We are a irreligious society, each generation for the last few generations has been more secular than the one before it.
Granted a lot of people are still theists, but I once read an author (who I can’t remember) who claimed the US was about 30-50 years behind western europe on various issues. In the Scandinavian countries, France or Germany irreligion approaches 60-80%.
The idea of a black president was heresy up until a few years ago. I don’t think an atheist president is unrealistic in 15 years when millennials make up 40% of the electorate.
I think this may have been more true at one time. But we are now in the 21st century. Most scientists are atheistic, and it cannot be denied that they are able to present the world with “miracles” that the clergy are unable to match. (Cathedrals and stained glass aren’t as impressive in the age of iPhones.) I think the strength of “social proof” in religiosity in the U.S. in the 21st century is wide but not deep, and on some level many religious people are aware of that. So they would much rather not be confronted with the uncomfortable questions an atheist may pose, and don’t want to be judged by some uppity smarty pants.
I think we also have to consider that most people (and yes, this is condescending on my part) don’t really approach the world around them wanting to know the real truth about things–rather different from an SDMBer, obviously. But they want to be comforted that they will see their dead Grandma someday, and that when they themselves die they will go to a happy place. They don’t want to think that maybe “this is all there is” (in this corner of the universe, anyway). So it’s a lot easier if they just don’t have to be confronted with, again, the uncomfortable questions posed by uppity atheistic smarty pants out to stir up trouble.
Okay, but there’s always something a little patronising, at least, about an atheist’s attitude toward religious people. “They aren’t able to use reason to overcome their upbringing and the power authority figures have over them…unfortunate, but understandable.” Is that really giving the religious person the highest level of respect? I think it’s hard to square that circle.
Here’s the funny thing. I have had five very good male friends in my adult life, and have been married twice to women who also count (or counted, in the case of my ex-wife) as close friends. Of those seven, only one male friend and my current wife are atheists.
One other male friend is…well, I don’t know how he would describe it, but he certainly disagrees strongly with my atheism and empiricism (what he’d call “reductionism”) but also with conventional religion. He believes in “shamanic” mysticism especially when linked with psychedelic drugs, and in pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo supposedly linked with quantum physics.
My ex-wife was raised Catholic and still likes the Mary statues, the incense and so on; she also identifies with a general nature-centred “spirituality” and sometimes refers to herself as “pagan” or “Wiccan”.
The other three guys are pretty straightforwardly non-denominational Christians. But not ones who just sort of casually call themselves Christians, never go to church, and don’t think about it much. They go to church, read the Bible regularly, all that jazz. They are also very, very intelligent (one of them even has a Ph.D. in chemistry and works as a college professor at a selective university). I absolutely recognise their intelligence and enjoy spending time with them and discussing a variety of philosophical topics with them (or just shooting the shit, depending).
But do I also believe that they have a serious blind spot in their rationality and worldview? Absolutely, I do. I try not to act insulting toward them, but there’s just no way around my thinking this, deep down. I mean, wouldn’t we all think that about a friend who was really cool and insightful in a lot of ways, but assiduously followed astrology? Maybe they are careful to follow the horoscope in the newspaper; or maybe instead they dismiss that as “not real astrology” and follow something from a book or from an astrologer they pay for advice. Wouldn’t we roll our eyes (at least inwardly)? So what’s the difference?
He wasn’t that far off, though. I am ecstatic that Obama became president. But what happened is that he was able to narrowly work his way through the primaries in a party that has for decades had a tendency to have a blind spot about electoral pragmatism. Then he faced the voters in a year when his party had a huge tailwind behind it. He still is estimated to have lagged by three or four points behind what a generic white male Democrat would have done, but thanks to that huge tailwind he won comfortably anyway.
If we had the electorates and the national mood we had in any previous election before 2008, there is just no way Obama wins.
I think that you are making assumptions about why people are believers that might or might not be true.
Certainly one might feel that an intelligent person who disagrees with us on a point one finds pivotal has a blind spot or is foolish on that particular point (and likely that person has the same idea about some belief one holds as well).
That would not lead me to feel contempt for the person or tempted to insult them–obviously that’s a matter of disposition, but I highly doubt that your own reaction to knowing your highly intelligent friends are believers is a universal among atheists.
I personally think that if the issue is whether God exists, given the number of smart people who have and still do believe, the logical conclusion is that reasonable people can disagree on that point.
But either way, one cannot logically conclude that most people are crazy or credulous people because they are believers, and that’s what you seemed to be saying above. Obviously, based just on what you’ve told us about your friends, that conclusion would be contrary to the evidence.
But it is absolutely not important to an atheist. The delusions that religious people entertain are perhaps a source of amusement or bemusement to the atheist, but the matter of metaphysics is in and of itself trivial. It is only when the common delusion is employed as a tool to froth up the believership that issue ever becomes anything near important to an atheist.
> The constitutions of these seven US states ban atheists from holding public
> office . . .
And those state laws are blatantly against the U.S. constitution. They wouldn’t possibly hold up if they were challenged. Nobody bothers to try to enforce them.
SlackerInc writes:
> If we had the electorates and the national mood we had in any previous
> election before 2008, there is just no way Obama wins.
My point was that he would have lost by a huge margin if he had run in 1964. I remember 1964. Wallace’s point that you had to assume a number of huge coincidences just to get into the Presidency in 1964 by some wild tricks. It may have been tough to get a black man elected President in 2008, but it would have been utterly impossible in 1964.
I agree that they violate the Constitution, but that is only important in states controlled by Democrats. Republican state legislatures have passed and enforced laws that have suppressed voting, closed abortion clinics, etc. And here’s another heartwarming story in today’s news:
> Republican state legislatures have passed and enforced laws that have
> suppressed voting, closed abortion clinics, etc. And here’s another
> heartwarming story in today’s news . . .
Oh, indeed they have. That wasn’t what I was talking about. What I was saying was that no state has tried to enforce a law preventing an atheist from holding public office. A law can’t be tested in court until someone tries to enforce it. As to suppressing voting by making it hard for some people to vote and closing abortion clinics by upping the requirements placed on the clinics, the problem is that there hasn’t as yet been any Supreme Court decision about how hard a state can make it to register and vote and how hard they can make it for an abortion clinic to remain open. That still has to be tested in court. As to the news story you link to about a Louisiana sheriff trying to enforce a law about homosexual sex (laws about which were shot down in 2003 by the Supreme Court), that article is from yesterday. The people arrested are going to have to go to court and charge the sheriff with making false arrest. You’ll note that there are statements from various people in that jurisdiction saying that the arrests were blatantly illegal.
I don’t know, Czarcasm. I think that the opponents of these unenforced laws know that the supporters of the laws didn’t really intend them to be enforced. The supporters of these laws were just trying to make a statement to their constituents, thinking that they would increase the percentage of them who would vote for them. I think that both the supporters and the opponents of these laws think that any court case and any new vote would be a waste of time as long as they aren’t enforced.
There are numerous jobs in numerous states and cities where an atheist could get elected. There are also plenty where he couldn’t.
Is getting elected, say, mayor of Portland, Oregon “going nowhere”? How about being elected Senator from Hawaii, or governor of Washington state? I could easily imagine an openly atheist liberal Democrat being elected to any of those offices.
There’s another angle here that Harris hasn’t considered. What does his imaginary atheist candidate stand for politically?
Let’s get specific: Jimmy Carter is both a liberal Democrat and a devout Christian. George Will is both a conservative Republican and a self-proclaimed agnostic. So, if Jimmy Carter and George Will were facing off in a Presidential election, which one would Sam Harris vote for, and which man would most religious conservatives vote for?
Not surprisingly, the 700 Clubbers would vote for agnostic Will, and Sam Harris (like most liberal atheists) would almost surely vote for Carter.
You must not have been around in '76: Jimmy Carter was very much a conservative Democrat, the nutbags have dragged the supposed left/right scale so far over it is not even recognizable anymore.
I’m 52, and was very much around. Carter is and was a man of the Left- it’s actually a measure of how far leftward the Democrats have drifted that Ted Kennedy ran against him in 1980, on the absurd grounds that Carter was conservative.
But if you want to play games, fine- I could name any number of very liberal religious Democrats. My point stands- Sam Harris would definitely vote for a religious liberal over an agnostic conservative.
Wait… Thirty years ago, Jimmy Carter was viewed as too far to the right… and that’s offered as evidence that the Democrats have moved to the left today?
That doesn’t really make sense. Did you mean “had drifted”?
Carter vetoed a bunch of stuff passed by the Democratic House and Senate, which tells you a lot right there. He is also the only prominent Democrat I know of who is a strong proponent of voter ID.
When I was sixteen, I participated in the “mock Democratic Convention” in our town, a learning experience for HS students, so I have a very, very clear memory of where Carter was positioned. You may think of him as a “liberal” today, but that was far from the case in '76, I remember those days quite well. Carter was considered a conservative, end of story.
In so many ways, belief in God is a non-question. All someone has to do is act as if they believe in God- how many politicians already do this- many politicians are the opposite of religiose- consigning religion to being a side issue, but possibly attending church or making statements compatible with being a believer.
Compared with other issues which require real political actions, atheism is easily hidden. So the question really is- can a campaigning, proselytising, publicity thinking atheist get elected?
I could not run successfully for office in the US as I am openly anti judicial killing, pro-abortion, anti the entire system of US criminal Justice, pro decriminalising of drugs, moderately socialist, internationalist and many other beliefs that would not look good on the dance floor. All of them require me to act and speak in a particular way when in office. It is however easy for me (and easy on my conscience) to give lip service to belief in God (“it all depends what you mean by God”).
I think if the OT is correct then God chose a murderer and an adulterer to lead his people and to be the linage from where his son would come. Humans want everyone to think and act as they do .It is my belief that People are afraid of others beliefs. that maybe they are wrong?
As a post script: We ( according to the constitution), have separation of church and state and no religion should be a part of how people vote, but many do vote their religious ideas, and one just need look back when Obama was elected and see the bigotry when they wanted to believe he was a Muslim. A lot different than what the founding fathers had in mind, it was to protect the minority from the majority. Too many want only freedom of their thoughts and beliefs, and complain about someone else’s beliefs. Too many talk the talk of Christianity but don’t walk the walk, They seem to be like the Pharisees that Jesus seemed to despise!