What secularists are REALLY telling you.

There's a web site, "BushFish.org", which sells Bush Fish stickers. The Bush Fish is a Jesus fish with the name "Bush" inside it, and the words "One Nation Under God" around it.

I'm not going to comment on the Bush Fish. What I am going to comment on is the sidebar on that web site. The sidebar says "Are You Tired of Secularists Telling You..." and then lists six things which, supposedly, secularists are telling people.

The list surprised me. I'm an atheist and I'm as secular as they come, and I only agree with one of the items on the list. I think what's happening is that there's someone who's imagining what he thinks secularists are telling him - blowing it somewhat out of proportion, to make it easier to knock it down like a strawman. This doesn't do anyone any good.

I decided to set the record straight. Let's take the list one at a time.

"Prayer has no place in our public school system."

Wrong. It has a place in the life of anyone who feels like praying. Nobody's questioning your right to pray, anytime, anywhere.

What isn't appropriate is for a teacher (or coach or administrator) to lead a class (or assembly) in prayer, because this might make a student feel like he had to "pray along" to avoid being singled out by his classmates or his teacher. In general, it's wrong for a person in any position of authority to risk making subordinates feel that their choice of religion could affect how they're graded or treated. And Christians should agree with this too - why would any good Christian want a nonbeliever to pay lip service to Christianity merely because it's easier than drawing attention to himself? Faith is supposed to be a gift and a choice, not a default.

"Evolution is the ONLY explanation."

Nope. There are lots of explanations. Evolution is only the best explanation we've got for how life on this planet came to have the diversity it does today. No scientific discoveries ever came from Creationism.

See this Modern World comic for an illustration of the danger of trying to pass off religion as science.

"'God' does not belong in the Pledge of Allegiance."

This is the one I agree with. We are not one nation under God; we are one nation under a wide range of various deities and philosophies. Why does anyone feel a need to keep trying to insist that we're at all homogenous in our beliefs? Yes, the majority of Americans are Christians, but then again the majority of Americans are also whites - should we change it to say "one nation of conservative white males under God", and then tell everyone else that if they have a problem with this, they can just be quiet during that part of the Pledge?

"The 10 Commandments do not belong in public spaces."

I have no problem with the Ten Commandments being displayed in public places as one of many historical documents which helped shape this country's legal system. (Though the Ten Commandments themselves had little role to play; the commandments that aren't about God are already reflected in earlier legal codes.) I do have a problem when someone like Judge Roy Moore insists that no other document of non-Christian origin may be displayed alongside the Ten Commandments (as reported at the bottom of this CNN article).

"Terry Schiavo had no right to live."

First of all, it's "Terri", not "Terry". And of course she had as much a right to live as anyone else - it's not a question of someone's "right to live"; that had nothing to do with her situation, and trying to frame it that way misrepresents the issue. What was at question was whether she had the right to die with dignity, as she'd stated a desire to do (and several courts affirmed this as her desire). I believe that if life has any meaning and importance, the answer to that has to be yes.

"Life begins AFTER birth."

Pretty much everyone agrees that a unique human life exists from the moment of conception. Not everyone agrees that an embryo's right to live outweighs a woman's right to govern her own body. This is a matter of rights, not of when life "begins". A baby should not be seen as a "punishment" for having sex. A human embryo only develops the capability to think and feel at two months old (give or take a week or two), and I don't see any moral repercussions in ending a pregnancy before this point. I would fear a government which takes this decision away from the mother.