Posted on 02/26/2014 4:35:25 PM PST by lbryce
"It is an attack on God Himself."
This was how Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative Media Research Center, felt about the prospect of representatives from the American Atheists attending the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservative leaders and organizations in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, the Atheists announced they would host a booth at the conference next week; within hours, they had been disinvited. The group "misrepresented itself about their willingness to engage in positive dialogue and work together to promote limited government," a CPAC spokesperson told the Washington Post yesterday.
The American Atheists were invited—and then uninvited—from the Conservative Political Action Conference. Why?
The American Atheists disagree. "America’s religious conservatives can deny it all they want, but soon they’re going to realize that ignoring the growing number of atheist constituents is a losing proposition,” the organization's president, David Silverman, said in a press release. He says his group had been in conversation with conference's planning committee about 2015, offering up ideas for future atheist keynoters. Despite this year's snub, the Atheists are willing to reopen dialogue with CPAC about "the importance of religious equality," Silverman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
This issue is merely a rehash of the chimerical political beast the Republicans /Conservatives have become and they do have a point about what it means, I'm sorry to say. For me, a log cabin Republican is a chimerical creature created by a political Dr. Moreau, one that doesn't exist in the real world, merely created in the demographics laboratory of political expediency, necessity.
Stretching the canvas tent out and up making it tauter to accommodate an egregiously blasphemous political compromise is only going to cause the tent to collapse that much sooner and was already declared "an attack on God Himself" if not in so many words.
If you're indulgent in the lifestyle of the depraved and the licentious, God is as absent, non-existent from your life as it is for the atheist.
Zero curiosity or they don't give a rat's.
“the importance of religious equality,” Silverman said.
How sincere!
Bozell is correct. It is impossible to be both a American Conservative and an atheist.
American Conservatism is about preserving and utilizing the time-honored and proven values, methods, and institutions that have built up America into the exceptionalism that has made it a bastion of freedom.
Where do our rights come from? Answer me that and I'll explain to you why a Conservative atheist is a non-sequitur.
Makes as much sense as a conservative homosexual.
A friend asked me about this controversy, this is what I sent him:
I saw this - and I have mixed views about it. I do think conservatives should be welcoming to the secular community, so this action is a bit problematic. That being said, the secular community has pretty much embarrassed themselves and completely pissed off most conservatives - and of course, I see little evidence of any separation between secularism and secular progressivism - certainly none of the groups I know makes that effort. They are like misbehaved guests whom you don’t want to have at your party. So I see both sides on this. As a Tea Partier who is an atheist, I am stuck in the middle :-).
>> I never did understand atheism.
But Atheists understand you enough to describe your God as fictitious.
Nothing weird about them.
What’s weird is this sudden demand to be recognized as a group to be pandered to.
I was conservative long before I stopped being an atheist. One inevitably leads to the other.
I don’t understand atheism either. How can you possibly prove that there is no God?
Playing the devil’s advocate, though, how can you prove that here IS a God?
Agnostics don’t care what you think and can’t understand why you care so much about what they think.
People with different ideas about divine beings can come together if they have common interests or common adversaries.
People love to hold forth about their ideas about the ultimate things, but that can tear political coalitions apart.
This is a controversy that could have been easily avoided by just not inviting an explicitly atheist group with no conservative ties to a conservative conference.
Insofar as it is in the interest of a free and prosperous people to promote and instill virtue, I do not find it outside the realm of possibility that an atheist could fall into line at least from a sense of self-preservation. But a civil society is much better served when its participants act out of more than self-preservation, seeking the betterment of all. This is partly, if not largely, why we [the citizenry of the USA] argue over the manner and degree of affirming the common good. Pure self-interest is unhealthy and not in accord with the Judeo-Christian ethic that serves our founding principles as expressed and enforceable by law. Most atheists I know seek to question and undermine this very thing, but not all.
Our Judeo-Christian sensibility responds to “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...”
An atheist can only appeal to “we decided these were rights”...
And if one group of leaders can decide them some other leader in the future can undecide them.
Religion is conservatism’s Achilles’ heel.
Hardly. Judeo-Christian faith is its strength.
So in realistic terms, they are angry with the center of their universe...they hate the core of realism.
In fact, they believe that they can create a world (Utopia) which is better than His. And they believe this because they follow a leader who has held this opinion for many millenia.
And who is this Rebel?
Obama serves him!
Fine with me—just identify as a conservative and leave atheism out of it...same with homosexuals. I know of conservative ones, and I am glad they agree on low taxes and smaller government. So let’s leave it at that.
Karl Rove is an atheist.
So is Charles Krauthammer, IIRC.
This is a part of the movement of the GOP away from conservatism, and into even more libertarianism/rinosim.
Kill conservatism, then argue about money issues with the democrats.
The GOP left doesn’t realize that social liberalism only creates socialist voters, not capitalist voters.
What is it THAT communists and atheists have in common?..
Actually more than disbelief in God..
Commies believe the givernment is God.. Atheists DO NOT..
BUT the commies only use that as a gambit for dissimulation..
BUT atheists know that too.. let’s say their “cousins”.. not brothers..
When an atheist comes to you with compassionate atheism..
Just know it’s all BULL SPERM.. he would inseminate you with..
Commie or atheist... both are hauling a short load..
Atheisim has as much in common with conservatism..
As PeeWee Herman does with innocence..
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