As far as I know, DOMA just protects a state’s right by not forcing their population to adopt gay marriage if they don’t want to. That’s a constitutional issue, not a religious issue. Where put to a popular vote, gay marriage loses so I too support democracy.
Since alcohol was made legal and you say most federal lawmakers are Christian, you sort of defeated your own argument.
Begging the question really doesn’t win debates :dubious:
FYI we are not a pure democracy exactly for the reasons you claim above, to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
I am an athiest. If some theist wishes to pray for me, I have no dog in the fight. They are wasting their time, but that is OK by me.
Such laws that are passed in a democracy are passed by representatives representing the majority culture, or some corporate interest of late. He who howls loudest, or who plans and executes his agenda most carefully will win, and this is what has been going on for a long time in our country. While there might not be a vast rightwing conspiracy, there is a religious perspective that has taken on many of the trappings of such a conspiracy, and it is pervasive.
In my view, we need to develop our skills so that we can see the bigger picture and respond to it. So if a theist wished to pray for me, I am fine with it. If that same theist wants to run for the school board and argue that we should teach creation science, I am adamantly opposed to his aims. Pick fights wisely, and don’t sweat petty stuff is my view.
Thank Dog for Australia, we have an atheist as our Prime Minister [ssshhh she is even living in sin, childless and a red head!]
In Aus if a minister said “I’m christian” most people would say that’s cool but get on with your job.
The Soviet Union reference is a bit silly and lazy to be honest. The Soviet Union fell because of the nature of man.
I think it is hard for a very liberal catholic in Australia to truly understand the nature of born again theology and the impacts on modern American politics. It seems like a whole messed up bunch of looies to me…
Gay Marriage is a reflection of the world society view on homosexuality. Personally I think they should be allowed, its their choice.
Why link banning of alcohol and Christians? I like my wine and I am sure the Pope is cool with that.
Please do not make the mistake of tarring the majority of the worlds religious folk with the born again theology and spin off sects that seems to form the American diaspora.
[QUOTE=Milton Findley]
In my view, we need to develop our skills so that we can see the bigger picture and respond to it. So if a theist wished to pray for me, I am fine with it. If that same theist wants to run for the school board and argue that we should teach creation science, I am adamantly opposed to his aims. Pick fights wisely, and don’t sweat petty stuff is my view.
[/QUOTE]
Milton I support you in this 100%. Again I say this time and time again, the majority of worldwide Christians accept the big bang, evolution etc it is only the lunatic fringe that push the other cart.
The Atheist view that all religious people are somehow mentally retarded SLOWS the battle down, we must unite on common principles and put aside the differences to fight the battle against fundamental loonies. And believe me on this, they are a real cancer on our civilization and have lost the true message of self less love.
Ignorance can be found anywhere and those that insist they are right are often the most ignorant.
An atheist that as you point out is living in sin and yet opposes gay marriage.
Well according to this poll, Americans are firmly outside that majority.
No secular reason for maintaining DOMA has been given in the thread on the matter.
It would seem that she opposes straight marriage too 
The WCTU wasn’t so much about “liquor is sinful”, but seeing the effect of alcoholism on families and the poor. They were only part of the temperance movement, which had many supporters from the women’s suffragists. It wasn’t motivated by religion, but by progressives. Many thought that alcohol was a big cause of domestic violence.
Now, I’m not saying necessarily that religious groups didn’t play a part – they did. But they weren’t the only ones pushing for it, and those that were had mostly the same motives as the rest of the pro-temperance groups.
Nah, she says it “has a special status”, apparently. I think she’s just pandering to the worst elements of society.
There are still lots of Blue laws on the books though.
E.G. go and try to buy a car in Chicago on a Sunday.
Lyman Beecher and Justin Edwards were both preachers and founders of the American Temperance Society.
Their actions were very much based in the “Second Great Awakening” of America in the 1800’s where the country became much more religious.
In the late 1800’s the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union gained a huge amount of power, so there were many connections to the temperance movement and religiosity.
Many were not trying to ban wine/beer, they tended to blame everything on distilled products.
Not representative of the majority of worldwide Christians.
OH and our PM is pandering to a vocal minority who might not vote for her in the next election.
[quote=“gamerunknown, post:206, topic:616860”]
Which, of course, is wrong. It’s just a reason that you don’t like or accept.
Fine, no rational, consistent reason has been given for supporting DOMA.
Good luck with that.
I will point out that all of the major religions in the world today have vastly outlasted every society that exists on Earth today.
Governments rise and fall. Armies march, countries are destroyed and new ones created. People are slaughtered because of their religion, or their skin color, or where they live or who their parents and grandparents were. But religion is always there. Always, in every society, in every tribe, in every hamlet of Humanity clear around the world and throughout history.
Regardless of your faith or lack thereof, this would tell the thoughtful and prudent person that there is something about religion that satisfies a very basic human need.
When you stand up and try to fight human needs…try to compel people to be what they are not…you will lose. Every time. All the time.
The Atheist community in the West has become noisy enough and obnoxious enough to religion that once again religion is rising. In the USA particularly - and with some specific exceptions through our history - religion has been mostly somnolent. The social covenant of “you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone” has worked pretty well for a long time. And so the broad and deep strain of religious fundamentalism that has ALWAYS been present in our society has been quiescent and under control, and we have all benefited from the good that religion brings, while not being harmed by the evil that unfettered religion always brings about.
But now the increasingly noisy, self righteous, and abrasive non-believers are arousing the giant. Overt religiousness is on the rise in the USA. And there is no combination of power in the USA - in the whole world - that can stand against religion when it begins to march. I do wonder if our institutions can possibly survive, this time.
When someone says Merry Christmas to you, whether you are christian, jew, muslim, hindu, atheist, or whatever, you should just smile and say Merry Christmas right back. When you greet a friend, you should greet them in a fashion that is appropriate to their religion - they will appreciate that.
When someone puts up a religious display, if it doesn’t suit you just ignore it.
When a family member pesters you about religion, avoid that person as much as possible and when not possible just refuse to make an issue of it.
You can’t win. You’ll never win. If you are aggressively atheist, you will be crushed. Because, ultimately, it really doesn’t matter a bit whether the universe was created or just appeared through natural processes. It doesn’t matter whether you have a soul that will go to heaven or hell or not.
None of this matters, not even a little bit. Because there is only one thing that DOES matter, and that thing is that people want to believe. And you will never, ever stop them from believing. And if you become too insistent, they will destroy you.
Well, far be it from me to contradict the history of a religious person… Which precise noisy, self righteous and abrasive non-believer created the Family Research Council? The Christian Coalition? The John Templeton Foundation? The Discovery Institute?
Were those all reactions to “new atheism”? Or reactionary innovation, à la the Bush doctrine?
Which firebrand broke the social covenant of “live and let live” by sponsoring DOMA? Which Women’s Atheist Temperance Union lobbied for prohibition? Which virulent atheist set up the School of the Americas to train anti-Communists to kill nuns and bishops for espousing the preferential treatment for the poor?
What makes you think I’m a religious person?
Perhaps it is merely the typical “us” vs “them” mentality, and since I don’t sound like “us” I must be “them”? You definitely need to broaden your world view.
And, in fact, I don’t know how old you are, though you sound quite young. But I am old enough that I remember when atheists started to become noisy and self righteous - and I remember the time before that happened. All of the organizations you have mentioned post-date those days.
All of those things are reaction, not action. All those things are the bear growling when it is being poked with a stick.
And your rather defensive response totally ignores the central thrust of my post, which is that people want to believe, and no one and no thing is going to stop them from believing. And any attempt to make them stop believing is going to elicit a response whose strength will be absolutely overwhelming - to everyone.
Not all evil governments in the history of the world have been theocracies, but I am aware of no theocracy in history that was not an evil government. And, I fear, your continual poking and prodding is making conditions ripe for the establishment of a theocracy in These United States.
Oh, sorry. Clearly the WCTU predates the rise of modern atheism, which began in the late '60s.
But you will note that I stated that religion had been somnolent in the US with a few specific exceptions. The era of the WCTU was one of those exceptions. And, as a matter of record, the events that led to the WCTU becoming a power in the US were largely a reaction to a form of progressiveness in the late 1800s that included rising atheism both here and in Europe.
The basic point is that religion is the Really Big Dog in the neighborhood. Not merely here in the US, but around the world and throughout history. You don’t tease the Really Big Dog, unless you want your head bitten off and swallowed.
Epicurus? Hume? Voltaire? Bertrand Russell? Pretty much any independent thinker in a country where admissions of that sort didn’t carry a criminal penalty?
I didn’t say there haven’t been atheists and people who did not have faith. These people (I am one such) have ALWAYS been present. And, in location where they were free to speak, they have spoken.
But, Russell for instance was one of the leading lights of the late 19th century progressive movement that did in fact elicit a religious response that, in the US, led to Prohibition among other things. So there was a price to be paid for his free speech, when that movement became too offensive to the religious community.
Hume and Voltaire lived at a different time. They lived at the end of a time where religion had been completely and overwhelmingly ascendant in Europe for literally more than a thousand years.
They lived at the time that religion was just being shackled in order to give rise to other things in European (well…Western) civilization, and they succeeded because at that time people in Europe were working to tear down the overwhelmingly crushing oligarchy that was the Church - when an era of religious enslavement was ending.
Conditions were very different then. They helped, in their way, to create the modern environment of which I speak, where religion is shackled in a fashion that allows us to benefit from it, while not being subject to the evils that it displays when it is not shackled.
So, religion was shackled rather than the religious being shackled. But people, by and large, did not turn away from religion. They just stopped letting institutions supposedly based on religion from dominating and enslaving them.
Epicurus is far enough back that I can’t comment much on his time; ancient history to me. But, he clearly didn’t manage to destroy religion.
I think the conclusion is inescapable that religion satisfies some basic human need. There must also be survival value to religion; if that was not so then it would not be the nearly universal trait that it seems to be.
Once you recognize that this is a basic need - a Need - a NEED for the vast majority of people, then you’ll inevitably change your view about how you should approach it. The way things are going now…I have a very deep fear of what the not distant future will look like.
The WCTU were pikers, acting in a time when our institutions of government were stronger and probably more moral than they are now.