{"id":72,"date":"2008-11-25T13:00:57","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T21:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=72"},"modified":"2008-12-05T14:54:06","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T22:54:06","slug":"from-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/from-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"From comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A sampling of comments of potentially wider interest among the many posted so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I love the Corner and am thrilled you\u2019ve started this blog. I think \u2018Religious Based Values\u2019 will lose the party more elections. However, please note, one can be a secularist and still believe in God&#8230;. Ryan K., from <a href=\"..\/?p=59#comment-4\">Politics &amp; God<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8230;I wish my fellow religious conservatives were not so anti-reason. Glad you are blogging. &#8211;Braden Bell, from <a href=\"..\/?page_id=2#comment-23\">What is the Secular Right?<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Thanks for the blog. I knew I wasn\u2019t the only secular conservative, but it\u2019s nice to have it confirmed. I am an anomaly to friends and acquaintances all along the political and religious spectrums. When all is said and done, I definitely feel comfortable with religious conservatives; and they are comfortable with me as well, though they find it hard to square my atheism with conservatism. As I have explained to them, I am not anti-religion, just non-religious. As a secular conservative, I feel a greater burden to understand and justify my conservatism (particularly on social issues) since I do not have a \u201cspecific set of supernatural claims\u201d to fall back on. &#8212; Baldy, from <a href=\"..\/?page_id=2#comment-20\">What is the Secular Right?<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8230;I am a Christian who opposes using the power of the government to further any religious agenda. It\u2019s a simple proposition really. Following the laws of a government is not the same thing as following the laws of God. The results may be similar, but it is the intent behind them that matters. If I choose not to kill someone because Jesus said we should love our neighbor as ourself, from a religious perspective, that is wholly different than not killing someone because I may go to prison&#8230;. &#8212; Jonathan Schafer, from <a href=\"..\/?p=19#comment-70\">The H.L. Mencken Club<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Finally! I think I emailed Derb suggesting this very idea several times. I have been a National Review and Commentary reader for decades and, though enjoying and agreeing with most of the political stuff, I always felt turned off by the subtext implying that, as a reader, I could be assumed to be religious. It always bothered me also that, though the logic behind a particular article might be impeccable, it was bundled together with other pro-religious stuff that was laughably weak and credulous.\n<p>So: three cheers for this website.  Let\u2019s not cede the intelligent skeptical community to the Left.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, though an atheist, I am pro-Life. This is a question of morality, not science. I would be interested to know what proportion of other readers share this particular narrow segment of the population. &#8212; John, from <a href=\"..\/?p=64#comment-63\">Open thread for suggestions, etc.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>While I agree that NRO and elements of \u201cconservatism\u201d are too overtly religious, I\u2019m not sure I follow the logic that suggests an \u201cunbeliever\u201d conservatism. Derb introduced this as \u201cGodless Bloggers\u201d on NRO. Why? Isn\u2019t there a way this could be framed so a discussion of \u201cconservatism\u201d takes center stage, and the role of faith and religion simply takes a subordinate role? &#8212; Don in Tucson, from <a href=\"..\/?p=64#comment-90\">Open thread for suggestions, etc.<\/a><\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ll follow this blog for a while, but I\u2019m afraid it will turn, inevitably, into the usual snickering at Creationists and God Botherers. For the record, I am conservative and a lapsed Methodist.  I\u2019m still a believer, though. &#8212; Mesquito, from <a href=\"..\/?p=69#comment-105\">A note on civility<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote cite=\"#commentbody-92\"><p><strong><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"edit-comments.php?apage=1#comment-92\">Scott<\/a>:<\/strong> I have a suggestion for members of the secular right: become Democrats. Republicans don\u2019t want you. They are very happy replacing their politics with theology. They fundamentally reject the idea of a division between church and state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Guess what? I\u2019m a Republican because I agree with them on the overwhelming majority of issues. I don\u2019t particularly care whether or not they don\u2019t see much of a division between church and state, as that\u2019s not a huge issue for me. Unlike so many atheists, and you apparently, I make my decisions over a wide range of issues, not just one. &#8230; &#8212; Andy, from <a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=69#comment-120\">A Note on Civility<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8230;I advocate a grand treaty on the Right: Christians don\u2019t quote the Bible in arguing politics, just argue your values and their implications for policy; and secularists listen to what\u2019s actually being said rather than assuming that Christians are out to impose a theocracy. &#8212; russab, from <a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=19#comment-111\">The H.L. Mencken Club<\/a><\/li>\n<li> To stray away from the other commenters here, I\u2019d like to express my hope that this blog will not delve into a Dawkins-Dennett-Hitchens kind of anti-religious forum. As an atheist conservative who could not care less about the modern pop-God debate, I\u2019d just want to see a site that focuses primarily upon what we would call conservative conclusions arrived at via logical reasoning and empirical evidence. I like religion and religious people, but it is so difficult to find a place where there is no space wasted on those arguments. &#8212; A Milder Despot, from <a href=\"..\/?p=64#comment-135\">Open thread for suggestions, etc.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sorry about the formatting problems, still in the shakedown phase of site design. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sampling of comments of potentially wider interest among the many posted so far: I love the Corner and am thrilled you\u2019ve started this blog. I think \u2018Religious Based Values\u2019 will lose the party more elections. However, please note, one &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/from-comments\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[17,42],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}