I moved to Western Maryland when I was in sixth grade. Wow. Talk about culture shock. From a small Arizona town with people from all over the country, and a very well educated group at that, to a serious bible-belt area. A girl in my sixth grade class got pregnant. The father was her thirty-five year old uncle.

Her parents said she had to have the child. They also said she had to stay in school. This was ‘god’s punishment’ for the girl. She was being punished by god because she ’seduced’ her uncle. I have no idea if any of this hit the courts. In the late ’70s, I tend to doubt it.

I realize this is a different tack on your post, but much of religious violence, through (possible intentional) misrepresentation of ‘holy’ writings, comes more within families than without. For every women’s health clinic bombed, how many girls have been beaten (possibly to death) in the United States as punishment for failure to be pure? We will never know.

Schlafly calls women in America the most privileged class of people on earth. Tell that to a 12-year old girl forced to have her uncle’s child becuase mom and dad believe that this is god will punish her. Tell that to a woman who’s husband has bought into the Christian Domestic Discipline idea (which says that, basically, as man of the house, the husband has the right to beat his wife and kids to ‘correct’ their behavior). Tell that to a woman who has been told by her doctor that another pregnancy would threaten her life, but her church says that birth control is immoral.

I truly feel sick over the religious violence in Iraq. And Iran. And Saudi Arabia. And America. Though American religious violence is often much more covert, it still exists. As long as men sieze and twist religious dogma into a macho-rambo maleficent worldview, this problem will continue. Everywhere.

You are correct, the assumption is that Atheism is not a religion. Frequently the only defense religious folk can play against their religion is to say atheism is a religion too. I am still hoping one of these days someone will realize that counter-attack is not a proper logical defense.

Stalin is an example of a tyrant, who did kill religious folk, but he also killed scientists, and anyone whose work might have threatened his regime. After WWII he allowed revival of the Orthodox Church after the NKVD (secret services) recruited the Church to do its work. Stalin also placed restrictions on science, only allowing ideologically safe science to be performed. Area such as genetics, and cybernetics were seen as bourgeois pseudosciences. His regime was not determined by atheism, no matter how hard some folk try to make it so. Stalin attempted control on all and any aspects of life regardless of whether it was science or religion, for the ideals of Marxist-Leninist ideology.

Are you using the statement that atheists are fanatics of the worst sort to avoid the issue at hand, that claiming religious ideals a certain group in Iraq has been killing women who refuse to wear their head scarf? I’m not sure if you’re defending them, or committing the same fallacy as Schlafly, by denying the existence of violence just because you think religion is good and kind, thus it can’t possibly be violent. Think again.