[Billthedrill]

That extra participation in religious activity correlates with 16 percent less welfare participation than the usual rate...

For three reasons - first, a discouragement of sloth as a moral issue, second, that church groups are more effective dispensers of help to the poor because they're closer to the problem, and lastly, because churches compose a social network through which you can find out where there is work when it's available, through sources that government does not have. The last two aren't religious points at all, they're cold, hard economics.

I have always wondered at liberals who on the one hand ostensibly oppose racism, sexism, and homophobia as "fear of the Other" and on the other hand practice a form of raging theophobia that is outright bigotry for precisely that reason. Weird disconnect, IMHO.

[Blind Eye Jones]

"I have always wondered at liberals who on the one hand ostensibly oppose racism, sexism, and homophobia as "fear of the Other" and on the other hand practice a form of raging theophobia that is outright bigotry for precisely that reason. Weird disconnect, IMHO."

Liberals fear religion because religion has favored racism, sexism and homophobia at certain points in history. I think it's about fearing the power of religious institutions, institutions that in the past have been involved in politics, in bloody religious wars that raged for hundred of years throughout Europe and the Middle East, and who have condemned reason and science (The Enlightenment) and persecuted scientists (Galileo).

I think the progressive liberals and socialist want a quasi Christianity without God, but with man and the state at the top. This will result in ultimate tyranny and so far the socialist experiments of the 20th century (Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler) have killed more people than any past religious war.

The liberal dictum, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" doesn't ring true when dealing with other humans... in fact, sometimes we'll have good reason to fear.