re: Leftists….”keep religion out of politics!”

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Newsflash... a lot of women aren't that bright and liberal women are borderline retarded.

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A lot of it is not IQ as much as emotion/logic balance. IE, if a male suddenly encounters a rattlesnake in his back yard his brain thinks: 'Oh my, I'd better get my pistol. Or maybe the shovel in the garage might be quicker.'
The female brain thinks: 'OMG! I'm gonna get bitten and die. I gotta run away screaming!'

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Lots of great minds have come along since then. The Christianity you follow today is not what Christians believed 2000 years ago.

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So what? They’re all just opinions and there is no objective “better” or “good”, just different.

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we can improve,

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No, you can’t. Without an objective standard there’s nothing to move towards. There’s just opinion.

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One wonders how all tires are round instead of square if we're *just* talking about opinions.

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We agree because we agree on what the function of a wheel is. Absent that agreement your argument fails. A much more accurate analogy would be art. Your art has a round shape, mine is square. Which art is more pleasing to the eye?

I don’t know why you keep beating your head against this wall. By your worldview objective morality cannot exist. You know this.

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You can’t logically use that word.

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Of course I can.

I'm not referencing some nebulous, ethereal, assessments of our societies. Look at infant mortality rates, life expectancy rates, how many hours of work a year we devote to just feeding ourselves, etc.

Creating stable, peaceful, prosperous societies have helped enable all of that.

Sure, just like round vs square tires, there's nothing objectively good about feeding ourselves requiring fewer work hours per year. Still, somehow, we all agree that that's a "good" thing and are fine when a society works towards that and will consider such a society as an improvement over societies that are less prosperous.

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there's nothing objectively good about feeding ourselves requiring fewer work hours per year.

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Correct. You should ask yourself why you use language that you know is inaccurate.

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Interesting you treat rational and secular as synonyms here.

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Yes, I do, because if you reject the source of all wisdom and knowledge--the one whom upholds reason as a reflection of His own thinking--then yes, you do ultimately become irrational, and remove all rational basis for whatever policies you support. Everything is turned into a mere opinion, with no opinion being intrinsically better than another.

We've gone over this topic with morality, but it applies to all knowledge and reasoning.

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So a blank sheet of paper is atheistic since God is excluded from the sheet of paper.

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Atheism speaks to people, and what they believe, not inanimate objects.

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This premise is wrong.

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I don't believe it is. From my perspective, all people are created in the image of God for His worship and glory, and we are imbued with an instinctual desire to worship because of this. We pervert this desire by not worshipping the God who created us, but set our worship and affections on other things, like made up gods and idols, money, other people, or more often than not, ourselves.

Atheism describes a lack of acknowledge belief in God, but what is more typical for the atheist is a belief in some framework that satisfies their need for worship. Secular humanism is a common framework for this in modern atheists, where the "god" worshipped is mankind, broadly, and even perhaps the self, specifically.

The ultimate source for authority is not God or His word in the Bible, but is often human reason, human autonomy, and/or human flourishing.

Secular humanism also is grounded in moral beliefs and commands through an ethical framework based on the belief in human rights, human dignity, human equality, human autonomy, and harm reduction. These aren't just suggestions or opinions, but are treated as absolute authoritative standards of moral truth. Christians base morality ultimately on the character of God.

Religions typically have an origin story, a "problem" with humanity that requires "salvation", and a means to that salvation. In secular humanism, the problem is ignorance, superstition, injustice, or religion itself. The solution or path to salvation is education, scientific progress, and social reform, and the hope for the future is a vision of humanity improving itself over time. Christians obviously see sin and its inevitable judgement by God as a problem, and salvation as coming through the work and person of Jesus Christ, with a hope in eternal bliss and existence with God.

Religions have objects of devotion. Christianity worships the triune God and orients its teachings around Him. Secular humanism often expresses itself with devotion to political ideologies, human progress, science or technology, the state, and/or personal autonomy.

Religions typically have communities and confessions of faith and practice. Secular humanism is not exempt from this, as there are several shared creeds or manifestos, conferences and gatherings around the topics of devotion, influential teachers and texts, and even evangelistic efforts to persuade others. Christianity has all of these things, in its creeds and confessions, church gatherings and conference, theological study, pastors, the Bible, and certainly evangelism and apologetics.

I could go on, but I'll stop there. Atheists have their own religious devotion and practice, but it's not formalized in a "religion" like Christianity is.

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A lot of people are not religious yet still have what you and most normal everyday Americans would say are great character and morals.

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As a Christian, I would chalk this up to being made in the image of God with His moral law written on our hearts (consciences). All people know the truth deep down, but suppress it in their rejection of their creator.

The atheist has no basis for calling any action "good", as the best an atheist can hope for is that their actions are preferred by themselves and others. Since there is no ultimate and objective moral standard to abide by and compare to, "great character and morals" is based on consensus-opinion, which can change from day to day. What is seen as a great character trait in one generation may be a character flaw in another.

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Oh stop it. Christians already are.

Didn't the current LA gov put up 10 commandments on public property?

I suspect for every instance you give me of a non-Christian religion injecting their religion into government I can find several of Christians already doing the same thing.

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Perhaps they do in some cases. My point was that I'd like to see consistency with Christians being able to propose policy changes as Christians without having to hide that fact or come up with other secular reasons (that will likely be ignored anyway) for Christian proposals.

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Yes, so you saying you get ridiculed/ignored when you tried to use non-divine inspiration rationale to argue for the jailing/fining of churches that marry homosexuals was a lie.

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I wouldn't argue for such a thing. I was providing what I believe to be a secular argument that has or would be used for supporting such punishment. There is no lie. I may be misunderstanding you, so please clarify.