SDShad - Precisely, again, thanks for noticing.

John, thanks for answering mousethief so nicely. The company is promoting being religious, which may in fact be professionally detrimental to atheists, who have rights too. See, the basic issue to me is freedom FROM religion - leave it in the homes and holy places, not in my place of work, where having Bible stuff shoved onto my desktop bothers me. Sorry, but it does, whereas it wouldn't bother me on your coffee table, mousethief. It belongs there - it's your coffee table, and should I even have the honor of stepping over your threshold, I'd love to discuss anything with you, especially over some music. I would not and do not fear personal harm from indivisuals who have religion, although I have been personally accosted for being an atheist more times than I care to count.

Think of it like any other harassment - if I am offended, then even if what was said wasn't "meant that way," I have been harrassed. And just like with sexual harassment, some people are more vocal in their efforts to make (usually the Good Old Boys, but basically businesspeople in general) realize that comments of that nature just plain don't belong in the air of an office. It wouldn't have bothered me if the people in the office in question had decided to hold Bible studies together. It probably wouldn't have bothered me to find out that the company was letting them use office space - after all, I sometimes have students come meet with me while I'm at the office, and I use the tables in the cafeteria or outside - but having it ANNOUNCED ON THE INTRANET so that I would see it every time I went there for work, which I do a lot, put it in my face, and that's what I objected to. I would have minded if it had been a women's group, or a men's group, or a white group, or any group that specifically excluded any employees, even if they included me. For instance, they had a self-defense seminar. Now it turned out only women went, but it wasn't a woman's announcement.

And I have been accosted at work by fundamentalists before, too, when I had a fundamentalist (dig this) Christian Jewish boss, and he (the boss) made the evangelist lay off, as was right and proper. Some of us at lunch had been discussing this neat Nova on the origins of language, looking at theoretically unrelated languages and finding interesting "coincidences" and using them with biological data to attempt to map the origins of human language, when another colleague came over and told us we couldn't discuss this, the question couldn't even be asked, because the Bible already told us how it happened. And he meant it, too. I tried asking if it would be OK to try to figure out what had been spoken before the Tower of Babel was attempted, and he said No, because God fractured the languages specifically so that it couldn't be figured out. Now admittedly that was extreme, but it only that - an extreme, of something that ought just plain not to be tolerated. At work, that is. He'd have been welcome to say that if I'd been having that conversation inside his church, although I still think it's ridiculous. Personally. But even then, I didn't tell him so. He sat down, and we changed the subject. It wasn't harmful in any painful sense, but it was certainly curtailing of freedom...

I also have a separate question for those who don't believe in God as a supernatural being, but as somehow imbuing everything, immanent in everything, if that is a fair assessment of your position? If deity is everywhere, isn't that logically equivalent to being nowhere? Is the only thing, then, the concept of soul, life everlasting, or something? That's where I fail to ken, to grok the fullness, as it were. I believe in physics, chemistry, and electromagnetism, which gave me life and consciousness. What lives forever in humans and no other animals that we know of (I give the benefit of the doubt to African elephants) is the memory, knowledge, teachings and wisdom of the dearly departed. Like those aliens in that Star Trek (Matt, you know which one I mean), as long as you are remembered, you aren't really gone. You're dead, of course, but not gone. But I don't consider any of these beliefs to be religious... but I do find that the emphasis on the next life detracts a limited amount of energy from the efforts that need to be made in THIS life, and that is what I find so sad, and so harmful, about religion in general. I've made this point before, but every time I am awed by the beauty of a mosque, or a Gregorian chant, I am dismayed anew by the ugliness of a public school, or the tune for the multiplication tables... I just wish people would concentrate on the here-and-now, rather than the thereafter. And I don't just mean folks that go to church but don't feed their elderly neighbors on holidays. Not that there are any of those here, I would trust a mudcatter to have kindness, whether religious or not, but you know what I mean, I hope!