I’m the type of atheist they hate. I enjoy laughing at adults who talk to the magic man in the sky. I can’t seem to help myself. The schadenfreude I get from people spouting iron age superstition as fact is intoxicating. The sadness I feel when those iron age superstitions are taught to children is crushing. But for me, the worst is the anger I feel when people are denied the same rights as everyone, beaten, locked up, or murdered because the people who love the magic man in the sky want to make him happy.
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If one really wanted to explore this question, and I wish someone would. There should have been at least one parallel poll to determine the weight of the word atheist, as you suggest does not believe in God, or “has no religious affiliation” would be interesting to see, also agnostic, or perhaps unconventional religious beliefs, something along those lines. After further thought I’m somewhat impressed that given the perception of much of the public about atheists, and the way many people are hostile to and threatened by other people’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof that the numbers are that low. So many theists only picture either their acquaintances who are anti-theists, often very hostile towards some particular religion, or religion in general.
I’m not suggesting a poll to determine the weight of the word atheist was needed. It was @jsroberts who suggested the the word has more negative connotations than what was written in the poll. I’m suggesting this poll was deliberately worded to the negative as it was written. You’re kinda missing my point by saying “does not” and “has no” to begin phrases about an atheist. Both of those terms are worded to the negative.
A fair poll would have just said “is atheist”. That’s the same idea and positive form term used in the other two choices.
To make a really fair poll, all options should be worded to the positive “____ is ____” and several additional options should exist. After all, 8.4% of our Congresscritters are currently Jewish, and they’re not the only non-Christians. People shouldn’t be given the false two options either.
Here’s the breakdown:
Protestant — 54.7%
Catholic — 30.1%
Jewish — 8.4%
Mormon — 2.6%
Orthodox — 1.3%
Unknown — 0.9%
Other Christian — 0.6%
Other Faiths — 0.6%
Muslim — 0.4%
Buddhist — 0.4%
Protestants and Catholics may hold sway in D.C., but so do white males.
I think one problem is that atheism is basically defined as the absence of something. The word ‘atheist’ leaves the meaning in Greek, but it’s still there. While atheism can be a positive thing and people often feel that they are better off without a belief in God, most don’t feel that this is the most important thing about themselves or their beliefs. Still, ‘not believing in God’ is considered important enough a factor that humanists, Buddhists, anti-theists, agnostics, non-religious people, Jewish atheists, communists etc. are considered to be part of the same group in some meaningful way, to the extent that you might feel justified in making statements about a random member’s suitability as a leader. The other groups have a large spectrum of belief, but there isn’t really a lot you can say about someone based on the fact that they don’t believe in a god.
I’m not flatly disagreeing with your statement.
The term “atheism” is a negative term to some people.
The term “Catholic” is also a negative term to some people, for various reasons.
(It’s not as neutral as “Christian”.)
The problem with the poll was that “atheists” were never asked about in the same verbal fashion that Catholics were. I was just explaining to Electrasol that I wasn’t the one who suggested what you did, and that my problem with the poll stemmed from other issues. Those issues are common tricks that pollsters use to direct people to answer polls in the way they want them to. More than one got used.
Yes, “atheism” is the absence of something. It goes back to the quote, “Atheism is a religion like ‘off’ is a TV channel.” Trying to tell people that “atheist” means you aren’t religious at all can be an alien concept for them. Even harder for them is when they like you and consider you to be a well-guided and moral person. It kinda tweaks their world view.
What you can say about atheists is this: We have every right in this country to serve no god, and to not be treated as less for that choice in life.
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The thing is - the founding fathers clearly meant for church and state to be separated. For good reason - the church would muck about with the state to its own ends. With ‘divine’ inspiration. The little things, like outlawing gay marriage.
How can you be a card-carrying member of a religious institution, and not be influenced by it, and still adhere to the principle of separation of church and state? You can’t. Unless you don’t really believe anything churchy, which leaves you a hypocrite - not a desirable quality in my personal choice of representatives.
And if you’re sincere, you’re automatically unfit to govern or represent. You can’t be sincere about churchy things and not allow it to influence your politics.
So it’s idiocy that atheism is untrusted. Blank-eyed, wool-stuffed ears idiocy.
You raise an interesting question. How can I ever not serve something I don’t believe in? And why do people always see themselves ‘serving’ god, like pieces of pie. Oops, my bad - like servants. If god were great and cool, everyone wouldn’t be bothered about the bowing and scraping - they’d just go about their daily lives in a lovely way.
The whole vocabulary is (quite deliberately) littered with pointers to the in-gang that the out-gang are fools and nuts. There is nothing absent in my life, besides hopeful wishfulness, which I disposed of long ago.
I see the whole thing as a sham. A useful sham, in tribal societies that are at eachother’s throats, and can never better the society, and need a convincing scheme to improve behaviour; but a sham nonetheless.
America, Land of the Free. Hah!
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You’ve touched on why people who follow religion are confused by atheists. Religion is sometimes central to their lives, part of their core belief system, and a life separate from that makes no sense. Asking an atheist to be “under God” is a nonsensical request. It doesn’t have to offend us emotionally, but it does offend our logic. I love my country, and will always honor its flag.
One part of the definition of “religion” is that it has rules that followers must obey. A person who believes in a god, but follows no organized religion, can be called a “theist” without it being considered incorrect nomenclature. Religion is a separate idea from personal faith.
It is very much a useful way to bind societies together, and provide some members with control over the behavior of others.
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They also feared how rich Churches might try to control members of other Churches. Thomas Jefferson was a Deist and was seriously opposed to the idea that the Catholic Church might use our young country as a new stronghold outside of Europe. Separation of Church and State was designed to protect both the State and minor Churches.
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On some level, it’s a gut thing. In anything with a Team A and a Team B, it’s fair to assume that all arguments come first from the gut and are then rationalized. I’m not saying that “a thoughtful person of faith” should “distrust an atheist prima facie,” I’m just saying that it is the case that I’d pick the other candidate. But if I had to give a reason–and these aren’t arguments for how anyone else should judge things so much as explanations of how I think about it–:
Atheism involves a rejection of the values of one’s parents, one’s family, and/or one’s culture, and a priority placed on the individual’s own reason, Enlightenment style. Hence the mythical status of Galileo, right? It doesn’t matter what anyone told him, he had figured things out for himself, and he was willing to stand against the prevailing model. But in terms of the politician I want representing me, I want somebody who has less of a focus on the individual. I want someone with a really strong sense of “us.” So Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam–all of those signal to me that someone’s coming from a background that didn’t have that Enlightenment individualism foregrounded so much, and so seem like a good sign to me. Protestantism is somewhere in the middle.
Also, atheism tends to incorporate some rejection of the religious sphere of public life, and I think that sphere is important for a healthy society. As separate as I want the church and state to be, that kind of vision for what one thinks one’s country should be like matters in public office.
It also probably contributes that I want someone who’s willing to compromise and get things done, and put aside ideology for pragmatism in pursuit of the interests of the people they represent. Therefore, someone who feels the need to be outspoken while running for office about something they know is unpopular–that signals a certain kind of upright moral character, don’t get me wrong. But that a candidate would already be hamstringing themself over something I don’t even agree with… I’d rather pick the other person. As far as that point is concerned, I don’t care if they secretly don’t really believe in God or whatnot.
In the end, if I got to sit down and get to know a candidate really well, and their goals meshed with my values well, and they seemed trustworthy, they could be a Scientologist for all I’d care. But almost no one gets to do that; we’re guessing what our candidates will be like based on very limited information. So that’s another difficult part of this survey’s design; what else do I know about the candidate? Because honestly, even something like… “Ivy League educated” means that the candidate is much more likely to have come from a position of privilege, which I wouldn’t necessarily dig. But I’d definitely consider it an asset on the side of Sonia Sotomayor.
So, in conclusion, I have a lot of sympathy for voters who want someone like them in office, just because it’s a heuristic for a lot of complicated issues. Issues that are way too complicated to be measured by a survey like this.
I think you’re totally right that that question is unbalanced! (Although, I’d weeble and say the first option should read “evangelical Protestant” if Catholicism/Orthodox Christianity etc. is a contrasting option.) Can’t say I’m looking for an “excuse”, though.
You’re making an awful lot of assumptions about atheists.
The worst one is that somehow this is the first generation of them.
I grew up in a non-religious household. We celebrated Christmas as a social extended family event, and for all the good kid stuff. I was allowed to visit any church I wanted, with any friend I wanted to go with - and I did. I went. I saw. I still didn’t get what all the fuss was about.
I’m socially very engaged, and do my best to get along with others. If you’re looking for compromise, faith doesn’t do that. The question asked wasn’t, “Do you want an outspoken atheist for office?” It was just a question about their wholly federally-protected religious rights and whether or not you’d uphold them. You wouldn’t.
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I truly appreciate your detailed response explaining your thought process. I find it fascinating because for so many of your examples, I have the exact opposite reactions. For example, I would prefer a political representative be someone who researches and thinks deeply before making policy decisions. I don’t want Joe at the bar to represent me: I want someone who can take in the complex data presented to government officials (much of which we average citizens don’t have access to) and distill it into a reasonable understanding of how it will affect his/her constituents and what that will mean in terms of a vote or decision to be made…even if that means changing position as a result. And when I hear candidates make a big deal about what great Christians they are, I assume that means the candidates just want to fit in so everyone will like them. That doesn’t make for a good politician, in my mind. And it definitely makes me wonder how well the Founders’ efforts to protect the minority will be followed.
To me, it’s not rejection when someone decides to follow a different religious path than their parents. Kids don’t grow up to be carbon copies of their parents in many ways…why assume religion is special and must be continued down the line unchanged for generations?
In other words, now I have a much better understanding what you are thinking when you hear the same things I do. Of course you come to a different conclusion, because you start from a very different place. Thanks for taking the time to answer.
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Well, while we disagree on some important fundamentals, I think you’d probably find we agree on many policy conclusions. I don’t want Joe at the bar running things either, I just have sympathy for the people who resort to that approach to voting. And as a member of a religion that’s a minority in the US, I’ve got skin in the game when it comes to putting distance between the majority’s beliefs and the minority’s rights.
Also, I didn’t mean to suggest religion is special. The idea that people make their own paths in life like that is pretty new, historically speaking–a few hundred years old?–and while the J. S. Mill way of looking at The Individual And His Fulfillment is very American, I’m not into it. My grandfather rejected his family’s way of life on the farm, an inheritance he was meant to take up. While contemporary thought tends to look at the individual going against the crowd as heroic, my intellectual predecessors would see it as cause for suspicion. Should things always continue unchanged? No! I’m really glad when people reject their parents’ racism, for instance. But in my system of thought, there’s something valuable about inherited traditions, something noble in the son or daughter who learns their parent’s trade. This probably seems even more alien than my earlier comments, but I wanted to throw it out there because it’s probably the most relevant point of divergence.
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Actually, I said explicitly it can just be the general culture’s values that one is rejecting. I had in mind children raised in non-religious households because of someone close to me who was raised in that way.
Also, you are very, very wrong about religious rights. The question asked was “First, would you be more likely or less likely to support a candidate for president who [option], or wouldn’t this matter to you?” If you think that a person has a legal right to have their religious belief not affect other people’s support of their being president (for example, if they believed Hurricane Katrina was God punishing America for gay rights or whatever it was that guy said exactly), you are mistaken. I very much doubt you would think people should have such a right, if you thought it out.
A direct quote of your own statement: “Atheism involves a rejection of the values of one’s parents, one’s family, and/or one’s culture,” you placed disobeying one’s parent’s teachings first, and only then said culture - which I’m NOT disobeying either. In this country, I have every right to not believe in god. You really did write it up like atheists are something brand new and, in, direct opposition to your statement, like they should not be trusted prima facie. You really spoke down to us collectively.
No, I’m not wrong about religious rights. In our country, a person’s religion shouldn’t be a part of how they operate as a politician. We as a public just fail to police them on this matter. Some examples will follow.
Every person, no matter their religion, has an equal right to run for office on their own merit. Extremism is the only thing that really should matter, and that - not the type of religion - is what you are actually referring to with your example. (Have you forgotten that the guy who just beat Cantor immediately ran out a claimed it was a miracle and praised God?) Of course you’re not even mentioning the fact that we already have a “House Anti-Science Committee” Several of them already act in the way you suggest might be a problem.
They’re Christian.
P.S. What you are trying to say (without saying it) is that you believe that without religion you cannot know an atheist’s moral code. Considering the behavior of those who have held office under the banner of religion, I’d hold my tongue on that. Morality is not tied to religion, it’s tied to a good upbringing and personal psychology. You really should be ashamed of yourself. You do think religion makes a person special. Your only right in obeying your religion is to obey it yourself, not force observance on others through politicians.
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because a) the ethno-racial baggage around “Muslim” is much clearer and easier to reinforce than the baggage around “Atheist”, and because there’s plenty of “evidence” that he is a muslim- he went to a muslim school for a minute, his middle name’s “hussein”, etc. and b) if someone accused him of atheism, he has a clear and effective response: “my relationship with God is very real, and I don’t have to prove it to you or anybody. I have faith, etc.”, and boom, that’s some major points with religious type. No such easy rebut for the Muslim attack.
related phenomena: the distinction between Indonesian Islam and middle eastern Islam is non-existent in US media, muslim=muslim=muslim; obama being simulteaneously accused of islamicism and radical anti-white christianity (jeremiah wright) in 2008
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