1. Poll: Should the motto 'In God We Trust' be removed from U.S. currency?

Comment #231101 by tgbarton on August 15, 2008 at 7:00 pm

52% Yes to 48% No with 441,000 voting as of 2 minutes ago...it's almost too good to be true...did a "yes" proponent figure out a hack?

2. Man Sues Church Over 'God Injury'

Comment #209925 by tgbarton on July 13, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Hmmmm...maybe we could get the guy to donate a portion of his settlement to the RDF if he wins the suit...

3. The Rise of Atheist America

Comment #68928 by tgbarton on September 9, 2007 at 6:35 am

I sent them the following:
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Regarding your article "The Rise of Atheist America": the U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation. True, it's always been possible to describe it as a Christian nation - like Justice Brewer did in his citation in the article – because its population has been predominantly Christian (although that marginalizes the non-Christian citizens who have also always been present). However, to quote the U.S. treaty with Tripoli drafted in 1796 by George Washington, signed by John Adams in 1797, "...the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."

Furthermore, it's widely known that the most prominent of our Founding Fathers were not Christians. David L. Holmes, in his book "The Faiths of the Founding Fathers", put it this way:

"The U.S. wasn't founded by people who believed Jesus was their personal Lord & Savior: the Christian religions at the time were heavily-influenced by Calvinist ideals of predestination. The educational institutions (colleges & universities) taught the principles of the Enlightenment, which emphasized the use of reason and, at most, a deistic view of the world. That's why, being educated people, most of the Founding Fathers who signed the Constitution were not Christians (although their uneducated wives often were). The most well-known fathers certainly weren't: Thomas Jefferson created his own version of the Bible where Jesus did no miracles and emphasized he had no affiliation with a church; he, Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Madison, Ethan Allen, and Thomas Paine (author of "Age of Reason", which inspired the revolution and Declaration of Independence) were non-Christian Deists of the Voltairean vein, although some of them were affiliated (i.e. attended) Christian denominations (e.g. Franklin supported a Presbyterian church; Washington went to ). The only exception was Alexander Hamilton (he was Episcopalian, but far from a fundamental Christian: "As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me— [my prospective wife] must believe in God and hate a saint."). It's true that they often equated generic religion with morality, and thus regarded religion as important to society, but they were using a very liberal - not literal or fundamental - definition of religion (i.e. they would not have endorsed evangelicalism)."

If the theory of evolution had been developed at the time of the nation's founding, it's probable that most of our Founding Fathers would have discarded even their deistic beliefs.

Debate that last sentence, if you will, but one thing is certain: a retraction/correction to that article is owed regarding the subject.

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Feel free to cut-and-paste any of the above into responses of your own to this rag and any others who spread that false propaganda.

4. Hitler Was an Atheist Who Killed Millions in the Name of Atheism, Secularism?

Comment #56656 by tgbarton on July 16, 2007 at 7:13 pm

The article wasn't about Hitler; it was about the Nazi party not being atheists. Hitler didn't kill millions of people on his own. Even if their leader was an atheist, the vast majority of Nazis were Christians who thought they were doing the will of God.

5. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #46087 by tgbarton on May 30, 2007 at 7:05 am

The most important thing I learned in my marketing classes was, "Never forget: you are not the market." The arguments and ideas that have attracted us to these forums won't work on the majority of the people in the pews - be they hard wood facing a crucifix or soft upholstery facing the TV.

For those, we need a different strategy leveraging the herd/school/flock mentality exhibited by fads where the masses follow a leader, not because they agree with the leader, but because they like to move with the rest of the herd. Trying to engage their intellect is futile; it's their emotions that drive them.

Unfortunately, cranky contrarians like ourselves aren't leaders; we must emerge from our sheltered caves and dirty our hands with the work of nurturing others. To that end, there is no better role model than religion. The only difference is that ours will be based on reason, logic and reality - constantly updated by critical thinking and the scientific method - for which being an extreme fundamentalist will finally cause more good than harm.

6. The Dawkins delusion

Comment #45903 by tgbarton on May 29, 2007 at 2:55 pm

He just doesn't get what makes people tick.

I would argue that it's the "quasi-religious" people who don't know what makes themselves tick. They walk into those impressive, warm buildings filled with friendly (at least on the surface) people, uplifting music, wishful promises, and tasty treats called churches and misinterpret the resulting release of social hormones in their brains as the presence of a supernatural being.

Until the non-religious masses band together to create similar venues in every neighborhood - substituting the wishful promises with science-based explanations of reality such that the lay person will find it sublime, of course - the war on faith will never be won.

There are only so many people in this world capable of and/or willing to engage in critical thinking; the rest will simply choose the prettiest packaging. Nature has written a script better than any provided by human mythology, all we need to do is do a better job presenting it...