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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (15534)	6/5/2001 11:01:35 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

No, that is their business. I am only glad that other minorities have come so far. If you want to agitate for greater tolerance, fine. But I do not see making a civil rights movement out of it, or addressing it primarily through legal action.

To: Lane3 who wrote (15534)	6/5/2001 12:04:16 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

does it at all give you pause that fewer than half of he population would consider voting for an atheist for President while more than 90 percent would vote for a black or a Jew and 59% would vote for a homosexual? You addressed this to Neocon, but in my case, it doesn't give me any pause. I suspect it's mostly the public persona atheists have put out -- who's the best known atheist? Right. Still Madelyn Murray O'Hair, despite her being out of the picture for years. And the shooting up of a prayer group in school. These are the basic public images of the atheist community. Unjust, of course, to blame a whole community for the acts of a few, but that's how people are. And while most atheists just go their way and do their thing without anybody really knowing they're atheists, for those who do go public the main activity they seem to delight in is harrassing the religious community over stuff that often, frankly, seems extremely petty and meanspirited. Not all of it is, or course, but a lot of it is. Locally, for example, an atheist objected to the lighted NOEL sign (about 4 feet high by 8 feet long) that volunteers in the community have for about 30 years put up on the roof of the ferry terminal. So the Ferry System made us take it down. Like it really hurt anybody to have a NOEL sign on the ferry terminal? But it certainly turned this whole normally quite liberal community against the atheist agenda and philosophy in a hurry. Those atheists who choose to come into public activity don't seem concerned to put forward a positive image, or stress the contributions to society that atheists make, or the like. Instead, they focus on such things as taking away the community's NOEL sign. So why should people believe they will make good and reliable public servants? If a viable, quality atheist ran for President things would change in a hurry. Same as with Kennedy. If in the 1940s and 50s you had asked how many people would vote for a Catholic for president, I bet fewer than half the people would have said they would. But Kennedy overcame the Catholic issue and got elected. If atheists want to change their public persona, they might start by having other people than O'Hair and our local atheist representing them in the public eye, and focus on their positive contributions to society.