referred to religion was specifically talking about the cohesion of the state. My argument remains that separating the notion of ‘religion’ from every other aspect of life is specifically a modern convention, ie a result of the modern era, starting with the decline of the Roman church and the rise of the secular monarchies. I personally put the date of when this division occurred at October 13, 1307 when Phillip IV, the Fair of France arrested the Templar leadership in France. It’s the beginning of many things that characterize the modern state.

1. A secular King exerted dominance over the church.
2. It was one of the earliest known cases of ‘trust busting’ as both the Kingdom and the Church broke apart the world’s most powerful multinational corporation.
3. It directly preceded a split between Clement V’s successors one French Pope in Avignon like he was, and one Italian Pope in Rome, resulting in the excommunication of well, everyone in the world, as both pope’s excommunicated everyone who was not loyal to them.
4. It crushed one of the Church’s elite military wings.

Throughout the next couple of centuries kings began to secularize ecclesiastical lands, and the church lost a lot of its temporal power. However, even in the 17th century, Spinoza who was living in one of the freest countries on the planet, had to worry about religious persecution due to the threat his views posed to the standard religious authorities. Spinoza was very influential philosophically in the enlightenment views that informed many of the political movements that were to come in the next 200+ years, including the formation of the United States and the French Revolution.

So yes, religion can be disruptive, but I think you’re missing a key point here. Religion is only disruptive if it is not the source of the status quo. Throughout history the bulk majority of people participated in the religious life of their community. You use art as your example, which is the reason I used it as well, but throughout the middle-ages, MOST ART was related to the Christian church. It was ubiquitous. You can’t simply go back and revise the importance of religion to world history out of it because you have taken a neutral concept and deemed it as something negative.

I would argue that Mammalian territorial dominance patterns are responsible for most of the violence in history, not religion. Religion coheres society so that we can define a clear ‘us’ vs a clear ‘them’ by which we know who we can vent our aggressive mammalian tendencies toward, but it is not the cause of those tendencies. Religion and civilization have been a result of the attempt to channel those mammalian aggressions into a codified authority structure so that human beings can cohabitate in groups.

[sqweels]

I think some here are missing the point. The idea that religion is an essential component of morality–and therefore law–is being disputed because, first, much of basic morality is based on human empathy, an imperative that first arose in pre-religious societies, and second, reason can take it from there.

Better stick to arguing that there are always secular reasons justifying any current or future law.

[Odesio]

[QUOTE=mswas]

MGibson Aren’t all of your examples modern conventions? Inventions of the modern era when we replaced the notion of religion with ‘ideology’. Voyager postulated that communism is a political religion, as many people I know just accept this as an accurate description of communism.

[/quote]

If they are modern discoveries, so what? At any rate, Mill wrote on Utilitarianism in the 19th century, who based a lot of his ideas on the work of Bentham, and you can trace the origins of Utilitarianism back to Epicures way back in the bad old BCE days. Let’s go back to the Plato question, "Is it good because God says its good or does God say it is good because it is good? If God says it is good because it is good that would mean that right/wrong is independent of the divine.

I think that many people here are working with a convenient catchall category called religion, where they can dump a great number of the societal aspects that they have dubbed distasteful, and that religion is implicitly, ‘all that is distasteful’,

I agree, I think some people have a rather myopic view of the role religion played throughout history. Yes, people used religious reasons to implement horrible systems, but they also used religion to fight against terrible systems. John Brown was against slavery, in large part, because of his religious convictions.

Marc

[Czarcasm]

[QUOTE=Shodan]
I know you’d like to think that, but there is no logical basis to do so. It’s all faith.

Does it bother you that your own morality is just as faith-based as, for instance, Fred Phelps’?
[/QUOTE]

Since you’ve decided to ignore all the posts (and all the previous threads) telling you why this premise is wrong, I’m not going to bother addressing either your faulty premise or your cheap shot. If I point out what has already been stated by so many others on this subject you won’t address it, and if I don’t point it out you get to “win” this argument.
O.K., you “win”-whatever that means to you.

[Lightnin]

[QUOTE=mswas]
The question is not “How is religion “encroaching” on everyday life?”, I think the fact that murder is illegal is quite relevant. I mean, that whole civilization thing that religion imposed upon us is pretty impactful on my every day life. How about you?
[/QUOTE]

I’m curious, mswas- if god didn’t tell you it was bad to murder, would you do it?

[DMC]

[QUOTE=Justin_Bailey]
Ya know, that sounds almost like you’re calling me a homophobe who thinks gays shouldn’t adopt children. I know someone as smart and logical as you wouldn’t stoop to such a thing.
[/QUOTE]
Nope, I was simply responding to your points. Hell, I even quoted them above my responses. I have no clue if you are a homophobe or not, but there are religious homophobes keeping gays from adopting children. I call that “encroachment.”

I’ve never understood this argument. It’s the frickin’ pledge! No one pays attention to it and everyone is just droning on with the rest of the class before they’re old enough to understand what it even means. Do I think the pledge should be done away with completely? Absolutely. But to say there’s peer pressure to say the words “Under God” is ludicrous.

My best friend in grade school was a Jehovah’s Witness and I didn’t even know he wasn’t speaking the pledge with us until he told me in high school.

Peer pressure. Jesus.

Is that the “Some of my best friends are black” argument? Just because he didn’t experience peer pressure doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Exactly how many cites would convince you that this is an issue, and get you to stop making stupid assertions based on your own little worldview? That’s ignoring the fact that it should be found unconstitutional in the first place.

Now, I was under the impression that atheists didn’t have some cohesive, organized movement to “get back” at religious people. At least, this is what the SDMB told me. Are you saying all the atheists on this board are liars, or are you just throwing up a strawman?

Well, since I said nothing about a cohesive, organized movement to get back at religious people, if there is a strawman around, it’s your’s. It was simply a demonstration that atheism has far less impact on the religious, than religion (which is also not a very organized, cohesive movement, although many of them do seem to agree on a few things) has on the atheist. So, I’ll repeat it again, and you can either answer, or you can keep trying to play “find the strawman”, and losing at it:
[QUOTE=DMC]
Can you name a single thing in which atheism is having similar effects on non-atheists? Can you name anything that atheists are proposing that you would consider unconstitutional?
[/QUOTE]

Oh, you completely ignored my responses to your statements about previous marriage statutes. Did you want to retract that, or did you want to bring some actual evidence?

[BrightNShiny]

Shodan, I asked you a question: Do you define religion to include capitalist economics? I would appreciate an answer to the question. Thanks.