Since I applied the expression, “pearls before swine”, which means to waste words on someone that cannot possibly appreciate the value in them, to those who believe that all Christians harbor hate, fear, or disdain for atheists, I must assume that this is the argument that you would make. Otherwise you wouldn’t see that expression as being directed at you. Expressions are not intended to be taken literally. If I intended to call someone “swine”, I would do it directly, so your literal interpretation is either dishonest or ignorant.

If you believe that all Christians harbor hate, fear, or disdain for atheists, then I am included in that assessment, therefore, you are actually the one doing the insulting here, and you leaped over that part of it in order to accuse me of schoolyard name calling, without having to acknowledge your part in it. Very cute. Didn’t work. I noticed.

Or did you skip the whole lead in instead, just so you could have yourself a moment of self righteous indignation that you’re too cheap to pay for?

Nyah, nyah. I called you cheap. I’ll alert my mother to expect a call from your mother.

My knowledge of FA jurisprudence is rusty, but isn’t the crucial distinction between the atheism case and O’Reilly’s MLK/KKK hypothetical the fact that one of them touches on religion and the other doesn’t?

I agree that on the surface, they seem unrelated, but upon further scrutiny they are both founded on a belief that God exists. MLK was a champion for civil rights of Black people.
He was also a champion of God’s law that says all men are equal in the eyes of the Lord as opposed to the secular laws of that time that said they were not. If different races of people are proclaimed equal by nothing more than a governmental foundation, they can also be enslaved by the same as in the past. Without a government foundation built upon Christian priciples, laws are fleeting and have no higher authority than the men that crafted them.

I would caution minorities to beware of these athiests, for you are their equals as long as they deem you necesary to their cause, eerily similar to Marxist ideology.

TheSitRep on December 6, 2008 at 10:44 AM

You said presents. Snicker.

A blank placard would have been more sublime.

I would look just as poorly on a display reading something along the lines of:

At this season of CHRISTMAS may God prevail.

There is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

Those that disbelieve will drink of the wine of God’s anger that has been mixed undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and will be tortured with fire and sulfur in front of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb.

wdomburg on December 5, 2008 at 5:39 PM

Blah blah blah blah blah.

You argument might be more persuasive if you didn’t call us swine.

Hot blonde lawyers – i thought that was only in the movies.

My husband’s ex also puts up a Christmas tree, but calls herself a recovering Catholic and bashes her ex faith regularly.

Many Protestant faiths, whose adherents also put up trees, believe that followers of my faith are damned to hell.

I don’t see how anyone can find an implied message, shared by all Christians, in the display of a Christmas tree. I don’t see a tree and think it means, “Die Papist scum!”, or “I’m taking out all of my childhood resentments on the Catholics because my parents are dead and I can’t take it out on them!”, so why would atheists see a message directed specifically at them?

And please, if your answer is that all Christians harbor hate, fear, or disdain for atheists, especially including the assumption that that reaction is somehow more virulent towards themselves than those of any other religious faith, then I retract this comment using the Pearls Before Swine clause. Haters hate, those who constantly see themselves as the most hated hate more, and the rest of us just try to get up and get the kids off to school.

If atheists hold a rally…

Um, no offense intended, but they can’t get a crowd together for an atheist’s meeting. Run an ad in the newspaper. ‘Atheist Meeting next week.’ five people will show up. That’s why we see them ruining it for Christians all the time. They’re upset their crowds are so small.

If putting up statues of a manger and a couple of sheep somehow amounts to the state forcing a religion on people then why doesn’t putting up a plaque hostile to religion amount to the government attempting to prohibit the free exercise of religion?

–Because the government is not stopping you from being Christian or exercising your Christian beliefs.