You will find strong characters/viewpoints on both sides of the religion question around here (and by "here" I mean this side of DU).
Some of us in A&A get accused of being "militant", which simply means that we won't shut up and accord religion the privilege generally accorded it in the U.S. However, those of us who don't live in the US are often astonished by what the religious there think they are entitled to expect from everyone else just because they believe in what to many of us are ridiculous fantasies and laughable conceits.
Being an atheist in the UK bars one from nothing. Nobody here needs to be afraid that if someone finds out they don't believe in this irrational nonsense they may lose their job, their friends, their families... The fact that I'm an atheist never comes up in daily life here because, I think, nobody cares. I just imagine they all are too. Certainly almost everyone I know is.
When that nasty little creep Tony Blair was PM he was asked by a magazine editor whether his faith had allowed him to 'bond' with Bush; his director of strategy and communications interrupted the question to insist, "I'm sorry. We don't do God." Blair was prevented by his advisers from ending his address to the nation at the start of hostilities in Iraq with the message: "God bless you."
Bliar waited until after his term as PM was over before announcing that he was converting to Catholicism because, as he explained, if you talk in public here about God people will "think you are bonkers". And so we do. And so, indeed, he is.
So for a Brit to come to DU as I did 12 years ago, the culture shock is not just because of things like the very creepy reverence for the military or the obsession with guns (I'm in my 50s and I've never even seen a gun IRL) but over the way that no-one seemed willing to laugh at religion or even question its ludicrous claims. It seemed as if no one was allowed to do those things. Here, in the "land of the free".
So you have Hillary Clinton claiming that the bible is her favourite book. And nobody laughs! Does anyone really believe that or do they just understand that in the US that's the kind of thing a wise politician learns to say? Money talks and church money talks very loudly.
The worst thing that the right wingers can think to say about Obama - even worse than the ludicrous claim that he's "a Communist" - is that he's secretly "a Muslim". Oh, I know it's just code for saying "America-hater!" (or even "black!"
but they have no idea how ridiculous that sounds outside the US. Which is where most of us live. Not that they care about the rest of the world, of course.
Anyway, enjoy your time here.
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