This could go in Politics/Government also, but I thought it fit better in P&R.
Why is atheism death to political aspirations?
By Los Angeles Times
Several polls indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37 percent of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.
Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was "not at all to be tolerated" because, he said, "promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist."
That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87 percent of the population claims "never to doubt" the existence of God; fewer than 10 percent identify themselves as atheists -- and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.
Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse:
1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.
On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness ... well ... meaningless. 2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.
People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
3) Atheism is dogmatic.
Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.
No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.
The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.
5) Atheism has no connection to science.
Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God -- as some scientists seem to manage it -- there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90 percent of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.
6) Atheists are arrogant. When scientists don't know something -- like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed -- they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn't arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.
7) Atheists are closed to spiritual experience.
There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly. What atheists don't tend to do is make unjustified (and unjustifiable) claims about the nature of reality on the basis of such experiences. There is no question that some Christians have transformed their lives for the better by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus. What does this prove? It proves that certain disciplines of attention and codes of conduct can have a profound effect upon the human mind. Do the positive experiences of Christians suggest that Jesus is the sole savior of humanity? Not even remotely -- because Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even atheists regularly have similar experiences.
There is, in fact, not a Christian on this Earth who can be certain that Jesus even wore a beard, much less that he was born of a virgin or rose from the dead. These are just not the sort of claims that spiritual experience can authenticate.
8) Atheists believe that there is nothing beyond human life and human understanding.
Atheists are free to admit the limits of human understanding in a way that religious people are not. It is obvious that we do not fully understand the universe; but it is even more obvious that neither the Bible nor the Quran reflects our best understanding of it. We do not know whether there is complex life elsewhere in the cosmos, but there might be. If there is, such beings could have developed an understanding of nature's laws that vastly exceeds our own. Atheists can freely entertain such possibilities. They also can admit that if brilliant extraterrestrials exist, the contents of the Bible and the Quran will be even less impressive to them than they are to human atheists.
From the atheist point of view, the world's religions utterly trivialize the real beauty and immensity of the universe. One doesn't have to accept anything on insufficient evidence to make such an observation.
9) Atheists ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society.
Those who emphasize the good effects of religion never seem to realize that such effects fail to demonstrate the truth of any religious doctrine. This is why we have terms such as "wishful thinking" and "self-deception." There is a profound distinction between a consoling delusion and the truth.
In any case, the good effects of religion can surely be disputed. In most cases, it seems that religion gives people bad reasons to behave well, when good reasons are actually available. Ask yourself, which is more moral, helping the poor out of concern for their suffering, or doing so because you think the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it?
10) Atheism provides no basis for morality.
If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Quran -- as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.
We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Quran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery -- and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture -- like the golden rule -- can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.
Harris is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation."
"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." Mark Twain
Absolutely I would vote for an Atheist if they were otherwise qualified to be President. I don't think that someone's religion/lack thereof should kill a political career.
"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet ... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." Mark Twain
I agree with Pippin on this... a person's choice of religion, or lack-there-of, doesn't come in to play, for a position, unless it's that of a minister/priest. So, yes, I would vote for an atheist, as long as they were qualified for the position, and were running for the party that I wanted, and supported the issues that I felt were good.
:::>^..^<::: ~*~The Journey is more important than the end or the start~*~ :::>^..^<:::
Atheism seems to be a fad. Forums like ours are swamped with domineering slogans and innuendos from atheists trying to appear more informed and superior than their religious brothers. It seems to be better organized now and has moved on from just a simple individualized approach to life to a brotherhood-like stance, packaged and presented just like any religious cult. Atheism today is a reactionary anti-religion movement of sorts that draws its arguments from a handful of personalities who have made themselves popular and quotable.
Politically and historically, atheism became policy for half the world via communism. Communism is a God-less ideology that banned the practice of religion and completely ignores the spiritual realities of man. Communism is pure materialism that succumb to poverty and more of the same persecution and troubles that their atheist leaders blame the religious for.
If you want an example of the modern day atheist, look at Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. He appears to be religious. The despot even prayed at a recent UN meeting and labeled the US "diablo". He declares his favor towards socialism and deplores free market policies that upset his ideals. His "popular" dictatorship is probably the model of socialism that he prefers implemented worldwide. How do I know that he is atheist? Another atheist from another forum treats Chavez as among the more popular atheists that their fellow members emulate.
Thus, the atheist movement has infiltrated religion, your typical wolves in sheep's clothing personalities trying to lead and then demolish the object of their hate.
I think voting for an atheist president might do you American some good after it's the god fearing ones that got you in to this mess in the first place
Sierradaddy said this in post #4 : Voting for an atheist is better than voting for a known satanist... I think...
Actually, modern Laveyan Satanism is not a theistic religion - it's more a collection of philosophies and rituals. It's actually a subset of atheism, as Satanists don't believe in god or Satan as an actual being. We believe in Satan as more of an archetypal figure - a role model of sorts - from the Twain/Blake/Miltonian romantic tradition of portraying Satan as a proud rebellious figure who rose up against an unfair tyrant (god). It has more in common with secular humanism than anything else, as far as philosophy goes.
I would vote for any kind of president if there views were the same as mine. I think alot of people think like that but there are many people that believe in religion so it makes it hard to get someone that openly states that they don't believe in anything to get voted in as president.
Aliens do exist how can they not with all the different alien pictures out there???
01-01-2007 08:20 PM
