Dear Christian-bashers, here's a big fat target for you:

[RainDog]

56. I don't care what his professed faith might be and it has nothing to do with his ability to govern

because he has not indicated that he is willing to allow faith to interfere with science or to justify sexism, etc. etc. That's what I care about when someone talks religion - whether their beliefs provide them justification for political, educational and social attitudes that I do not think are worthwhile.

Statistically, the more education someone has, the less they seem to think religion matters in life - realistically, no one in the U.S. can be elected as President if they don't make some claim to faith - so, honestly, Obama's religious beliefs don't matter to me - he has demonstrated he's not a fundamentalist whacko.

His political philosophy, however, does matter.

From a Pew poll conducted in March of 2012:

http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/more-see-too-much-religious-talk-by-politicians.aspx

Nearly four-in-ten Americans (38%) now say there has been too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders, while 30% say there has been too little. In 2010, more said there was too little than too much religious expression from politicians (37% vs. 29%). The percentage saying there is too much expression of religious faith by politicians has increased across party lines, but this view remains far more widespread among Democrats than Republicans.

Slightly more than half of the public (54%) says that churches should keep out of politics, compared with 40% who say religious institutions should express their views on social and political matters. This is the third consecutive poll conducted over the past four years in which more people have said churches and other houses of worship should keep out of politics than said they should express their views on social and political topics. By contrast, between 1996 and 2006 the balance of opinion on this question consistently tilted in the opposite direction.

At the same time, 51% of the public say that religious conservatives have too much control over the Republican Party. Fewer express the view that liberals who are not religious have too much control over the Democratic Party (41%).

71% say the Democratic party is either friendly or neutral about the issue of religion.

You're going to find more atheists, agnostics, skeptics, freethinkers and those who adhere to "spiritual" beliefs that do not promote a certain view of Christianity (the fundie kind) among democrats than republicans. Some of them are going to state their opinions about religion - because certain religious groups continue to try to force their view of religion into the political sphere. Some of them are going to be hostile toward that group, but may phrase this hostility in general terms. Some are hostile because of their prior experience with such groups - for them, it's personal.

I try to phrase my complaints within the context of certain beliefs because those are the ones I find unsupportable - and, yes, I challenge those who express a belief in creationism or I.D. because it's nonsense - I don't like to see people wallow in the gutter of ignorance. There is no dispute about the absolute worthlessness of creationism as a scientific issue.

Some of the phrases you include failed to include the original remarks in which someone makes the claim that anyone who has ethics is a "small c" Christian - as though only Christians have ethics - which is not true - and why wouldn't someone respond to that false claim? So, it was okay for someone to claim that only Christians have ethics? What a lot of Christians are unfamiliar with is coming into an environment in which people aren't polite about those sorts of remarks. In situations in real life, people put up with such nastiness all the time - here, they don't feel like they have to.