One more thing I forgot to add.
Was anyone else offended by the Rehms' being offended by being called atheists? Like being an atheist is tantamount to being a criminal or something.
I for one am proud to be an atheist, proud to have not been baptized, proud to have never attended a church service in my life, proud to be a champion of skepticism and free thought over credulity and oppression.
Somewhere the US went wrong. Somewhere along the line Thomas Paine's ideals were lost forever to be replaced by George Bush's.
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
-Thomas Paine
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"For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable." - Carl Sagan
Freedom consonant with responsibility.
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