My answer to the OP is that i vote based on a candidates expressed polies, not his or her religious beliefs. On the one occasion where I’ve actually had the opprtunity to choose between a theist and an atheist in a significant election I voted for the theist (the atheist was Jesse Ventura).
[QUOTE=Monty]
I will never understand why anyone gives 2 figs whether another person thinks they are going to go to hell or not. As a Catholic, I have been told plenty of times that I am going to go to hell, and frankly, I find such a statement to me more humorous than anything else. It certainly doesn’t hurt my feelings. If you know the truth, then it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.
I am not in a position to back up what LonesomePolecat says in terms of numbers, but I do think there is a huge, huge difference between someone thinking you are going to hell, and someone wanting to murder you to help the process along.
I don’t see your point. Just because the number of Christians who think murdering abortion doctors is justified is a tiny percentage of Christians, it doesn’t follow that the number of Muslims who want to murder Americans is a tiny percentage of Muslims. As I said, I don’t know the numbers, but your example from one to the other doesn’t necessarily follow.
Personally, I would not avoid voting for someone based solely on his religion or lack thereof. On the other hand, it is not surprising that the candidates I like tend to be relatively religious Christians & Jews. It doesn’t have anything to do with the specific religion, but more that religious people tend to have the same kind of politics I do. If the person was athiest or anything else and shared my political POV, that’s great, too.
Yeah, yeah, the same old dodge. If you haven’t noticed, we’re not talking about what is legal. And you use a brush as wide as Texas when you say what the Founding Fathers beleived. And they—even Jefferson—believed the Creator was active enough to 1) Create man and 2) endow him with unalianable rights.
If only ten percent of Muslims sympathize strongly with Islamic radicalism, that makes one hundred million Muslims who want to kill you. What percentage of the world’s Christians want to kill you? No matter how you look at it, Muslim extremism is a much greater problem for the world today than Christian extremism.
Telling you that you’re going to hell isn’t nearly the same thing as chopping off your head.
I see your point. It just isn’t much of a point.
Since the question was, “Why wouldn’t an atheist make a good politician,” I’m afraid that you haven’t actually answered it. Why do you think an atheist would not be as zealous or as competent in defending the rights enumerated in the Constitution as someone who believes in God?
:rolleyes: Prove that it doesn’t. And where rights come form does matter. If they are solely the invention of man, a man can come by tomorrow and say otherwise. And everything is then morally relative. Which, I know, you like. As do godless dictators like Lenin, Stalin Mao, and Castro.
No, you’re worse. You are the enemy. You know, maybe I should stop responding to your posts and spend that time starting a little penpal dialogue with Charles Manson. Six of one…
Your view of religion is so warped you cannot even entertain that many people hold it dear. And I think that many people would find it easier to put their life on the line for an absolute truth, a law of God, than the whim of man.
It goes to essence, that which defines man, a tiger, or a person with a diseased brain.
My posts explaining my position and yours revealing the ridiculous of yours. Go look it up. And take your time.
You may want to review some of the pit threads against you before you ascribe to that theory.
Has it occured to you that their religion tells them they should hurt us.
Let’s make belive you’re right about this, and they’d hate us. But would they kill us? Would they send their brothers and sons on to airplanes and strap bombs on them to blow us up. Would they be so willing to die for their hatred if they didn’t think there were 72 virgins waiting.
And you know, this shows just how bizarre you are. You caonstantly rail against religion as fabtastical, deranged and the root of all evil. But when we talk about the one religion that actually fits the bill, you defend it’s adherents. I hope this reveals to all just how—let’s see, we’re in GD—just how “inconsistent” you are.
Yes. Christians, too, believe in a paradise if they’re true to their faith, and there’s nothing inherent to Christianity that prevents it from being perverted the same way that radical Muslims have perverted Islam.
Just ask Eric Rudolph.
Because tyhe rights are derived from a higher order. I don’t see how you can deny the logic of that.
As far as I recall Lincoln was not a atheist. He was a fan of Paine, who was a Deist and believed in the after life.
Also, I do think it is perfectly possible for an atheist to be in office and defend rights as staunchly as a Theist. The question was who I wouldn’t vote for and why.
I see the laws of science that the universe operate under as the fabric of a world that would accommodate man. And that man is an intentional creation (whether via evolution or not). Rights coming from a mortal king are, indeed, preferences. Rights imbued by God go to the essence of his creation. That is why they are unalienable. Even possibly the least religious of the Fouding Fathers belived this to be the case.
As I said, because he believes the rights are derived from a higher order. Whatever rights are in place, it would be much easier to think you should overturn them if you believe that they came from a mortal who preceded you as opposed to God.
Just look to all the biggest despots: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao. They delude themselves into believeinig that their view of the world is correct because there is no higher power to defer to.
Yes. But are you trying to say that the incidence abd degree of perversion is the same between Christianity and Islam? You’ve got to be kidding.
I don’t vote for degrees, I vote for candidates.
I feel completely capable of evaluating if an individual is a bloodthirsty maniac, whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. The percentages don’t really enter into it.
So have you.
What logic? You believe that rights are granted by God. Which is fine, and you are probably right in that most of the founders agreed with you to some extent. What you haven’t done is provided any kind of a coherent argument as to why an atheist would be less likely to respect those rights than a theist. There is, so far as I’m aware, no religion anywhere that includes ideas like freedom of speech, freedom of belief, or freedom of association as part of their religious code. There’s nothing in the New Testament about the right to bear arms. The Torah does not, to my knowledge, guarantee the right to assemble to petitition the government for redress of greivances. The Qu’ran lines up nicely with the 21st ammendment, but since we’ve ended Prohibition, I don’t think there are many other points of congruence between that book and the Constitution. The idea that the rights talked about in the DoI and specifcied in the Constitution are somehow guaranteed by God is not an article of faith in any religion I know of. So why should someone who is religious be any more likely to support them than someone who is not? At the very least, an atheist is never going to argue for the repeal of our rights on the grounds that “God wants it to be so.”
What does that prove? I’m a fan of Thomas Paine, and I’m a stone-cold atheist.
And in light of the fact that you think it’s “perfectly possible” for an atheist to be a good politician, why wouldn’t you vote for one?
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. Yes, there are more dangerous fanatical Muslims than Christians. So what? The fact that a religious terrorist is more likely to be a Muslim does not mean that a Muslim is more likely to be a religious terrorist.
And they can do the same if a God decrees them. Also as BrainGlutton said, they are either intrinsic or not, no matter God’s opinion on the subject.
As opposed to Christians like Hitler ? Besides, what makes you think they believed in moral relativism ? Communism is very absolutist.
Ah, yes, the guy who disagrees with you on a message board is just as bad as the leader of a band of crazed killers. Typical Atheists are the Devil ! religious garbage. Given that religion is malignant by nature, I’m not surprised.
First, I’m quite aware that most people are religious; fools, lunatics and monsters, in other words. Second, most people are rather more impressed by, say, not having their friends and family killed, imprisoned or tortured than bad philosophy about God’s “absolute truth”. Third, religion has usually been on the side of tyranny, or is the tyrant. If you were right, everyone would be the slave of the local King, ruling by Divine Right.
Essence is a meanlingess term.
And the majority religion here says everyone else should be killed; what’s your point ? I already regard religion as evil; telling me their religion is evil is pointless.
Of course; we’re killing them. It’s their duty to try to kill us in return.
No, they’d choose better tactics. They’d still be at least as aggressive.
:rolleyes: Has it occured to you that they have perfectly rational non-religious reasons for hating and killing us ? I don’t approve of their religion; I simply think they are justified at killing foreign invaders and tyrants.
:rolleyes: Please; that makes it trivial to overturn them. Simply say “God wills it”, and your done; since God is a delusion, he won’t argue with you.
Hitler and the Nazis were Christians, who behaved like Christians always do if they get the chance. The Communists believed in such things as the Forces of History, Marx, the proletariat, and so forth. You also ignore the millennia of Christian tyrants.
Both are perversion; so yes. The difference is, the Christians have a bigger military and far more money and nukes.
Well, actually, yes, it does.
No it doesn’t; then there’s the definition of terrorism. A lot of what America’s done in Iraq can be considered terrorism, such as the “Shock and Awe” attacks ( sure sounds terroristic to me ), not to mention kidnapping and torture. The usual arguments against such things being terrorism to me ring of the old line “terrorist is what the big army calls the little army”. Since most American soldiers are Christian, that’s a lot of Christian terrorists.
He was. He even wrote a book about it in his youth – and then burned the manuscript when a friend pointed out how publishing it would hamper his political ambitions. See What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America’s Greatest President, by Michael Lind.
Uh, yeah, like I’m going to go aread a whole book because you think it says somehting it probably doesn’t. If you want to provide excerpts, go ahead. But please, don’t waste my or anyone’s times with lazy, ridiculous cites.
You might find this interesting, though: (emphasis mine)
I chose here an article from a humanist perspective, not one that is inclined to argue for my side. And even it makes clear that Lincoln was not an atheist. He, like Jefferson, didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus or active God of Christianity. He was a Deist. Just like Paine.
These continued attempts to portray the some of the Founders, and now Lincoln, as atheists never gets old, does it? I don’t mean to saddle you, BG, with the nonsense of others, but it is all the product of the same desperation.
Thank you for your contribution. I hope you didn’t strain yourself. If you have nothing to say, why type at all? :rolleyes:
You think so, huh? Tell me, if all poodles are dogs, are all dogs poodles?