Religion
Related: About this forumIn Seven States, Atheists Push to End Largely Forgotten Ban
State Senator Jamie B. Raskin, a law professor, said the atheist ban in the Maryland Constitution was inconsistent with the state’s history
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
DEC. 6, 2014
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A bookkeeper named Roy Torcaso, who happened to be an atheist, refused to declare that he believed in God in order to serve as a notary public in Maryland. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in 1961 the court ruled unanimously for Mr. Torcaso, saying states could not have a “religious test” for public office.
But 53 years later, Maryland and six other states still have articles in their constitutions saying people who do not believe in God are not eligible to hold public office. Maryland’s Constitution still says belief in God is a requirement even for jurors and witnesses.
Now a coalition of nonbelievers says it is time to get rid of the atheist bans because they are discriminatory, offensive and unconstitutional. The bans are unenforceable dead letters, legal experts say, and state and local governments have rarely invoked them in recent years. But for some secular Americans, who are increasingly visible and organized, removing the bans is not only a just cause, but a test of their growing movement’s political clout.
Todd Stiefel, the chairman and primary funder of the Openly Secular coalition, said: “If it was on the books that Jews couldn’t hold public office, or that African-Americans or women couldn’t vote, that would be a no-brainer. You’d have politicians falling all over themselves to try to get it repealed. Even if it was still unenforceable, it would still be disgraceful and be removed. So why are we different?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/in-seven-states-atheists-push-to-end-largely-forgotten-ban-.html?_r=0
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struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)
Cartoonist
(7,317 posts)Some passages in the Bible. You know, the ones relating to slavery. As the man says, "Even if it was still unenforceable, it would still be disgraceful and should be removed." Think they will remove them from the Bible? We'll see a female Pope before hate is removed from the Bible.
rug
(82,333 posts)Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet species of it exists.
Atheists may not hold public office by statute, tet it is completely unenforceable.
Cartoonist
(7,317 posts)I am talking about old laws on the books that are no longer relevant. It is good that we have a government that allows review of its laws and can repeal them.
The Bible has old laws on the books that are no longer relevant. But suggest that they be reviewed and Holy Hell breaks loose.
onecent
(6,096 posts)laughable.
I actually am glad to see so many young people questioning the validity of the Bible these days.
I have been questioning it for over 60 years, and still find it totally absurd.
Bitch about it if you want, No one should care care about anyone elses' opinion
regarding religion....these evangelicalistic sarah palins and dippy congressman are disturbing.
No ONE knows what happens when we die...so why try to PLEASE someone who never existed, and threatens us with hell and damnation if we don't "obey?"????????????
And I WOULD DEFINITELY NEVER try to please someone who keeps teeling me that he gave
his only begotten son....if someone ASKED ME TO DO that I would Christopher Hitchen them!!!!
stone space
(6,498 posts)I've never seen his name used as a verb before.
Is this a reference to the use of cluster bombs?
I've heard that even the Holiest of Books are useless against the Omnipotence of Christopher Hitchen's Atheistic Gods of Metal.
onecent
(6,096 posts)but Christopher Hitchens was a master of words....and often people spoke of being hitch
slapped.....google ==== hitch slap........or google Christopher Hitchens. you will find plenty.
stone space
(6,498 posts)...Cluster Bomb Atheism.
In Cluster Bomb Atheism, it is important to clearly visualize the atheist Gods of Metal piercing Holy Books on their way to human flesh, since the ability of these atheist Gods to pierce Holy Books clearly demonstrates the Omnipotence of Cluster Bomb Atheism against the Impotence of Religion.
nichomachus
(12,754 posts)You couldn't hold public office unless you were a member of the Congregationalist Church (before Congregationalists got nice).
cbayer
(146,218 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)stone space
(6,498 posts)And if a few do jump up in support of these old Blue Laws, let them do so loudly and proudly.
The words, "Please proceed" come to mind here.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)One word: Republicans.
Two more words: Timid Democrats.
Three more words: God Bless America.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Anyone that thinks it could or would is, well, delusional.
Drop that chip. It will be much easier to ride your bike.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I read and post on Discussionist and there are a considerable number of people, virtually all of the conservatives, who will swear up and down that racism is no longer a factor at all in the US except for anyone who disagrees is the real racist and has a chip on their shoulder.
http://www.newsweek.com/atheists-face-persecution-worldwide-report-says-290649
It's peculiar how I see you as the one more obsessed with religion than I, you post far more in this group than I do and seem to be on an adversarial basis with several posters. Rug and I spar a bit but I don't see our interactions as essentially adversarial and don't think he does either, I'm starting to get that vibe from you though and I trace it back to when I was being dogmatic and you got annoyed with me about it.
Now you're annoyed with me and descending to personal insults because my imagination is somewhat different from your own.
Have you considered checking your privilege?
cbayer
(146,218 posts)only that laws permitting bigotry will be allowed to stand.
Which privilege do you imagine I have? Where do you think you and I might be on the privilege ladder?
Speaking of descending to the personal, that statement about checking my privilege does exactly that. And then there is the statement about me being more "obsessed" and my interactions with others. Do you not see the irony?
You experience me as adversarial and I experience you the same way.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)That was the entire thrust of my argument in fact.
Bear in mind that there is only one person on DU I'm feeling adversarial towards, how many do you feel that way towards and how many feel that way towards you?
And yet in your mind the problem is mine and not yours despite the fact that you have many times more adversarial relationships on this board than do I. It also doesn't escape me that your adversarial relationships as far as I can tell are with members of a particularly despised minority which you claim to be a member of.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)If I am the only person that you feel adversarial towards on this site, then I suggest that we just stay away from each other. Your scorekeeping is not something I am at all interested in.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)If atheists would just shut their pieholes about not belieeeeeeving in God they could hold any office they wanted.
Why can't they just hypocritically mouth the words to Christianity like almost all the Republicans and a lot of the Democrats do already?
rug
(82,333 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)There's the old saw about a leader being someone who figures out where the mob is headed and runs to the front and starts shouting "follow me". 
For some odd reason I always feel like I'm being manipulated when I interact with those who have strong "people skills".
rug
(82,333 posts)Which reminds me of a joke.
A man is walking down a street in Paris, turns a corner and runs into a few hundred angry people with signs and weapons.
He's grabbed by the shoulders, pushed up against a wall and a man whose face is throbbing with veins yells at him, "Who are you for!"
The man, who's no slouch, yells back, "I'm for us!"
Everyone cheers.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Everything is a matter of interpretation and nuance, perspectives vary so widely. If there is one thing I've learned being online for a couple of decades it's that unambiguous communication is well nigh impossible. There is always someone who is going to misunderstand what you say and who is going to say something you misunderstand.
stone space
(6,498 posts)If atheists would just shut their pieholes about not belieeeeeeving in God they could hold any office they wanted.
Yeah, I've been told here at DU that I should keep my militant atheism hidden to allow myself to be pushed into the closet.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)truebrit71
(20,805 posts)....
stone space
(6,498 posts)17 May 1968 9 people walked into a Selective Service Office, took hundreds of draft files from a cabinet, took them outside, doused them with homemade napalm and burned them in the name of peace.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)You have been asked before to explain what you mean, and how you feel your atheism is "militant"....It is still no clearer as to how you come to that description..
stone space
(6,498 posts)I'm not sure that I would claim it as "my method", however.
That wording seems to imply that I invented it.
Militants have been around for a long, long time.
And militants have been demonized for just as long.
Damn rabble rousers!
It did not come easy for us in this country, under the weight of the vast influx of immigrants and the residual effects of the frontier tradition, to consolidate a secure internal order based on custom and respect for constituted authority; but finally we managed. This internal order is now in jeopardy; and it is in jeopardy because of the doings of such high-minded, self-righteous “children of light” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership of the “civil rights” movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of “non-violence.”
For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the “cake of custom” that holds us together. With their doctrine of “civil disobedience,” they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes — particularly the adolescents and the children — that it is perfectly alright to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk. They have on occasion after occasion, in almost every part of the country, called out their mobs on the streets, promoted “school strikes,” sit-ins, lie-ins, in explicit violation of the law and in explicit defiance of the public authority. They have taught anarchy and chaos by word and deed — and, no doubt, with the best of intentions — and they have found apt pupils everywhere, with intentions not of the best. Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. But it is not they alone who reap it, but we as well; the entire nation.
It is worth noting that the worst victims of these high-minded rabble-rousers are not so much the hated whites, but the great mass of the Negro people themselves. The great mass of the Negro people cannot be blamed for the lawlessness and violence in Harlem, Chicago, Los Angeles, or elsewhere. All they want to do is what decent people everywhere want to do: make a living, raise a family, bring up their children as good citizens, with better advantages than they themselves ever had. The “civil rights” movement and the consequent lawlessness has well nigh shattered these hopes; not only because of the physical violence and insecurity, but above all because of the corruption and demoralization of the children, who have been lured away from the steady path of decency and self-government to the more exhilarating road of ‘demonstration’ — and rioting. An old friend of mine from Harlem put it to me after the riots last year: “For more than fifteen years we’ve worked our heads off to make something out of these boys. Now look at them–they’re turning into punks and hoodlums roaming the streets.
http://themoderatevoice.com/15520/recall-the-words-of-the-national-review/
pinto
(106,886 posts)
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)Most atheists are perfectly decent people and barring them from office is, as far as I understand it, unconstitutional.
