Comments on: Politician’s moral compass

By: Traveling Hypothesis » No shortcut to reputation

Traveling Hypothesis » No shortcut to reputation — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:46:27 +0000

[...] U.S. conservatives, and their core of evangelical Christian voters, may now have to face up to the question of where we get our morals. [...]

By: Traveling Hypothesis » Why there are no atheist politicians

Traveling Hypothesis » Why there are no atheist politicians — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:50:18 +0000

[...] to share moral views with a religious voter, even if she isn’t the same religion. I’ve already discussed this fallacy of where our morals come from in some detail, but I overlooked another challenge potential [...]

By: Traveling Hypothesis » Should conservatives choose between Rand and Jesus?

Traveling Hypothesis » Should conservatives choose between Rand and Jesus? — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:11:45 +0000

[...] is likely that most politicians are not truly believers, but rather succumbing to the oft reported (even by me) distrust of atheists in American society. Unfortunately, their tacit support of religious [...]

By: dan

dan — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 05:03:43 +0000

Oh wait, one more thought:

I just saw a democratic presidential debate where audience members got to ask a question. One of the questions was “what is your favorite scripture?” Of course all of the candidates came up with one. It just reminded me that in our puritanical country no one could even get close to getting elected unless they at least pretended to be intimately familiar with the bible and had a suitable number of photo ops at church on Sunday. Ugh. It’s ironic that the european countries, which had a long head start on us with all this nonsense, are far ahead of us on weaning off of it.

By: dan

dan — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 05:00:45 +0000

This whole topic makes me quite sad. I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion” where he looks at this in some detail. He argues (quite persuasively) that humans have an inherent sense of morals, and when people say things like “if you don’t believe in god, how do you know what is right and what is wrong?” it is so easy to turn it around and reply “you mean if you found out there was no god you would have no sense of right and wrong? The only reason you don’t cheat and steal and rape etc etc is because the bible told you it was wrong?” But he also makes the point that those people who rely on the bible for their morals actually *do* use their inherent morality, because christians take some parts of the bible literally and other parts as metaphor or as out of step with the times. If you take all of the bible literally, you would have to believe that we should stone people to death who are caught working on the sabbath. So the question is, how do you judge what parts of the bible to take literally and what parts to consider metaphor? The judgment you are making is relying on your inherent morality. He also outlines why natural selection would favor certain moral judgments.

I think back in the McCarthy era atheism was lumped in with communism and other “evils,” in fact I think I recall that they tried to spin that it was the godlessness of Russia that made the country so “bad.”

By: erin

erin — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:25:36 +0000

Fascinating piece! I wonder if there’s research that shows the percentages of atheists in jail. My guess is that atheism is pretty low not just because so many “find” religion while there (where was it hiding?), but also because even those who don’t practice probably don’t consider themselves atheists – they just don’t drink from the God fountain.

Why is the concept of atheism so foreign to people? Why does it scare them? I know a couple who have been happily married (well mostly) for 45 years – he’s an atheist, she’s a devout catholic. Clearly they’ve decided that the beliefs of one do not affect the beliefs of the other.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die. no wait a minute -that’s bs!