Advocatus Atheist

It is often preached from the pulpit that America was founded as a "Christian Nation." Perhaps worse than the blatant fallacy behind this is that so many people buy into it. However, to anyone who has spent a little time investigating the matter, the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation is unequivocally false. It is not really a claim which needs to be refuted since, the simple fact of the matter is, America was the first country founded on the principle that all religions deserved equal respect and none deserved unrequited favor. The Christian doctrine of exclusivity was, to the minds of the founding fathers, incompatible with their loftier principles of a united republic, a United States. The vision they had was one of an autonomous nation where your religion was just one part of what defined you--but at the end of the day--each and every citizen, man or woman, could proudly call themselves free--they could call themselves--Ame...

“There are invisible ways of conveyance by which some great thing doth touch our souls, and by which we tend to it. Do you not feel yourself drawn by the expectation and desire of some Great Thing?” –Thomas Traherne “…All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part.” –Joseph Conrad Introduction As a practice, religious skepticism and criticism is perfectly okay. In fact, like Thomas Jefferson, I too find it necessary if freedom of speech and the freedom of religion are to thrive. Religious intolerance, along with racial, social, cultural, and sexual intolerance, on the other hand, is not okay. I do not feel, nor would I ever feel, that all religions should be equally tolerated just as all labels of wine should not ...