Quote Originally Posted by denuseri View Post
[B][COLOR=pink]I think your still trying to paint all religious adherents with the same brush however.
No, I'm not. I've specifically said that I don't believe all theists are evil. Or even that all religions are evil. I just think there are evil things done in the name of religion which are far less likely to occur under other circumstances.

atheist dogma
LOL! There's an atheist dogma? Why haven't I been told about this? I guess you have to attend the atheist church before they let you in on the secret.

which only ever points to the bad, and allways overlooks the overwhelming ammount of good religions have brought us.
I've never denied that religious organizations can do good. Mostly because they are made up of people who want to do good things for their communities. And yes, religious groups generally are more tolerant of outsiders (with a few notable exceptions) than in the past. This has more to do with adjusting to the mores of their constituents, mores which come from outside the Church, than from any inner workings of the religious establishment. I point out the bad things to do with religion because all too often those things are hushed up by religious organizations, like the RCC's protection of pedophile priests, or of priests raping nuns in some 3rd world countries. And these things happen in other religious organizations, too. We seldom hear about them because the parents of those children who were harmed are so besotted with their religion that they either refuse to believe a priest could do such a thing, or because they are forced by the Church to sign confidentiality agreements or risk excommunication.

But none of that stuff is exclusive to religion, I agree. It happens everywhere. The difference is that religious organizations and leaders attempt to take the moral high ground, claiming to speak for God, to do God's work, while performing unspeakable evils, or covering up those evils.

As for the anti religious movement of the Soviets...People who were stuanchly communist in every other ideological way outside of their religious faith had to leave, hide or die. I' m married to a man whose elders on his fathers side had to flee Russia for places abroad for no other reason than they believed in a god and the atheist goverment wouldnt tollerate it.
I'm sure you know more about these things than I do. But the Soviet model was not so much atheist as Stalinist, replacing God with the supreme Soviet. Just like Chinese Communism replaced God with Mao, and Cuban communism replacing God with Castro. While these states were not religious, and even anti-religious, they were far from any kind of atheist ideal.

We live in a secular society today, most nations in the weastrn world have learned thats prefferable to abolishment of personal beliefs or exclusion of all others save the one and is in fact a human right.
I agree with all of that! But in the US right now there is a movement to make this country a theocracy! This movement has captured the right wing of the Republican party, and is threatening to take control of the government. THAT is what I am fighting against. I do not, and most atheists I know do not, advocate abolishing religion. We only want to keep religions, ALL religions, where they belong!

I also see nothing wrong with people in a community teaching their children what they wish to teach them in the schools that they pay for with their local taxes so long as they also teach respect and tollerance and do so in an objective fashion.
This is fine as long as you have a unified community. All Christian, or all Muslim, or all atheist. Muslim citizens pay taxes to support schools and governments, too. Why should they and their children be forced to endure Christian ideology? Atheists pay taxes, and don't want their children inundated with ANY theology.

Like this is the "theory" of evolution and it entails this... etc etc...here is the evidence some scientists have gathered for it etc etc...and this is the theory of the creationists...most creationists explanations express belief in a god or gods to be envolved with the making of our world via some form of intellegent design etc etc....
Except that Creationism is NOT a theory. It is an ideology. It makes no testable claims, has no evidence for the claims it does make, and presupposes a God without any evidence for such a being. Intelligent Design is just Creationism dressed up in science-like terms. I listened to a debate about teaching ID in schools and the ID proponent admitted that ID has no real theory to base their "science" on! As the science proponent said (paraphrasing), What are you going to teach? Some people believe a god or gods created the universe 6000 years ago. Then what? You have no evidence to review, no experiments to run, no discoveries to make. Sure, a teacher could take 5 minutes at the beginning of the term to spout out all the different creation beliefs, saying for each one, "This is not science." But what's the point?

Above all that though...I believe that the children in any school, private or state funded, should be tuaght to be objective and tollerant and respectful of everyone's beliefs, theories, ideologies etc etc whatever they may be,
Objective and tolerant, yes. And teach them to think critically, to question everything and everyone, regardless of position. And teach them to respect other people in general, of course. Treat others as you would like to be treated. But I don't extend that respect to beliefs which I consider to be silly: like the 'thetans' of Scientology, or the inscribed golden plates which only Joseph Smith could read, or the global flood of the Judeo/Christian mythology. If you are going to base your life on silly stories, how are you any different from the ridiculous 'trekkies' who live in their own fantasy world.