Now, on the retard side of the fence, you have an example of stupidity like this one, wherein our author declaims,We have retired the gods from politics. We have found that man is the only source of political power, and that the governed should govern.On the centennial anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Robert Ingersoll, the foremost champion of freethought and the most famous orator in late nineteenth-century America, paid tribute in his hometown of Peoria, Illinois, to the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Also known as “the Great Agnostic”, Ingersoll praised the framers of the Constitution for deliberately omitting any mention of God from the nation's founding document and instead acknowledging “We the People” as the supreme governmental authority. This unprecedented decision, Ingersoll declared, “did away forever with the theological idea of government.”
—Col. Robert Green Ingersoll, July 4, 1876
The Great Agnostic spoke too soon. It is impossible to imagine such a forthright celebration of America's secularist heritage today, as the apostles of religious correctness attempt to infuse every public issue, from the quality of education to capital punishment, with their theological values. During the past two decades, cultural and religious conservatives have worked ceaselessly to delegitimize American secularism and relegate its heroes to a kook’s corner of American history. In the eighteenth century, Enlightenment secularists of the revolutionary generation were stigmatized by the guardians of religious orthodoxy as infidels and atheists. Today, the new pejorative “elitist” has replaced the old “infidel” in the litany of slurs aimed at defenders of secular values.
"We are all entitled to our beliefs, but I am curious as to how one can swear to uphold the Constitution and not believe in God. After all, it was enacted in the 1787th 'year of our Lord.'?"My jaw seriously dropped when I read this. I mean most religious right loons will use the Declaration of Independence, or some state constitution, to try to point out how "godly our heritage is..." to argue that atheists can't be patriots, or serve as officials in government, in the vein of frauds like David Barton. But by acknowledging the conventional dating scheme, the FF implied you had to believe in God to uphold the Constitution???? How fu*%ing stupid can wingnuts get? Actually...don't answer that.
See here for some more thoughts along Constitutional lines and how it bears on Stark. Hemant brings us the WaPo ad put out by the AHA to support Stark:
See the .pdf here, and the .jpg here.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Atheism, Politics
