This link:

 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070507F.shtml

 is to an article about a conference of Southern Baptist zealots who want to make the United States into a Christian Taliban, a theocratic state in which all independent thought will be squelched. The next step, of course, would be to punish dissent to their “Christian” ideals.

The conference was sponsored by American Vision, what this article calls “a radical ministry that toils away to ‘help Christians build a truly Biblical worldview,’" Some 800 people attended, representing a number of other groups with similar goals

One of their speakers, Gary North, called for a Taliban-like rule. This is his view of a Christian America:

North has called for the death penalty . . . for youngsters who curse their parents, gays and others who violate his interpretation of biblical law. He has argued that stoning is the preferred means of capital punishment, noting that it is a communal activity and "the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost.”

 This conference really scary. As an atheist, I hear all the time, "Why do you atheists think you have to promote atheism? Why don't you just keep it to yourself?" This conference represents the reason that we go on YouTube and elsewhere to state our views and try to reach the fence-sitters. We know the thoroughly convinced Christians, Muslims and other religionists will not heed anything we say. But there are many who have been disappointed by what they have been taught, and some of them may come to see that the world needs a peaceful secular vision, not a warlike religious one.

Muslims claim that theirs is a religion of peace, while, in the name of Allah, some of them sever the heads of anyone who disagrees with them, and threaten mass violence over a cartoon. Meanwhile, the "peaceful" Muslims are not quick to denounce these "non-Islamic" actions. 

Christians claim to represent the "Prince of Peace," yet they wage war on non-Christians in distant lands and promise war on non-Christians in their own.

The only hope for peace in the world is secularism/humanism. I am utterly convinced of that. Atheists and other secular humanists do not threaten anyone. We simply try to fight fanaticism with reason. I fear that we will lose. The religionists are experts at propaganda. They do not hesitate to lie, especially when characterizing the ideas of their dissenters. They play to emotion and not reason. They would (and eventually will, I fear) kill anyone who disagrees with them in any particular.

My brother tells me that this is just a relative handful of creeps who like to get together and make a lot of noise. Maybe he's right. But there has been a real and serious effort on the religious right to install co-religionists in high government positions. Pat Robertson bragged about that effort a number of years ago. Now we have a president who says he is directed by God. I would like to believe that Bush was merely pandering to his base. But it looks more all the time as if he really believes what he says, and that somebody with a strong religious bias is pulling his strings.