Respecting the beliefs of others

Anti-atheist discrimination is against the law; in the United States, anyway. But people still sometimes discriminate against atheists.

It’s illegal for public schools to prevent students from viewing atheist Web sites, while allowing them to look at religious ones. But the San Antonio Independent School District did it anyway.

It’s illegal to make atheists swear religious oaths when they testify in court. But the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Fort Myers did it anyway.

It’s illegal for the U.S. military to spend money evangelizing to U.S. soldiers, to demand that U.S. soldiers attend chapel, or to order U.S. soldiers to take a “spiritual fitness” test and order them to visit evangelizing chaplains when they fail it. But the U.S. military did it anyway.

It’s illegal for businesses to give church-goers discounts they don’t give to non-believers. But the Fisherman’s Quarters II restaurant in Asheville, N.C. did it anyway.

It’s illegal to deny atheist organizations the right to advertise in venues where religious groups advertise regularly. But when American Atheists and the NEPA Freethought Society tried to place a bus ad in Pennsylvania that simply had the word, “atheists,” with the names and URLs of the organizations in smaller type, the transit system rejected the ad because it was “too controversial.”

It’s illegal to deny atheist students in public high schools the right to organize clubs. But it happens all the time. Talk to Secular Student Alliance high school specialist JT Eberhard. He spends a ridiculous amount of his working day pushing high school administrations to stop throwing up illegal roadblocks to atheist students, and to let them have the clubs they’re legally allowed to have.

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/09/4_reasons_atheists_have_to_fight_for_their_rights_salpart/

Some of my favorite anti-religion pics...

This has come up recently in media. I like how the woman keeps claiming God is on her side.

Update on Amy's Baking Company - Claims Facebook Was Hacked; Brand New Report

This Is The Most Epic Brand Meltdown On Facebook Ever

Amy's Baking Company kicks us out after we find flies in the vodka (three times)

Nine states that deny custody to atheist parents, purely and explicitly on the basis of their atheism. Can you imagine the outcry there would be if a judge denied custody because someone was Baptist?
Eight states will not allow an atheist to run for public office. What kind of outrage would there be if someone were denied the right to run for office simply because they practiced Islam? And yet, ILLEGAL discrimination against atheists goes unchallenged.

Great article you cited, rotohead. I am hopeful that things will change as more and more people are "coming out." It says a lot that by many it is referred to as coming out. My guess is that a large percentage of atheists are still in the closet.

It really ticks me off when I hear Christian's talk about how much they are being oppressed and "the war against Christianity."

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Anti-atheist discrimination is against the law; in the United States, anyway. But people still sometimes discriminate against atheists.

It’s illegal for public schools to prevent students from viewing atheist Web sites, while allowing them to look at religious ones. But the San Antonio Independent School District did it anyway.

It’s illegal to make atheists swear religious oaths when they testify in court. But the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Fort Myers did it anyway.

It’s illegal for the U.S. military to spend money evangelizing to U.S. soldiers, to demand that U.S. soldiers attend chapel, or to order U.S. soldiers to take a “spiritual fitness” test and order them to visit evangelizing chaplains when they fail it. But the U.S. military did it anyway.

It’s illegal for businesses to give church-goers discounts they don’t give to non-believers. But the Fisherman’s Quarters II restaurant in Asheville, N.C. did it anyway.

It’s illegal to deny atheist organizations the right to advertise in venues where religious groups advertise regularly. But when American Atheists and the NEPA Freethought Society tried to place a bus ad in Pennsylvania that simply had the word, “atheists,” with the names and URLs of the organizations in smaller type, the transit system rejected the ad because it was “too controversial.”

It’s illegal to deny atheist students in public high schools the right to organize clubs. But it happens all the time. Talk to Secular Student Alliance high school specialist JT Eberhard. He spends a ridiculous amount of his working day pushing high school administrations to stop throwing up illegal roadblocks to atheist students, and to let them have the clubs they’re legally allowed to have.

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/09/4_reasons_atheists_have_to_fight_for_their_rights_salpart/

Louisiana’s Latest Anti-Scientific Folly, on Video
Lawmaker says faith healing should be allowed in science class.

To get a sense of the supplemental materials approved under this law, you need look no further than its proponents. Suzanne Passman, who runs CreationEvidence.info, testifies in support of LSEA every year. (You can see her testimony here and here.) She highlights LSEA on her website and suggests supplemental materials from the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis (source of the Creation Museum), and the Discovery Institute, a think tank for intelligent design creationism. She also offers to provide notes from creationist lectures she has attended; my favorite is “Jurassic Prank,” which discusses “dragons as real creatures” and shows that “people saw dinosaurs and not so long ago.”

Barton: 'You Can't Drink Starbucks and be Biblically Right'

Cindy Jacobs, Television Prophet, Says Native Americans Must Repent For Ancestor's Pagan Beliefs

"In the past, Jacobs has received mainstream attention after arguing she had observed God multiplying food as she was cooking it. She has also suggested that durable shoes are proof that God provides "supernatural provisions" for those willing to listen to him."

Texas does it again!
Perry signs 'Merry Christmas' bill into law
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Surrounded by sleigh bell-ringing Santa Claus impersonators, Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday signed a law protecting Christmas and other holiday celebrations in Texas public schools from legal challenges — but also stressed that freedom of religion is not the same thing as freedom from religion.
http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Perry-signs-Merry-Christmas-bill-into-law-4597837.php

You have all seen Cheesus and Jesus toast.
Now we have Dog Butt Jesus! Hallelujah!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/dog-butt-looks-like-jesus-photo_n_3436086.html

it still amazes me that in this day and age, whatever a person believes or does not believe, there is persecution. i didnt realize it was happening in the usa.

Good Irish Catholics.
A paedophile priest told a distraught seven-year-old boy that he could get his dead grandfather into heaven if he performed a sex act on him, a court has heard.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/paedophile-priest-told-boy-7-he-could-get-dead-grandfather-into-heaven-if-he-performed-sex-act-29389769.html

I would expect nothing less from Catholic clergy.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/123723679.html

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/123723679.html

I am not sure how this relates to the pedophile priests. The hypocrisy of the catholic church is that they build their image based on moral authority from god and then instead of turning priests over to the police to face justice for their crimes they hide and transfer them to new locations where they can continue to abuse children. This went on for decades.

Did Pope Bill from Microsoft interfere in any way with justice? Did this guy take advantage of a child by telling them that their grandfather was going to hell unless they provided sexual favors to the priest?

I can't believe that anyone is still a member of the catholic church.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDfut2Vx0

Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt

Try reading the first sentence again, "Has Again been charged", ,, Along with the last one,"Convicted of the same crime....,, " Might help you to relate. Point is, its a secular crime.
Not just ecclesiastic. Don't know what this guy told this child to take advantage of him ,as he did with another child previously.
Also, cause this thread has not only been Totally Derailed, but is now on a totally different track, "Pope Bill from Microsoft" LOVES his Tax
Evasion!!! (Kinda/Sorta Like a Church),, Google it, OOPS,, Pinch of A- Hole .

Much as I strongly disliked Bill Gates for the hack job Windows has been, he has committed $28B to his charity. That redeemed him in my eyes.

Try reading the first sentence again, "Has Again been charged", ,, Along with the last one,"Convicted of the same crime....,, " Might help you to relate. Point is, its a secular crime.
Not just ecclesiastic. Don't know what this guy told this child to take advantage of him ,as he did with another child previously.
Also, cause this thread has not only been Totally Derailed, but is now on a totally different track, "Pope Bill from Microsoft" LOVES his Tax
Evasion!!! (Kinda/Sorta Like a Church),, Google it, OOPS,, Pinch of A- Hole .

Yes, he had previously been convicted in 1998. He had previously faced justice. Priests avoid facing justice, are transferred and do it again elsewhere. Pedophile priests have become a worldwide problem for the past several decades. I have not heard of a pedophile programmers scandal before. Bill Gates tax evasion? Get serious. I am sure that he uses every legal loophole to pay the minimum legal taxes that he possibly can. Who wouldn't. Do you pay taxes that you are not obligated to pay? As for tax evasion, I googled it and found no indication that Bill has been convicted of tax evasion.

As for being like a church. Churches are snake oil salesmen. They sell promises to the gullible. Microsoft sells a product. A product that works.

Much as I strongly disliked Bill Gates for the hack job Windows has been, he has committed $28B to his charity. That redeemed him in my eyes.

Hack job windows? I was a software development manager in the operating systems group at Microsoft for many years. I was part of the original Windows NT group. It was one of the most professional software development groups in the country. Dave Cutler is a perfectionist. Previous versions of Windows not so much. We called Windows 98/Millennium "Legacy Windows".
I worked for several computer companies in their operating systems groups for 30 years. Burroughs, DEC, several startups and Microsoft. No one was better than the NT group at MS.

First: I like Windows 7. It has been a long time coming.

My experience with computers goes back to 1972, when my father encouraged me to use one of his companies computer. It was a Cogar super-mini and had a 10MB hard drive the size of a washer. I was part of the OS/2 beta. I've used Windows since its inception in 1986,

Windows NT blows compared to OS/2, IMO. I remember Win-nuke to kick all the other people off the gateway computer that ran Citrix. What a piece of crap that was...

OS/2 was never actually completed. This was while I was at MS. Almost all of the OS/2 development team moved over to the Windows NT project. Microsoft had done almost all of the OS/2 development but abandoned it to IBM when NT started.

We used OS/2 as the development platform for NT development. In the early days before NT was stable enough to use, we would compile and link NT on OS/2 then boot to NT for testing. This only lasted a short time before NT surpassed OS/2.

NT benchmarked better than OS/2 and ran the original Windows apps, something OS/2 did not do.

From wikipedia: OS/2 2.0 was released in April 1992. It provided a 32-bit API for native programs, though the OS itself still contained some 16-bit code and drivers. It also included a new OOUI (object-oriented user interface) called the Workplace Shell. This was a fully object-oriented interface that was a significant departure from the previous GUI. Rather than merely providing an environment for program windows (such as the Program Manager), the Workplace Shell provided an environment in which a user could manage programs, files and devices by manipulating objects on the screen. With the Workplace Shell, everything in the system is an "object" to be manipulated.

It was completed, unless you are talking about the MS/IBM previous versions that were scrapped.

You do realize that a lot of ATM machines are run on OS/2, because of its stability an security?

It was completed, unless you are talking about the MS/IBM previous versions that were scrapped.

You do realize that a lot of ATM machines are run on OS/2, because of its stability an security?

I was talking about the MS/IBM version. After MS, OS/2 only had limited success on the desktop. NT based windows is more secure.

Today the vast majority of ATMs worldwide use a Microsoft Windows OS, primarily Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Embedded. A small number of deployments may still be running older versions of Windows OS such as Windows NT, Windows CE, or Windows 2000.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_teller_machine

I agree that OS/2 2.0 did have limited success, I believe mainly because you really needed at least 8MB of RAM to run it.

I dunno, I really like OS/2 2.0+ but up to Windows v7 I did not like Windows that much.

I suppose we should get back on topic?