Don’t snip the qualifiers on my quote. They’re important. Atheists in the US (and other countries with a majority of Christians) were probably either raised Christian or were exposed to a great deal of Christian thought when they were growing up. Of the atheists of my aquaintance, both in meatspace and online, all of them did a lot of exploring and studying of the various religions. ALL of them. They almost always started with the Christian Bible, too. Granted, this is just my experience…but I challenge you to find a prominent atheist in American or generally Christian culture who isn’t quite knowledgeable about the Christian Bible. Knowledgeable about doesn’t necessarily mean that the person buys the message, just that the person KNOWS the message.
I always add “snip” when partially quoting someone and I missed it this time. Sorry.
I appreciate the follow up, but strenuously disagree. Your [anecdotal] experiences may not be representative of “most” atheists (your word), and the knowledge of “prominent atheists” may not be representative of most atheists either.
My anecdotal (I mean, neither of us can prove this and are offering up are anecdotal experiences, right?) experience is that bible ignorance is pandemic.
I have a reason to talk to people with some regularity about this issue, and my anecdotal experience is the vast majority of the population is not “quite knowledgeable” but rather, quite ignorant of the bible. This includes both theists and atheists.
Maybe the crowd you run with has this knowledge, but both IRL and online my experience has been that it is common to the point of irritation for [atheists in particular] to claim to have read the bible cover to cover, multiple times, in source languages, in different languages, and in different translations.
If you wish to amend it to say that your anecdotal experience is that the atheists you know are knowledgeable than I have nothing to say. If you wish to say that most atheists---------in other words, your friends are representative of most atheists ------than I say, “Cite?”
My purely anecdotal experience is this it is not remotely true, and especially not true at SDMB where it seems a fairly high percentage of those contributing to GD threads claim to be highly knowledgeable. (and rarely demonstrate this prowess)
And when we have beaten Scalia’s calunnious analogy to atheism into the ground, the fact remains that the case is one where a group of self-identified Christians is bringing suit to retain university funding for themselves while denying membership, contrary to university non-discrimination policies, to a group of self-identified Christians whom they dislike.
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Don’t lose sight of that. In fact, it’s precisely the argument that broke out here that illustrates why Scalia’s comparison was so despicable.
Really? I would have thought it was the hatred of one group of “self-identified Christians” for homosexuals that was so despicable. And remember that “self-identification” is not a very reliable guide for determining if the group believes what it purports to.
The case should have been about the school having an obligation to subsidize that hatred.
I agree with Polycarp. Sure the CLS is wrong for discriminating against gays. But you’re always going to have some bigots in the world.
What I feel is worse are Supreme Court Justices trying to twist things around to support those bigots.
Hasn’t anyone ever heard of an unofficial club? :rolleyes:
If these people are so worked up about atheists invading their clubhouse, then they can simply hold unofficial meetings on some random corner of the school and talk about Jesus all day.
Yeah. But you’re a liberal. And we’re talking about Americans. 
Or, in other words, the people being discriminated against were not atheists wanting to join a club that involved an interest they presumably did not have – they were gay Christians – i.e., people with faith in Christ who have same-sex orientation – wanting to join a club whose focus is on Christianity. Stop drawing lines between “gay” and “Christian” as if thjey were antithetical concepts – it’s despicable enough when bigots do it, without having supposedly enlghtened people doing it too.
You don’t need to bring “Christian” into it to reach the same conclusion.
Which wouldn’t allow the plethora of Christian groups to raise money by scaring people into belieiving there is a huge culture war against Christianity. Many a dollar has been made, and many a vote has been assured, because of the mythical War on Christianity. So cases like this are monetarily supported and trumpeted in the media to continue that gravy train.
It’s the same logic tea-baggers use when they denounce government spending while cashing their social security checks. The Christian Legal Society wants Hawkings College to give them money but doesn’t want to accept the conditions the college placed on getting that money.
The word for this is “entitled”.
To hit on the Christian chicks?
Explain to an alien how people are arguing about the Bible, a book which is supposedly the word of God, yet filled with contradictions.
Not quite. The Christian Legal Society believes the conditions placed on them are legally flawed. They seek a declaration from the courts that this is so.
I think the aliens would destroy us as worthless idiots while we were explaining God – before we ever got a chance to explain the Bible.
I’m not seeing that. Hastings College is not forbidding the Christian Legal Society the right to exist. The CLS, as a private organization, can exist and choose its membership however it wishes.
What Hastings is saying is that it has established a set of guidelines on what organizations it will sanction as student organizations which may then receive college funds.
What the CLS is claiming is that it should receive college money even if it isn’t complying with the college rules. Their claim essentially is that the college has to waive the rules for them as long as they can assert they do not want to follow the rules for religious reasons.
If this argument is allowed it would set a ridiculous precedent. I could go to a car dealership and tell them I want the free deluxe stereo upgrade with my purchase of a $25,000 car. If the dealer tried to tell me that that option package only comes free with purchases over $50,000, I would simply tell him that my religion forbids me to pay over $25,000 for a car and therefore his $50,000 rule is a violation of my religion. He has to give me a free stereo with a $25,000 car because that’s my religious belief.
From ScotusWiki:
I don’t have a problem with the school’s policy. Sexual orientation is a protected class in CA, subject to strict scrutiny, and a state school should not be funding organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. If private discriminatory groups want to use campus facilities the way any other private study group can, so be it. But expecting a state school to pony up actual funds for a discriminatory organization isn’t reasonable.
There’s a supremacy issue, though. If federal law or the US Constitution gives a group the right to discriminate on the basic of sexual orientation, then the group has that right even if the state constitution forbids them.
I agree there’s a supremacy issue, but you’ve misphrased it here, I think. The issue is whether Federal law/US Constitution gives the right for a private group to force a state organization to discriminate in violation of its own laws. The group, of course, has the right to discriminate on its own.
I should also add that I wasn’t intending to make a legal argument but a legal policy argument (although my use of a legal term of art like “strict scrutiny” could certainly lead someone to believe I was making a legal argument). I’m more interested in analyzing what effects arise from crafting certain legal rules than which way we could argue this in court.
Exactly. You are free to associate – or not associate – with whomever you wish. But when you want other people to foot the bill, then you have to live up to their requirements. This is not dissimilar to the various school districts no longer allowing the Boy Scouts to hold meetings on school property; you can have whatever policy within your group that you want but that doesn’t mean that anyone else has to accommodate you.