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Well, there's one vote for Richard Dawkins. We'll see if you can find a second anywhere.

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Wasn't Stalin an atheist?

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Stalin was not President.

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I'm not suggesting we need Atheists running everything. I'm suggesting we need their views to be given more prominence - to be included more in the public debate.

This country is filled with many different religious denominations, most of which get substantial attention. But two of the biggest groups in terms of religious views, atheists and agnostics, are largely ignored.

A society that refuses to elect a politician who'll say, "I'm not affiliated with any particular religion," or, "I don't think there's a God" is fundamentally flawed, intellectually dishonest, and totally unaware or willfully ignorant of its deist founders' views.

The first step to addressing the divisions cause by religion is to allow the viewpoint there might not be a God at all. Or, at least, that organized religion has no special monopoly on God. Once you allow those opinions, religion isn't as important as it was before. And once it's no longer as important as before, it's easier to get along with people who disagree with you on who's got the real direct line to the Man in the Sky.

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No, but Sebby thinks we need to give his views more prominence. Perhaps he has a grandchild somewhere in the US we could elect to Congress?

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Didn't we try this once? Among the 5 founder Presidents, I think the only one you can clearly identify as a member of an organized religion was a UU (Adams).

And you see how they all turned out, right?

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It's a lot easier to remember not to attack someone when they are the largest source of your funding.

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Josef Stalin was an atheist.

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Yes. As was Lenin. On the other hand, it appears from all the observed evidence and rhetoric that GW Bush and Bill Clinton both believed they were annointed by God. Obama is leaning heavily in that direction as well.

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Wha..!?! Of America, maybe!

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You should become a Unitarian Universalist. We don't shove God down anybody's throat, you can be a Jew or amuslim or Catholic (well, the Catholics won't let you be a Catholic anymore, but we'd be cool with it) and be UU, too. And we have cookies.

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Jefferson was one as well.

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A UU? I don't think so. The UUs were New Englanders, and while Jefferson's brand of theism and agnosticism may have made him a fellow traveler, I can't think of anything he said or did that would suggest actual UU membership. Jefferson's founding of UVa was very much contrary to the goals of the UUs, since it was explicitly nondenominational (verging on the anti-religious even) while the UUs were aggressively focused on taking over and running universities (like Harvard) at the time. They wanted to teach and control the religion classes that made up a sizable portion of the curriculum.

I think Sebby would be at home with the rather light-weight religion of all the Prez's before Jackson; that's when the 2nd great awakening crew really takes over and we get the start of what we see today, where having a strong religious identity is a virtual prerequisite to having a political life.

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I suppose in historical context, you are right. In terms of his nondenominational bent and his disavowance of any creed, he would certainly fit under the chalice of UU today.

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Wow, it's almost like you don't know any young people.