First off, I recognize that “Democratic Party” and “liberalism” are not one and the same. Nevertheless, in order to avoid the OP turning into a long meandering sprawl of words, I’m going to have to conflate the two a lot.
As far as I can tell (as a Christian-and-somewhat-right-leaning Doper), liberalism’s substance fully reflects what you would expect of atheism: The Universe and life was made naturally via Big Bang/evolution, there is no intelligent design, the Bible is historically and scientifically inaccurate, people should be free to do as they please if it doesn’t harm others (if you’re gay, great, if you’re trans, great, if you want to have safe consensual sex with a hundred different legal-age partners, great), abortion is fine, prayer is useless, there is no reason women should ever be on a lower rung than men, God never steps in to intervene, religion is the cause of a great deal of harm and death in the world, we answer to no supreme deity but only ourselves (fellow mankind and society), miracles are impossible, there is no life after death, and everything has a scientific or natural explanation.
But that is not liberal practice. You never hear a Democratic presidential candidate openly say, “There is no God.” The Democratic National Convention featured a lot of religious references. On the contrary, Democratic politicians praise religion all the time.
Why don’t liberals and Democrats go full-bore, “There is no God, it’s just us alone on a planet in a vast universe?”
It’s not an either-or thing. There are all shades of belief on the religious spectrum, something hard for sword-of-the-Lord types to accept.
It’s hard to get elected on the basis of being a outright godless heathen, so most every political type gives at least lip service to religion even if they don’t buy many of its tenets.
Because there are a TON of religious Democrats and liberals (myself being one of them). Not to mention a massive constituency - African Americans are religious and liberal.
I don’t see these as liberal tenets. There are a lot of Christians in this country, many of them liberals. Liberalism is not even close to being the party of atheism. I doubt an open atheist could get elected, even as a Democrat.
Yeah, I am wondering if there have been any atheists elected to public office in this country(?) - I would guess announcing your atheism as a candidate would not fly well, even in the more liberal parts of the country.
Maybe because they’d like to leave religion out of politics in total, and leave people to believe what they want? And it lets all people celebrate and practice their religions freely, instead of taking a stance that says there’s one right way to think when it comes to religion.
Let’s flip the question over; why don’t Republicans go full-bore; There is only one God and that is the God of Christianity (or even of a specific flavor of Christianity)? Can you see how that might be limiting the party?
To a large extent, they are. Not all of them, but increasingly the party is indeed moving in that direction, especially in the era of Trump. In fact, we had a thread in GD that touched on that (the “The Christians are coming” thread). There is a New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), Christian dominionism movement that is indeed gaining a stronger and stronger hold in the GOP.
To answer the OP, why would or should they? The party isn’t going to do something that neither has discernible political benefit nor would be good policy for the country (and declaring “there is no God” has nothing to do with policy).
Or to flip it in another way - why don’t conservative politicans who have little or no use for religion admit it? While many seem genuinely devout, you can bet there are substantial numbers of conservatives who are token members of their churches or agnostic/atheistic, but realize that they have to put on a good front to appeal to religious conservative voters, who would reject them in a heartbeat if they didn’t drag God into their campaign appeals.
OP, is it your belief that if liberals/Democrats did so, they could wield the same kind of loyalty and power that conservatives/Republicans do by embracing fundamentalist Christianity?
My point isn’t about power, but consistency. I’m wondering why atheism gets a relatively cool reception within the Democratic Party despite being pretty much fully consistent with liberalism and progressivism. Not that there aren’t conservative atheists, but by and large liberalism reflects a viewpoint that is compatible with a there-is-no-God worldview.
Yet, Democrats very often give atheists the cold shoulder. They’ve never run an openly atheist presidential candidate as far as I can tell, for instance, and I can’t recall the last time a Democrat ever said God didn’t exist (in contrast to vast numbers of both Republicans and Democrats who say God does exist). Considering that atheists are far stauncher supporters of Democrats than religious people, this is a strange way to treat an ally.