Tdc2182 said:
I could easily just refer you to my original message. So you don't think religious people are bigotted? And you are reffering me to a story you found on the internet. Do you want me to go find a story of religious persecution, becauseit would be more than easy. So, is everyone who is christian perfect? No, in fact I know that there are shitloads of people who are complete assholes and slightly crazy. Do you think atheist never do these kind of things? Sure they would. does that mean there all batshit crazy? not at all. You can't judge the actions of a few people to the entire group. Or, maybe the case is that you notice more of the things the other group does, probably like me. I don't hate atheists, almost all my friends are atheist. They just don't tell me that am an idiot for believing in something greater than myself.
Thankfully, you've clearly defined the difference between 'Faith' and 'Religion', so I didn't have to; you have 'Faith' that something greater than yourself exists, and (so far as I can infer from your response), you're not particularly prone to proselytizing, which are characteristics that I almost universally applaud
individuals for. I personally don't object to an individual having a specific set of beliefs that include a 'greater power' or a 'godlike figure', provided they don't constantly try to jam it down my throat, or harp about my eventual relegation to some uncomfortable afterlife. I have faith in a variety of things, but I don't include the Judeo-Christian God among them.
Unfortunately, once you get ANY group that all agrees on a specific philosophical ideal, a mutation can begin to occur, where the group begins to view itself as a means of propagating that ideal or message; that's the basis of any religion, essentially. But when you begin to accumulate individuals in a group, a mob mentality can also emerge almost spontaneously, which is where you end up with the preaching and proselytizing common to the American branches of Christianity, and the tendency of those groups to attempt to effect political actions that support their specific religious agenda, in a theoretically secular society. There's really not a great deal of difference between a rioting mob and a group of religious fundamentalists of any stripe, once they get agitated.
The political force that the 'Religious Right' (as an obvious, modern example) can exert is almost completely the reverse of the stated intentions of the American Founding Fathers. One of the founding principles of the US was religious tolerance, and your own Constitution and Bill of Rights reflects that, stating that the government and religion will be kept as separate, distinct entities, and that everyone should be free to pursue a philosophical dogma of their own choosing.The entire reason behind that decision was to clearly promote the notion that the US was different from England, where the reigning monarch is also the Pontiff of the Church of England, and a direct response to the persecution of many American settlers prior to their emigration to America.
However, your assertion that you could readily cite examples of clear and definitive religious persecution of Christians is a somewhat misguided hope; I can point to the persecution of the Christian Lebanese as a relatively recent example, but I'm not coming up with a lot of North American examples, off the top of my head. Traditionally, the philosophical persecution in N.Am tends to be
by Christian groups, and targeted at non-religious groups, or groups that adhere to a different dogma altogether. As an example, I'll link the NCSE's (National Centre for Science Education) article on the 10 most notable court cases related to forcing Creationism into American schools.
