Group1 can't claim that group2 isn't under siege if there's a group3 doing the attacking.

Of course I wouldn't say a lone crusader was besieging Jerusalem, but then again that's not analogous to what I'm saying could be the case.

That's my point in it's entirety. The following is an aside:

Your examples about school prayer, abortion clinics, etc are not proof either. Just because we think those things are wrong or whatever, doesn't mean we're not attacking Christianity if Christianity thinks they're necessary. Just because Nazi Germany (school prayer, abortion clinics, etc) needed to be taken down for the greater good, doesn't mean that the Nazi's couldn't claim they were under siege. The "rightness" of the attacker has nothing to do with whether the one being attacked can claim they're besieged.

Would you also say a lone crusader at the gates of Jerusalem controlled by the Sarracens was laying siege to the city? Something can only be under siege when its strategic options are restricted. The matter of school prayer, abortion clinics, etc. are not examples of laying siege to Christianity but preventing Christianity from wholly subsuming society, similarly to how Microsoft is regularly prevented, through anti-monopoly laws, from gaining even more importance.

Christianity would be under siege if Christian women were forced to have an abortion when they were raped, believers were prevented from displaying the cross around their necks, and a Christian-professed presidential candidate lost the election BECAUSE of this religious beliefs. I.e. Jon Stewart's point.

The question wasn’t whether or not anyone felt they were under siege, it was whether or not they could be under siege.

Poor choice of words on my part. Doesn't matter though, my points still apply.

The question wasn't whether or not anyone felt they were under siege, it was whether or not they could be under siege.

Clearly many Christians do feel like the values they hold dear are being eroded and that we'll all bring pestilence upon the world with our wickedness - but that's not exactly new.

But even if one strongly argued that the Christian faith was threatened in the US - so what?

Some of us (okay, me), feel that the members of the whackjob religious right do far, far more to threaten Christianity than any number of atheists or different faiths.

Well, sure, in theory. But Christianity self-evidently has a firm grip on the entire US government from bottom to top.

This seems like an example of arguing from different perspectives, but I'll trudge on...

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a Christian could claim to be under siege even if every single person in government is Christian, if there are powerful lobbies striving to change that.

Of the Christians I know, that tend to feel like Christianity is under attack, don't think Barack Obama is attacking them. The feel like Hollywood, academia, and special interests are attacking them, which is not incompatible with having a completely Christian government.

Not that they're right or wrong, but I don't think the arguments presented so far attack any of the reasons most Christians who feel under attack feel that way.

Would you actually say that, strictly speaking, you're agnostic? I suspect not. Dawkins (as ever) has a nice differentiation between the different flavours of atheism.

Dawkins describes people for whom the probability of the existence of God is between "very high" and "very low" as "agnostic" and reserves the term "strong atheist" for "I know there is no god". He categorises himself as a "de facto atheist" but not a "strong atheist" under this definition.

Would you describe yourself as a "de facto atheist"? I like the term. Admittedly, in the context of your article, a survey is unlikely to offer a choice of several varieties of atheism - despite offering numerous options for the theists.

Unless of course by "liberals" (since you do have it in quotes and all) you're refering to the paranoid fantasy of "liberals all around us" that the xtr33m fundies tend to have.