Religious people have been vital in positively defining the most important ethical issues [View all]

[Thats my opinion]

to face the county.

While this has been true historically, it has been massively true in modern times.

Let's' begin with the Civil Rights movement. Any solid examination of this vital American phenomenon will conclude that it was the religious community that made civil rights possible. It was more than M. L. King. It was Ralph Abernathy, James Lawson, Abraham Heschel, black and white Churches in every Southern Community, the National Council of Churches, the liberal wing of Judaism, on and on. I was President of the Washington D. C Council of Churches and we were deeply involved in the struggle, in addition to thousands of congregations.

The Freedom Riders and the lunch counter demonstrators were either mainly clergy or devout members of churches.

Without religious groups and persons there would have been no civil rights movement.

In "religion," at least half of the posts have attacked religion in one way or another. But the time has come to ask another set of questions. The involvement of religious people in civil rights is clear. But what has been the participation of either atheists or organizations of atheists? Certainly Ayn Rand was on the other side of the issue--as was Madeleine Murry O'Hare. But what name of an individual atheist or group was prominent and involved? Could it be that it was absent because at its core atheism has no substantial ethical posture? If so, what is it, who is identified with it in the same way that religionists act out of their faith?

Value in society is not known by what people believe--what doctrines they espouse, but how what they espouse forms the substructure of what they do. I think we all hold to that as an ethical reality. Who here would have denied the religious community from participating in civil rights struggle--and at what cost?--

I have pointed out how this applies to theists. How does it apply specifically to atheists?.