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ORIGINAL: sirsholly

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

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ORIGINAL: sirsholly

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver


I've spent quite sometime in America, going to church is like going to a club, there is social pressure to do it and to be seen to do it.

your ignorant generalization could be offensive to those of us Americans who go to church for the right reasons....if your opinion mattered.

What are the right reasons for believing in superstition?

I can understand people saying they believe for political reasons, that is being rational if not entirely honest.

this doesn't even justify a response.

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ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

It's not about the right to worship but the right to worship privately, if at all.  Our Foreign Secretary is an atheist.  He wouldn't be free to do the same job in your country yet you invoke the hoary myth of the pilgrim fathers and their search for religious freedom.

I can't speak for every vagary of law in each European country but EU law is based on democratic principles which allow real freedom of religion - ie, to have none if that is your belief.  If any EU country violates that right, an EU citizen has recourse in law.

I don't know of any "religious army" except for the Swiss Guard in the Vatican, a ceremonial escort.  As for powers to convict or tax; see my comments regarding the European Convention on Human Rights above.  Clearly, you last visited Europe during the plague of 1347 or you'd know that things have moved on a little.

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ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

The observation that US politicians wanting to get a majority of the votes try to appear like as many members of the majority as they can, is hardly denying others their right to worship differently.
Kennedy debunked the myth that one had to belong to a specific WASP church to win office, other politicans have debunked the notion that one 'must' be a Chritian at all. 

When was the last Catholic head of state in England, Denmark, etc, or the last Protestant ruler in Italy?

The notion that Europe by contrast has no church state link, sounds fine and grand and all.... Except for that pesky matter of the facts that no religion in the US has the legislated power to tax, or convict, or raise an army, or legally require a politician to belong to a specific denomination etc, as they do in so many other places.



So where is the evidence that if the US somehow or another implemented this change that no one is willing to define, the rest of the world would applaud?

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What are the right reasons for believing in superstition?

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

As an interesting aside, in 2006 Keith Ellison was the first Muslim elected to the US Congress.  The first Muslim elected to the British Parliament was Mohammad Sarwar in 1997.

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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What are the right reasons for believing in superstition?

"Belief" itself is irrational by definition.  Yet it is the one thing that will trump logic and reason every time.

That is the order of things.

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Wrong. I can remember Keith Vaz being elected in 1987 and he's still serving. Near my home is a street named after Nairoji, who was a Zoroastrian MP in the 1800s. The point isn't belonging to another religion than CofE, it's the freedom to have none.

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Are there any members of the Senate or Congress who are open aethists? It would be interesting to know if the religious demographics of those institutions mirror the demographics of the population as a whole.

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ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

Keith Vaz? The one who wants Rushdie's head on a platter...the one who says there is no such thing as absolute  freedom of speech when it comes to disagreeing with his religion's doctrine?  Yeah, he's as non-religious as they come.

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ORIGINAL: michaelOfGeorgia

i thought politics was the new religion...for the rich

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ORIGINAL: celticlord2112

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Are there any members of the Senate or Congress who are open aethists? It would be interesting to know if the religious demographics of those institutions mirror the demographics of the population as a whole.

http://www.adherents.com/adh_congress.html

Broadly stated, yes they do.

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ORIGINAL: michaelOfGeorgia

that's ok, i don't follow the BS that is the US government anyway

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What this means for the putative separation of church and state is rather unsettling. It implies a cherry picking approach to the constitution.

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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver

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ORIGINAL: Alumbrado

Keith Vaz? The one who wants Rushdie's head on a platter...the one who says there is no such thing as absolute  freedom of speech when it comes to disagreeing with his religion's doctrine?  Yeah, he's as non-religious as they come.

Keith Vaz is a Christian and was stating a political view, not a religious view.

I'm making the assumption here you think Vaz is a muslim.