What PZ did was offensive to many people. Nobody has ever denied that. But he actually harmed nobody. Nobody had any rights taken away from them as a result of his actions. Nobody lost their job.

However, he did recieve emails and mails from people who wanted him fired, who wanted him arrested, who even wanted him dead.

Now, in that situation WHO was persecuted?

ME
I wouldn’t suggest as you do that there is necessarily a correlation between secularization and persecution of Christians. Sweden, France, Britain, Australia, and other countries have quite large atheist populations and I don’t think believers are being persecuted in those countries.

I guess I have trouble stepping into your shoes and seeing this future political oppression of Christians. I mean, in a country where every President has professed faith in the last 35 years and a Congress made up of predominantly believing men and women, I just don’t see it. Can’t forget those things called the Constitution and Bill of Rights either.

Patrick Lynch
“And my point about Communist membership cards got lost in translation, but it’s simple: all it takes to get a genocide going is for people to agree that it’s for the best. Oppression doesn’t need a lot of people with strong beliefs to enact – it needs a few people who want it to make it impossible for a large group of people to coherently object to it. See: Gitmo. Oppression isn’t inherently ‘religious’ or ‘atheistic’ so much, just conspiratorial.

In your mind, persecution is a rather remote and distasteful thing to have associated with your beliefs. Most of us feel the same way about the sins of our co-religionists. Nobody remembers a time in the US where atheists were openly discriminated against – but living in the US today are thousands of ex-pats who escaped countries that banned their religions and tried to kill them.”

Me
I suppose when you can show me that the current atheist “movement” shares common political goals like abolishing the First Amendment I will become concerned about a coming scourge against people of faith.

I am so glad you are privy to the contents of my mind, it is always so nice to be stereotyped based on the assumptions of an other. For the record, you have no inkling of my beliefs and what I feel about them. If I am not mistaken the only sure thing you know about me is that I don’t believe in gods, and I think the bloggers fear of an impending atheist revenge on believers is based more in fantasy than anything.

The probable reason no one remembers an organized persecution of atheists is because McCarthyism has been regulated to the closet of forgetfulness in America.

I will admit, it is harder to persecute a fraction of the population when they try to blend in among the faithful masses to avoid being jailed or worse. We might as well praise Christians for no longer burning witches while we are at it, since they now show enormous restraint to be tolerant of powers they no longer believe in (at least in America, Africa is another story).

I think we can both agree that persecution is distasteful and should be discouraged regardless of it’s association with belief or non-belief.

Patrick Lynch
“When a Dawkins or a PZ Meyers tries to make a name for themselves by disrespecting religious people, they leave as bad an impression with us as the God Hates Fags people does with .. everybody.

I’m not familiar with any ‘myriads’ of people who pathologically fear and distrust atheists; then again, I don’t know many Fundamentalists. But I will say that one Richard Dawkins wields more respect and influence than 10,000 scared hillbilly Americans holed up in their churches, which does translate to political influence – also, I don’t know if you know this, but the guy started an atheist movement. So, yeah, I would say that it’s likely that a few amplified objecting voices may come to outweigh the combined bleating of an American heartland full of sheep – they won’t be ‘few’ for long, in any case.”

ME

Meyers, if we are referring to his requests for communion wafers, was being inflammatory. I would need examples on Dawkins because every time I have seen videos of him, he has been a most gracious and decent person.

I agree that the inflammatory rhetoric is not helpful for any of us who would like to share the same country in a atmosphere of tolerance and peacefulness.

As for your observation on fundamentalism being a weak political force, I highly recommend you search out a few, befriend them and educate yourself. You have obviously been living in another country than the one I inhabit if you really think Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris are even close to mustering anything like the political influence held by the likes of Liberty University, The American Family Association, John Hagee, and Pat Robertson. There is no comparison.

Tell me you are joking when you say Dawkins outweighs the thousands of churches that home school their children using revisionist materials that say America was founded as a Christian nation and it is their duty to retake it from the evil liberal atheists who want separation of church and state.

I would recommend the websight Talk2Action if you seriously don’t know about how the Christian right has been on a mission to make their version of Christianity the law of our land.

Apart from the whole whether gods exist or not, I think we can both agree on the dangers of fanatics exercising power over our nation, whether they are believers or unbelievers.

You didn’t; I brought it up to pre-empt any claim that religious people should have nothing to fear from non-religious people.

“So really, in the context of the American experience, you don’t think my comments had any merit at all? Christians really are being or soon will be the object of persecution that the author was expressing fear of?”

Oh, well yeah – in the “American experience” of today, I think you’re totally sensible. I don’t live in fear of persecution, and I think people that claim to are at least probably alarmist.

“Persecution is being equivocated with offending certain sensibilities and I find it dishonest and laughable that certain Christians attempt to frame things this way.”

I think that’s stupid too; in a religion that loves to remember people for being burned alive, it’s ridiculous that Christians want to get litigious over being told ‘no’ every once in awhile.

But the “American experience” you’re thinking of, of political friendliness towards Christianity and general adherence, isn’t an internationally common phenomenon, not nationally long-standing, and isn’t even stable today.

Research the state of American Christianity before the Baptists and the Methodists got ahold of it, or how politically welcomed the Catholic Christians were made to feel during their first hundred years here. Read up on church growth patterns in the 19th century; the political reality behind that overblown myth of a 1950′s apple-pie Christian piety took a hell of a long time to grow from nothing and has fallen apart more or less completely in a few decades.

No Christian (and really, nobody) should be surprised when our religious landscape begins to resemble those of other secularizing countries and the Christian in the US begins to encounter the same hostility that our co-religionists in some other nations do today. In gaze of history, peaceful Christians being persecuted is a fairly common occurrence – we’ll be marginalized in the US eventually. It’s not because we’re special. How bad will it get for us depends not on any inherent reasonableness of the atheist position but on the political motives of whoever benefits by stirring or abeying sentiment against Christians. Same as any other group.

And my point about Communist membership cards got lost in translation, but it’s simple: all it takes to get a genocide going is for people to agree that it’s for the best. Oppression doesn’t need a lot of people with strong beliefs to enact – it needs a few people who want it to make it impossible for a large group of people to coherently object to it. See: Gitmo. Oppression isn’t inherently ‘religious’ or ‘atheistic’ so much, just conspiratorial.

In your mind, persecution is a rather remote and distasteful thing to have associated with your beliefs. Most of us feel the same way about the sins of our co-religionists. Nobody remembers a time in the US where atheists were openly discriminated against – but living in the US today are thousands of ex-pats who escaped countries that banned their religions and tried to kill them.

When a Dawkins or a PZ Meyers tries to make a name for themselves by disrespecting religious people, they leave as bad an impression with us as the God Hates Fags people does with .. everybody.

I’m not familiar with any ‘myriads’ of people who pathologically fear and distrust atheists; then again, I don’t know many Fundamentalists. But I will say that one Richard Dawkins wields more respect and influence than 10,000 scared hillbilly Americans holed up in their churches, which does translate to political influence – also, I don’t know if you know this, but the guy started an atheist movement. So, yeah, I would say that it’s likely that a few amplified objecting voices may come to outweigh the combined bleating of an American heartland full of sheep – they won’t be ‘few’ for long, in any case.

If a Christian only acts charitable because they’re commanded to do so, while an atheist does it because they feel it’s the right thing to do, who is the better person?

I worked for a large Fortune 50 company whose employees did lots of work in crisis ares, out there with chainsaws and such, with the total support of the company.

It’s a little demeaning to call that “atheist rhetoric” because it wasn’t driven by a religious organization. In fact, many of those working were not Christians at all.

Timothy
While this sounds nice, I’ve never seen any physical evidence of these works by organized atheists. Where are the atheist men’s chainsaw crews after storms? Where is the atheist women’s society canteen truck?

In the midst of mayhem, I find Catholics, Baptists, Salvation Army and others, but no atheist groups.

Its just so much atheist rhetoric for now.

I hope no one thinks I am just posting here to argue, but it is comments like this that show the prevalent attitude among Christians that atheists are a bunch of selfish and misanthropic bastards.

Your biggest error is to think that atheism is an ideology at all. Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s). Period. It has no creeds, dogma, organizational structure or anything else.

You might as well complain of a lack of charities started by those who don’t believe in ghosts.

The reason there are few atheist charities might be related to the fact that, until recently, atheists consisted of less than 12% of the total population. However, to say that atheists do not care about helping others is ignorant.

There are organizations that have no religious agenda that help others and do so without the ulterior motive of trying to “save” peoples souls.

To name a few

UNICEF
Red Cross
Bell and Melinda Gates Foundation
Amnesty International
United Way
Doctors without Borders

Believe it or not, there are people who think helping others is worthy in and of itself and don’t feel compelled to do so because some ancient book told them to do it.

But don’t take my word for it, try doing a little research before making hasty generalizations about people who don’t share your beliefs.

We all might get along much better if you attempt a bit of charity when speaking about us godless, baby eating heathens.

While this sounds nice, I’ve never seen any physical evidence of these works by organized atheists. Where are the atheist men’s chainsaw crews after storms? Where is the atheist women’s society canteen truck?

In the midst of mayhem, I find Catholics, Baptists, Salvation Army and others, but no atheist groups.

Its just so much atheist rhetoric for now.

ME
I suppose credit is due that atheists that didn’t openly exist were not persecuted by Christians when they were burning each other alive. I stand corrected.

My emphasis was more on the knee jerk cries of “persecution” from those who have their beliefs challenged by those who don’t share them. For example when the musical “Proposition 8″ with Jack Black came out, I got e-mail from the Christian Anti Defamation Commission pointing out this “persecution” of Christians.

Persecution is being equivocated with offending certain sensibilities and I find it dishonest and laughable that certain Christians attempt to frame things this way. Here in NC there was talk of overturning “blue laws” and Christians freaked like they were being subjected to horrible torture. Any objection to their enforced values is seen as an attack and the evil unbeliever is trying to destroy their faith.

See where I am going with this?

Patrick Lynch
“Sigh.

Rationalism doesn’t make people rational: modern times have seen atheist governments persecuting religious believers of all types… Socialism (a word reduced to scare quotes today) is just one atheist philosophy that’s purged MILLIONS of people of all faiths as it’s spread across the world.

We’ve got to stop being glib about this stuff.

China persecutes Christians. TODAY. The USSR violently suppressed religion at its height. Albania? The Khmer Rouge?

Come on, dude.

These references represent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The word ‘gulag’ itself IS a reference to the modern, systematic violent persecution of people for their beliefs – by relativist rationalists in power.

If the only objection to that is “…but but but religious folks have killed MORE people..” then you’re not seeing the big picture here.

The VERY FIRST self-declared atheist states killed religious people as a matter of process. Atheism doesn’t ‘make’ people kill each other: people find all kinds of great pragmatic or philosophical reasons to do so on their own. That’s the story of humanity. The USSR may be gone and China may be reorganizing a little, but humanity is not going to change. Violence and prejudice are GREAT ways to get things done: of COURSE Christians (and everybody else) will (continue to) be persecuted for what they believe in.”

ME
Well, I am glad we both agree that a secular constitutional republic government is a desirable thing for a free and tolerant society.

I am not sure where you inferred from anything I said that I think Marxism or stateism were a desirable thing, and I don’t think I insinuated that the killing fields or Stalin’s exploits were somehow less offensive because of the Crusades or Inquisition.

I still think the possibility of atheist run American gulags is a lot less likely than theocratic run ones based on the recent history of religious ideologues infiltrating all levels of government. Maybe we read the political landscape quite differently.

Patrick Lynch
“The reason Dawkins and others are viewed with suspicion by Christians is because whenever somebody gets famous by decaring a population irrelevant or hopelessly backwards, it’s ALWAYS A BAD THING FOR THAT GROUP.

See: Germans:Jews. Dutch:Africans.”

ME
So, you really don’t see the numeric disparity between a couple of voices speaking against religion and the myriads who have constantly painted those of no faith as evil and enemies of all things “righteous”?

I think the last numbers I saw showed 12% of the U.S. population were considered atheist/agnostic. I am not sure how that boils down to strong vs. weak atheists but I think we can both agree that any “atheist rage” the author might fear as a possibility has a very small base of the population to work with even if they were interested in a systematic oppression of believes.

Patrick Lynch
“What “atheist community” are you referring to? I think they forgot to send me my membership card. ”

For effect: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Communist_Party_of_USSR_membership_card_(edit).jpg

Not that Communism and atheism are the same thing at all, but the fact that in at least one recent historical instance you had to officially renounce religious faith in order to GET A MEMBERSHIP CARD is, I hope, instructive.

It’s always been playground rules.”

ME
Maybe you missed the in that comment. The entire point of it was there is no “atheist community” that I know of. Atheism alone is no grounds for any political position. I know atheists that subscribe to politics that lean left and right and a good many in the middle.

Believe it or not, many atheists think a constitutional republic is a good form of government and that the separation of church and state and the fist amendment are admirable.

So really, in the context of the American experience, you don’t think my comments had any merit at all? Christians really are being or soon will be the object of persecution that the author was expressing fear of?

Check out the Christian Anti Defamation Commission web page and tell me if you think they have a case. I would also like to know the scriptural justification for an organization that exists to protect believers from “persecution”. I think the Sermon on the Mount teaches the exact opposite of Dr. Cass’s mission statement. But, then again, I might be fuzzy on my New Testament.

=

Patrick Lynch: “Not that Communism and atheism are the same thing at all” …

You get my meaning though, even if I did interchange ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ in there somewhere. My bad. I did speak somewhat sloppily.

Socialism isn’t necessarily inherently atheist. Many occasions where they’ve connected in the past have been notably horrible.

My main point, being mainly that atheists, under whatever philosophical or pragmatic guise, have proved as likely to gather together and persecute as anybody of another creed, still stands. That’s just what people like to do.

Socialism is NOT atheist. You can have secular, atheist or theist socialisms. Remember, Marx got his phrase “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” from the Bible!