And the depth of someone's religious belief undoubtedly makes their beliefs true.

Unless they conflict with laws regarding trafficking in illegal reptiles.

The story can be found here

and I am sure other places.

If you do not know the story the article provides a decent, though CNN-based summary of it

<more after the break>

Obama's recent push toward the Christian community, especially as it comes to a White House connection to something resembling Bush's policies, has me a little edgy. The recent poll revelation that roughly 92% of Americans are believers in some form of religion (with Christians by far in the lead) puts me in a shaky 8% that misses the true separation of church and state that Jefferson enjoyed.

While riding in to work this morning and listening to public radio do a story on the Middle East, they gave up the statistic that over 80% of Arabs are convinced that the US's position in the Iraqi and Afghanistani campaigns is to replace Islam with Christianity, therefor giving Al Quaeda it's strongest recruiting message.

[I wrote this with people like James Dobson of Focus on the Family in mind. I was especially driven to finish it after his comments about Obama. This is NOT with his campaign's blessing, btw. I'd love to get Dobson's reaction though I doubt he'd be able to react intelligibly.]

What if we could equate morality with optimal behavior? That is, given a full understanding of our true circumstances, especially in a scientific sense, could our ideas about moral behavior be successfully anchored to some final perspective?

This is the body of an email I sent to an old high-school friend.  This transaction occurred a few months ago when Edwards was still in the running for president.

I hope you enjoy my retort and please feel free to give me pointers for discussions like this in the future.

Cheers!

Being a pure athiest or at least as pure as one can be, given my inability to prove it, I am often baffled by religion and the religious. It would also seems that the religious are often baffled by me. I think one of the main difficulties with the religious understanding athiesm, is that they look at it as just another religion competing with their own. The fallacy in this is that the absence of something is not just another form of that something. If I was in a room full of people, each of whom is holding either an orange, a lemon, or a lime, and I am holding nothing, that does not make my empty hand another form of citrus fruit. And like my empty hand is not an orange, a lemon or a lime, my atheism is not a religion, mearly the absence of one.

Being a lazy Sunday I thought it might be interesting for some to read why a person who is an atheist, in a world full of religions, got to be that way. This is not an argument intended to convince the religious to be otherwise, mearly one mans view of the great unknown.

I've been as swept up in Barack Obama's candidacy as everyone else, but for me there is still one huge issue.

So, I had an interesting epiphany today. About 40 minutes ago, I had the urge to enjoy a can of coke that we had lying around the apartment after dc’s family had left town. I went to the fridge, and I did not find any coke in it. I guess we simply drank all of the coke. Now, here’s the epiphany though. DC apparently claims to have taken a can of coke from the fridge this morning, placed it somewhere around the house (without opening it), and forgot where she set it down.

Finally, I thought, I would find a can of coke, and through that can of coke, satiate my thirst. Now, the problem was, she remembered seeing the can, and experiencing its existence, but had no idea where I could also partake in that experience. So, since I had faith that this can did exist (and I was thirsty), I searched the apartment high and low for it. I looked in my bookshelves, I looked next to my bed, I looked in the fridge, and I even spent some time on the throne looking for it. Sadly, nowhere could I find this can of coke.

Maybe the human brain evolved faster than technology so that becoming sentient created abstract thought - especially about things for which there were no immediate answers.  This, I think, was the beginning of science.  As each mystery was solved, one more fear, or, from a cynical perspective, one more god went the way of the Edsel.

My name is David Edward Oliver and I live in South Carolina. I first lived in Virgina for 34 years before I moved to South Carolina. I am a political libertarian with liberal leanings. I hope to meet new people and talk politics or religion.

That's the headline from an article in The Observer yesterday.  It describes an honor killing in Basra, where a 17-year-old girl was stomped to death by her father for talking to a British soldier -- "the enemy, the invader and a Christian".

Well, it's been a long time since I posted and received the wrath of dKos for pointing out the obvious for stating this, but I'll do so again: this is another example of how religion kills.  

How's that headline? Do I have everybody's attention now? Good. Because a headline like that should get your attention. Would anybody tolerate "Gay Bashing Week" or "Woman Bashing Week?" The very idea is ludicrous. Yet, Dinesh D'Souza can print an article entitled "Atheist Bashing Week" and hardly anybody bats an eyelash. There's certainly not public outrage and condemnation for such blatant bigotry. He was just joking, you say? Even in all of our stunts here at the RRS, which are regularly criticized by atheists (often quite vehemently), we've only dared to tell people that their god doesn't exist or encourage others to say so and post it to YouTube. Even the mind disorder controversy doesn't encourage physical harm or even allude to it. If we haven't had "Christian Bashing Week," you can bet it's because we find the notion repugnant, even in jest.

Dear Barack,

Today I received two emails from you soliciting a donation for your campaign. I probably would have donated some money as I have four times in the past, but I’m a little strapped right now. It’s the economy, you know. I really gave it a lot of consideration before turning you down. I could have given up a necessity or two for a couple of days, but something kept stopping me from dropping something in the plate when it was passed. So I decided not to contribute right now.

What stopped me was this whole religious thing that has been going on recently. I know it must be a heart wrenching decision to denounce someone who has played a big part in your life. It seems that Rev. Wright was there to help you out of some spiritual uncertainty in the past and his leading you to Christianity was an answer for you at the time. I also know that all of us continue to associate with some people whose views we may not agree with 100 percent. I am also sincerely sorry that you had to deal with some personal turmoil caused by someone you had a great deal of respect for.  But I also think that all of this is significantly caused by trying to mix religion and politics.

CNN reports that 23 year old Jeremy Hall was denied a promotion because of his religious beliefs. Hall was also harassed by other soldiers while on duty in Qatar and told the army couldn't protec him from such harassment.

He even had a superior officer (a Major) threaten to bring charges against him for trying to organize a meeting of those who believed as he does.

Hall is a member of one of the most reviled groups in America today because of his relationship to religion. Hall is not a member of a fundamentalist Mormon sect, or a Muslim.

Hall is an atheist.

Religiously speaking, 2008 may seem like an upside-down political season.  John McCain doesn’t do God talk, Barack Obama does.  And the general consensus seems to be that even though Obama acknowledged that he went searching for a church only after he began organizing in Chicago, he genuinely means it.

That may seem upside-down because for seventeen years the U.S. has grown steadily more secular – and democrats pander to secularism, don't they?  The data comes from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) from CUNY, first conducted in 1990 and repeated in 2001.  The study asked thousands of Americans "What is your religion?"  "No religion" came in third after "Catholic" and "Baptist" – and the number jumped from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.5 million in 2001.

So where’s the evidence of rising secularism since 2001?  Well, I interviewed one of researchers behind the survey – and he heartily believed that the trend had continued.  But I can’t really cite that with links here.

There is some citable evidence, however, in modern politics.

Atheist soldier claims harassment

But the short and soft-spoken specialist is at the center of a legal controversy. He has filed a lawsuit alleging he's been harassed and his constitutional rights have been violated because he doesn't believe in God. The suit names Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"I'm not in it for cash," Hall said. "I want no one else to go what I went through."

Known as "the atheist guy," Hall has been called immoral, a devil worshipper and -- just as severe to some soldiers -- gay, none of which, he says, is true. Hall even drove fellow soldiers to church in Iraq and paused while they prayed before meals.

More here and here.

It has often been said that "there are no atheists in foxholes".  The point, I guess, is that soldiers under fire will discover their belief in a higher being.  However, it is not meant to exclude non-believers from the armed forces.  Someone needs to tell that to our military commanders, apparently.

A story in today's New York Times details the travails of Specialist Jeremy Hall, who, while serving in Iraq, had the temerity to hold a meeting for atheists and non-believers.  When a superior officer upbraided him, and when he was subjected to continual harrasment, he was sent home early from Iraq due to threats directed against him.  He has filed suit against the US Army charging them with religious discrimination.

Who suffers from existential angst more, men or women? Apparently no one has really looked into this.

UPDATE: I added a couple more little things to the post that make some things in it more precise, and I wrote a lot in the comments that may interest people.