One of the arguments I frequently make when the religious right defends some instance where the government is providing tax funds to support a Christian religious exercise or giving Christians exclusive access to government property is that if you changed the religion being supported to Islam instead of Christianity, most of the arguments they use to defend such displays would quickly become totally unconvincing to them. As long as it's Christianity being supported and endorsed, they're fine with it. Let a judge put up a 4000 pound monument to the Quran in a courthouse, or let a school try and teach a course in the Quran in a public school and you will hear howls of outrage at such a misappropriation of our tax dollars.
Behold, I give you a Worldnutdaily headline: Taxpayers fund Islamic center. And sure enough, they are up in arms that at the Marine Corps headquarters in Quantico, VA, the military has designated an old building as a place for Muslim soldiers to hold prayers and religious services. Never mind, of course, that the taxpayers have forever funded Christian religious services on military bases all around the world. Indeed, that we have dedicated an entire military department for that purpose, all paid for with taxpayer money.
You can see an incredibly obvious pattern here between this response and the ridiculous response from the same Christian groups to the presence of Wiccans holding religious services on military bases in 1999: religious freedom for me, but not for thee. If the government funds Christian religious exercises, that's all good and proper; if they even allow other religions to worship on a base - why, that's an outrage! They're using our tax dollars to support religion! The hypocrisy is quite obvious.
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I'll wager 99% of the people protesting this don't see their hypocracy, and the other 1% don't care. Then again, these people are probably angry that there are any non-Christian soldiers in the military.
If it were up to me, I would ban ALL religious ceremonies on goivernment property. I wonder if this post will bring DaveScott storming out of his dugout like the Marines ban prayer myth did?
Ed. this is merely exposing that these so-called christians are in reality christianists, and very anti-democratic to boot. [Pun not necessarily intended]
J-Dog,
Marine prayer myth? This is one I haven't heard.
There's no mystery about the fact that what the Christians refer to as "faith based initiatives" are really meant to be entitlement programs from which Christianity stands to benefit while other religions are denied. They see no problem with this, because religious people by their very nature believe that their religion is the right one and all others are wrong. Therefore, their religion (Christianity) is the only one that deserves to benefit. To them it isn't even hypocrisy. You cannot quantify these people's arrogance, backed up as it is by the imagined support of an all-powerful invisible magic being.
Marine Prayer myth from an earlier thread:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/05/an_intelligently_designed_scam.php
Argh! No! "Christianists" has a very specific historical and socio-political definition that you are violating!! Why don't you know that the pre-post-antebellum Christianists of north-western Milwaukee had as a major tenet blah, blah, blah, blah...
[/sarcasm]
Sorry I couldn't resist the urge to do some pendant baiting.
It would be interesting to provide a continuum of religions and see when the WND readership decided they didn't approve:
For example:
Christian
Catholic
Jewish
Mormon
Buddhist
Hindu
Muslim
Wiccan
Athiest
Please don't flame me for my choice of religous labels or their exact order. The whole point is to create an intolerance scale.
The next interesting thought is, where does government policy fit on this scale? Should it even be an issue.
Troy Britain wrote:
Would it be pedantic to point out that you misspelled pedant? Or that Jim Ramsey misspelled atheist? Probably. So I won't. :)
I think that a lot of the people you're referring to would simply fall back on the "It's a Christian nation and always has been" argument. The concept of the separation between church and state is not something that many of them really believe in. It's just useful to invoke when a minority religion gets uppity.
troblesome Frog,
Fortunately, by means of a timely post, I can demonstrate that some do.
As a Wiccan, I'll chime in on Jim's intolerance scale. In my personal and limited experience, fundies like atheists better then they like Wiccan's. Atheists may not believe, but what they don't believe in is still Christianity.
I suspect 'belief' vs 'no-belief' seems a more easily winnable debate then 'my god' vs 'your god'. Or perhaps it is easier for them to understand believing in nothing then believing in something else.
I often use a similar argument when debating the pledge of alligence. You hear the argument from time to time that "Under God" is just "symbolic" and the word "God" just means a higher power... or higher standard... I then ask why we can't change it to "Under Allah" since that's nearly synonymous with "Under God." They drop that argument real quick... and reveal how "reasonable" they really are.
As long as it's Christianity being supported and endorsed, they're fine with it. Let a judge put up a 4000 pound monument to the Quran in a courthouse, or let a school try and teach a course in the Quran in a public school and you will hear howls of outrage at such a misappropriation of our tax dollars.
That's because they want our tax dollars appropriated for their own (unconstitutional) purposes. They would dearly love to see the United States become an autocratic democracy ruled by a select cabal of Christinas. And they must be stopped now.
For example:
Christian
Catholic
...
err, common convention has Catholics as a subset of Christians (no matter what the fundies might say)
Pennybright:
I think fundies see atheists as preferable to Wiccans for a number of reasons:
1. As you state, many atheists are not necessarily supporting the idea that there is no God, but rejecting the Christian one. This leaves a bit of hope for eventual conversion;
2. Very few atheists openly challenge the majority around them, preferring to ignore religion as much as possible. Wiccans also frequently try to stay hidden, but there also are a number of in-your-face types, although the movement has yet to produce a national figure as yet;
3. Wiccans are seen as devil-woshuppin' crazies intent on mutilating goats and eating small children. Atheists, on the other hand, are just aging StarTrek fans who can't get a date. Wicca could stand an image makeover; Flora and The Green Man aren't getting it done. You could lose the whole crystals thing, too, although the dolphins are kind of cool.
Wiccans are seen as devil-woshuppin' crazies intent on mutilating goats and eating small children. Atheists, on the other hand, are just aging StarTrek fans who can't get a date.Wicca could stand an image makeover; Actually, when you describe them THAT way, the Wiccans come out ahead...
Depends on how you feel about goats.
In all seriousness, I somehow left out the most important of my points: From my experience (and what little demographics have been done on Wiccans) it appears that many -- perhaps a majority -- of Wiccans come from conservative Christian or Jewish backgrounds. Because of this, there is antipathy on both sides, the Wiccans because of the religion "forced" on them in their youths, and the church as the jilted bride. That is how it seems to work here in NC, anyway.
For example:
Christian
Catholic
err, common convention has Catholics as a subset of Christians (no matter what the fundies might say)
A subset! A SUBSET! I will have you know that the one True Church - the Roman Catholic Church - is not a subset of Christianity; it IS Christianity, and regards most of the modern versions (or perversions, as Sister Maria, my first religion teacher in high school would say) of Christianity - particularly evangelical and fundamentalist churches - to be nothing more than blasphemous cults.
Of course, that only proves that there is not such thing as a "Christian" church, as the differing sects of that overall religion can't agree on anything (except that GOP=GOD and the gays are out to get them) - not even the Bible (Roman Catholics consider the King James to be heresy).
Despite polls I am totally convinced that there are far more atheists than routinely admit as such. Most polls show many Americans claiming Christianity but having a more general type of spirituality that many Christian talking heads says lends towards a weak deism.
Most people for the most part are functional atheists in practice if not principle. It's only when asked that they seem to claim this or that religion. Which would explain the empty pews in most churches.
But this is just an idle thought today.
CPT-Doom that was funny sarcasm. Well done.
Atheists may not believe, but what they don't believe in is still Christianity.
Brilliant, I want that on a bumper sticker.
Spelling Nazi! :P
I nominate Eric S. Raymond, a practicing wiccan priest and coven leader as the poster child to elevate wiccans to prominence. And he's a blackbelt I hear...
Not to mention the victimhood inherent in kicking around a guy with cerebral palsy.
This is totally false. They don't think any of the various and many Gods exist. It has nothing to do with Christianity per se.
"...aging Star Trek fans who can't get a date..."
*ROFL*
Whereas I am an aging Star Trek fan who not only dated but married and reproduced.
I don't think any formal demographic studies have ever been done on Wicca, but the 'come from conservative Christian backgrounds' sounds pretty on target from my personal experience. I do agree that Wicca could use an image makeover - hells, it could use an adherent makeover. We get far too many disturbed young people, and simply don't have the population of experienced elders it would need to counterbalance that in the public eye, or to provide appropriate and decent religious education and pastoral care. But that's a bit of an internal issue, and not really on topic.
Uber, I understand and agree with your point, but I was attempting to point out something about how/what fundamentalists think regarding atheism. A great deal of the public voice of atheism is (quite naturally in a Xtian dominated culture) arguments against Xtianity, and that tends to lead to a perception that atheism is merely a rejection of Christianity, not a coherent system of thought of itself.
Atheists may not believe, but what they don't believe in is still Christianity.
Brilliant, I want that on a bumper sticker.
In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Yossarian is having an affair with Lt. Scheisskopf's wife, who starts to hit him when he denigrates God:
As an atheist I have almost as much disdain for pagans (not to single out Wiccans) as I do for Christians. I just don't think pagans are actively as dangerous to society and science. Basically I think they're silly. I also find lots of Christians silly. I can live with silly. In fact I like silly an awful lot. It makes life more interesting. Silly isn't dangerous, silly isn't starting holy wars, taking over government organizations, and threatening my freedoms, my childrens future, and basically the core of my beliefs. I really do like silly. YECs would be downright silly if they weren't trying to railroad that crap down children's throats.
PennyBright Brought up an interesting point. If the Wiccans are getting a substantial number of "problem" Young people then maybe the gov't should look at a faith based initiatives to support Wiccan clergy in efforts to help these kids. If I were a parent I would be a lot happier with my children finding some relief in a type of spiritual belief than suicide or dangerous drugs. Whatever spirituality these poor souls find has got to be better than the alternatives. Such a program would probably not make it through the ideologues who like such ideas as long as they are for Christian groups.
BTW Not to leave the Atheists out, I would support the same type of program for them if they had a clergy/priesthood/something. The objective is to help people who are in pain. That should be the guest priority.
Just my brain droppings...