Has religion ever died in the US?

[Formless]

This is why I don't think you should label yourself as an atheist. In the eyes of a theist it puts their beliefs on a pedestal when they by no means have a monopoly on superstitious non-sense. By not doing that, you can prevent arguments like this from ever coming up.

Sam Harris proposed this at AAI '07, but I don't think its a very good idea for the moment. Religious groups are just too vocal and large to snipe at from the edges, and history shows that whenever rationality becomes so commonplace that religion is assumed to be dead, it has a disturbing knack for staging a revival, the results of which in America have been Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Sarah Palin.

Those weren't "revivals": God never died in America in the first place. Bad example.

Split from this thread in Debating Help. Also, added an extra quote to this OP to give context to the debate.

[Samurai Rafiki]

Perhaps it was a poor choice of words. What I meant was that there have been several periods in American history when the power of religion was significantly lower than it is today. Notably the founding of America, when the greatest thinkers and politicians of the day were mostly deistic. Even among the laity, fewer people went to church less often, and secularism was very powerful, which resulted in an American constitution which, quite on purpose, does not mention God, and in fact (in the words of Thomas Jefferson) sought to erect a "wall of separation" between church and state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was another period of comparative secularism, just as Darwin's theory was growing more public. This period was in fact championed by openly atheistic leaders, rather than deists. Even the fifties in America were markedly less religious than today. However, religiosity and fundamentalism always follow up with a resurgence, though they invariably make some concessions to the most recent secular period.

God may not have 'died' in America, but the power of his proponents has certainly waxed and waned.

[Formless]

Perhaps it was a poor choice of words. What I meant was that there have been several periods in American history when the power of religion was significantly lower than it is today. Notably the founding of America, when the greatest thinkers and politicians of the day were mostly deistic. Even among the laity, fewer people went to church less often, and secularism was very powerful, which resulted in an American constitution which, quite on purpose, does not mention God, and in fact (in the words of Thomas Jefferson) sought to erect a "wall of separation" between church and state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was another period of comparative secularism, just as Darwin's theory was growing more public. This period was in fact championed by openly atheistic leaders, rather than deists. Even the fifties in America were markedly less religious than today. However, religiosity and fundamentalism always follow up with a resurgence, though they invariably make some concessions to the most recent secular period.

God may not have 'died' in America, but the power of his proponents has certainly waxed and waned.

As an American, I must tell you this simply is not true. If anything we were far MORE religious in decades and centuries past. Some of the founders did indeed have their doubts about religion, but the vast majority of their constituents were puritanical, bigoted, religious fuckwads who those same founders had to pander to by hiding their skepticism. Ever wondered why they were openly elitist? And as for the fifties? You ever heard of senator McCarthy? Major flaming asshole, religious too. And do you know why our currency has the phrase "in god we trust" on it? What about the period in between the early years and the fifties? Ever wonder why women couldn't vote for the first half of the country's existence? How do you think racism lasted so long? Religion isn't the only thing to blame, but it didn't help things either.

Your ignorance is astounding. If anything, the reason the religious are so much more visible now is because of the very fact that their beliefs are under direct attack. Their hatred of gays. Of birth control and abortion. The sex scandals. The religious overtones of the war we are currently fighting. Have no illusions about God's influence ever being anything but what it is now in this country.

[Samurai Rafiki]

Susan Jacoby's book "The Age of American Unreason" actually spends a great deal of time explaining the continual battle between rationalism, reason and intellectualism and irrationality, unreason, and anti-intellectualism, the latter three of which are invariably bound up in religion. Page 39:

The American religious landscape a the conclusion of the Revolution was pluralistic and somewhat chaotic: it bore little resemblance to the portrait of a devout, churchgoing America that the religious right loves to paint today. Like all wars, the war for independence had disrupted established customs and institutions, including religious institutions. An official nineteenth-century history of Windham, Connecticut offers a precise depiction of what was seen as post-revolutionary moral chaos by the forces of religious orthodoxy:

Her [the town's] secular affairs were most flourishing, but religion had sadly declined. It was a transition period-a day of upheaval, overturning, uprootal. Infidelity and Universalism had come in with the Revolution and drawn multitudes from the religious faith of their fathers. Free-thinking and free-drinking were alike in vogue. Great looseness of manners and morals had replaced the ancient Puritanic strictness. . . . Now, sons of those honored fathers . . . were sceptics and scoffers, and men were placed in office who had never entered the House of God except for town meetings and secular occasions.

She goes on to note, about the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sharp rise in communism, concentrated mainly in the intellectual class, which is nearly always atheistic. Several of the champions of the women's suffrage movement were atheists, Mark Twain was an atheist, and the popularization of Darwin's theories in the late nineteenth century was quite damning for religion. The backlash to that was Prohibition, which was an item on the religious agenda.

The McCarthy era was in the early fifties and, though violent, relatively brief. The later fifties emphasized the power of intellectuals, who were at this point largely atheistic, in response to the science war with Russia and the exploding number of Americans going to college as a result of the GI Bill. A significant portion of the early sixties "counter culture" was quite rationalist, even though much of it was also influenced by the myriad "spiritual" movements of the period. In the later sixties and early seventies is when the "counter-counter culture" began to grow, with the rise of youth groups, campus crusade for Christ, and the Jesus Freaks. These people, and those they influenced, would eventually become the core of the religious right that has dominated politics since Reagan.

Certainly American history cannot be simplified to a gradual decline of religious influence, and certainly this current "New Atheists" movement is not the first or even the most successful wave of rationalism in American or particularly world history.

[Formless]

Susan Jacoby's book "The Age of American Unreason" actually spends a great deal of time explaining the continual battle between rationalism, reason and intellectualism and irrationality, unreason, and anti-intellectualism, the latter three of which are invariably bound up in religion. Page 39: *snip*

One can cite the opinions of numerous bookwriters till you are blue in the face, it's not the same thing as proving a fact.

She goes on to note, about the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sharp rise in communism, concentrated mainly in the intellectual class, which is nearly always atheistic. Several of the champions of the women's suffrage movement were atheists, Mark Twain was an atheist,

Communism was systematically squashed, you ignored the point about how it was partially due to religion that women's suffrage took so damn long, and Mark Twain is largely irrelevant since he wasn't exactly the norm for his day, was he?

and the popularization of Darwin's theories in the late nineteenth century was quite damning for religion. The backlash to that was Prohibition, which was an item on the religious agenda.

And we are only seeing the repercussions in America now.

The backlash to that was Prohibition, which was an item on the religious agenda.

The backlash was because it was a shitty, unenforceable law, NOT because of some atheism/religion conflict, idiot. Have you ever opened a real history textbook even once in your life?

The McCarthy era was in the early fifties and, though violent, relatively brief. The later fifties emphasized the power of intellectuals, who were at this point largely atheistic, in response to the science war with Russia and the exploding number of Americans going to college as a result of the GI Bill. A significant portion of the early sixties "counter culture" was quite rationalist, even though much of it was also influenced by the myriad "spiritual" movements of the period. In the later sixties and early seventies is when the "counter-counter culture" began to grow, with the rise of youth groups, campus crusade for Christ, and the Jesus Freaks. These people, and those they influenced, would eventually become the core of the religious right that has dominated politics since Reagan.

COUNTER culture, moron. The key is the first word.

Frankly, it appears you do not have even one example that wasn't in its day a fringe movement rather than the norm. I on the other hand can point you to several social trends throughout American history such as racism, discrimination against women and gays, laws and more anti-intellectualism than you can shake a stick at. All that rhetoric against smart people and science didn't just pop into existence in the last ten years. You are grasping at straws.

[Samurai Rafiki]

One can cite the opinions of numerous bookwriters till you are blue in the face, it's not the same thing as proving a fact.

I'm providing evidence for what I'm asserting, and giving a source. Forgive me if it clashes with the carefully crafted image in your head of this recent surge of secularism being an utterly revolutionary idea, the first social push of its kind... The fact of the matter is that atheists and theists have been fighting for centuries. De Rerum Natura, the source of the Epicurean argument so effective against the Abrahamic god, was published in first-century Rome.

I'm not saying that atheism or secularism has ever been the norm, what I'm saying is that over and over again in world and American history secularism and religion have been pushing against each other, with the advantage swaying to one side or another.

Communism was systematically squashed, you ignored the point about how it was partially due to religion that women's suffrage took so damn long, and Mark Twain is largely irrelevant since he wasn't exactly the norm for his day, was he?

Of course it was due to religion that suffrage, as well as abolition, took so long. However, the fact that these movements both eventually succeeded, championed in both cases by either outright or suspected (in Lincoln's case) atheists, is suggestive of a period of weaker religious influence. A well grounded charge of atheism, the kind laid at Lincoln, would be enough in these past few election cycles to utterly derail a political campaign. If Barack Obama had said in this last election "I do not speak for my church on public matters-and the church does not speak for me," that would have seriously hurt his campaign, but it was one of the selling points of JFK. Communism was squashed, but for a long while it did flourish. How could the popular quasi-social Darwinism of the mid-nineteenth century, used as a means to legitimize racist laws and policies, have been so successful if not for the potency of biological Darwinism during that age?

And we are only seeing the repercussions in America now.

You think it took 150 years for Darwin's theory to gain traction? How much more myopic can you get?

The backlash was because it was a shitty, unenforceable law, NOT because of some atheism/religion conflict, idiot. Have you ever opened a real history textbook even once in your life?

Prohibition itself was the backlash, fool. It certainly died out for those reasons, but the reason it passed in the first place was because of resurgent religion in response to the social upheavals brought about by the women's suffrage movement of the time, as well as the rising popularity of Darwinism. Why don't you actually read what you're quoting?

COUNTER culture, moron. The key is the first word.

By COUNTER culture I mean the hippies and protesters and social activists of the day, who were rejecting the cultural norms of their parents, thereby creating the culture of the 60's. They ranged from secular to devout, but they were almost uniformly opposed by mainstream Christianity of the day, and were rejecting a large number of religious doctrines of the day no matter what their views. The counter-counter culture was the Christian response to that, when evangelist and fundamentalist Christians grew in influence as the social activism aspect of the sixties died out and younger evangelists who dressed just like the hippies started siphoning off the members of the counter-culture who'd grown jaded with the drug use and sexuality of the day.

Frankly, it appears you do not have even one example that wasn't in its day a fringe movement rather than the norm. I on the other hand can point you to several social trends throughout American history such as racism, discrimination against women and gays, laws and more anti-intellectualism than you can shake a stick at. All that rhetoric against smart people and science didn't just pop into existence in the last ten years. You are grasping at straws.

And you're spitting assertions with no backing whatsoever. Each and every one of those trends that you point out were indeed perpetuated by religion, and each of them at some point died. It wasn't because the religious leaders changed sides, it was because the religious leaders of that era were less influential than they had been in previous eras. Anti-intellectualism is not a new phenomenon, but for you to suggest that it's always been this strong is patently absurd. Perhaps if you read a history book besides the one you got in high school you'd have a more detailed impression of American History.

[Darth Wong]

I'm having trouble believing that the 1950s was a relatively secular time in America. That was the time they added "One Nation Under God" to the pledge in order to turn it into a state-sanctioned national mass prayer. It was the time of McCarthy and the blacklists; even if they were short as you suggest, they still indicate a lot about the prevailing culture of the era. It was the time when overt religiosity was common in Hollywood movies; those movies can be downright painful to watch today for that reason, particularly the ones set in ancient Rome.

[Samurai Rafiki]

Certainly the McCarthy 50's were highly religious, and correspondingly highly anti-intellectual. Every week you saw one egghead after another dragged before congress to testify on another professor or to be accused of communism himself, and McCarthy whipped up the populace by uniting them against the godless commies.

However, at the same time this was happening, millions of Americans were clamoring for college educations, and the universities were hungry for teachers, even atheist teachers who may at any point be hauled up and prosecuted before congress. Add to that Sputnik in the mid-50's and all of a sudden the popularity of these highly atheistic thinkers grew to the point that the stigma of the McCarthy era was short lived.

In any case, the higher your educational level the more likely you are to tend towards secularism, freethought, and agnosticism, and by the later fifties this trend was taking effect, especially among the growing economically middle class and intellectually middle brow culture. The nouveau riche tend to try to emulate their idols, who were in this case atheists. You even had celebrity scientists like Einstein, who were quite outspoken atheists (or, in his case, pantheists). Essentially, even though there was still a very general sense of "Christian nation" that politicians could call on, fundamentalist and evangelist sects were sharply in decline. If you had told someone in the fifties that we'd be fighting Biblical literalists in 1980, or 2010, they'd have thought you were nuts.

[Formless]

In the unlikely event that a moderator comes across this little argument, would they mind splitting it? I think we've drifted quite far enough from the original topic.

I'm providing evidence for what I'm asserting, and giving a source. Forgive me if it clashes with the carefully crafted image in your head of this recent surge of secularism being an utterly revolutionary idea, the first social push of its kind... The fact of the matter is that atheists and theists have been fighting for centuries. De Rerum Natura, the source of the Epicurean argument so effective against the Abrahamic god, was published in first-century Rome.

I'm not saying that atheism or secularism has ever been the norm, what I'm saying is that over and over again in world and American history secularism and religion have been pushing against each other, with the advantage swaying to one side or another.

Hey, moron, I never said that Secularism was a recent development. I'm contesting the idea that it has had any real traction in the past or that there was some kind of good old days when people weren't as religious as they are now. That's patently false, and I find it hard to believe you can't understand this fact. The advantage has been on the side of religion since almost the instant this country was founded because the few secularists have always been vastly outnumbered.

Of course it was due to religion that suffrage, as well as abolition, took so long. However, the fact that these movements both eventually succeeded, championed in both cases by either outright or suspected (in Lincoln's case) atheists, is suggestive of a period of weaker religious influence. A well grounded charge of atheism, the kind laid at Lincoln, would be enough in these past few election cycles to utterly derail a political campaign. If Barack Obama had said in this last election "I do not speak for my church on public matters-and the church does not speak for me," that would have seriously hurt his campaign, but it was one of the selling points of JFK. Communism was squashed, but for a long while it did flourish. How could the popular quasi-social Darwinism of the mid-nineteenth century, used as a means to legitimize racist laws and policies, have been so successful if not for the potency of biological Darwinism during that age?

1. Abolition and women's suffrage were paltry small victories when considering that racism and sexism continued for so long.

2. I like that you continue to use examples of suspected secularists/atheists as examples of the norm when the simple fact of the matter is they weren't. Kinda hard to run a culture war when you lack sufficient numbers, Eh?

3. The popularity of Social Darwinism is evidence that people didn't know what the fuck Darwinism is you moron! That's evidence against your assertion that Darwinism was some kind of triumph of secularism. Although I do doubt that it had anywhere near as much influence on racism as religion did.

You think it took 150 years for Darwin's theory to gain traction? How much more myopic can you get?

To get traction in the public eye moron. We aren't talking about the scientific community, we're talking about barely intelligent lay public.

Prohibition itself was the backlash, fool. It certainly died out for those reasons, but the reason it passed in the first place was because of resurgent religion in response to the social upheavals brought about by the women's suffrage movement of the time, as well as the rising popularity of Darwinism. Why don't you actually read what you're quoting?

It was the backlash against Darwinism? Oh, that is rich. Of all the causes I've ever heard for prohibition, that isn't even on the list. Ever heard of the Women's Temperance Movement? Sure, there was a religious component to prohibition, but I think you quite overestimate the importance of secularism in this, and underestimate the sheer level of drinking that went on at the time.

By COUNTER culture I mean the hippies and protesters and social activists of the day, who were rejecting the cultural norms of their parents, thereby creating the culture of the 60's. They ranged from secular to devout, but they were almost uniformly opposed by mainstream Christianity of the day, and were rejecting a large number of religious doctrines of the day no matter what their views. The counter-counter culture was the Christian response to that, when evangelist and fundamentalist Christians grew in influence as the social activism aspect of the sixties died out and younger evangelists who dressed just like the hippies started siphoning off the members of the counter-culture who'd grown jaded with the drug use and sexuality of the day.

I know what you mean by counter culture; that whooshing noise you just heard was the point soaring over your head. In fact, if anything your point about counter-counter culture only reinforces my point about religion being that much more entrenched than you make it out to be.

And frankly, I know people who lived through that era and who experienced the counter culture movement firsthand. The impression I consistently get from them is that it would be best considered Just Another Consumer Fad, and that it died out as quickly as it did for exactly that reason.

And you're spitting assertions with no backing whatsoever. Each and every one of those trends that you point out were indeed perpetuated by religion, and each of them at some point died. It wasn't because the religious leaders changed sides, it was because the religious leaders of that era were less influential than they had been in previous eras. Anti-intellectualism is not a new phenomenon, but for you to suggest that it's always been this strong is patently absurd. Perhaps if you read a history book besides the one you got in high school you'd have a more detailed impression of American History.

emphasis added

One word: bullshit. Speaking as someone who has studied more than a high school course's worth of American history, its obvious that for all your protestations to the contrary, you haven't.

[Surlethe]

Split topic from Debating Help.

[Formless]

Thanks, Surlethe.

Come to think, rereading the OP, it occurs to me that his point about religion being too entrenched to be sniped at and attacked from the edges is more reason not to label yourself an atheist. Some of the movements he brings up actually seem to confirm this to me-- the communists, the counter culture movement, both gave some alternative belief system to people to adopt, which I think is key to getting away from religion.

[Simon_Jester]

OK, but I'm serious: Religion in America comes in waves. It's always there, like the ocean, but sometimes it's more there than others: one minute you're more or less free and clear, and the next it's actively swamping you.

[Samurai Rafiki]

OK, but I'm serious: Religion in America comes in waves. It's always there, like the ocean, but sometimes it's more there than others: one minute you're more or less free and clear, and the next it's actively swamping you.

Exactly what I'm saying. That's a great way to put it.

Hey, moron, I never said that Secularism was a recent development. I'm contesting the idea that it has had any real traction in the past or that there was some kind of good old days when people weren't as religious as they are now. That's patently false, and I find it hard to believe you can't understand this fact. The advantage has been on the side of religion since almost the instant this country was founded because the few secularists have always been vastly outnumbered.

Atheists have always been vastly outnumbered, but to suggest that the country has always been anti-secular is a gross over simplification. Certainly the laity has always considered themselves more or less Christian, but church attendance, and just as importantly the types of churches that were attended, has been in constant flux. When Darwin's theories were made public, there was a very large shuffling towards more liberal churches that could encompass a theistic belief with this new scientific revelation. It indicates a general weakness of religion that at some periods the liberal churches outnumbered the fundamentalist.

I'm sorry to put the pin to your quaint idea of being a member of the first secular movement with "any real traction," but the atheistic writers we find so compelling and interesting today weren't just spitting their ideas into the wind. They were being absorbed and digested by the laity, often to the detriment of the church. Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" is an excellent example. It was reprinted 18 times between 1794 and 1796, totaling 25,000 copies, and was probably passed around quite a lot meaning the number of readers out strips the number of copies. Consider as well that the population in 1790 was under four million, and New York had just over 33,000 residents and it becomes clear that this book was hugely popular. The equivalent of a best seller many times over. His book was denounced vehemently from all but the most liberal pulpits, but still it was read. You think the Four Horsemen, who've sold less than 5 million copies of their books altogether, to far fewer readers since many would buy several or (in my case) all four of their books, had a greater secularizing impact than Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason?" It's ludicrous.

1. Abolition and women's suffrage were paltry small victories when considering that racism and sexism continued for so long.

2. I like that you continue to use examples of suspected secularists/atheists as examples of the norm when the simple fact of the matter is they weren't. Kinda hard to run a culture war when you lack sufficient numbers, Eh?

3. The popularity of Social Darwinism is evidence that people didn't know what the fuck Darwinism is you moron! That's evidence against your assertion that Darwinism was some kind of triumph of secularism. Although I do doubt that it had anywhere near as much influence on racism as religion did.

Your ability to misunderstand what I've so painstakingly made clear is truly astounding. It epitomizes the quote "Make it idiot-proof, and someone will make a better idiot."

1. Abolition was a paltry victory? It took a horrifically bloody war to bring about. Women's suffrage was a movement on par with the Civil Rights push, which I'm sure you'd be less eager to call paltry or small. Racism and sexism continued, but it was much harder to institutionalize them, and they had to rely just as much on social contracts as law to maintain the inequalities. The church took a hard stance on abolition, women's suffrage and civil rights and each time they were defeated. You think they lost because their arguments were bad? It was because the public was edging, however subtly, towards secularism. Even if they attended church, even if their pastor screamed epithets and curses and damnation on abolitionists and feminists as godless, the laity still very tacitly approved of the movements and they passed.

2. Again, let me make this clear. I'm not saying that the majority of America was secularists or agnostics or atheists; that's never been the case. I'm saying that these famous openly atheistic figures were very influential, and were able to accomplish social reforms and move the rational goal posts again and again, so that religion had much less influence over the generally accepted scientific facts than they do today. This outright rejection of all scientific theories we're experiencing today is quite abnormal.

3. Of course the laity didn't understand the specifics of the Darwinian theories. However, quasi-Darwinian extrapolations were applied to social situations in order to bolster capitalist and racist agendas. Essentially, the powerful and the rich were the most successful species, it was said, and so it was proper that they should be on top. Furthermore, it was asserted that the white races were more fit than the darker races, again citing Darwin's natural selection (and coining the term "social selection") as an excuse. Today, it would be absurd for someone to promote laissez faire economics to the religious laity by citing Darwin, but that's exactly what they did. And the reason they were able to do it is because name dropping Darwin was an effective political tool. That social Darwinism helped legitimize the racism many in the laity and the clergy craved but could not successfully justify in religious terms. Let me make that more clear, because I just know you didn't get it. Certainly religion contains material galore to justify racism, but a religious justification was not as effective as a Darwinian justification. That is not the case today, so at some point in the past, religion must have been less effective, less influential, and less powerful than it is today.

To get traction in the public eye moron. We aren't talking about the scientific community, we're talking about barely intelligent lay public.

Richard Dawkins is called Darwin's Pit Bull. He's assumed that title because it's a clever allusion to Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), who called himself Darwin's Bulldog. He's the guy who most vehemently popularized Darwin's theory, but he didn't do it in a purely masturbatory sense to a bunch of intellectuals, he was also passing these opinions on to the general public and a good number of them were lapping it up- a good enough number to make it feasible to sell racism and strict laissez faire capitalism under the banner of Darwinism.

t was the backlash against Darwinism? Oh, that is rich. Of all the causes I've ever heard for prohibition, that isn't even on the list. Ever heard of the Women's Temperance Movement? Sure, there was a religious component to prohibition, but I think you quite overestimate the importance of secularism in this, and underestimate the sheer level of drinking that went on at the time.

Perhaps you oversimplify because you're too stupid to grasp the entire argument all at once. Maybe if you read and quoted it in smaller chunks we'd be able to get somewhere. That's twice involving the same thread of quotes and responses that you've failed to read and comprehend what you were actually quoting. Let's try once more, shall we? Okay! Feel free to read this nice and slow so it sinks in. Women voting makes priest cry. Black people not slaves so priest cry more. Priest start yell at people, and people start listen to priest because a lot of them don't like women or black people either. They get lots of friends, and then they and their friends say drinking make priest cry too, and they don't want priest cry no more, so no more drinking! QED you're a fucking idiot.

Why don't you tell me why you think prohibition passed? Feel free to call your fifth grade teacher so she can read it to you from the textbook.

I know what you mean by counter culture; that whooshing noise you just heard was the point soaring over your head. In fact, if anything your point about counter-counter culture only reinforces my point about religion being that much more entrenched than you make it out to be.

And frankly, I know people who lived through that era and who experienced the counter culture movement firsthand. The impression I consistently get from them is that it would be best considered Just Another Consumer Fad, and that it died out as quickly as it did for exactly that reason.

Why don't you actually read a book on the subject and continue this conversation then? The counter culture movement was right there along with the civil rights movement and the feminist movement. They all became, in their own ways, quite successful and were able to push societal norms (even if they didn't achieve all their goals) from where they were in the 30's, 40's and early 50's a good deal closer to where they are today. Religion wasn't taking a nap while they did this, it just didn't have the traction at the time to stop these social reforms, so it morphed into the counter-counter culture. Well dressed young men and women riding in floats with Richard Nixon, Jesus freaks on campus dressing like hippies and talking about the Bible, attracting followers from those who had become jaded with the counter culture's sex, drugs and radicalism. I can't believe I have to say this shit twice.

Let me make this clear, I'm not saying that religion isn't entrenched, what I'm saying is that it hasn't always been as powerful or influential as it is now. I'm saying that, like Simon Jester's ocean analogy, it's power has risen and fallen periodically over time.

One word: bullshit. Speaking as someone who has studied more than a high school course's worth of American history, its obvious that for all your protestations to the contrary, you haven't.

Well then why don't you quote a fucking history book other than the imaginary one in your head full of images of you as the triumphant general leading the first charge ever with actual soldiers against the armies of God. Get over yourself. You're a member of the newest form of the secular force that's been fighting this fight since Lucretius published De Rerum Natura in first century Rome.

As an aside, I'd like to say that you've really depressed me. You're the first stupid atheist I've really met. I knew there had to be stupid atheists (Lee Strobel comes to mind), but actually having that thrust in your face is like realizing as a teenager that girls fart. Sure you knew on some level, but it didn't really register until later, and when it did, it kinda ruined that rosy-hued image in your head. You just shat on my impression of atheism. I hope you're happy.

[Formless]

Atheists have always been vastly outnumbered, but to suggest that the country has always been anti-secular is a gross over simplification. Certainly the laity has always considered themselves more or less Christian, but church attendance, and just as importantly the types of churches that were attended, has been in constant flux. When Darwin's theories were made public, there was a very large shuffling towards more liberal churches that could encompass a theistic belief with this new scientific revelation. It indicates a general weakness of religion that at some periods the liberal churches outnumbered the fundamentalist.

No, it indicates a "strength" of religion that it can adapt like the Borg and never be killed except by direct confrontation. Meanwhile christian "morals" and "values" continued apace in society, undermining progress wherever it could.

1. Abolition was a paltry victory? It took a horrifically bloody war to bring about. Women's suffrage was a movement on par with the Civil Rights push, which I'm sure you'd be less eager to call paltry or small. Racism and sexism continued, but it was much harder to institutionalize them, and they had to rely just as much on social contracts as law to maintain the inequalities. The church took a hard stance on abolition, women's suffrage and civil rights and each time they were defeated. You think they lost because their arguments were bad? It was because the public was edging, however subtly, towards secularism. Even if they attended church, even if their pastor screamed epithets and curses and damnation on abolitionists and feminists as godless, the laity still very tacitly approved of the movements and they passed.

I see you forgot all those lynchings of blacks that continued almost until the modern day. Slowly inching towards secularism my ass.

This outright rejection of all scientific theories we're experiencing today is quite abnormal.

The Dover Trial used the same arguments against evolution that modern "Intelligent Design" blowhards keep spouting today. You were saying?

3. Of course the laity didn't understand the specifics of the Darwinian theories. However, quasi-Darwinian extrapolations were applied to social situations in order to bolster capitalist and racist agendas. Essentially, the powerful and the rich were the most successful species, it was said, and so it was proper that they should be on top.

That's just a restatment of the old prodestant belief that the rich are rich because God is rewarding them using pseudo-scientific terms. You really think that's a result of secularism?

Let me make that more clear, because I just know you didn't get it. Certainly religion contains material galore to justify racism, but a religious justification was not as effective as a Darwinian justification. That is not the case today, so at some point in the past, religion must have been less effective, less influential, and less powerful than it is today.

And yet we can show that their actual motivations were religious in nature, not secular at all. That's not a point in your favor because i'm not talking about the justifications used throughout history-- I'm talking about influence. There is a difference.

Richard Dawkins is called Darwin's Pit Bull. He's assumed that title because it's a clever allusion to Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), who called himself Darwin's Bulldog. He's the guy who most vehemently popularized Darwin's theory, but he didn't do it in a purely masturbatory sense to a bunch of intellectuals, he was also passing these opinions on to the general public and a good number of them were lapping it up- a good enough number to make it feasible to sell racism and strict laissez faire capitalism under the banner of Darwinism.

Your point? Seriously, I'm not suggesting that the ideas behind secularism aren't new-- I'm saying that they have had precious little influence on politics and culture. We didn't get to a situation where no atheist could possibly run for the office of the president and win in the just the last ten years. We got here because the religious segment of society has taken its sweet time entrenching itself into the public mind. And it has been entrenching itself since before the beginning of the country.

Perhaps you oversimplify because you're too stupid to grasp the entire argument all at once. Maybe if you read and quoted it in smaller chunks we'd be able to get somewhere. That's twice involving the same thread of quotes and responses that you've failed to read and comprehend what you were actually quoting. Let's try once more, shall we? Okay! Feel free to read this nice and slow so it sinks in. Women voting makes priest cry. Black people not slaves so priest cry more. Priest start yell at people, and people start listen to priest because a lot of them don't like women or black people either. They get lots of friends, and then they and their friends say drinking make priest cry too, and they don't want priest cry no more, so no more drinking! QED you're a fucking idiot.

Oh, hey, look at that. You just enumerated one of the social mechanisms that keeps this nation religious. Good grief, you have no idea what I'm even arguing, do you.

Look, moron, if you bothered to look up the Women's Temperance Movement, you would realize that prohibition was not a reaction to women's suffereage either. Do I have to spell that out for you?

Why don't you actually read a book on the subject and continue this conversation then? The counter culture movement was right there along with the civil rights movement and the feminist movement. They all became, in their own ways, quite successful and were able to push societal norms (even if they didn't achieve all their goals) from where they were in the 30's, 40's and early 50's a good deal closer to where they are today. Religion wasn't taking a nap while they did this, it just didn't have the traction at the time to stop these social reforms, so it morphed into the counter-counter culture. Well dressed young men and women riding in floats with Richard Nixon, Jesus freaks on campus dressing like hippies and talking about the Bible, attracting followers from those who had become jaded with the counter culture's sex, drugs and radicalism. I can't believe I have to say this shit twice.

They changed laws, but they failed their main goal-- change society on the level of its basic culture. Sure, they made some progress, but at the end of the day as you yourself admit religion and the status quo won. Racism is still around, in modified form. Sexism too. The anti-war movement was an abysmal failure in the strictest sense-- the country learned absolutely nothing from Vietnam and made the same mistakes errors fuck it, the country is still a warlike failure to humanity. There is no other way of putting it.

Let me make this clear, I'm not saying that religion isn't entrenched, what I'm saying is that it hasn't always been as powerful or influential as it is now. I'm saying that, like Simon Jester's ocean analogy, it's power has risen and fallen periodically over time.

Only because religion is slow to react, but powerful when it does. However, its power has demonstrably remained throughout history-- there is no Golden Age of Secularism you can point to, only relative periods of it.

[Samuel]

As an aside, I'd like to say that you've really depressed me. You're the first stupid atheist I've really met. I knew there had to be stupid atheists (Lee Strobel comes to mind), but actually having that thrust in your face is like realizing as a teenager that girls fart. Sure you knew on some level, but it didn't really register until later, and when it did, it kinda ruined that rosy-hued image in your head. You just shat on my impression of atheism. I hope you're happy.

You mean you have never heard of Marxists?

[Formless]

As an aside, I'd like to say that you've really depressed me. You're the first stupid atheist I've really met. I knew there had to be stupid atheists (Lee Strobel comes to mind), but actually having that thrust in your face is like realizing as a teenager that girls fart. Sure you knew on some level, but it didn't really register until later, and when it did, it kinda ruined that rosy-hued image in your head. You just shat on my impression of atheism. I hope you're happy.

You mean you have never heard of Marxists?

No, what he means is he's so impressed by one fucking book he can't see the perspective of anyone else but its author.

[Samurai Rafiki]

No, it indicates a "strength" of religion that it can adapt like the Borg and never be killed except by direct confrontation. Meanwhile christian "morals" and "values" continued apace in society, undermining progress wherever it could.

The Borg adapt because what they were doing before had become, for some reason, ineffective. They adapt to failure, they don't arbitrarily change from strength to greater strength without a catalyst. Similarly, religion has suffered, over the centuries, a devastating series of setbacks. However, religion very rarely regains the ground it's lost to secularism and science. They used to burn heretics- now they don't. They used to say the earth was flat- now most of them don't... that qualification depresses me... anyway, they used to sanction racism, sexism, discrimination, slavery and child abuse openly. Now, even when a church engages in them actively or passively and the charge is laid, they're quick to defend themselves. Before they'd have just done whatever the hell they wanted and your condemnation be damned. The fact of the matter is that they can't always undermine progress. Every time science and secularism makes a stand, even though religion comes back, it doesn't come back in the same way. Inevitably it is weaker, more malleable, easier to defeat. The ideological holes that we so easily exploit in religion these days were ripped open by our forerunners, but it seems this current backlash of religiosity is seeking to undo a great deal of the progress we thought we'd already made, which is why it's the responsibility of atheists to beat it back even more viciously. Christianity is a cancer, and we're chemotherapy.

I see you forgot all those lynchings of blacks that continued almost until the modern day. Slowly inching towards secularism my ass.

Well, let's see. A hundred and twenty years ago the whole town would turn out to see a black man lynched, and very commonly take souvenirs from the body to commemorate the occasion. Sixty years ago the lynchers were limited to a few fringe groups in the town, and they were commonly brought up on charges. They got off quite a lot, sure, but they were charged with murder. Thirty years ago they'd be convicted unless there was an egregious miscarriage of justice that would cause a massive uproar among the populace. Nowadays, such a miscarriage of justice is almost inconceivable. QED you're still a fucking idiot.

The Dover Trial used the same arguments against evolution that modern "Intelligent Design" blowhards keep spouting today. You were saying?

I hope you're not referring to Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist., because that was in '05, and is part of the same religious movement that started in the late sixties, gained serious traction in the seventies, and by the eighties was the dominant force in American politics. I'm sure you meant to compare Kitzmiller v Dover to something like the Scopes Monkey Trial. You're right. They did use many of the same arguments. The difference is that in the Scopes Monkey trial H.L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow kicked the ever living snot out of them cruelly, painting them as incompetent, backwards fools. Now the rhetoric of Darrow and Mencken would not play well in the court or with the public. So religion is resurgent now, but this surge, as I said, is odd, because they seem to be trying to make up lost ground for once.

That's just a restatment of the old prodestant belief that the rich are rich because God is rewarding them using pseudo-scientific terms. You really think that's a result of secularism?

Yes, because the Protestant justification for it didn't have any traction, so the protestants who had those ideas had to cloak them in the garb of science. Like creationists these days cloaking themselves in ID theory. Why do they do that? Because in some circles- not all- it's not really appropriate or effective to use the Biblical justification. Works on Sunday morning, but when you're standing in front of the Supreme Court you need to have a better excuse for that shit.

Let me make that more clear, because I just know you didn't get it. Certainly religion contains material galore to justify racism, but a religious justification was not as effective as a Darwinian justification. That is not the case today, so at some point in the past, religion must have been less effective, less influential, and less powerful than it is today.

And yet we can show that their actual motivations were religious in nature, not secular at all. That's not a point in your favor because i'm not talking about the justifications used throughout history-- I'm talking about influence. There is a difference.

Emphasis added

Let me just elaborate on this phenomenon one more time for those just joining us. You're talking about influence? THE QUOTE YOU JUST USED IS SPEAKING SPECIFICALLY ABOUT INFLUENCE. They changed justifications because they lost influence, and had to play by the rules of the dominant force, that being secularism. Are you arguing by slamming your head against the keyboard and running it through a spell check?

Your point? Seriously, I'm not suggesting that the ideas behind secularism aren't new-- I'm saying that they have had precious little influence on politics and culture. We didn't get to a situation where no atheist could possibly run for the office of the president and win in the just the last ten years. We got here because the religious segment of society has taken its sweet time entrenching itself into the public mind. And it has been entrenching itself since before the beginning of the country.

No, we got here in the last 30 or 40 years; remember, both Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon were falling over themselves to seem more religious than their opponents, and they won elections because they were able to do it. Nixon was full of shit, but Reagan wasn't, and neither was Bush. Can you honestly imagine Sarah Palin being a serious contender for the presidency against Kennedy, the sexism of the era aside and focusing only on the merits of the candidates and the intellectual and religious influence. She would have attacked him for distancing himself from his faith and he would have skewered her for being a dumbass, backwards religious nut.

Taking its sweet time entrenching itself? That's not what your mom said last night. That's not what you said at the beginning of this debate.

If anything we were far MORE religious in decades and centuries past. Some of the founders did indeed have their doubts about religion, but the vast majority of their constituents were puritanical, bigoted, religious fuckwads who those same founders had to pander to by hiding their skepticism.

So did we start religious and become gradually or even suddenly less so? Or did we start somewhat secular and has religion "entrenched" itself only rear its head in the past ten (actually, 40) years? Why don't you decide who's side you're arguing on and then we'll get back to this.

Oh, hey, look at that. You just enumerated one of the social mechanisms that keeps this nation religious. Good grief, you have no idea what I'm even arguing, do you.

Well if you don't how the fuck am I supposed to? Keeps the nation religious? That mechanism relies on a failure of religion in order to get started!

Look, moron, if you bothered to look up the Women's Temperance Movement, you would realize that prohibition was not a reaction to women's suffereage either. Do I have to spell that out for you?

Wow, I wonder who championed the Women's Temperance Movement... could it have been the Women's Christian Temperance Union? It makes perfect sense for the Temperance movement to garb itself, as ever, in the clothes of its recent superiors. So having a bunch of outspoken Christian women promoting temperance would make perfect sense if the public was somewhat used to agreeing with the positions of women, a la the Suffrage movement, the leaders of which were............. Secularists and atheists. Fuck me, sometimes you prove my point better than I do. Sure I have to extrapolate and repackage it because it would be rude to expect all our peers here to sift through your babble on their own, but hey, thanks for the leg up. Fool.

They changed laws, but they failed their main goal-- change society on the level of its basic culture. Sure, they made some progress, but at the end of the day as you yourself admit religion and the status quo won. Racism is still around, in modified form. Sexism too. The anti-war movement was an abysmal failure in the strictest sense-- the country learned absolutely nothing from Vietnam and made the same mistakes errors fuck it, the country is still a warlike failure to humanity. There is no other way of putting it.

Failure? Blacks are free, women can vote, blacks can vote, and the anti-war movement brought the troops home from Vietnam despite a general failure to accomplish their stated goals. Why does it argue against the general idea of changing influential dominance to say that the religious nuts frequently fucked up the social gains of their secular opponents? It's simple damage control. They have to be on the side of some of the recent social change, but they can certainly try to cut it off there, and perhaps even take a little ground back.

My point is not that any of these secularist movements won in perpetuity and religion rose from the dead, what I'm saying is that these movements made significant social progress because their influence was greater than that of the religious side. That the religious side counterattacked actually proves my point that the influence has swung from one side to another over various decades.

Only because religion is slow to react, but powerful when it does. However, its power has demonstrably remained throughout history-- there is no Golden Age of Secularism you can point to, only relative periods of it.

Relative periods of secularism followed by religious revivals are all that I was pointing to, jackass. Can I go ahead and view this as a general concession of defeat?

As an aside, I'd like to say that you've really depressed me. You're the first stupid atheist I've really met. I knew there had to be stupid atheists (Lee Strobel comes to mind), but actually having that thrust in your face is like realizing as a teenager that girls fart. Sure you knew on some level, but it didn't really register until later, and when it did, it kinda ruined that rosy-hued image in your head. You just shat on my impression of atheism. I hope you're happy.

You mean you have never heard of Marxists?

No, what he means is he's so impressed by one fucking book he can't see the perspective of anyone else but its author.

I've heard of atheists being mistaken and buying into some sort of junk thought fad among intellectuals at one time or another, but anyone can make a mistake. Furthermore, many of those atheist fellow travelers and whatnot had renounced their hold with communism by the fifties.

Actual stupidity though; an inability to coherently generate thoughts based on input? That's what's surprising.

The book, in this discussion, is relevant. I'm sorry I couldn't use "My Dog Spot" so you'd be a little more familiar with the material.

[Formless]

I've heard of atheists being mistaken and buying into some sort of junk thought fad among intellectuals at one time or another, but anyone can make a mistake. Furthermore, many of those atheist fellow travelers and whatnot had renounced their hold with communism by the fifties.

Actual stupidity though; an inability to coherently generate thoughts based on input? That's what's surprising.

The book, in this discussion, is relevant. I'm sorry I couldn't use "My Dog Spot" so you'd be a little more familiar with the material.

Lets see. You have made assertion after assertion after assertion, and the only source you have cited is that one book. What do you expect me to conclude? You say things like:

The Borg adapt because what they were doing before had become, for some reason, ineffective. They adapt to failure, they don't arbitrarily change from strength to greater strength without a catalyst. Similarly, religion has suffered, over the centuries, a devastating series of setbacks.

And yet, its still here, promoting the exact same bullshit, and the only changes that have come about is that it has to couch its bullshit in slightly less offensive words, and slightly more moderate positions. Tell me, is that what you call devastating? You don't know what the fuck a "devastating setback" is.

Answer me one thing: if these setbacks were so devastating, how the fuck did we get to the point we are now? The generation of the sixties is still around-- how come we aren't much more secular? Could it be that the number of God Fearing Christians is a better measure of the religion's influence than any amount of rhetoric or short lived counterculture movement? You would think, wouldn't you?

[Samuel]

I've heard of atheists being mistaken and buying into some sort of junk thought fad among intellectuals at one time or another, but anyone can make a mistake. Furthermore, many of those atheist fellow travelers and whatnot had renounced their hold with communism by the fifties.

Actual stupidity though; an inability to coherently generate thoughts based on input? That's what's surprising.

The book, in this discussion, is relevant. I'm sorry I couldn't use "My Dog Spot" so you'd be a little more familiar with the material.

You do realize I was refering to the Russians, right? Not all atheists in the world were/are American. I don't think the origional revolutionaries were caught up by a "fad" given the fact it meant they were kicked out of the country, and many of them died still convinced they were in the right.

[Samurai Rafiki]

You do realize I was refering to the Russians, right? Not all atheists in the world were/are American. I don't think the origional revolutionaries were caught up by a "fad" given the fact it meant they were kicked out of the country, and many of them died still convinced they were in the right.

The Russian populace had been highly religious and highly superstitious for centuries. Consequently when Lenin and later Stalin set up shop, they simply set up an atheistic religion. Impervious to reason, dogmatic, long list of thought crimes, definitely smacks of religion even though it was nominally atheistic. What I should have said is I hadn't heard of a stupid rationalist.

The original revolutionaries were idealists. Perhaps they were stupid though. Why rub it in that all girls fart though.

Lets see. You have made assertion after assertion after assertion, and the only source you have cited is that one book.

And you've quoted no books. The reason I quoted that book is because that book deals with this subject the most directly. Jacoby devotes several very in-depth chapters to examining the history of irrationality and anti-intellectualism in America. She's a well-respected journalist, so it's reasonable to assume she's a reliable resource.

And yet, its still here, promoting the exact same bullshit, and the only changes that have come about is that it has to couch its bullshit in slightly less offensive words, and slightly more moderate positions. Tell me, is that what you call devastating? You don't know what the fuck a "devastating setback" is.

The followers of these highly conservative, very anti-progressive churches expected them to win those fights. They didn't, and it cost the churches quite a lot of power. These churches nearly always pushed back eventually, but when they did they had to do it in the new lines on the playing field.

Also, I think it's quite absurd to continually try to downplay the massive social shift that abolition, suffrage, and civil rights had to represent. The movements weren't complete by your terms -there was still a lot of racism after abolition and sexism after suffrage- but that's not what I'm arguing. I'm saying that there have been periods of predominantly secular influence in America followed by periods of predominantly religious influence in America. As evidence for that, I offered the fact that during these periods of secular dominance, large social movements often succeeded. I never said there wasn't racism after abolition or sexism after suffrage. In fact, I showed how, particularly in the case of post-abolition racism, the rhetoric used shows the low comparative influence of religion during that period.

Answer me one thing: if these setbacks were so devastating, how the fuck did we get to the point we are now? The generation of the sixties is still around-- how come we aren't much more secular? Could it be that the number of God Fearing Christians is a better measure of the religion's influence than any amount of rhetoric or short lived counterculture movement? You would think, wouldn't you?

Because the generation of the sixties was hijacked. The religious nuts pulled a fast one on us. The increasingly secular late fifties gave way to the somewhat secular, but also quite "spiritual" early sixties. In the late sixties the style and image of the early sixties counter-culture was hijacked by religious fundamentalists who then proceeded to hijack much of the movement, such that by the seventies the religious right had become a big enough force to pander to. In 1980 they elected Ronald Reagan and assumed a position of greater dominance than had been seen in recent history. Incensed by Supreme Court Decisions like Roe v Wade, they were able to push through a massive social campaign at the same time that Reagan's wall street puppeteers were pushing through very conservative economic policies.

To reiterate, the sixties generation changed their minds, by and large.

So let me get this straight, are you talking about population counts or influence? Because in the early sixties the fundamentalists had moderately decent numbers of followers but very little influence. In the 80's they had a very many followers and exerted a great deal of influence. You can't just count by population. Minority movements, especially in the United States, have very often been able to exert enormous influence and override the clamoring of the comparatively larger churches.

Again, read a history book that deals with this subject.

[Flagg]

I'm having trouble believing that the 1950s was a relatively secular time in America. That was the time they added "One Nation Under God" to the pledge in order to turn it into a state-sanctioned national mass prayer. It was the time of McCarthy and the blacklists; even if they were short as you suggest, they still indicate a lot about the prevailing culture of the era. It was the time when overt religiosity was common in Hollywood movies; those movies can be downright painful to watch today for that reason, particularly the ones set in ancient Rome.

Christ, one of the main fucking reasons we thought of ourselves as morally superior (we were, though for far different reasons) during pretty much the entire Cold War was our "inherent belief in almighty god".

[Simon_Jester]

I see you forgot all those lynchings of blacks that continued almost until the modern day. Slowly inching towards secularism my ass.

Formless, I am I to understand that you cite those lynchings evidence of religious influence in the American South?

If so, then it seems to me that you're confusing correlation and causation: churches are conservative, therefore every bit of reactionary bullshit that ever happens in America is a church's fault! You're ignoring the possibility of non-religious racism, non-religious sexism, non-religious obsession with "tradition..." all of which are confounding variables in trying to chart religion in America simply by looking at the level of political progress and assuming an inverse relationship between them.

Or is that not what you're trying to do? I have to admit I'm a bit confused here.

They changed laws, but they failed their main goal-- change society on the level of its basic culture. Sure, they made some progress, but at the end of the day as you yourself admit religion and the status quo won. Racism is still around, in modified form. Sexism too. The anti-war movement was an abysmal failure in the strictest sense-- the country learned absolutely nothing from Vietnam and made the same mistakes errors fuck it, the country is still a warlike failure to humanity. There is no other way of putting it.

What, the counterculture?

That raises a question: was their main goal realistic? I mean, how often does a movement succeed in altering the fundamental way people view society that fast, starting from what amounts to a youth movement in year X and having completely remade the country in its image in the year X+20 or X+40? Is that a normal thing that we would expect the '60s counterculture to have been able to do? Something that some villain must have stopped them from doing?

Are other nations that experienced something comparable to the '60s counterculture now examples of the triumph of that counterculture today? I mean, yes, they're better than the US in a lot of important ways. Are they transcendently better, such that a Summer of Love veteran would step into them and go "Wow, this is what winning must look like?"

I'm skeptical. Expecting any kind of social change that drastic on that time scale seems to me like you have very unrealistic expectations about what reform looks like.

Only because religion is slow to react, but powerful when it does. However, its power has demonstrably remained throughout history-- there is no Golden Age of Secularism you can point to, only relative periods of it.

Speaking for myself, that's all I've ever been saying. Religion doesn't vanish from the American political scene, but it alternates between taking an active role (1980s-today) and taking a relatively passive role (1940s-60s)

[Formless]

So let me get this straight, are you talking about population counts or influence? Because in the early sixties the fundamentalists had moderately decent numbers of followers but very little influence. In the 80's they had a very many followers and exerted a great deal of influence. You can't just count by population. Minority movements, especially in the United States, have very often been able to exert enormous influence and override the clamoring of the comparatively larger churches.

Again, read a history book that deals with this subject.

I have, dumbshit, but I find it amazing that you do not see the basic contradiction in the idea that "secularism had more influence during these times, yet Religion in the end had the power to hijack their social movement and create a period of regression." I'm not just talking about the fundies, I'm talking about all christians. Population count is a measure of influence, and a better one than religious activity at any given time, because such social movements require massive amounts of people to pull off. Just because the religious aren't active in any period of time doesn't mean the that social/cultural influence isn't there. It means they aren't using it, or haven't yet gathered enough momentum to pull off a period of regression.

Speaking for myself, that's all I've ever been saying. Religion doesn't vanish from the American political scene, but it alternates between taking an active role (1980s-today) and taking a relatively passive role (1940s-60s)

The role religion takes is immaterial. What is important is the potential power they wield: as long as over half the population regards the tenants of their religion as important they become that much more easily swayed by the pundits and preachers who can tell them the brown people, the commies, the hippies, the pro-abortion scientists, the atheist gays, etc. are the enemy of God and country, which translates into political power thanks to democracy. Yes, there are other factors at work, notably capitalism. Heck, my point about the prohibition era that Samuri guy didn't seem to understand (and to be fair, maybe I didn't communicate as well as I could have) was that there were secular pressures and reasons for its institution. That does not, however, negate the point that there has never been a time at which potential power rested in the hands of the religious forces, both institutional and more importantly social, due to the sheer numbers of people who still consider themselves christian in this country.

[Simon_Jester]

The role religion takes is immaterial. What is important is the potential power they wield: as long as over half the population regards the tenants of their religion as important they become that much more easily swayed by the pundits and preachers who can tell them the brown people, the commies, the hippies, the pro-abortion scientists, the atheist gays, etc. are the enemy of God and country, which translates into political power thanks to democracy.

I would argue that there can be a significant difference: more progress occurs during times when religions are passive.

Progress tends to shift the terms of the debate. For example, you will not find any significant political faction in the US that advocates denying women the vote... because they fought and lost that battle about a hundred years ago. Today, even the conservatives (and American conservatives are about as reactionary as you can get) advocate things that would have been starkly mad in an earlier social context.

So you get these waves of back-and-forth, and there's a very real difference in the political climate depending on whether you're on the "back" or the "forth." I wouldn't call it immaterial, though it might be of secondary importance from your point of view.

[Formless]

So you get these waves of back-and-forth, and there's a very real difference in the political climate depending on whether you're on the "back" or the "forth." I wouldn't call it immaterial, though it might be of secondary importance from your point of view.

Indeed, it is of secondary importance (if that) because the religious can find other ways of pursuing their agenda after the legal aspects are tied up. Continuing racism, sexism, and homophobia are excellent examples of this.