Reply #4: What can we do?

[Thats my opinion]

First the Fischer clip is obscenity at its worst. Thankfully very few pay much attention.
There is a decreasing hard core of bigots. History moves beyond them more every day.

If we together want to take on bigotry then we had better recognize the real enemy and quit throwing nasty salvos at one another. Atheists are not all followers of Ayn Rand--I hold that very few actually are. Most of those I have known--and still know--are humanists, who dismiss the Randian Objectivism as just another secular cult, more admired by religious fundamentalists than by agnostics. On the other hand, to waste precious time and space by searching the Internet for religious horror stories and concluding that all religion is a fraud does not advance anyone's agenda, let alone fight the battle where it needs to be fought. Who is the minister (Methodist?) who founded the ASA? I know quite a bit about Emory and its Candler seminary, and ASA just don't fit. And can you say more about who Bishop Pearson is and what is his story?

Somehow we need to find a national leader who has unassailable liberal credentials and is clearly welcoming to the non-religious. Jim Wallis doesn't fit because of his Gay prejudice. I nominate Bill Moyers, who is going to begin new series in a few weeks. His interviews called "the conversation continues" ought to convince anyone he is a universal advocate of human rights.

In the meantime almost every mainline Protestant group is quietly--and not so quietly-- calling ASA what it is--a citadel of bigotry.

For some time I have been calling for a joining of our forces--in this forum and elsewhere. It is time to do so.