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You ask good questions, mc6809e. Indeed, how big is the tent? Will they welcome my opinion? Or just my vote?

I hear you about agreeing with MOST of the Republican Party platform. And yes, the left has little if any clue. The same unrelenting logic that caused me to reject superstition has also caused me to vote nearly the straight repub party line in recent years. (I did have to vote against some Republican judicial candidates who where confusing religion with law.)
So many people, falsly I think, confuse atheism with communism and other far-left perversions.

I have stumbled across those republicans whose christianity shrieks with the same shrillness as the Taliban - they seem to grasp neither that no imaginary deity has any appropriate role in public policy nor that religion has no monopoly on ethics or morals. The historical significance of Seperation of Church and state eludes them as well. Indeed, history is rife with religious authority being abused in the most cruel and immoral manner - and shows the Roman Empire's mandatory christianity as having little to recommend it over the Taliban's enforced worship other than christianity's eventual mutation into something less nasty. I doubt Emporer Constantin was the moral superior to Mullah Omar for having forced christianity rather than islam.

I am troubled by Ashcroft's rolling back of privacy rights and by the far right's insistence that the religious dogma of Pat Robertson become the law of the land. I find the "In God We Trust" on our currency a pathetically poor substitute for the Founding Father's "E Pluribus Unum." I sometimes wonder if the religious right wants to kill "E Pluribus Unum" just as much as it wants to push "In God We Trust."

Yet the left often as not panders to the cultists as well. Slick Willie even trotted his womanizing butt to church on a regular basis - even toting a bible. I wonder whom he thought he was fooling.

The Republican party, and its Nonconservative (led amusingly by disaffected jewish democrats) Wing, offers an educated and coherent plan on foreign affairs and economics. I'm just not so sure about the areas of domestic policy so often polluted by religious doctrine.

For instance, in my opinion, if 3000 casualties convinced us to go to war and stay at war, 6000 plus people willing to shade our outdated marriage statues ought to be enough to get us to consider including more people within the law rather than pushing otherwise law-abiding citizens to operate outside of a sodom-era marriage definition. Both parties missed the opportunity to lead here - both parties opted instead to pander the caricature of the "religious" demographic.

But what is the religious demographic? While self-described "atheists" are no more numerous than Jews or Muslims (1%), the sum of atheists, agnostics, no-preference, and don't-know/refused is 14%. And the percentage of those who attend some religious service and label themselves as catholic or protestant or Jewish but don't really believe is considerable. Like 30% of christians and 50-plus percent of jews.

So I guess my point is: Keep the non-faith, brother! Eventually SOME politician is going to figure out that the non-religious/non-believers are worth going after, or at least not offending.

Until then, I guess we just have to shrug off the ministrations of the holier-than-thou and if necessary, cast the occasional non-republican vote just to keep 'em honest.

How do you explain the existence of the physical universe? Evolution? Every evolutionary model that I have seen postulated is not only unscientific, but anti-scientific, violating a plethora of the laws of science. It takes a far greater faith (and a blind faith at that) to embrace the theory of evolution than it does to embrace the truth of creation. No matter what area of science one examines, i.e. physics, biology, geology,etc. evolution is always refuted, and creation buttressed (if one is intellectually honest).
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Romans 1:18-22