In the Western tradition, religious people have historically been for secular government, since it ensures their hated rivals won’t control the levers of power. Conflating secularism with atheism is fundamentalist propaganda.
Nifty. Now if we can just get religious Republicans in America on board with that tradition.
It may be a bit deeper than that, to a religious wired brain atheism can be incomprehensible, it’s just not an unknown, it’s an unknowable unknown; the Void, a thing of horror.
Problem is, what led to the Old World religious groups to form that tradition was those groups finally crying uncle after centuries of persecuting and massacring each other over theology, see for example the Treaty of Westphalia; it may be good to take that lesson from history, roll it up and smack around the head with it the people who think “Government” “Absolute Truth” and “(My) Faith” are good things to mix together.
That summary is still firmly in the hyberbolic region.
If someone says, “I would never vote for an atheist,” or “Atheists are unfit to hold leadership positions in government,” that’s not an identical statement to, “I don’t agree with the First Amendment to the constitution.”
Do you understand why this is so?
The difference is that the First Amendment constrains the federal government, not individuals. The First Amendment does not compel voters to set aside their own religious favoritism when they vote. In fact, it even protects their right to urge others to do likewise. “Don’t vote for an atheist, ever!” is an utterance that the First Amendment protects. And making that statement does not equate to not agreeing with the First Amendment.
Now, apart from the First Amendment, there is perhaps some relevance to Article VI, Section 3, which provides in pertinent part that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Even then, however, Sessions’ statement is not fairly read to be urging the imposition of a statutory religious test. He’s urging that atheists be considered by the public to be unfit. This is a perfectly legitimate sentiment for him to offer up, just as it would be perfectly legitimate for an atheist to urge that no religious believer be considered fit for office by the public. What would run afoul of Article VI, Section 3 would be the attempt to enshrine this sentiment as law.
As a religious believer myself, I don’t agree that atheists are per se unfit. I regard those people who don’t understand the Constitution as unfit, however, in the sense that the public should not vote for such people.
I include the current President-Elect, and you, in that group, but not Senator Sessions.
Annd the difference between;
“I would never vote for an atheist” or “Atheists are unfit to hold leadership positions in government”
and
“I would never vote for an Jew” or “Jews are unfit to hold leadership positions in government”
is what again?
CMC fnord!
I’m very curious as to what’s inside that “per se”, if you’d indulge me.
Bingo.
Is it really a purely statutory matter? That seems easy to get around, if so. If I’m Federal Employee Mr. Jerk, and I say “Hey, I’m making an appointment, and the law says I can’t make religion a qualifier. However, I’m telling you, I won’t appoint anyone that isn’t an athiest. I’m not going to change the law, I’m just telling you that I will never appoint a non-athiest.” that seems like a problematic situation. On a legal level, would that be entirely reasonable? The government can apply a religious test, so long as it’s not statutory?
Do you think this shows Sessions is bigoted against non-religious people? That seems very clear to me – as clear as if he had questioned whether Jews were fit for public office.
You know** Bricker**, I kind of like you. I don’t consider you to be the devil incarnate as many Dopers do. But this is a ridiculous stretch of reasoning. In a democracy there should be no distinction between the public and government motivations. For a politician in public office to say that the government should not place a religious test on public office but the public should place such a test themselves has no practical distinction. It merely asks the people to ignore and disrespect the constitution you claim to support and that politician has sworn to support. Just how far would you take this? Should the government not interfere with the right to freedom of speech but the public should? How many other rights and restrictions in the constitution be ignored by the public and be nothing but meaningless words on paper in government that consists of members of the public in it’s actual operation?
Well, in one case the person is a bigot, and in the other case they’re a bigot with bad grammar.
It should be noted that Sessions didn’t actually say atheists are unfit to hold public office. That was a paraphrase by the author in the commentary referenced in the OP-- an inaccurate paraphrase, too, if you ask me. If you go to that article, you’ll find that Sessions thinks (wrongly, IMO, but similarly to most Americans) that non-religious folks might not have the same sense of morality as religious folks do. Not that they MUST have a difference sense, but that they are not tied to a sense that God commands us to act thus and so. Atheists (or secularists), he believe, consider morality to be relative and so could easily be swayed into a moral code that values power over duty. Which, when one thinks of Trump, one has to wonder what Senator Sessions thinks of his new boss…
Isn’t Trump about to be the highest ranking secularist in government?
Of all the things he lies about, being religious is probably the most obvious lie to everyone.
:smack:
Assuming we’re looking at the same article (bad citing form, OP)…
[QUOTE=Sessions as quoted in the article]
“Ultimately, freedom of speech is about ascertaining the truth,” Sessions, an Alabama Republican, told Horowitz’s audience on Nov. 14, 2014. “And if you don’t believe there’s a truth, you don’t believe in truth, if you’re an utter secularist, then how do we operate this government? How can we form a democracy of the kind I think you and I believe in… I do believe that we are a nation that, without God, there is no truth, and it’s all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda, not doing the public service.”
[/QUOTE]
I would certainly characterise that as him believing that an “utter secularist” could not operate the government or democracy “of the kind” he refers to. That certainly seem reasonable to me to be paraphrased as “unfit to hold office”. And I think your “not that they MUST have a different sense” objection isn’t accurate either, since he ties the lack of “belief in truth” to the unfitness for office, and also when he brings up those later problems that it’s all about them, and not doing the public service.
Can you be more specific about this question?
There are a number of differences. I can speculate on what you’re asking. My answer based on my speculation is: there is no logical difference between those positions. Each is a representation of religious bigotry.
See my answer above: yes, this answer shows that Sessions holds a prejudice against atheists that is fairly described as bigotry.
Whew. Thank goodness.
You have moved the question into the realm of “should.”
I believe plenty of things SHOULD happen, but are not constitutionally mandated to happen.
Which would you like to discuss?
Yes, that’s the commentary piece. Note that he says " it’s all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda". Emphasis added. Ideology is a very broad category and there are certain ideologies that can easily align with the what Sessions seems to think is the Truth (i.e., Christian ideology, or perhaps he’d say Judeo-Christian ideology), even though there are many that don’t. He’s saying that he doesn’t believe our form of government could be created in an “utterly secular” environment, not that any given secularist is “unfit” to be part of the government as it exists now. There is no mention of any particular office, nor is the word “unfit” ever used.
Yes. If it was unclear, that is pretty much exactly what I meant. The only thing I might modify is that Trump may or may not be a “secularist”, but he sure acts as if he were one. And one of the worst kind, I’d add. Being a secularist myself, I like to think that he doesn’t represent us, as a group. 