Reply #59: I've often wondered why we have these discussions in the first place [View All]

[Cats Against Frist]

at least here, in GD -- letting this issue remain as a potential wedge within our party.

I think that ALL REASONABLE people can agree that religion or no religion, the liberal elite (because that's what they were) who founded this nation, were children of the Enlightenment, which mainly did two things: 1. Strip away the magical thinking of the "divine right of kings," and divested the authority of the church from the authority of the state.

No matter how much Christians, or athiests want to quibble about it, religion is part of our heratige, though I would argue that the authors of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they wrote "Nature's God," and "we hold these truths to be self-evident," and "Congress shall make no law, etc..."

I think that we, on the left -- whatever the extent we believe or don't believe in a material manifestation of a deity -- recognize the importance of secularism, and the separation of church and state, which was not only penned, originally, by Thomas Jefferson, but has had stare decisis for over half a century.

I, am personally, a liberal libertarian, and worship at the Church of "Gnostic-Buddhist Church of Jesus & Thomas Jefferson," of which I am the founder and the sole parishoner. I don't care what others believe, so long as 1. My tax dollars don't go to funding others' religious crusades and 2. To the extent that there are still public schools (because I actually believe in private schools), that no one tries to teach my son ID or creation-myth hokey pokey. AND, further, that we're ALL allowed to bash each others' religions in good fun, and that people don't take unneccessarily defensive stances.

If you called my religion crazy, I'd tell you to fuck off and that I think all religions that stemmed from the early canonical collections of the Catholic church are pursuing the agenda of the Anti-Christ. And you'd deal with it -- because thank Jefferson, this is still a free country.