I enlisted, re-enlisted, and have also been a witness in courts-martial. Not once was I required to “swear to tell the truth”, much less swear on a Bible. For each instance I just mentioned, I affirmed.
Churches do pay taxes, just not all the taxes you wish to inflict (heh) on them. There are plenty of non-religious corporations that don’t pay certain taxes also.
I will note that the OP seems to indicate that having a secular government with religious citizens be allowed to believe whatever is not enough. Because he still has to deal with us religious folk.
Anyways, Churches are non-profit organizations and like those (such as the ACLU for instance) don’t pay corporate taxes on that basis.
And obviously in any democratic society groups of people who believe in a certain thing will try to get that thing passed. So what happens with, say, religious groups believe that our immigration policy is wrong (for example the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, among other religious groups, deeply oppose the Trump administration’s immigration policies). Would advocating against immigration restrictions or in favor of universal health care based on religious principles violate a ‘strictly secular’ government?
If your only support is your religious views, then to some extent, yeah. Not saying you can’t say your piece, but I am saying that it doesn’t need to be taken seriously.
If you have religious views that informs a secularly justifiable opinion, that is entirely different.
My impression of the OP is that he really, really wants to be an asshole to the religious people in his life, and resents that there are social consequences to assholery.
I’d take it considerably further than that: not only do I not want to be clobbered by the law, but I don’t want to live in a society in which killing, raping, and stealing are legal. Self-interest alone ought to tell nearly anybody that their chances of being killed, raped, and/or stolen from in such a society, or even in a society in which such behavior is technically illegal but often allowed in practice, are a great deal higher than their chances of having those things happen in a society that doesn’t allow the behavior. Atheists have plenty of practical reason to want an effective rule of secular law.
In addition: I’ve evolved to be capable of empathy, and have evolved to have a sense of justice. So I am happier when others, as well as myself, aren’t miserable; and happier when others, as well as myself, appear to generally be treated fairly. It’s not necessary to posit the existence of God or gods for humans to have empathy and a sense of justice – most likely both are part of our evolving as a social species. (Which evolving I really hope is still ongoing; because we pretty clearly aren’t where we need to be yet.)
Saying ‘Bless you’ when someone sneezes is taught as good manners. In the Middle Ages they believed a persons heart stopped when they sneezed hence the need to invoke the lords blessing from someone standing near by.
That’s where we’re at, continuing to do something that was always stupid because we’ve done it so long it has been woven into the fabric of society. What an apt comparison with everything else religion is about and the ground it’s claimed.
It’s ‘rude’ to say someone else is wrong about this particular thing. Nothing else, not even politics, has this privilege.
Well said
I was up way past my bedtime and as I fell asleep thought that was not correct what I wrote.
Could be.
On the other hand, a lot of black people are tired of putting up with the white assholery in their lives. And a vast number of other whites are just now awaking to the fact that such assholery is so common they haven’t even noticed it. It’s like the air - it’s simultaneously everywhere and invisible.
That is the state of play of organized religion in the world and the US today. It’s everywhere, it touches and influences everything, and it is patent nonsense from end to end. Very often mean-spirited xenophobic nonsense. And certainly anti-intellectual, anti-fact, and anti-science nonsense.
But folks by and large just accept that this noxious psychological poison is what we all breathe.
And, as I said, if it’s the locally correct flavor of noxious poison we’re all supposed to agree it’s wonderful nutrition. But if it’s some other flavor of the same basic poison we’re supposed to condemn it as the vile poison it is.
I say: forget that noise; poison is poison. And deserves to be loudly and continuously pointed out as poison & fought against until all the flavors become just as socially unacceptable as the one the e.g. Mayans favored.
I personally am not willing to fight this battle every day. As I said above, I think we’re a couple hundred years too early for this to be a winnable battle for society as a whole. What we can do is try, little by little, to get people at large to recognize the religiosity that’s permeating culture and suppressing non-religious worldviews. Once they notice they can begin to question.
It all starts from recognizing the problem isn’t “which religion”; it’s recognizing the problem is religion.
I assume, of course, that you will be the one who determines which views are “secularly justifiable”?
So according to you, we do this because of stupid religious Medieval people. Except your position is not based in any evidence. Do you care to comment on why you smeared Christians, when finding out the facts was literally one Google search away? Or are the facts less important that your feelings?
Good example. I was thinking of another one. I’ve heard telling people that you do not believe in any gods called “coming out” of the religious closet. What I’ve noticed is that not agreeing that there is a god up there is considered proselytizing for atheism - in exactly the same way that two guys holding hands is considered proselytizing for homosexuality by the more homophobic preachers.
Think of when the new atheist books started coming out. The reviews I saw were mostly along the lines of “how obnoxious these people are, and my church is not aggressively fundamentalist so I don’t think any exist.” This wasn’t in religious magazines, this was in the NY Times.
So despite the fact that there are inches of atheist books in the library compared to yards of religious books, publishing an atheist book is somehow nasty.
My experience has been that just stating your lack of belief is considered assholery. The OP said nothing about trying to convert anyone but religious people, seem to think statement of an opposing view is pushing for it. They don’t seem to understand that we don’t care what you believe so long as you don’t try to push it on us.
Pledge of Allegiance, anyone?
I’ve never argued for atheism in real life, except when a JW comes to the door. And even then, I usually argue for evolution. And always politely. On line, I’ve been doing it since 1976 or so.
Those of us old enough remember that the first Smothers Brothers show - the sitcom before the variety show - involved Dickie dying and being changed to an angel.
Unless one accuses Hollywood of being original, I’m sure that wasn’t the first appearance of the concept.
No, that would be unnecessary.
If you have to invoke religion to justify an opinion, then it is not secularly justifiable.
If you do not have to invoke religion to justify an opinion, then it is.
It’s a pretty objective standard, and not all that hard to understand.
If you are saying that we should base our secular policies on religion, I assume that you would be the one who determines which one?
@smilingbandit not sure how to quote yet.
“So according to you, we do this because of stupid religious Medieval people. Except your position is not based in any evidence. Do you care to comment on why you smeared Christians, when finding out the facts was literally one Google search away? Or are the facts less important that your feelings?”
Perhaps it was Pope Gregory I’s suggestion as a sneeze was a warning sign of plague, perhaps the real answer is lost to history.
The point I was making is summed up perfectly in the last two paragraphs of your Snopes cite:
"These days, one says “Bless you!” because it is expected, not out of concern for the wellbeing of the sneezer’s soul or heart, a need to disassociate oneself from the dying, or envy for another’s presumed luck. We do it because we’ve been taught this is an obligatory response whose omission would seem glaring. We “bless” out of a desire to not be perceived as impolite, a perception that would take root if the sneeze were to be received in silence.
In the final analysis, it may not be as much about souls leaping out or demons clawing to get in as it is about simple human acknowledgement of another’s presence."
It’s in the social contract to invoke the one almighty deity for no discernible reason out of politeness. THAT is what I was talking about. I respect Snopes as a cite, it’s too bad for you it doesn’t appear to help your argument here at all.
You can hold that opinion if you want (which I also don’t need to take seriously 
) but it seems like it would be impossible to enforce.
First off, “Bless You” is about as generic as you can get. It invokes no more than a the vaguest of religious feelings if even that. There are hundreds of alternatives, most of which are variations of “Good Health”, and "gesundheit is one which is quite accepted in America. Also, you have apparently failed to notice that there no social contract which requires you to say it. Nobody cares. You are clearly basing your statements on fiction, not fact, and when the facts go against you, you handwave the objections.
Is that what a rational being does?
My mother is the most religious person I know.
Every good outcome is literally a miracle to her. The traffic cop lets her off with a warning. Miracle. She wins $50 on the scratch-off ticket. Miracle. She and my father survives corona. Miracle. I survive cancer surgery. Miracle. It doesn’t rain during a backyard bbq as predicted. Miracle
It’s exhausting having to listen quietly all the time. To me, as a non-believer, it’s as exhausting as listening to a schizophrenic go on and on about the talking light fixtures. So sometimes I say something. Sometimes I respectfully challenge her. Like, today she was telling me how a whole bunch of people from her church (whom I have never met) have been praying for me since I got my cancer diagnosis, so I owe my good recovery to them. I told her while I appreciate them rooting for me, I think my excellent team of doctors and modern medicine should get all the credit. She countered that there are lots of people who receive excellent medical care and don’t survive because they have no one praying for them. I countered that there are even more people who don’t have excellent medical care but have lots of prayer and they are in the grave…with people still praying for them. Like her good friend from several years ago, who my mother took care of until she died. Her friend had no insurance and no money, so the medical care she got sucked. I listened to my mother. She listened to me. She’s not going to be moved from her position. I’m not going to be moved from mine. But at least we both have a chance to say our pieces to each other, in a respectful, light-hearted way. I don’t tell her she’s an idiot for her beliefs and she doesn’t tell me I’m arrogant and hateful.
God talk gets on my last nerve, but I don’t have to let it show in my face. I don’t have to put up with it once it reaches a certain threshold, but I can assert myself without being rude.