Is there a place for religion in public life or in the political arena?

[skepticscott]

10. Lots and lots of straw men...why?

what is the legal role of religion in political campaigns? Does a candidate have the Constitutional right to insert his or her private religious convictions into public pronouncements or campaign literature?

Come on, now. Are you just being deliberately obtuse in even asking this question, trying to imply the straw man that mean old atheists and secularists have suggested that they don't? Of course they do, and you know that well, as well as you know that NO ONE and NO GROUP has ever suggested that the Constitution restricts what political candidates who are private individuals may say or write as part of their campaigns with regard to religion. The First Amendment is a restriction on laws and policies enacted by elected and appointed government officials, period.

On the other hand, there are those who decry the incursion of such issues into the national debate. Would they have tried to keep Martin Luther King Jr. out of the civil rights struggle because he was an avowed Christian who believed that what he stood for flowed from his faith? Had his voice been eliminated on that basis, we would never have had a voting rights law.

Is there an argument from any quarter that if a policy is promoted by anyone or any group motivated in any way by religion, then that policy must be bad and should be rejected? Of course not. Just another straw man. The argument, if you'd cared to state it accurately, is that if a policy wouldn't be considered or can't be justified without using religion or "religious values" (whatever those are), then it has no place in a Constitutionally mandated secular government. The policies that King and those with him tried to promote could be, while those that creationists try to promote can't be, so your analogy is bullshit.

And you, like so many others, weep and wail about religion being pushed out of the "public square", but you get your shorts in a knot when religious beliefs and convictions are held to the same standards of scrutiny and criticism that apply to all other ideas in the public square. If you want to keep your beliefs to yourself or among like-minded believers, fine and dandy. But if you're going to throw them out here, or into public policy debates, then they are fair game and not immune from the harshest criticism.