Don Roley said:
I am not religous at all. At best you could say that I am agnostic, leaning toward atheism. In fact, I really dislike the idea of religous faith. To do something based on a lack of proof is an abhorance to me.
Having said that, I have to side with people like Technopunk when they talk about how there are a lot of people who are out to get religion and not in the manner you try to portray above. In fact, your attitude that religous people would get mad just over a film about the big bang theory is part of what I see as the problem.
Like Don, I am not religious at all, at least not in the conventional sense. I consider myself a postmodern perennialist, with strong leanings toward Mahayana Buddhism (especially Zen). As a student of the social sciences, I also strongly believe in moving forward on the basis of reproducible data and communal peer review.
Having said that, I have to disagree with Don and Technopunk on this issue. I'm just not seeing this widespread antagonism against religion (specifically Christianity) that you guys are talking about. Even when I was a Baptist, I didn't see it.
At worst, we have a few college professors and influential writers (such as, say, Richard Dawkins) defaming religion. This is
NOTHING compared to what various segments of the Religious Right have attempted over the years. Everything from trying to have Intelligent Design (what one Republican judge recently described as "creationism re-labeled") taught in public school biology classrooms to trying to have Imax films that describe the Big Bang Theory shut down (and yes, Don, that really did happen) to having stone monuments of religious teachings erected in federal courthouses (Separation of Church and State??). There is nothing even vaguely comparable to widespread movement on the "anti-Christian" side of things.
I don't hear of atheist lobbyists trying to forcibly change the teachings of local churches nor do I recall atheist protestors trying to have films like "The Passion of the Christ" cancelled or boycotted nor do I hear of atheist manifestos being erected in federal courthouses on the taxpayers' dollars.
It seems to me that what many Christians are perceiving as an attack on "their religion" are really attempts to enforce the Separation of Church and State. Most Christians that I have met are actually behind such democratic principles. It is only a rather neurotic, yet politically powerful, minority that seems to be huffin' and puffin' about the whole situation.
Sorry, guys, but I just don't see it. And, while I don't agree with Marginal's vitriole about the subject, I am inclined to agree with his general perspective of the situation. Perhaps somebody could give some specific examples of these atheist thinktanks or atheist movements that I've never heard of??
Laterz.
