How Atheism Poisons Liberalism

I have been having some blog brawls at the ironically named "Religion Dispatches".  One I'm currently having with an idiot, alleged science PhD who is so brilliant as to name himself "Skeptic Tank" (what is it with those Eschaton-based, atheist sci-trolls and their identification with feces?) who has been moving goal posts faster than a geezer of his age should attempt.  The issue is the status of liberal Christianity, today.  He started by ridiculing out of ignorance.

Do you remember when liberal Christians were relevant? Me neither.

Which is easy enough to counter, considering that every single piece of liberal legislation passed in Congress, in every single state legislature and even in almost all cases, liberal statutes on the local level would have depended, absolutely on the support and work of liberal Christians.   I mentioned the high water marks of American liberalism, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Right Act to the doctored dolt, which would never have gone anywhere without the efforts of the Black Church members and others who put their lives, repeatedly, on the line.  Not to mention every bit of 19th century reform, abolition, extension of the vote, etc.    I also mentioned the second most liberal president in our history,  Franklin Roosevelt who famously answered an inquiry into his ideology, "I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all".

Apparently his sci-track education didn't include much in the way of basic rhetoric or history or anything that would have included the information that having a PhD in science didn't grant him an indulgence making his ignorance an adequate replacement for knowing what he was talking about.

Among his demands were.

Name the liberal Christians who matter.

The starting list I gave included:

Methodists such a Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton  and Debbie Stabenow Baptists like Kamala Harris, Lutherans such as Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Congregationalists such as Amy Klobuchar Catholics such as Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jack Reed.... 

That was in answer to "Skeptic Tank's" list of "Bernie Sanders".  I don't know if Senator Sanders would agree with his constituting such a list of one, so I note him being so .... um..... "honored" only for the sake of this argument.

I gave other information as demanded by the atheist blog rats who infest the ironically named "Religion Dispatches" like Putin rent-boy trolls.   The atheists, as I have found they generally do, had nuthin'..

Atheists have had nuthin' for a long, long time.  I mentioned that even such atheists as, perhaps, Bernie Sanders and Barney Frank, if such they are, were smart enough to understand that their presence in the House and Senate depended on the votes of liberal Christians since there simply are not enough liberal atheists to elect them.   They also knew that anything that alienated Christians who would potentially support their election was not only massively stupid, it was a guarantee of futility.  That is something I've been pointing out to enraged atheist brats since 2006 and the idea doesn't seem to make much of a dent in their bratty arrogance, that's more important to them than moving any kind of liberal progress in the United States.

That preference for their counter-productive venting and ridicule over making liberal progress is, I contend, the definition of the effect of atheism on American liberalism, especially since the mid-1960s.  Before that the damage atheism inflicted on American liberalism was largely through Marxists attaching themselves to liberalism like parasites that kill their host.  None of which was either a legitimate aspect of American liberalism or helpful.  The only effect such actions have ever had was in diminishing the political effectiveness of liberalism, distracting liberals from their legitimate agendas, duping liberals into supporting the elevation of lies and pornography as the most clueless of icons of freedom - they both destroy freedom and human dignity - and into permitting and agreeing to the line of Supreme Court rulings in which the corporate fascists have used to lie us into the Trump-Ryan fascism we have, today.

In virtually every case, when you see the influence of that strain of ideological atheism at work on the American left, the results have been damaging to liberalism, diminished the power of liberals, defeated our agenda and undermined it through attacks on the moral foundations that all liberalism depends on.  The falsification of history, the replacement of lies for fact, taking advantage of the ignorance of most Americans about what has worked and what has not, playing on the sympathies of liberals through phony melodramatic show biz crap, have been a big part of that effort.

Atheism carries no defining moral content that liberalism requires to make a case for its validity and to counter the selfishness that is the basis of those things liberalism exists to counter.  It carries no absolute moral obligation to respect the rights of other people, to be rigorous in the respect for those rights, or even admitting that any rights you wish to brush aside exist.  Atheism doesn't carry any moral content that identifies lies as wrong.  Atheism doesn't even carry a requirement that an atheist tells the truth that they are an atheist.

I noted that, in response to another atheist troll at  "Religion Dispatches" that there was no defining stand in atheism that would identify anything that Trump or Ryan or Putin or Stalin or Hitler, for that matter, as being wrong or immoral.  Any moral stand that any atheist took, one opposing that list of anti-liberals or, for that matter, any alleged moral stand that supported them, would have to come from somewhere other than atheism.  Atheism is morally nihilistic.  I also noted that if an atheist came up with an assertion that equality and justice were moral absolutes, their greatest opponents wouldn't be Christians or Jews or Muslims they would be their fellow atheists.   I've seen such discussions online, I've noted that the nuclear physicist held up to be an atheist expert in what makes people do bad things, Steven Weinberg, has pretty much stated that other than his feelings of loyalty to his family and his university department, he didn't feel he had any moral obligations in the world to anyone.

Atheism has been a catastrophe for liberalism far more than the vulgar materialism of what conservatism means in the United States now.  When your ideological position includes shafting the poor, cheating the vulnerable, using the alien among us as a means of whipping up paranoia to gain power, destroying the very environmental basis of life continuing, you will find your opponents in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in virtually all religions.  You won't find any real opposition to that in atheism because there is none there to be found.   Any atheist who asserts any moral position has to leave atheism to do that.  Any atheist politician who ever proposed a liberal law or policy had to, as well.