Separation of Church and State

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Sand, you say, "...it's precisely because they are Christians that they are intolerant." This states that intolerance is a core Christian defining characteristic, and that if they weren't intolerant, they wouldn't be Christians (with a side implication that if they weren't Christian, they wouldn't be intolerant).

This stands clearly at odds with the followup statement, "I never said all Christians were intolerant." In fact, you did so state.

(Oddly, I hold that intolerance of others is evidence that one is not being a good Christian - that is, not following what Christ is alleged to have said in the Gospels. One thing He was pretty consistent about was that it's not our place to judge each other - that's God's job, and He gets a little miffed when we try to usurp His judgment with our own. Jesus promised that anybody who did take moral judgment [as distinct from the legal variety] upon themselves would find themselves being judged by their own standards, when the time came...)

The thing that scares me about desecularizing is the dominionists/reconstructionists who want to use stoning as a punishment for adultery, "blasphemy", and "witchcraft".

A quick check will show that that diversity is serious - in fact "Fundamentalist" Christians are not real unif, orm - nor are, I suspect, Fundamentalist Muslims or Fundamentalist Atheists whose antipathy for what they dare not understand leads them to more hate talk than I once heard from a rather nasty racist Frenchman.

But when you need an enemy, it is easier to ignore facts.

But, Sand, you did not say "it is precisely because they are Fundamentalist Christians..." Instead, you chose to tar all Christians with the brush of intolerance, then later pretend you didn't.

Let's face it, those same Fundamentalists wouldn't just be intolerant of those who follow other gods, or no gods; they are also horribly intolerant of other Christians who sometimes hold that it demeans the Scriptures to treat them as if they were nothing more than a series of history texts, while ignoring the deeper lessons that can be taught by reading them as parables and legends loosely based on reality. (I think more people could be won to a clear view of morality by reading C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters than by years of study of the writings of Josephus...)

It's not their Christianity that makes them intolerant - it's their dogged, determined ignorance. If they weren't Christians, they'd be intolerant Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus, or Asatru, or Wiccans, or...

No, mon. No.

If you have in your 84 claimed years met as many of the intolerant of all stripes and affiliations as I have in my 60+ - being at the University in several countries helps - you would realize that the GREEN MONKEY principle does not require ANY dogma.

No, mon. No.

If you have in your 84 claimed years met as many of the intolerant of all stripes and affiliations as I have in my 60+ - being at the University in several countries helps - you would realize that the GREEN MONKEY principle does not require ANY dogma.

No, mon. No.

If you have in your 84 claimed years met as many of the intolerant of all stripes and affiliations as I have in my 60+ - being at the University in several countries helps - you would realize that the GREEN MONKEY principle does not require ANY dogma.

The treble repetitiion was not intended as emphasis - an architect of my web connection. Assume I said it just once.

But "Christian dogma" does not call for intolerance - the Gospels are quite clear on the topic. Now, some people have taken, for instance, the words of Paul as if he were the one who was the living incarnation of God, but it's a bit of a stretch to call that "Christian doctrine", any more than the Talmud constitutes "Jewish doctrine" for any except the Ultraorthodox.

And again, these people are simply intolerant, and would be no matter what doctrines they embraced. Christianity has nothing to do with it - they mouth Christian doctrine only because that's the culture they were raised in. They have counterparts among the Islamic Wahhibists, Israel's right wing, and both sides fighting in Sri Lanka.

I know you've got some issues, probably stemming from encounters with those selfsame fundamentalists, but I'd really appreciate it if you could apply a bit more intellectual rigor to your arguments, rather than permitting your obvious intelligence to fail in the face of your emotional opposition to such people.

Sometimes, teachers and principals led my public schools in prayer anyway. It happened at a handful of large-scale school gatherings. I live in Georgia, U.S. My high school's dress code also banned Satanic symbols, even though it allowed all other religious symbols. Meh.