(July 27, 2011 at 2:20 am)Rokcet Scientist Wrote: Excuse me? Have you been out of the country in the past decade? Or in a holding tank? Quite the contrary is the case. The founding fathers did their best to keep church and state separated. Bachmann and the other Mor(m)ons clearly try to corrupt that picture (the Religious Right has been working on that, and made considerable progress, since the fifties: the corruption of the pledge!). And guess who's winning right now?
The way things are going the very real spectre looms that you'll have a bonafide inquisition/witch hunt (Salem/McCarthy style) in the United States and a couple crusades (Vietnam/Iraq style) elsewhere on your hands by this time next year. For the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ!
The religious right are pushing hard at the moment in response to the fact that people who identify as agnostic or atheist has doubled in the last decade, and is expected to double again in the next decade. That's why I say it's happening at the moment, it's a movement that's really picking up steam and it's in no small part due to places like this, and accessible, concise material like The Atheist Experience which are tearing down misconceptions about atheists and their goals and making people question their beliefs.
Furthermore, there have been several high profile cases of people challenging government endorsement of religion and getting results and raising further awareness (and making some enemies, for sure). So as for who's winning, I don't know. There are still greater rights afforded to religious groups, but I think you're going to see less and less of it, and if the population of agnostics/atheists does double again by, say, 2020, they'll make up not far off 10% of the population, and could then start to be regarded as an important demographic to appeal to.
As for your prediction about McCarthyism striking again, I'm not sure I really get what you're saying will happen. That atheists will be targeted? Why do you think that? I'm not sure it would matter if that did happen, in the long term. If you think about the end results of both of those examples, it was a raised consciousness and the realisation that the practices of the witch-hunters/McCarthy were reprehensible. It could also lead to civil action by atheists in protest, which would have the same effect.
I do agree that a sudden removal of religion could have negative effects, but since I can't see how you'd even do that, it's kind of moot. Unless you're kind of talking about an alternate reality in which the people wake up tomorrow and nobody remembers that religion ever existed, in which case I think it would be fine, or at least no worse. I think it's a little patronising to say that they NEED these myths. They might need them at the moment because it's what's been drummed into them on a personal and societal level. If they never knew it existed, they'd find some other way to console themselves, and who knows, it might just be in rational thinking.
