X-Message-Number: 27779 From: Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 10:06:03 EST Subject: names & games In a message dated 3/31/2006 5:00:23 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, writes in part: Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study This silliness oozes from carelessness with words and with the distinction between what is said and what is meant. Who is really atheist or agnostic in America? In terms of behavior, I think a majority, who say they "believe in God" but have only the vaguest idea of what that means and seldom go to church. Roman Catholic older people complain bitterly that the young people aren't interested and only go to church for Christmas and Easter, and few priest candidates can be found, and parishes are closing right and left. Militant atheism of course is stupid, and there are very few of those. How many practical atheists actually suffer discrimination? As far as I can tell, very few. There is nothing here of practical consequence. R.E. Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27779