Pharyngula: Look, Ma, I'm a "secular whackjob"!: "the absence of faith is not faith, any more than the absence of a sandwich is also a kind of tasty snack between two slices of bread."
Response to the article by Melinda Barton on Raw Story, which I posted in my previous entry. Myers took the time to analyze the Barton piece. I probably wouldn't have come up with quite as scathing a response, as it's not in my nature (or nurture: take your pick), but I think his decimation of Barton's article is right on.
But that brings up a different sort of problem. How do you deal with the political ramifications of "secularism"? There are a lot of people out there who perceive the Democratic Party as the party of godless license, and who vote otherwise or not at all because of this perception. These are people who vote against their own economic and political interests because they fear the outcome if some godless liberal managed to take office. How can Progressives build and maintain a "big tent" if we keep having these arguments over the nature and existence of god? Republicans seem somehow to have managed to bring together the Social (read, conservative Christian) Right and the Economic Right, despite their divergent interests, yet Democrats have difficulty appealing to groups with convergent interests because of divergent social views.
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