A Plea for Religious Tolerance:

[RandomKoolzip]

(I posted this a few nights ago in an unrealted thread at like 3 in the morning.....reposting it here just for the hellck of it:)

I'm going to offer some advice here to DUers who aeem all too willing to get involved in flamewars about religion: I'm an atheist, and I've been involved in my share of flamewars on DU about this shit, but I've kinda turned a corner.....it's time we start being nicer to people of faith who happen to be liberal, and stop demonizing all believers as superstitious twerps.

I DON'T believe in a god. But yowling about how right I am will never convince any religious person of a liberal political persuasion to my side. What WILL work is finding common ground in a desperate situation. I've got friends who are religious and liberal; the two traits are not mutually exculsive.

When Karl Rove and the other strategists of the right discovered that religion was the perfect wedge issue to divide the Democrats, they really musta been happy. The inclusion of religion into political debate on the left turns everyone involved into a bigot; everyone's prejudices come out and the conversation turns round and round, never landing anywhere safe. Those of faith are offended by the coarse language of the faithless, and the faithless are pissed of about having to knuckle under to what they view as superstition....and any kind of unity, however fragile, is ripped asunder. This is exactly what the GOP wants.


This is my own New Year's Resolution: to work WITH people of faith on the left for a solution to the Democratic Party's crises. Even as an unbeliever, I am honored to be on the side of Martin Luther King, The Berrigan Brothers, Jesse Jackson, the Dalai Lama, and Mahatma Ghandi: these are all persons of faith (Another resolution: to stop using "religion" as a euphemism for "Christianity.") whose goals are my goals, whose struggles are my struggles.

Atheists should start looking for a way to build a coalition with liberal people of faith in fighting for the same goals. And liberal Christians ought to be standing up in their churches, demanding a return to the traditional Christianity which produced Dr. King and rejecting the radical new apocalyptic rhetoric of the Christian Right. They ought to be taking their faith back from the Rapture-boosting usurpers. How to do this? I dunno. Maybe there ought to be a "counter-quorum" to refute and combat the new Rapture-propaganda with direct quotes from the Bible, or facts....Maybe there can be some large, organized group of liberal church leaders in the vein of The Christian Coalition or Focus on the Family.....DU believers, can we start talking about forming/organizing/funding something like this?

We, as atheists, ought to be helping them in fighting the consrvative hijackers, not condescending to them for their adherance to a different set of spiritual beliefs. In the new year I vow to refrain from harsh language when talking about my beliefs and AVOIDING CUL-DE-SAC FLAMEWARS WHENEVER POSSIBLE....in the past, I've called their god "The invisible cloud being." Ha ha ha, but for every laugh I get from a fellow atheist, there's six believers who take umbrage. And as long as these guys and gals are on my side, I want them to feel like part of the team. (This also goes for North vs. South debates: I pledge to be more magnanimous about this shit, seeing as how there's liberals in every part of the country)

The church, as a social force, CAN be used for good; it can be used as a vehicle for social justice, fairness, and peace, which I think 99% of atheists can all agree are legitimate concerns.


Anyhow, I just thought I'd add my two cents in here, because I'm seeing a rupture in the hard-won unity I saw on the left post-primaries, and it troubles me. I know I can be more tolerant if it helps our common goals in the long run. Not telling you what to do, just passing some advice. Feel free to ignore it.


(Now, freepers posing as DUers to start religious flamewars, that's a COMPLETELY different subject! Fuck them; they're easy to spot, as they never post about anything else)