Interesting how you and Voegelin are attempting to turn a perfectly non-partisan thread distinctly partisan. What's the point of that? This isn't a Democrat/Republican issue. This is an American issue.
First of all, I was responding to a poster who said clergy should keep out of politics. Some seem to only apply that to conservative Christians. I have no problem with Jesse Jackson, Jim Wallis, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Nancy Pelosi and her 54 Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives mixing their faith with politics. Don't hear many other conservatives complain either. Who can object to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Wilbur Wilberforce or Patrick Henry mixing politics with religion? But today, when conservative, traditional Christians, mention faith in the political arena, some on the left--atheists in particular-- often deems it illegitmate.
The double standard is simply not fair.
Secondly, atheism is a political matter when it enters the polis as it does in this thread. While individual atheists bear no responsibilty, it is germane to point out the history of atheist movements since the French Revolution. That history, from the French
Culte de la Raison to E.Yaroslavskii's
League of Militant Atheists to the actions of the 70 million plus atheists in the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China today, is not good.
While I do not believe George Carlin or others atheists in the west have the slightest ill intention toward anyone, one cannot deny what was done in the name of atheism in the last century and is being done today in the
lao gai and in Tibet.
In
The Brothers Karazamov, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote:
Socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism today, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from Earth but to set up Heaven on Earth
In
God and Man at Yale, William F. Buckley wrote:
I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. I believe that if and when the menace of Communism is gone, other vital battles, at present subordinated, will emerge to the foreground
While individual choices, as a rule, do not matter, the question of if we are to have a society which is Christian or atheist is a political issue. Why mass atheist movements from the French to the Bolshevik revolution to post 1949 China and Cambodia under Pol Pot have turned tyrannical is frankly something I do not understand. The atheists I know do not harbor totalitarian designs. No reason I can see why atheism must go that way. But it is a fact large atheist movements have gone that way.
If there has been a large, million plus member, atheist organization which has not gone the way of Yaroslavski, I am unaware of it.
We hear Christians regularly express regret for the errors of Christians. Errors which happened centuries ago. Yet I do not hear atheists express similiar regrets over Yaroslavski, Ezhov, Chaumette or Mao. That is disconcerting ( I will grant that many atheists haven't heard of 3 of these 4 individuals but they should, they were fierce promoters of atheist ideology).
I also do not see organized atheist efforts to help society such as we see among Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs and others. Where are the atheist charities? Where are the atheist hospitals? I may be missing it but virtually all I see atheist groups do is complain about Christians (and see, some of them, sue in Federal court to prevent Christians from promoting their faith in the public square). The largest atheist group in the world today is the Communist Party of China. Considering that and the history I related above, is it any wonder many are concerned about what a mass atheist movement might do if one did rise in the west?