It wasn’t just to Shaath. Abbas was there too and is claiming the same thing. I have no doubt whatsoever that Bush said it. It sounds exactly like him.
Umm that’s exactly what I said. I specifically made a distinction between atheists and agnostics. But don’t let that stop you from showing your ignorance.
Erek
All those countries have a religious background that informs upon their philisophical leanings. Using Japan doesn’t refute my statement. Japan still has an Emperor and a sort of religious cult around him, it is not secular in the way we consider America to be secular.
Erek
Here’s the quote from Abbas
None of this would be out of line with similar kinds of megolomaniacal statemenst Bush ahs made in the past. God wanted him to be President, I can remember at least one story where he was reported as habitually referring to his decisions as “God’s will” in private. He’s a religious zealot. The only difference between him and bin-Laden is that Bush has more power.
I guess I need to say this again. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If you think that the less than 10% of people in the world who are atheists should run the world as a super-elite because there is no PROOF of God, I’m gonna have to respectfully disagree, I’m sorry. I don’t think disenfranchising the vast majority of the world’s population makes sense.
I’m really sick of these threads that are ego-maniacal atheists trying to avow implicitly that atheists would make for superior leadership.
Maybe we should just let agnostics run this country, because only those who don’t know can be trusted to be telling us the truth. Or maybe I should run the country, because I AM God, and therefore if I ever hear the voice of God, I know it’s just myself talking. ;p
Erek
I’d like to see a cite for a single Doper ever posting that the world should be run by atheists or that only atheists should be allowed to be leaders or even that atheists would be inherently better leaders.
All we ask is that the government - as a government - refrain from trying to codify religious beliefs into laws and to refrain from takingt official positions on what is or is not religiously true. FYI, that would include any attempt by the government to say that God does not exist. That’s not for the govenment to decide. That doesn’t mean that we think elected officials do not have a right to believe and worship and practice as they wish in their private lives. The personal philosophy of elected leaders is not an issue unless they try to impose that philosophy on the electorate by means of legislation or official endorsement.
I dunno. I have to wonder if the translator was using some poetic license. Are there any sources who confirm what he said IN ENGLISH? I agree that Bush has invoked God in the past, but never in this manner. It sounds oddly like what one would here an Arabic speaker say.
And you know you’re going to get called on the “only difference between him and bin-Laden is that Bush has more power”. But I’m not even going to engage in that debate since it is, on the face of it, an absurd claim. All it does is make one less inclined to believe your other statements.
That is not the point, you are still willfully ignoring that there are Hard Atheists, and that I do agree in your assessment of them, but Soft Atheists and Agnostics are not like what you are still discriminately trying to say here, you are just pigeonholing.
You made two claims: that the reason I think certain things are moral/legal is because of the 10 Commandments, and that all moral/legal beliefs come from religion. You have just conceded that the 10 commandments are not the absolute basis for morality since other religious traditions have similar beliefs. So the question is did religion provide the basis for all moral and legal beliefs everywhere, or did some “universal” moral and legal beliefs influence religion.
It is clear that religions have many differences: some require long hair, other prohibit it; some have Saturday as the holy day and others have friday; there are different names for god(s), different numbers of god(s), and different creation myths. They don’t seem to agree on much. Yet, there is wide agreement on the prohibition of murder and theft.
It seems much more likely to me that a universal set of practical and inherent moral/legal beliefs were incorporated into religions rather than the other way around.
In any case, the idea that the 10 commandments are the basis for all US laws is silly on the face of it. There are no laws that require us to recognize one god above all others, to not use god’s name in vain, to maintain a sabbath, to respect our elders, or not to covet.
Prohibition of murder and theft predate the introduction of Christianity to both North America and Britain.
DanBlather
I’d argue that Freemasons who strictly do believe in God, in a Deist sense, while taking much culturally from the Judeo-Christian tradition designed the government from top to bottom at the point of it’s inception. As Freemasonry is specifically inclusive of all religions that believe in a single creator Deity that can be summed up as “The Great Architect of the Universe”, it was within their ethical bounds to create a values system that wouldn’t value one religion over any other, as all religions are of the Great Architect, as there is only one God. So the core belief system that influenced the makeup of the American government would be Freemasonry. This value system incidentally protects Atheism, even though atheism, as it is constantly argued is not a “religion”.
No matter how much we may want to, we cannot escape our ancestor’s belief systems.
If an argument that influence by God made one unfit to hold public office actually caught on and took hold enough that it started having real influence, all you would see is a very rapid genocide of atheists across the entire globe. This would be proof positive that there is real power in the belief in God whether or not that God can be scientifically proven to exist or not. I think it’s important for atheists to realize that they are outnumbered by about ten to one worldwide when making arguments about what qualifications a religious person has to hold public office. It’s important to note that while (hard) atheists believe that religion is a form of insanity, many religious people hold the same view about atheism.
Me personally I think (hard) atheism is a quirky fringe belief, that is healthy to a questioning society. I happen to believe that it is an incorrect belief, and that the only function it serves is to test one’s belief. It’s kind of like a transitionary period between faith in my opinion. I would find it extremely dangerous if we started to judge belief in God as a negative characteristic, and I would definitely be putting a bullet in the brain pan of members of a successful political party run by atheists on a platform of disenfranchisement of the religious.
While I believe that pacifist methods are the most desirable, I do not believe that pacifism is always the best course. I would see the rise of such a belief as worse than the nazi party. However, if atheism remains in the academic realm to be debated, and influence people as it will that way, I think that the rights of atheists are sacrosanct.
To set GIGObuster at ease, I recognize his distinction between hard and soft atheists, and I already made a distinction for agnostics. Soft atheists and agnostics have valid arguments. Hard atheism is simply incorrect, and I feel it is important to point that out whenever possible as it makes a strict statement of truth with little proof to back it up. As far as belief in God goes, I believe in God, completely, and believe the argument is merely semantic, but I am willing to wait it out while others come to conclusions on their own.
Erek
And strong atheism is the belief that there is no god, not the claim to know that there is no god. (Which is logically unsupportable given the very large number of definitions of god there are.)
As for the OP, I don’t think there is a constitutional issue whether Bush gets his advice from God, the monster under the bed or the elf floating in his toilet bowl.
This from a guy that get’s mad when I talk about how brutal and nasty religion is ? You make my arguements for me.
Fine; I think religion is inherently irrational and destructive, and unless we give it up our civilization will slaughter itself. Unless we begin to “judge belief in God as a negative characteristic”, I don’t think we’ll survive.
Also, I largely echo Diogenes the Cynic; I don’t see anyone arguing that theists shouldn’t be allowed to vote. I do think atheists are inherently on average better leaders, unlike him.
So, you think the people you claim will be the victims of genocide are worse than the Nazis ?! Typical of the religious; despite all the speeches about how morally superior you are, you’re rather quick to go for the massacre as a tool of political control.
Der Trihs
Does taking people’s statements out of context usually work for you?
I said a political party comprised of atheists who thought that religious belief should bar one from governmental authority would be worse than nazis if it were to gain power in a political arena.
Basically to put it mildly, I think that hard atheists are complete idiots and could not gain power because they are not smart enough. One advantage that Religions have over atheism is that a religion can unite people whereas atheism has not shown to have such a capacity, as atheists are always arguing against being considered a singular entity.
The most I will ever do with the idea of an atheist fascist regime would be to put it into a movie, because I think it makes a good villain for a film. I want to make a Revelations movie where you have angels and demons fighting fighter jets and power armor. The army of the antichrist will be composed of atheists.
What always strikes me as amusing is that hard atheists are constantly clamouring for proof about everything, and will tell you the superiority of their views and their intelligence, yet throughout history our world leaders have been historically very religious, and religion has played a central role in power for all of history. If atheism were so superior, then how come atheists do not rule?
I don’t need to prove your point about anything, you’re going to believe it no matter what anyone says in response, like a good little zealot. So what does it matter what I say? If this were a christian forum, I still would find you phenomenally irritating even if your dogma were regarding the superiority of the words in the bible rather than the dogma of hard atheism.
All I was trying to illustrate was how dangerous the idea that a belief in God made one unfit for public service was.
However, context seems so unimportant to you, that it hardly matters what I say because you can’t understand it even though we labor under the illusion that we are speaking the same language.
Erek
That would appear to be 100% correct.
So it is your argument that prohibitions on murder and theft derive from Freemasonry?!? This despite the fact that those prohibitions existed before Freemasonry and in places that did not have Freemasonry?
Do you have any idea what the Nazi’s were actually like ?
Yes, religion is a useful tool for tyrants; that’s it’s most important function.
Typical believer mentality again. I disagree, therefore I am demonic. No wonder you have no problem with mass murder; after all, we’re all tools of the devil.
Because the religious tend to be more ruthless and brutal, in a more systematically murderous way. Religion has always been an excellent tool for promoting and excusing humanities most evil impulses; that is why the tyrants of history have promoted it so tirelessly. It helps them; they help it.
I did. All of my family is fairly religious. My stepfather is a minister. My cousin just married one, and is out doing missionary work right now. My sister, my closest relative, goes to church weekly.
Me? I’m an atheist, probably the only one in my family. So yeah, I’d say it IS possible to escape one’s ancestor’s belief systems.
I’m gonna call you out on this, mswas. WHY would a view that religion makes one unfit for public office inspire “genocide” of atheists? I thought that your religion taught that killing was, you know, basically bad? I’ve never heard an atheist call for the death of believers- do disbelievers scare you so very, very much?
And as for your claim that atheists are outnumbered ten-to-one by theists, which you’ve claimed twice now in this thread, I’m gonna have to ask for a “cite, please”. There ARE, in fact, other religions- you don’t get to lump all religions against atheism… unless you seriously want Al Qaida on your side.
“I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, then you will know why I dismiss yours.” (Stephen F. Roberts)
Not quoted for truthfulness.
He seems to be adopting some of my arguements without admitting it, possibly even to himself. Religious people tend to be tyrannical and intolerant ? Genocidal frenzies qualify. The religious tend to gang up on unbelievers ? A war of All Religion against atheists seems to qualify.
No, it’s just plain ol’, old-fashioned, absence of evidence.
Dude, I don’t think anybody should rule the world.
Hey, me neither.
See, we agree on a lot.
Me too! Bad atheists! Stop avowing, it’s mean :(Mean people make me sad. 
And those who do know can’t be trusted at all.
Wow thats cool! Do you live in heaven? Does it ever rain in heaven?
Your friend Crow 