REPLY TO M. TOVEY

Submitted by DANIEL REDMOND (United States), Jan 11, 2008 at 18:50

Most Christians are good people. They are good people not because they are Christians but simply because most people are decent and law-abiding citizens, regardless of religious affiliation. There is nothing positive taught by religion that cannot be taught equally well or better through instruction in human kindness and common decency. There is, however, a long history of bigotry, violence and oppression foisted upon Mankind by religious belief and religious institutions. Christianity itself has a long and sordid history of persecution----the first American colonists fled the religious persecution of other Christians to seek safe haven on our shores----and the warlike exhortations of the Prophet Mohammad to the followers of Islam has been well-documented in the Qur'an itself. In Hindu India approximately 160 million people are still today relegated to the lowest ranks of society in a brutal caste system that, through the perversity of religion, has labled them as outcastes, pariahs......Untouchables......those so foul that to merely touch them is considered an abomination.

If you want to look for tolerance, don't try to find it in religion or the religious. Consider this simple fact; no secular nation has ever started a war. Atheists have never burned anyone at the stake for not believing as they do [Christians have], nor have they stoned anyone to death for being an "infidel" as Muslims still do to this day.

We Atheists want all religion out of government. This does not mean that elected officials must give up their religious beliefs but it does mean that their decisions should be free of any and all religious bias. Our Constitution does not endorse any religion and the only way to keep one religion from taking control of government is to keep all religions separate from government. Our Capitol Building is not a church, it is the seat of government. If you want to practice religion and if you want your elected officials to practice religion there are, at last count, more than three hundred and fifty thousand churches and other houses of worship in America. Practice your religion there and keep God out of government. Period.

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