>I think Nathan's got it right. The village-atheist tone of some of these
>posts is getting a bit shrill. Remember that the form of Christianity
>espoused by, say, Tom Delay (an heretical form, I'd say) is held by only a
>minority of US Christians. Others take quite different positions, as is
>noted by (of all people) Noam Chomsky -- who thinks that all God-talk is
>incoherent, but points out, e.g., that Christian churches and church
>groups were far more active than the soi-disant Left in opposing the
>Reagan wars in Latin America. --CGE
>
Well, considering that our _politics_ put us as outside-the-consensus as
being the Village Atheist, I don't see this as much of a complaint.
I'm an atheist, and I don't think I'm especially didactic about it. (I have had tiresome encounters with other atheists, for whom religion is the trolley-track for the bicycle of the mind-- once they fall into the channel, they can't swerve their brains out of it. Yugh.) But I get really, really _sick_ of the generalized, be-nice God-talk I have to put up with every day. There's the lunatic Fundamentalist bullshit, of course. But it's also the sentiment that "all creeds" must be respected, or treated with kid gloves, or that religious faith is to be respected when its adherents share our moral values (as indicated above). I don't make a point of complaining about it, but when it's sort of forced on me by way of sentiment, I get irritated.
Let me put it this way. Imagine if there was some terrible violation of rights in this country, and the first religion to oprganize against it was the Church of Scientology. Does that mean that we should have some respect for this particular "faith?"
So I don't mind sounding like the Village Atheist. Heck, I _am_ the Village Atheist.