Do you think they’ll go away if Trump fails to take the White House?

They’re using this to provoke challenges against the wall of separation between church and state. They feel confident, with good reason, that the christofascist majority on the Supreme Court will reinterpret our Constitution to eliminate that law.

Religious indoctrination doesn’t promote progress:

This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market.

Atheism doesn’t mean I know there are no gods. I suspect there aren’t, because religious claims about gods and reality don’t stand up to scrutiny. The more excuses you have to make for why reality doesn’t work the way you insist it should, the less inclined I am to believe you know what you’re talking about. Arguing for a prime mover or appealing to consequences doesn’t convince me either. I’m intellectually honest enough to say that I don’t have concrete knowledge that there are no gods the way I know there’s no money in my wallet, but not being able to prove there are no gods isn’t enough for me to believe that there are. Wanting to believe there are gods is no more useful than wanting there to be money in my wallet. It’s still a claim that requires validation, not a default assumption.

No it doesn’t. The only reason I bother calling myself an atheist is because believers keep insisting I have to share their beliefs. If they didn’t, I wouldn’t need the label.

None. Atheism isn’t a religion or philosophy. It’s an answer to one question, and only one: do you believe in gods? The answer is “no.”

Where we go from there is up to us.

I have no idea why anyone would come here and think it’s okay to defend any religion.

I’ve read them, and I used to preach from them. When you read them critically rather than reverentially, Jesus was a dick.

Would you like to see some examples?

The canonical gospels, where thought crime is first introduced into the religion? Where the founder of the religion declares that everyone who doesn’t agree with him is doomed to eternal torture? Are you sure that’s an argument you want to make?

What an amazing display of privilege. It must be nice to live in a society where religious belief isn’t being injected into the public and our government.

They passed separate aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. They could have done all the aid packages in one lump, but House Republicans voted it down on Trump’s orders.

The speculation is that with Trump’s criminal trial in session in New York, he doesn’t have the capacity to micromanage Republicans on the Hill. So this was Magic Mike’s first opportunity to pass the bill unobstructed, even if it required Democrats to assist.

And they’ll kill to get it.

MAGA is disgusting, yes. But sacrilege, like blasphemy, is a victimless crime. So what’s the problem?

Yes, and?

That verse is too vague. Every Christian thinks it applies to them, especially conservatives.

I don’t agree with that statement, because both on paper and in practice, Christianity is no better or worse than Islam. The only reason Christians aren’t slaughtering homosexuals and transgender people the same way is because they’ve been leashed by secularism. It’s not that they haven’t or don’t want to again. It’s that they know they can’t get away with it – yet.

Look at organizations like Seven Mountains and other Dominionist groups promoting Christian Nationalism. It’s not a coincidence that Kevin Swanson regularly sees Republican office holders at his “Kill the Gays” rallies. They don’t hate Islamic theocracies because of the theocracy part. It’s that they’re jealous of their religious power and want to surpass it.

The real tragedy is that we have some real world examples of exactly this attitude.

https://www.newsweek.com/evangelicals-rejecting-jesus-teachings-liberal-talking-points-pastor-1818706

Dawkins stopped representing us a long, long time ago. He made some good points for a while, and then got so enamored of his own celebrity that he stopped being skeptical of his own thoughts. It’s sad to watch his decline, but he’s no longer relevant.

How do you mock your enemy if you don’t know who they are and what they’re doing?

Did you know about them before reading this? I didn’t.

Know your enemy.