we must marginalize the fundies

[CTLawGuy]

if we are to win.

the fundies are said to be 25% of Bush's base.

about half the voters voted for Bush - about 50 million people.

That means there are 12.5 million fundies who voted for Bush. Assuming 75% of them voted (which I would think to be a low estimate), that means 16.6 million actual fundies, out of 290 million Americans. That means fundies make up about 5% of the nation.

They are NOT great in numbers, people. They are like the Wizard of Oz, they look loud and intimidating, but they are really just little men behind the curtain, hoping you don't notice them.

We must be like Toto (the dog not the band), open the curtain and expose them as losers to the American people.

they are nothing more than a bunch of self-centered hypocrites who know nothing about Christianity, who want to tell YOU how to live your life. Sure, they only talk about gays now, but whats to stop them from putting their noses in YOUR business America?

They hate freedom; they hate people who do not live as they do; they live to control others. Is that America? Is that what the average joe wants?

I remember in school, everyone made fun of the religious fundies, who couldn't watch R-rated movies or drink, or swear. Whats to say that that sentiment didn't die as people grew up?

Let us not cower from these people. We should laugh at them. they don't represent people of faith, they are a bunch of extremists and should be treated as such. If we run a good campaign in 2008, America will end up hating the fundies and their power will die.

[evlbstrd]

1. They seem to working on that right now.

edit for spelling dammit.

[CTLawGuy]

3. pat robertson looks like

he is about to take a giant shit in your pic :)

[evlbstrd]

7. Doesn't he though?

That's why I like it. It's supposed to protect me while in the 700 Club.

[LoZoccolo]

2. 39% of evangelical Christians are Democrats.

Your plan has the potential to grow the religious right by two-thirds, and you really don't go into how it's supposed to help us specifically.

[CTLawGuy]

4. a fundie is not a democrat

and a fundie is not necessarily an evangelical either.

My plan would help because it would turn the electorate against the fundies and their destructive ways.


and how does my plan make people want to JOIN the religious right?

I am not talking about bashing religion here, I myself am religious. Most religious people do not want to use the government to force everyone to obey their religious tenets, and we need to stop acting like everyone is a fundie and like fundies are sacred cows.

[LoZoccolo]

6. A fundamentalist believes in certain doctrines...

...as "fundamental" to his faith. Some denominations outline five fundamentals, some seven, etcetera. That's all that really means. It's a theological distinction and not a political one. If you define it in your own idiosyncratic way, don't be surprised that what you say has unintended effects.

Your plan is actually one that the Republicans picked - to associate themselves with a certain segment of Christians. They do it, and now you do it. It's a plan that they picked because they felt it would allow them to win. The entire reason we're even having this conversation is because it's working. Why allow them to fight according to their plan?

[CTLawGuy]

11. The republican's plan is to conflate fundies with real christians

our objective is to sever that concept.

These people want to take away our freedom, why should anyone tolerate that?

The dems are so freaking scared of the fundies that they talking about "softening" abortion stances and are scared to advocate for gay rights.

I think that the reason gay marriage gets a bad rap is that there is NO ONE with any credibility speaking for it.

Why should anyone care whehter two gay men get married? Yet people fall for fundie bullshit because we are too afraid to counter it. and when people hear only one side, they tend to believe that side.

People used to be against interracial marriage. Why did they change their minds? because liberals spoke out in favor of it. Because they werent afraid to challenge the fundie orthodoxy.


Also, do you honestly believe pandering to the fundies will win us any elections, much less the votes of those same anti-abortion anti-gay religious people?

[LoZoccolo]

14. It depends on what you mean by pandering.

Framing these issues in a way that takes them off of government turf, but doesn't really affect someone's religious beliefs, would be a different strategy than the Republicans are taking.

Simply getting on the other side of the battle lines they've drawn, which are on government or political turf, is just playing the game they've chosen for us, which is working for them. Like I said, they chose it.

I believe they actually conflate the importance of these wedge issues to their victory specifically to get us to attack a part of our own base. In the last election, it was emphasized that "moral values" was the most important factor, when it's actually a waning factor. 22% of people ranked it most important in 2004, which was the biggest catagory, but 35% ranked it most important in 2000, and 40% ranked it most important in 1996 (sorry I didn't have a link for the last statistic, and now I'm not even sure if I remembered it right, but this one I do have: http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3375543 )

In other words, they want this conflict in the forefront, even though it's not...because they think it will allow them to win, possibly by prying part of our evangelical Christian constituency out of our hands and into theirs with the "anti-fundy" rhetoric they expect us to react with. We play their game by attacking specific religions rather than calling them out on the separation of church and state.

And yes, there are people who are personally against gay marraige and abortion, but not on government turf, who vote Democratic. One of them was our presidential candidate this election.

[CTLawGuy]

18. if they don't want to force their opinions on the rest of us

then I'm not talking about them!!!!!!!!!!!!

on edit: our presidential candidate was OH SO successful wasn't he?

[LoZoccolo]

20. You've got to understand, then...

...that your use of the word "fundamentalist" means something very different to people who would use it to describe themselves than it does to people who define it in a personal way that simply means a group of people you oppose on church/state grounds. And like I said, your use of it will have unintended consequences; in this case, I think it would be alienating people. It plays a role in the way the Republicans have framed the debate.

[CTLawGuy]

22. nowhere did I advocate using the word "fundie" in public

I talked about people who want to use government to force religion on us. this is a really small but powerful group of people.

[LoZoccolo]

26. Well, we have to fight smart rather than hard.

They've already gotten to the point where they can send out flyers (in West Virginia was it?) that say we want to ban the Bible and do it with a straight face. The kind of rhetoric I've seen post-election (and like I've said, they defined our reaction by pushing the waning "moral values" vote as being important to their victory) around here, I would think that would only contribute to that.

I would actually posit that the religious right was formed in reaction to the far left, that fear of officially atheistic communism drove it. It's why "under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance by a campaign sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.

[CTLawGuy]

27. even non-fundies like the bible

banning the bible is a ridiculous travesty. Its sad no one countered these lies. It doesn't prove that everyone in WV is a fundie however.

I am differentiating between just any old religious person and an activist fundie who wants to return america to the 19th century

we must convince people that their religion would be better off and our country would be better off if we supported the freedom granted to us by separation of church and state.

[LoZoccolo]

31. You do that issue by issue.

And you make a compelling case for each issue. You don't seek to "marginalize" people who may agree with you enough to come back. As I've pointed out, the shifting alliances of white evangelical protestants over 16 years should tell you that people do change their votes, even slowly.

I heard an activist from People For the American Way speak last week about how the religious right is trying to affect the judiciary. I was very impressed by how her advocacy for this issue or that was almost completely based on constitutional principles, and how this or that initiative by the religious right would conflict with those principles...it was all very respectful of the abstract issues involved in separation of church and state. It's a very different strategy than I see here, where DUers try to attack the people, which, if you want my opinion, so closely echoes dehumanization tactics of totalitarian regimes it's scary.

[CTLawGuy]

38. my strategy has nothing to do with totalitarian regimes

what we are doing is telling the truth about fundies. I'm not trying to throw them in camps, I'm saying lets not treat them as if they make up 75% of the population when they only make up 5%.

By doing so we can marginalize their power in our system.

[LoZoccolo]

43. I would imagine that an organization that's been fighting...

...encroachment on the separation of church and state for 25 years probably generally has more effective strategy than either you or I could think up.

[Zhade]

50. I agree: KEEP RELIGION OUT OF IT!

We should be emphasizing the separation of church and state, not trying to out-Jesus the Religious Reich.

[carpetbagger]

5. Then just go after the "cafeteria fundamentalists"

The ones who boil down the commands of the Bible to the ones that they are comfortable with.

[napi21]

8. Actually I got a better idea from Mike Malloy's show tonight.

He didn't make any suggestions, but (believe it or not!) he read a section of the scripture on his show tonight. It refers to the second coming of Christ. (I'm not well versed here so give me a break.) When Christ comes back to earth, he will gather all the people of the world and divide them into two groups, the lambs and the goats. To the lambs he will say, go to your reward in heaven, you have earned it. The goats will ask why not us? Christ will say when I was hungry, you ignored me, when I was neket, you didn't clothe me, etc. They will ask when did we ever see YOU hungry Lord, and Christ will say, what you did the least of my bretherin, you did to me!

The reason I mention this is because I think we can actually speak to the RW extremists in their own language, and make at least some of them understand that siding with leaders who think of nothing but successful corporations and cutting gov't programs to reduce taxes is NOT TAKING CARE OF THE LEAST OF cHRIST'S BRETHERIN. If we try to fight them with logic, they'll just dig their heels in harder, but if we speak to them in language they understand, at least some will listen!

[LoZoccolo]

10. I think your approach is a good one.

I'm not sure exactly how to get people who want to establish their religion through the government to not want to do that anymore, which is where I think we should go rather than scaring people into thinking we somehow want to use the government to affect what they believe religiously (the religious right really feeds off that), in other words, take the culture war off government turn rather than launching a counterstrike on government or political turf. But in the meantime, I think maybe a way to break the ice is to show how the effort to establish their religion on government turf one way contradicts other tenets of their faith.

[napi21]

15. I think that's partly right, but I think they might see how the people

they are currently supporting are doing the exact opposite of what they believe in. To deliberately hurt the poor by cutting programs os support, to insist on going to war, not in retaliation for an attack on you, but because you just want to change things is going against all their teachings.

I'm just saying that if we can speak to them as understanding people and not enemies, and that although we may not couch our comments in a religious vein, we both want the same things.

We need to show how the Pubs are in reality doing everything they don't believe in!

[libnnc]

9. it's those Dominionist mega churches

that have hurt the most, IMHO. They are independent, and are autonomous--the ones like John Hagee, Joyce Meyer (who was on Larry King tonight btw) etc. They reach hundreds of thousands of people and millions on the tee-vee. I was just thinking about this very thing while flipping channels. I came across the Paul & Jan Crouch tee-vee station TBN. Screaming christians in the congregation wearing cammo. Scary stuff. :scared:

They may be blips on the political demographic radar screen statistically, but their message is far, far reaching.

[NAO]

35. Dominionism Links: The Swift Advance of a Planned Theocratic Coup

Fundamentalist Radical Clerics such as Falwell, Dobson, and Robertson are not merely medieval throwbacks or misguided religious hacks. They are part of a well organized subversionary movement known as "Dominionism".

Dominionism constitutes a serious threat to American Democracy. These Radical Clerics have developed and are executing a detailed plan to gradually replace the free, secular democratic society of the United States with a Theocracy.

It is critical that people become aware of the extreme agenda these people have for the United States and ultimately for the world. The results of the 2004 Presidential Election were not a fluke or something that was drummed up over a period of months. It has been in planning for over 20 years, and what we are seeing take place now is, in the words of Katherine Yurica, "the swift advance of a planned coup".

The articles below are critical for understanding the Dominionist movement; for realizing how real and how detailed their plans are; and to become aware of how far they have come toward achieving their goals.

The Swift Advance of a Planned Coup: Conquering by Stealth and Deception - How the Dominionists Are Succeeding in Their Quest for National Control and World Power
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheSwiftAdvanceOfaPlannedCoup.htm

The Despoiling of America: How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

Video on the Christian Reconstructionist Dominionist Theocratic Agenda
http://www.theocracywatch.org/av/video_dominion.ram

The Rise of the Religious Right in the Republican Party
a public information project from TheocracyWatch.org
http://www.theocracywatch.org

The Religious Right - An Anti-American Terrorist Movement
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8816.htm

[applegrove]

12. We must punch through to the truth of the neocons. Fundies will

return to normal when they realize being pandered to isn't all that great when you vote and you vote and nothing you want ever gets on the agenda.

The whole rovbot plan is to tribalize. Don't fall for that. Reach out if you have the chance. Share you empathy with them. The vast majority of religious people have great hearts too. They want to live in a decent country. With decent distribution of wealth.

That is have to separate them from the people in Washington who use them so.

[CTLawGuy]

13. fundies will NEVER vote for us

they are weak minded. and also they are a SMALL (albeit loud) subset of christians. they have extremely disproportionate political power.

Because nobody challenges their ideas, independents have been agreeing with them.

[LoZoccolo]

16. They used to.

In 1987, white evangelical Protestants were split fairly evenly along partisan lines (34 percent Republicans, 31 percent Democrats). Today, there is a nearly two-to-one Republican advantage among white evangelicals (43 percent to 22 percent).

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0101-03.htm

And this doesn't even count African-American fundamentalists, who the Republicans are making inroads to by establishing social programs through the faith-based initiative. Will attacking them on theological grounds assuage or accellerate that process?

[undergroundpanther]

17. The fundies are theocratic

But what do right wingers and fundies have in common? Authoritarianism.


We need to UNDERMINE AUTHORITARIANS.

Educate people to the insanity of Authoritarian personalities,and the danger of bullies.And the necessity of not being a bystander.

[CTLawGuy]

19. ok you win

let get to banning abortion and building the concentration camps for gays immediately :eyes: :eyes:

you do not get it at all....


fundies are a SUBSET (that means a small proportion) of the group you have just cited. Fundies BY DEFINITION want to involve government in forcing their religion on everybody.

I do not understand why you are saying we should kiss their asses.

[LoZoccolo]

21. Not what I'm implying at all.

You fail to persuade when you try to hand me what you think I believe, and it's not what I believe.

[CTLawGuy]

24. what I gather from what you are saying

is we should be nice to the fundies because we don't want to piss them off.

that assumes that they might actually vote for us, which makes no sense since we don't want to advance their agenda.

They will NEVER EVER vote for us.

You seem to think we can win 100% of the vote at any particular election. If you think that way, you end up like john Kerry, having no position or positions so convoluted that no one can be offended by them, or like them either. then you look fake and disingenuous and lose the election.


These fundies are distructive to our country and we have to tell mainstream America that we will fight them.

[LoZoccolo]

28. No.

It means we keep religion out of politics if we want religion out of politics, because that's the Republicans' game, and they chose it so they could win.

You keep talking about how it's such a small segment as you define it, it's OK if we marginalize them, but you don't see that it has repercussions way beyond the people you'd like to pick on. Think about this: very few of us are Muslims here, and yet there has been a lot of people outraged by stories that prison guards may have flushed pages from the Quran down the toilet. It's a bigger principle of religious freedom that people are standing up for. Now pick on a religious group defined theologically and not politically - fundamentalists, which does overlap with evangelicalism and therefore cuts into part of our base - for political gain and more people will be uncomfortable with the idea that we too are using religion to win, and "marginalizing" people to do so. Who's to say who's next that we'll marginalize?

[LoZoccolo]

23. That's not the definition of fundamentalism, either.

Your definition is personal.

Fundamentalism has been around for over 100 years, and the religious right has been around for perhaps 30, and maybe in a weaker form for 55 or 60 years.

[CTLawGuy]

25. ok

fine, its a personal definition.


Do you honestly think any actual fundie would vote democratic?

[LoZoccolo]

30. Yes.

I work with one. He's an intelligent design apologist too. He spends all this time trying to disprove evolution.

I've given you've statistics, and you've given me nothing but words like "NEVER" in all caps. This issue is too important to be given this kind of treatment, because as I started out saying, the wrong approach could grow the religious right by two thirds.

[CTLawGuy]

37. the reason the dems keep losing elections

is because we think we can win 100% of the vote every election.

We have to stop acting like that is the case. The fundies are obviously the republican base and they are diametrically opposed to our base, gays, minorities, and women. Every time we pander to them, we alienate one of ours without having a great change of converting a fundie to our side.


I think we have to realize we can't win everybody's vote.

When LBJ signed the civil rights act in 1964, he knew it would alienate a chunk of people who were opposed to civil rights, yet who voted democrat. He was correct in realizing that it is better to represent your base well and do what is right, than worry that someone might not vote for you.

[LoZoccolo]

42. I realize that we shouldn't try to get everyone.

However, religion isn't a line that divides the parties as much as the Republicans would like people to believe. Were that to be so, we're the ones that would lose, as we've been progressively losing them. Drawing the line, or even just making it look like we're drawing the line, right next to where the Republicans would like it drawn, can only benefit them, as they've picked where to draw it.

[applegrove]

46. I agree with that. Fundamentalists who read the bible daily..cannot

help looking around and seeing the increasing poor... and being disgusted with that. Especially when the tax cuts on the wealthy keep happening and programs will be cut. There is nothing in the bible that says that is good.

We have to not let the repukes and their rovbots..separate us from other feeling humans. That is how the elites always rule, be it Saudi Arabia or during the British Empire: divide and conquer.

We have much more in common with each other than we either of us have in common with the neocons/rovbots.

[CTLawGuy]

40. I would like to know why your co-worker votes Democratic

obviously the Dem party will never outlaw abortion, so he must be ok with abortion rights.

The Dem party has many gay activists and is not actively trying to suppress them, so he must be ok with homosexuality.

Doesn't sound like a fundie to me.


Also, you give me statstics that are seemingly from nowhere, like "grow the RR by 2/3" Where do you get that idea from?

Also, you've given me statistics out of the scope of my argument like 39% of evangelicals are Democrats (when I am not talking about evangelicals) (I belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and most of those people are definite non-fundies)

and you've just given me an anecdote about one guy you know (who is probably just a mainline christian like me and my father) Many mainline protestants (non-fundies) believe God created the Earth as it says in the Bible.

[LoZoccolo]

41. You keep appealing to your personal definition of "fundies".

But it's already been defined differently for most people, and any rhetoric which alienates people who describe themselves under this theological, not political, distinction potentially serves to increase the pull of the religious right. And it has been increasing since 1987.

Evangelicals are often fundamentalists:

Besides self-described Fundamentalists, many self-labelled Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Mennonites; and The Confessing Movement in the Mainline denominations -- all otherwise diverse groups -- hold to the Five Fundamentals. On the other hand, the plasticity of the label appears when one of these groups condemns another as a "fundamentalist".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_christianity

And besides the fact, a lot of rhetoric, maybe not yours, was aimed at evangelical Christians after the election, which I posit was the intention of the Republicans for us to do so.

I knew someone who used the word "nigger" in reference to the black people he didn't like who fit his negative stereotypes, acknowledging that there were some that didn't fit. Should he be using it at all?

And as far as my friend's stances on abortion and gay marraige, you really can't say that. As I've said before, John Kerry is against abortion and gay marraige, even if he doesn't use political power to do so. There's something more complex going on here.

The two-thirds figure derives from if all 39% of evangelical Democrats switched over. A theoretical limit, yes, but the Republicans have been successful in bringing them over over time. Let's not push them over and do their work for them.

[applegrove]

47. But America is in debt. These phoney booms will end. And people

will see others suffering and huge numbers will be without health care. And it will not be so easy to blow smoke in their faces and tell them that their own marriage is put down because Joe & Nathan got married.

I mean the fact that the Iraq war has not gone well..is going to loose its well of Patriotic furore when it goes on for another year. That is already happening. People will not be for continuous war where it is not warranted.

[libnnc]

29. lemme ask you this then...

how do we "woo" people who hear and believe EVERY DAY that

~sex outside of marriage is a sin

~women are supposed to be subserviant to their husbands in all matters

~gays/lesbians are vile creatures who are out to molest your kids and steal your husbands and wives

~you're supposed to willingly give your last penny to the church and if you don't you're a bad person

~if you're poor, then there must be something wrong with you spiritually (you're a sinner so you deserve to suffer)

~minorities should be happy with what they have

~no race mixing

~if you are sick, then there must be something wrong with you spiritually (you're a sinner so you deserve to suffer)

Do I need to go on here?
How are we supposed to take these people seriously? There is a real ILLNESS associated with blind, mindless thinking. How are we supposed to "woo" these people?

[LoZoccolo]

33. I would say that most aren't that hard-line on every point you bring up.

I think getting back the votes would probably start with being respectful enough of people not to try to exaggerate how people think when you approach them. That'd be a start.

[applegrove]

48. Because, as the boom times fade (what is Bush going to do to keep

the market going? Give another tax cut to the rich?) all these things will happen in every community. And that big new house may be an albatross around the neck of every 'successful' family who bought one. ... Wages may fall (as prices of civil goods keep falling because of all the imports). So house prices will fall. So how will the fundie feel who bought a house that they will never see worth more than it was on the day it was bought?

[applegrove]

45. I agree. That is why I say we fight for them. Not everyone wants to

impose their view on everyone else. If we do enough to stop abortions (by cutting the numbers by appealing to them to help with reproductive health options and something like the morning after pill...they will come home. When they poll..many, many people in the USA, the vast majority do not want to see all abortion illegal. They just don't want it to be frivolous and as easy as it is. And they, like I, hate the partial birth abortions. But that is being taken care of.

[NAO]

32. They ARE extremely dangerous; must be taken seriously; Freethought

is the only hope for civilization to advance.I think what we need to counter this type of crap is a Freethought PAC - One that would run aggressive attack ads on TV. "Freethinkers for Truth", or something along those lines, to debunk religious superstition using 30 second TV attack ads. They could feature "Great Moments in American Secularism and Freethought" with "Great American Freethinkers" like Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll.

If TV stations would not run the ads, we could pull the same, "help, help, I'm being repressed!" crap that the fundies are always whining about. And of course the refusal to run the ads would draw attention to the works of Paine and Ingersoll, which are in themselves a very effective antidote to religious superstition.

The Freethought Zone
Science and Reason Over Religion and Superstition
http://freethought.freeservers.com /

Freedom from Religion Foundation
http://www.ffrf.org /

Secular Humanism
http://www.secularhumanism.org /

Secular Web
http://www.infidels.org/index.shtml

Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason - Online
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/index.shtml

Complete Works of Robert Ingersoll - Online
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/index.shtml

[NAO]

34. More on Freethought Movement needed to counter the Rabid Religious Reich

I think what we need is a Freethought movement similar to what the US had around the turn of the 20th century. Robert Ingersoll was touring the country, lecturing on secularism and exposing the claims of revealed religion to be false.

Unless something breaks the stranglehold of religious fundamentalism in the US - and in the world - I think we are going to continue the slide into Theocracy and destruction.

Would TV stations even dare run ads that exposed the claims of Christianity to be falsehoods? Could Freethinkers form an 'anti-Gideons' and leave copies of Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" and Robert Ingersoll's "Why I am Agnostic" in hotel rooms? Could Freethinkers produce tracts and pamphlets showing the contradictions in the Bible and exposing the rip-off of dozens of pagan beliefs and their incorporation into Christianity?

Could we have a Second Enlightenment, a Second Age of Reason? Could we re-secularize a world gone mad with religious superstition?

Robert Ingersoll's "Why I Am Agnostic"
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/why_i_am_agnostic.html

Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason"
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/index.shtml

*****

From "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine (1795)

EVERY national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike. Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it. When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

[FrenchieCat]

36. FUNDIES IS TOO CUTE A NAME.....PLEASE CUT IT OUT NOW!

Like my Undies, and my Funnies. The word has "FUN" built right there in it. Dumbass people will want to become FUNDIES cause it's so goddam cute!

Please start referring to them as the EXTREME RELIGIOUS WRONG....it's longer, but it works wayyyyyy better.

Capeesh?
Thanks.

[CTLawGuy]

39. no

i think fundie sounds condescending, and it's really just short for fundamentalist.

[FrenchieCat]

44. Well, I'll agree to disagree then.

Fundies.....like Religious Right indicate nothing negative.

If we are going to name them a shortened "Bumper Sticker" name, it should connotate something....and even a the word Fundamentalist does not connotate anything to be ashamed of unless you know about them, and know what they stand for. Many plain old folks just don't understand the connection between Fundamentalists and what they are doing to our country.

I want to shame the extreme Religious Wrong.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

49. You are totally correct. - 5-10% of the people are controlling 90%

of the discourse. I really like the phrase "American Taliban" because I think it is correct. These are people who want to control what people see think hear and say, who fight modernity just like the most rigid mullah when they decree that we have to throw centuries of science out the door and teach creationism, and forget about modern birth control methods and leave stem cell research for unconflicted societies.

Please have John Ashcroft or some other highly moral person explain to me in short words and simple sentences where Jesus says torture is ok.

I aso think Zealot Right is a good term when they talk about the Secular Left. Or how about The Intrusive Right ( they want to be in your bed, in your church, in your state, in your body and in your mind).