Secular group: 27 secret atheists in Congress

[Playinghardball]

Source: Raw Story

The president of a secular group says that there are 28 members of Congress who do not believe in God, but only one of them feels comfortable revealing his lack of faith.

Secular Coalition of America (SCA) president Herb Silverman told The Guardian that his group was aware of many members of Congress who weren’t ready to make their non-beliefs known.

“Privately, we know that there are 27 other members of Congress that have no belief in God,” Silverman claimed. “But we don’t ‘out’ people.”


That number is up from 2006, when SCA determined that there were there were 22 atheists in Congress.

More: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/04/secular-group-27-secret-atheists-in-congress/

[Warren DeMontague]

1. put me in congress

you'll have 29.

[Andy823]

2. The question is

How many in congress, republicans, "CLAIM" to be christians yet are breaking all kinds of "biblical" laws? It's worse to "claim" you believe in God, use God to win races for congress and then break the laws from the bible while condemning others for breaking those same laws!

[happyslug]

5. That is right in line with the philosophy of Leo Strauss, one of the leading God Fathers of the GOP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

Strauss was a complex charater, called by some an "unconvinced atheist", i.e. he opposed Atheistism not because he believed in God, but that he though religion was useful for the ruling elite of a society. As one commentator said of Strauss's philosophy:

"perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them."

In many ways that is the GOP motto to this day, use the fundamentalists to get in power and stay in power, but ignore them when it comes to what they really want. One of the reason the Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 was that the fundamentalists had been turned off by the lack of passage of what they considered most important when the GOP controlled the House, the Senate and the Presidency. The fundamentalists basically sat out those elections.

With the results of 2006 sunk in, the Corporate Right wing tried to get the fundamentalists back into the ball game, but they continue to sit out the election in 2008. Thus, to get around the problem that the fundamentalists could NO longer be counted as votes for the GOP, the Corporate elite founded the "Tea Party" movement, to try to get these same people out to vote. The "Tea Party" is an attempt by the Corporate elite to get back in control of the Presidency and the Congress by trying to get the same people who backed the fundamentalists agenda (And turned off voting when they did not get that agenda even addressed under Bush) back into the voting booth without having to actual promise them anything. Some of the old fundamentalists leaders are leaders of the "Tea Party" movement, but much of the lower level fundamentalists leaders are not (They are like their fellow fundamentalists waiting to support a candidate that will pass laws that the fundamentalists want, including some social reforms).

Sorry, this large increase in the number of atheist reflect the increase number of follows of Leo Strauss within the GOP. It is NOT a good thing for the Country and clearly not a good thing for Congress.

[hifiguy]

8. Leo Strauss embodied one of the great ironies of history.

A secular Jew, he fled Nazi Germany to avoid persecution. Arriving in the United States, he spent the rest of his life developing a deceptive political philosophy designed to empower an elite to propagandize and manipulate the masses while withholding all the relevant information from them and short-circuit the mechanisms of democracy.

A cynic might be forgiven that Strauss spent his life developing a system almost exactly like the one he fled, only shorn of its anti-Semitism.

[rurallib]

3. I bet they are all Tea baggers! Hey, lurking Repubs, find these people and throw them out!

:popcorn: :popcorn:

[murielm99]

7. Yeah?

Is it 205? Or is it 57? Let's make a list, just like McCarthy did.

[Zoeisright]

4. The sickest thing in this world is hating people who simply don't believe

in something that is unproven and impossible to prove.

Meanwhile, most "Christians" I know, especially the ones who squawk the loudest, are some of the meanest, most selfish, bigoted, and judgmental assholes on the face of the earth.

[DFW]

6. I'll bet the number is MUCH higher

It's just that a number of Congressional atheists are so busy placating their constituencies that
they need to keep up the façade of being such pious religious pillars of the community in order
to be elected. Don't tell me that a bunch of hard-drinking guys who get off on people being
executed or dying due to lack of health insurance believe in the sanctity of life. They are
no more religious than a pebble in a gravel pit.

[Lochloosa]

9. One of them is my Step-Brother.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. At least, that are KNOWN atheists ... nt