fifteen percent?

I read that "non-religious" persons now number 15% of the American population. I am someone who has been counted among that number and even now, attending a church, I still consider myself somewhat non-religious. I'm not a fan of religion. I'm interested in it, I'm fascinated, but I don't know how I feel about the evangelical bent of organized religion, the push to convert not only non-religious people, but people who are non-Christians.

I believe in faith, a creator, a spiritual yearning that needs to be addressed in all of us. I go to church. I go because I share a connection with the people and I love the message I get. I go for the communion with people I care about.

Not to spread the word. Certainly not to promote my own morality.

In a discussion about the stem cell debate I heard someone use religion to explain why an unused embryo - medical waste - being used for research to potentially save the lives of living, breathing human beings was murder... MURDER? Really?

It is these people who use religion as a shield, rather than the truly beautiful experience it can be, to force their morality on all of us through legislation. It has caused religion to be a word that sparks spirited debate. Fifteen percent of the American population is excluded from this conversation. To put that into perspective, people of the Mormon faith comprise 1.5% of Americans. One tenth.

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Cenk Uygur has a great piece at HuffPo about it.

There is a minority group in America that is a bigger percentage of the country than blacks or Hispanics. But they are often ignored or derided in public. Almost no politician would ever admit to being one. And they are given no voice in the public arena.

They are the non-religious. A new comprehensive study by The Program on Public Values at Trinity College shows that this group is now a whopping 15% of the country. Mormons by comparison are a puny 1.4% of the population, and people can't shut up about the Mormons. The Senate Majority Leader is a Mormon, one of the top Republican presidential candidates was Mormon and even HBO has a whole show devoted to them.

Even though the non-religious are more than ten times larger, other than Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), not one member of Congress would even admit to being in the dreaded minority of non-believers. They are almost never accounted for in any political discussion of religion in the country. The devout view them as amoral at best and destined for eternal damnation at worst. Yet, this kind of abuse and scorn is widely accepted and expected.

And, if God forbid, they should ever fight back and forcefully present their opinions, they are often considered rude and offensive.

I've always been amused at the idea that a religious person can say that an atheist will burn in hell as a result of their beliefs, and that is not considered offensive; but if an atheist says that believing in God makes no sense, that is considered deeply offensive. One person is charging the other with faulty logic; the other is charging them with a base immorality that warrants eternal torture. How is the former even vaguely more insulting than the latter?