Bigots always have an excuse for blaming entire groups for the actions of some.

And the Civil Rights acts equates religious groups with race and ethnic groups as being classes to be protected form discrimination. Write your Congressman if you don't like it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

The Civil Rights act protects religious freedom to the extent that people can worship as they please. However it's not protection for people who want to force their beliefs into state funded education. IMO, those people deserve the label "fundies", and it's no more bigoted than calling someone who is acting like an asshole, an asshole.

Now here is a link for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation ... _and_state

On the contrary, the Civil Rights Act protects the freedoim of relgious people to express their beliefs, not just worship as they please.

As far as I am concerned, you use of labels makes you no better than someone who uses the "N" word, and you deserve a comparitive amount of respect.

Says the guy who liberally applies the pejorative label, "anti-theist," and threatens to tell all his church friends about us. What a hypocritical baby.

If atheism is a protected class then it must come under "religion".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

So if atheists agree that atheism is a religion, I wll consider it a protected class.

So then in your line of thinking, fundamentalist Muslims who think it is just peachy to remove the clitoris of young women so as to lessen their ability to experience sexual pleasure, should be considered a "protected class". And if I happen to also refer to this lovely group of heart warming people as "fundies", then I'm a biggot according to your warped logic.

Oh Henry......Says the guy who liberally applies the pejorative label, "anti-theist," and threatens to tell all his church friends about us. What a hypocritical baby.

Oh, Henry,

Why would church folks care about you, a few of you and this site? What is the reason to tell them about you? Are you talking about this site and its posters? Or in general "anti-theists"? I am sure there are different church folks out there - from apathetic, liberal to extra fundamental and just plain weird. What category would those folks who'd be told about you be?

There must be a story behind this. You mentioning "baby" leads me to believe there must be some mischief and long term continuation about it? Is there more than meets the eye?

The Civil Rights Act determines what is a protected class. Don't like it? Take it up with the Supreme Court. They rule your life.

And if you label an entire group based on the actions of some, then, yes, you are a bigot.

I'm no law professor, but I seriously doubt the Civil Rights Act or the Supreme Court provides protection for religions groups who murder or assault people people in the name of Allah. Nor do they provide protection for people who want to wedge their fundamentalist ideologies into public education. Maybe you should go back and review the Kitzmiller -vs- Dover case.

Now you are talking about something different, individuals who commit crimes. A class can be Protected, but some individuals might go beyond that protection.

The entire group can not be blamed for the actions of some. That is bigotry.

But the Class remains Protected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

The Supreme Court determines what that will constitute; not the voters, not some bigot, not you certainly.

Your comparison to Kitzmiller in this instance is bogus; you obviously have not read the decision. (The judge, by the way, did not find evolution per se to be opposed to religion, unlike some of the New Atheists; he certainly did not find that it "falsified" the need for a creator, unlike some posters here.)

Mike wrote:

Do you mean like 'all scientists are atheists' because Myers and Hitchens are atheists. Something that you and others espouse.

Mike has a history of trying to lump science and atheism into the same pot for the purposes of maligning science. In fact, he goes even further and uses the term "anti-theist," a term often applied to Hitchens et al, for their aggressive manner in attacking the faults of religion. He made a couple of attempts to conflate the two and was given several explanations by several people as to why this is not true, but he never acknowledged the rebuttals and instead ended up repeating his original argument many times. I noticed he just started another thread attempting to do the same. Mike thinks that if he can drive his wedge in the right spot, prejudice against atheism will line people up against science. He made this clear when he stated that if more people knew of Jack's personal views, and by extension the views (real or imagined) of others on this site, before the science standards were written, then more people would have either ignored or found themselves at odds with KCFS and their science advocacy campaign.

When I said, "threatens to tell his church friends on us," I facetiously meant "us," as in the way he believes us to be - a group of people who want use science to destroy christianity. Not "us" in the way that we actually are. And I meant "church friends" to mean the narrow segment of christians that Mike surrounds himself with who would eagerly gobble up his dishonest ruse. Not the larger population of mainline christians whose faith is enhanced by science and is strong enough to accept empirical evidence.

I call him a "baby" because he whines a lot. He can dish out the insults and the criticism, but he sure can't take it.

Exactly.

Oh Henry.....Mike has a history of trying to lump science and atheism into the same pot for the purposes of maligning science. In fact, he goes even further and uses the term "anti-theist," a term often applied to Hitchens et al, for their aggressive manner in attacking the faults of religion. He made a couple of attempts to conflate the two and was given several explanations by several people as to why this is not true, but he never acknowledged the rebuttals and instead ended up repeating his original argument many times. I noticed he just started another thread attempting to do the same.

What have you deduced he thinks about theists who practice science every day (don't have exact stats but I recall that 40-60% of scientists with Bachelors and Masters are religious)? Are they using Methodological Naturalism/Objective Reality framework also anti-theist then? Or do they also worship science as second religion, according to Mike? Francis Collins or Kenneth Miller? For some reason I can see this is all concentrating on biology, not too much on math and chemistry and not so much on physics either unless it's The Big Bang and the anthropic principle.

Mike thinks that if he can drive his wedge in the right spot, prejudice against atheism will line people up against science. He made this clear when he stated that if more people knew of Jack's personal views, and by extension the views (real or imagined) of others on this site, before the science standards were written, then more people would have either ignored or found themselves at odds with KCFS and their science advocacy campaign.

From what I see in this election cycle, very few people in today's economic situation are interested in these pointless debates. But I never underestimate the power of the committed. Seems that there was a poll recently that says that 90-95% of Americans think that science will be a driving force to get us out of the economic slump and make us competitive on the world scene. Reality is somewhat different with the special theological interest having a stake in politics and scientific funding.

When I said, "threatens to tell his church friends on us," I facetiously meant "us," as in the way he believes us to be - a group of people who want use science to destroy christianity. Not "us" in the way that we actually are. And I meant "church friends" to mean the narrow segment of christians that Mike surrounds himself with who would eagerly gobble up his dishonest ruse. Not the larger population of mainline christians whose faith is enhanced by science and is strong enough to accept empirical evidence.

Like they don't know that "you" exist already? Have you not seen Santorum saying that Satan is at work in America, President wanting to give everyone opportunity to go to college is a snob (all the while he himself stated the same exact position in PA when he was a senator and while unemployment rate for college educated is 4% vs. 9% for general population, meaning that for not college crowd it is much higher than 9%). I am sure the committed know about "you".

Another matter would be if Mike was trying to find out and reveal private and personal information about you - this is how I read it.

I call him a "baby" because he whines a lot. He can dish out the insults and the criticism, but he sure can't take it.

He has no choice but to do so. His environment have given him the "free will" to only have one language within the confines of his upbringing, social network, family bonds, religious outlook, education, etc. Nothing can be done about it. Life goes on.

Brian actually went out of his way to avoid labeling an entire group based on the actions of some, when he distinguished the portion he was addressing (fundies) from the larger group (average church goer).

IMO you're just upset because your particular flavor of christianity, which you view as average or representative of the whole, was cast as extreme. And rather than address that, you'd rather call him a bigot in order to silence him.