Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steph S. on April 16, 2012 at 8:04am

I don't think it will be a secular nation, no.

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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on April 12, 2012 at 7:25am

Add this to the sword-rattling from the GOP about defunding Planned Parenthood and the ravings of Rick Santorum about abortion and women's rights in general (even though he has "suspended" his campaign), and you have more and more clear evidence of their attempts to disempower (if not disenfranchise!) women wholesale.

Any woman who would vote Republican in this election is voting against her own interests ... PERIOD.

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Permalink Reply by matthew greenberg on April 12, 2012 at 7:38am

the roundtable at Fox News (i know, i know) were saying yesterday that Obama is creating a war on women.  how exactly?  they didn't say.  but it's happening, and they had a totally weird, outlier poll to prove their point.  it was from about 6 weeks ago and it claimed that Romney had a substantial lead over Obama with women.  of course, now it's a blowout the other way, but that didn't stop them from claiming women are fed up with BO.  there biggest point - gas prices.  women hate high gas prices, hence Obama's war on women, i guess.  geez, that even hurt to type.  how do those dunderheads manage to get dressed in the morning?  it's as though they have no idea in the world why women would be upset with the GOP.  it must be hard to live with your head in the ground. 

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Permalink Reply by Richard ∑wald on April 13, 2012 at 3:40am

"Any woman who would vote Republican in this election is voting against her own interests …PERIOD."

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Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on April 14, 2012 at 4:02pm

The scene on the left could include non-wealthy people as well; GOP has masterfully used social issues, and racism, to gain a huge following among people who otherwise have nothing in common with the very rich.

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Permalink Reply by Michael OL on April 12, 2012 at 8:45am

What baffles me is that some of the most vociferous voices in favor of restrictions on reproductive rights, of theocratic domination of social discourse, of "traditionalism" and so forth, are female.  I have yet to see evidence of shift along gender lines between left-leaning and right-leaning, democrat-leaning and republican-leaning.  Women favoring the new relapse into Puritanism are not shrill outliers.  On the contrary, they are as entranced by these doctrines, as are men - if not more so.

On the bright side, I doubt that it would take 100 years to make substantive shift in America towards a secular societal reference point, as opposed to a Christian reference point.  The big difference between America and Western Europe is what happened in the post-WWII period.  At mid-20th century, I don't think that Christian influence in Europe was any weaker than in America.  America's Christianity was always personally-experiential, while Europe's was more communitarian.  So that probably does make America's Christianity more tenacious and more insidious.  But in the big picture, the American-European difference is that in America, the left largely lost the culture wars of the 1960s to a resurgent right-wing, whereas in Europe, the liberalization of the 1960s endured and the cultural ethos became suffused with it.  

So what we need is not another century of slow and plodding progress, but another watershed period such as the 1960s.  Maybe on the second attempt, the resulting social changes will actually take hold.

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Permalink Reply by The Flying Atheist on April 12, 2012 at 9:38am

As I stated above, I think religion will be our last great culture war in the U.S.  The "Millennials" will be at the forefront in enacting change.   

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Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on April 14, 2012 at 4:01pm

Agree that the Millennials will be key.  So often old ideas literally die out as those who hold them most dear die off, with younger people growing up with newer (and hopefully right or at least better/less destructive) ideas in their place.  There are several important aspects of personal freedom for which the consensus is, happily, changing significantly for the better.  Some are supported by science, some represent a change in norms.

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Permalink Reply by Allena Weber on April 12, 2012 at 9:11am

I don't like this law one bit!

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Permalink Reply by Richard ∑wald on April 12, 2012 at 9:23am

I don't like the Teabagger Taliban at all, …that's putting it mildly though.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Simeone on April 12, 2012 at 11:39am

I want to thank all of you for your interesting and insightful responses to my discussion. Personally I can’t watch anything on Fox with the exception being their Sunday show on occasion. I only watch that because I’m a political junky. How organizations like Fox and MSNBC are allowed to call themselves news organizations is beyond me. Before anyone gets the wrong idea I do believe that MSNBC is much more responsible than Fox but both of them slant the truth so that it fits their worldview. In order to find out what's really happening in the world one must check several different sources and then try to think their way through the crap.

 

I completely agree with Booklover’s daughter—I could never date a person who is religious and/or conservative. The mindset one must have to fit into either of those categories is beyond me.

 

Lastly, I’d like to ask what all of you think we could do to advance the cause of a secular society?

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on April 16, 2012 at 8:09am

Good question. Sow the seed of Freethought. Science education .. Which I am currently involved in at the university.

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