BillD, I can see where you're coming from. I understand why some people in the US are in a flap over Huckabee and Bush. We're in a flap in Europe over Bush. You speak about God giving us freewill yet leaving us a set of instructions as if you find these terms mutually incompatible. But surely you must see that they are not. The 'set of instructions' are designed for our own good - we've been over this one on another thread and I think I demonstrated how we would be better off if we observed them. Yet we are free not to follow them, and many of us do not, often to our own detriment.

I perfectly accept your argument about not foisting prayer on schools. Any such prayer would be insincere at best, a pain on God's ears at worst (the pain coming from the fact that people were being forced to say them).

I can even understand why atheists have reservations about adherence to rules based on religious belief.

What I cannot understand is why atheists suddenly abandon reason when it comes to an issue like abortion. My opposition to abortion is based both in rationality AND religion (nor are the two mutually exclusive). It is based on the empirically-backed view that the embryo is a human being. It is also based on the sanctity of human life.

It is disingenuous to talk of 'choice' in the matter of private right to control the life and death of another human being. What you are basically saying is 'if you don't want to murder anyone, then don't. But let people who do want to murder make up their own minds'.

If that doesn't alert you to the pitfalls of secular atheism, nothing is likely to.