Why the religious right has a permanent political edge over secular America [one atheist's view]

The Washington Post ^ | October 10, 2010 | Susan Jacoby

[Alex Murphy]

If you believe any of the hogwash about the irrelevance of the religious right to this election, take a look at the numerous right-wing evangelical websites promoting the 40/40 Prayer Vigil, which began in September with a prayer for Christian voter registration and ends--you guessed it--just before election day, Nov. 2. The 40/40 stands for the forty days and forty nights that Jesus supposedly spent wandering in the desert before finally saying no to Satan's temptations. I'm sure that you won't have any trouble figuring out which political party the Southern Baptist Convention--America's largest religious denomination and one of the many evangelical groups sponsoring pre-election prayer vigils--hopes will inspire its voters to just say no to the satanic works of government. It's perfectly legal; after all; none of these sites actually say that the purpose of these prayer fest/voter registration drives is to support Tea Party and Republican candidates who share the religious rights views on cultural issues.

But just look at the iVoteValues packet that appears on the websites of many Southern Baptist churches and state affiliates. Each church is advised to organize an iVoteValues team responsible for:

* Planning, advertising and conducting non-partisan voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives.

* Educating the congregation regarding biblical teaching on civil government, the responsibility for culture engagement, and the importance of being informed by biblical principles when considering current issues, candidates' positions, etc.

* Mobilizing members of the congregation to vote their values.

[a fool in paradise]

Secular humanism and atheism are not religions,

Socialists lie. Always.

[a fool in paradise]

Throughout the twentieth century, American intellectuals of many generations made the mistake of proclaiming that right-wing fundamentalist religion was on its deathbed... They said so in the late 1960s, when God was proclaimed dead. The intellectuals didn't know that God was alive and well among fundamentalists, who then and there began organizing a network of Christians schools that would provide an education from kindergarten to college. Intellectuals made the same mistake again after Obama was elected, when pundit after pundit declared that the religion-driven culture wars were over.

"Intellectuals" is the term she uses for "atheists"? Sounds like an atheist supremacist worldview. If you don't see the world the way she does, you are somehow "inferior" and not a creature of intellect.

The god-hating atheists need to put away their "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banned (whenever they declare "God is Dead") and learn to "CoExiSt" as they put it (put it on their cars, at least).

[a fool in paradise]

And she closes it out with some junk science mumbo jumbo about homosexual evolution (if they didn't mate with females, then where was the propagation of the genetic trait?)

Anything found in nature--and homosexuality, like left-handedness, is a common variation--is natural. To say that nature "intended" or "designed" something, and that any minority variation is therefore "unintended," is to betray as much ignorance about evolution as any firebreathing fundaamentalist preacher or senatorial candidate who rejects evolution because she never saw a monkey turning into a man. I never saw a monkey turning into a homosexual man either, but since homosexuality is found in both species, I must conclude that some gay monkey did evolve.

She is deliberately "dumbing down" her response to "proudly" proclaim that nature makes no mistakes. That there are no birth defects. That no baby that is not brought to term (miscarriage) is accidental, that was all "nature's plan".

Monkeys fling poo, masturbate in public in zoos, and engage in other uncivilized behaviors. She should actually go look at a monkey sometime before turning her typewriter over to a roomful of them.

[a fool in paradise]

Can you imagine what it would be like going to a secularist joke-telling session, then?

A painful exercise, to be sure.

[a fool in paradise]

None of the liberal socialsits types ever complain about types of so-called religious leaders like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his political rhetoric which borders on hatred of anything sacred in this country.

Same as how you don't hear of Fred Phelps' klan going to San Francisco during the Castro S&M gay fest to protest. They'd rather protest dead soldiers killed in a war they opposed.

It's like going to the tax office to complain about your driver's license photo.

[a fool in paradise]

If she is going to make the audacious claim that atheism isn’t a religion, they why does her column appear in the religious section and why does she denounce the faiths of other people (here Southern Baptists) as being a false path?

[Beckwith]

Atheism — the highest form of human arrogance.

[conservative_crusader]

I was under the impression that Catholicism was actually larger than the SBC in the U.S.

[Alex Murphy]

I was under the impression that Catholicism was actually larger than the SBC in the U.S.

That depends on who you ask. And what candidate/cause they're supporting.

[Zionist Conspirator]

The libs beat their chests about the evil rich and corporations, yet they praise the Republicans who represent these interests as "responsible" and "moderate." Meanwhile Biblical Fundamentalists (who are sociologically not well off and certainly not dogmatic Randians), who could serve as a constituency for anti-corporate rhetoric, are considered worse than the rich. Does this make any sense at all?

It's not like the Left is opposed to using fundamentalist religion to achieve power (Qaddafi's Libya is just one example). Yet here in America poor white Bible-thumpers (never poor Black ones) are the supreme demons, against whose evil influence the corporate fatcats are appealed to by the Left as allies.

Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest is (or was at one time) a socialist commune of KJV-Fundamentalists who reject capitalism because they consider it Darwinian and Malthusian. There is apparently no place on the American political spectrum for such people (or hasn't been since William Jennings Bryan).

[Cacique]

btt