On 3/9/07, Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
For someone like me, an atheist by birthright rather than merit, atheism is simply the framework within which any question can be asked.
Unfortunately, for a lot of people in the USA (and many other parts of the world), atheism is an "achievement" rather than birthright, sometimes it's a costly achievement that involves an emotional break with their families, communities, etc. When it is a costly achievement, there is an incentive to think of it as a personal merit and, perhaps going a step further, to become a kind of evangelical atheist like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I'd rather see more leftists follow the path of the late Stephen Jay Gould, who wore his secular worldview with a sense of humor, rather than that of evangelical atheists on a jihad for secularism. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
