Just when I thought Ruth Ann Dailey was going to write a decent column, she blows it. Today's column was titled "America a Christian Nation? Think Again.
Yay!!! Perhaps Ruth Ann understands that while the majority of citizens in this country are some flavor of Christian, the government is expressly secular. Alas, she goes all squishy. To wit:
"The correct answer to the question "Is America a 'Christian nation'?" is "yes and no." And both sides need to get over it."
She then goes on to note the early efforts to decouple government and religion, before dropping this heap o stupid:
"But it matters very much to American history that Christians discovered and established this principle well before Enlightenment philosophers did. It took root here because our forebears were -- literally and metaphorically -- plowing new ground. When the Enlightenment was barely under way in the Old World, deist intellectuals and learned Christians worked side by side in the New World to lead the war for independence, to draft and ratify the U.S. Constitution and to establish the separation of church and state.
In short, the principle that today's agnostics and atheists file lawsuits to protect comes to them courtesy, first, of Christian thinkers. Is it too much to ask them to acknowledge this fact?"
AAARRGHH!! No atheist or agnostic I know of refuses to acknowledge that many of the founding fathers, and the people who influenced them were Christians and Deists. That's not the issue. The issue at hand is that these leaders knew that entwining sectarian beliefs and government leads to persecution of those whos beliefs are in the minority or out of the mainstream. As Jefferson put it, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
She does call out the odious fake historian David Barton, but then goes on to cite Stalin and Mao as examples of evil atheists, while ignoring that the atrocities committed by those men were based on politics, not religion, or the lack thereof.
All we atheists and agnostics want by filing these lawsuits is to get the government to follow the law. Is that too much to ask Ruth Ann?
Yay!!! Perhaps Ruth Ann understands that while the majority of citizens in this country are some flavor of Christian, the government is expressly secular. Alas, she goes all squishy. To wit:
"The correct answer to the question "Is America a 'Christian nation'?" is "yes and no." And both sides need to get over it."
She then goes on to note the early efforts to decouple government and religion, before dropping this heap o stupid:
"But it matters very much to American history that Christians discovered and established this principle well before Enlightenment philosophers did. It took root here because our forebears were -- literally and metaphorically -- plowing new ground. When the Enlightenment was barely under way in the Old World, deist intellectuals and learned Christians worked side by side in the New World to lead the war for independence, to draft and ratify the U.S. Constitution and to establish the separation of church and state.
In short, the principle that today's agnostics and atheists file lawsuits to protect comes to them courtesy, first, of Christian thinkers. Is it too much to ask them to acknowledge this fact?"
AAARRGHH!! No atheist or agnostic I know of refuses to acknowledge that many of the founding fathers, and the people who influenced them were Christians and Deists. That's not the issue. The issue at hand is that these leaders knew that entwining sectarian beliefs and government leads to persecution of those whos beliefs are in the minority or out of the mainstream. As Jefferson put it, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
She does call out the odious fake historian David Barton, but then goes on to cite Stalin and Mao as examples of evil atheists, while ignoring that the atrocities committed by those men were based on politics, not religion, or the lack thereof.
All we atheists and agnostics want by filing these lawsuits is to get the government to follow the law. Is that too much to ask Ruth Ann?
