American Voters Prefer Muslims to Atheists
Ronald Bailey | September 10, 2007, 3:45pm
A new poll of American voters reports that atheists are less popular than Muslims. To wit:
Sixty-one percent of those questioned said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who did not believe in God. Forty-five percent said the same for a Muslim contender.
Only 5 percent or fewer said they would be likelier to support candidates who were atheists.
It appears that for most American voters, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens can just go to Hell.
Whole article here.
Mad Max | September 11, 2007, 6:59am | #
TheCurseOfLono,
When Trotsky (not even the worst of the commies) said "We must put an end once and for all to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life" (http://www.salon.com/march97/sneaks/sneak970325.html), why did he single out two *theistic* groups for special scorn, if atheism was just an incidental add-on to Marxism?
Why did the Soviet Union propagandize incessantly against religious "superstition," create Museums of Atheism and promote "scientific atheism," if atheism was just an incidental part of their ruling ideology?
Here's something I found on Google - a 1913 article by Lenin describing the "three sources of Marxism."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm
Guess which source of Marxism Lenin cites *first*?
"The philosophy of Marxism is materialism. Throughout the modern history of Europe, and especially at the end of the eighteenth century in France, where a resolute struggle was conducted against every kind of medieval rubbish, against serfdom in institutions and ideas, materialism has proved to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant and so forth. The enemies of democracy have, therefore, always exerted all their efforts to “refute”, under mine and defame materialism, and have advocated various forms of philosophical idealism, which always, in one way or another, amounts to the defence or support of religion."
Not all atheists are Marxists, but these Marxist murderers we have been discussing were certainly atheists as a key component of their ideology, and not people who *just happen* to be atheists.
Mad Max | September 11, 2007, 7:12am | #
Some more wisdom from Comrade Lenin. Gosh, he sure seemed to focus a lot of attention to the minor, "incidental" doctrine of atheism, didn't he?
http://www.marxist.com/classics/lenin/militant_materialism.html
"On The significance of Militant Materialism
"by V. I. Lenin
". . . It will be seen from the above that a journal that sets out to be a militant materialist organ must be primarily a militant organ, in the sense of unflinchingly exposing and indicting all modern 'graduated flunkeys of clericalism', irrespective of whether they act as representatives of official science or as free lances calling themselves 'democratic Left or ideologically socialist' publicist.
"In the second place, such a journal must be a militant atheist organ. We have departments, or at least state institutions, which are in charge of this work.But the work is being carried on with extreme apathy and very unsatisfactorily, and is apparently suffering from the general conditions of our truly Russian (even though Soviet) bureaucratic ways. It is therefore highly essential that in addition to the work of these state institutions, and in order to improve and infuse life into that work, a journal, which sets out to propagandise militant materialism, must carry on untiring atheist propaganda and an untiring atheist fight.The literature on the subject in all languages should be carefully followed and everything at all valuable in this sphere should be translated, or at least reviewed.
"Engels long ago advised the contemporary leaders of the proletariat to translate the militant atheist literature of the late eighteenth century for mass distribution among the people. We have not done this up to the present, to our shame be it said (this is one of the numerous proofs that it is much easier to seize power in a revolutionary epoch than to know how to use this power properly).Our apathy, inactivity and incompetence are sometimes excused on all sorts of 'lofty' grounds, as, for example, that the old atheist literature of the eighteenth century is antiquated, unscientific, naïve, etc. There is nothing worse than such pseudo-scientific sophistry, which serves as a screen either for pedantry or for a complete misunderstanding of Marxism. There is, of course, much that is unscientific and naïve in the atheist writings of the eighteenth-century revolutionaries. But nobody prevents the publishers of these writings from abridging them and providing them with brief postscripts pointing out the progress made by mankind in the scientific criticism of religions since the end of the eighteenth century, mentioning the latest writings on the subject, and so forth.It would be the biggest and most grievous mistake a Marxist could make to think that the millions of the people (especially the peasants and artisans), who have been condemned by all modern society to darkness, ignorance and superstition, can extricate themselves from this darkness only along the straight line of Marxist education. These masses should be supplied with the most varied atheist propaganda material, they should be made familiar with facts from the most diverse spheres of life, they should be approached in every possible way, so to interest them, rouse them from their religious torpor, stir them from the most varied angles and by the most varied methods, and so forth.
"The keen, vivacious and talented writings of the old eighteenth-century atheists wittily and openly attacked the prevailing clericalism and will very often prove a thousand times more suitable for arousing people from their religious torpor than the dull and dry paraphrases of Marxism, almost completely unillustrated by skilfully selected facts, which predominate in our literature and which (it is no use hiding the fact) frequently distort Marxism. We have translations of all the major works of Marx and Engels. There are absolutely no grounds for fearing
