Religious Folks Use Billboard to Bash Atheists!
They put up theirs, you put up yours try that "Live and Let Live" thing...
There are people on this website with a variety of religious beliefs. That freedom is a fundamental part of our republic. Kind of a "Free Republic". When we are facing the collapse of our currency, the gutting of our military, it seems that you would rather anger folks about privately held beliefs than to rally like minded people to work on issues of common ground.
I am not Jewish, yet I do not have a fit when a city not far from me has a big menorah out in public.
I am not a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon, yet I do not yell that they are trespassing when they knock on my door to "convert" me. (although if they delivered the mail at the same time, we could save some dough)
I don't demand that the state of "Maryland" change its name due to the obvious religious history of it.
I don't scream bloody murder that the coins in my pocket say "In God We Trust".
There are people in this world that do not share your religious viewpoint, and religious viewpoints by their very nature are not tangible, provable things. Why provoke needless arguments amongst people here when instead we can try to contribute productive discussions of tangible, concrete policical issues?
Thomas Jefferson no less said this:
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... "
First, many of the Founding Fathers were “deists,” but that was little more than the PC label of the day to genericize their Christianity since they were public officials pushing for freedom of religion. Jefferson was a devout Christian.
Second, you wrote: “I am not Jewish, yet I do not have a fit when a city not far from me has a big menorah out in public.”
The story is about atheists (those who reject religion all the time) and you are equivocating the observation of a religious belief regarding a specific religious holiday with a general attack on religion when the religious are celebrating a part of their religion. The two cannot be equivocated. And, to the intellectually honest, when an atheist directly protests a religious observation, which is saying in effect, “I don’t believe in your God. Which God? That God right there that we are both pointing at” that atheist destroys his own argument. So they would do well to avoid this type of slap in the face.
This is less an expression of a religious view than it is an attack on those truly observing their religion, and, as a result, is little more than hateful and petty.
Third, Freerepublic is a conservative web site that firmly believes in the Judeo-Christian view of God. Unfortunately, it has been watered down over the years with atheists and liberaltarians who run counter to the stated cause of this site which is to defend the conservative traditions of this country but with whom conservatives are united in a shared cause of limited government. I’ll team up with libertarians to reduce the oppressive size of government, but liberaltarians have more in common with the left wing of the DNC than they do with true conservatives.
Fourth, it’s hard to ‘live and let-live’ when someone is poking you in the eye.
I don’t smile to get along. That’s what we have been doing for 40 years, and that is why the country is fast becoming a cesspool.
So, I no longer smile to get along. I’ve been poking my opponent right back in the eye for years. And I have no regrets.