Could an Atheist Democrat ever win the Presidency of the USA?

[Stormspellz]

not any time soon

[apepi]

It's hard to determine who is and who isn't being serious here.

I do my best to confuse you.

[Stormspellz]

We do have a half black muslim in there now so why not have an atheist?

.....keep this garbage to yourself, I would ask for proff but I know you don't have any just random rhetoric talking points. If any thing is more a Unitarianism or even closet atheist not muslim

[Spectral]

It's hard to determine who is and who isn't being serious here.

While I try to be restrained and polite about it here because of forum policies, I'm one of the more atheisty atheists around these parts. I really have no patience for superstition. If something I said seems counter to that, it's almost definitely snark.

[vindicatorx]

As a fairly open-minded, accepting, educated, yet devoutly religious Southerner, I can add a little insight to that -- It confuses me as to how anyone could look at all the things that had to line up JUST RIGHT for life to even exist on our planet, much less evolve into the thinking -- feeling -- beings that we are, and just shrug their shoulder and go "eh, it was just all chance." How can you NOT look at our beautiful planet, and not feel that SOME divine being had some hand in it?

Very easily we can and have explained via science how the majority of this has come to be. Logically speaking we have the information available it is not rational to say hmm it's pretty and complex someone must have made it that way.

Edit for another point -- I'm also confused at how you can feel love, hate, anger, pain, any emotion really...look into your lover's eyes, see their true self...see innocence in a child's eyes...and feel like humans don't have souls, that we die, the end, no more, goodbye. I don't hate on it...I just REALLY don't understand how someone could feel like that.

Again what are emotions they are the chemical response in our brains we know and can explain why they happen. Animals have fear anger and show affection why do you think we are the only special animals that go on?

[Lovechile]

Because that's frankly not a cogent argument at all. Lots of things occur that require long odds to happen for them to occur, and there's not really even any evidence that the odds against life existing in such a vast universe are particularly long. Aesthetics aren't really an argument at all. On the contrary, I'd ask, "hey, if a really cool divine being made all these neat stuff, why did that asshole make Ebola virus?".

What's to say that divine being didn't make life anywhere else? And that asshole made the Ebola virus because LIFE IS LIFE. He didn't just make humans. I reckon everything gets a fair chance to come out on top.

1. The mistake is assuming that humans are a necessary or desired outcome. If you flip a coin 16 times, you may have a 1 in 65,536 chance of getting all heads, but you have a 100% chance of getting a series of 16 coin flips. We attach particular meaning to certain outcomes, in the same way we attach additional meaning to the fact that we exist, but in reality, 16 heads is no rarer than 14 heads, a tails, and another head or any other permutation.

2. Nothing about that logically leads to the existence of a soul. It doesn't go anywhere near that.

I guess that makes sense, and maybe it's just my security blankie that I feel like there has to be a bigger point to life. Otherwise, what's the point?

Very easily we can and have explained via science how the majority of this has come to be. Logically speaking we have the information available it is not rational to say hmm it's pretty and complex someone must have made it that way.
Again what are emotions they are the chemical response in our brains we know and can explain why they happen. Animals have fear anger and show affection why do you think we are the only special animals that go on?

Just because I believe God made the world, doesn't mean that I think he snapped his fingers and *poof* there was life. If you're going to make something, doesn't it make sense to make it have order and structure and he had to build things out of something...I know most Christians go "*hiss* science is the devil" but sadly I have brains in my head ;p I believe God and science can go hand in hand. Like I said, just because He created life doesn't mean that he created it without reason or just let shit go all willy nilly.

and no. I don't. What makes us better than any other lifeform?

[Deleted]

Again what are emotions they are the chemical response in our brains we know and can explain why they happen. Animals have fear anger and show affection why do you think we are the only special animals that go on?

Because human beings have mapped their own genome and everything else hasn't.

Let me know when cats put a cat on the moon.

[Spectral]

What's to say that divine being didn't make life anywhere else? And that asshole made the Ebola virus because LIFE IS LIFE. He didn't just make humans. I reckon everything gets a fair chance to come out on top.

I'm not impressed by a divine being that's less benign than I am. I can conceive of a world that's otherwise identical to this one, only without virii that make people bleed from every conceivable location that someone can bleed from, until they die an excruciating death.

So, sure, a deity is at least conceivable in principle, but if it were real, it'd surely have all the character and maturity of a malevolent child putting a magnifying glass to an ant farm to watch them burn.

[vindicatorx]

I guess that makes sense, and maybe it's just my security blankie that I feel like there has to be a bigger point to life. Otherwise, what's the point?

What's the point? So you live your life just waiting for it to end for something good to happen? To answer your question for me I live my life for my friends, family, and I enjoy the things i experience in this life. I live for today and what awaits me tomorrow I have never understood how people can live day to day just waiting to die for the prize. You are correct in your assessment that it is a security blanket. We all die and it is hard to accept that outcome for many people.

[Fexus]

I guess that makes sense, and maybe it's just my security blankie that I feel like there has to be a bigger point to life. Otherwise, what's the point?

Honestly my purpose being the mandate of a celestial dictator to worship and obey him or else makes me feel anything but secure.

[Lovechile]

What's the point? So you live your life just waiting for it to end for something good to happen? To answer your question for me I live my life for my friends, family, and I enjoy the things i experience in this life. I live for today and what awaits me tomorrow I have never understood how people can live day to day just waiting to die for the prize. You are correct in your assessment that it is a security blanket. We all die and it is hard to accept that outcome for many people.

On the contrary. I live my life every day, for my husband, my nephews I help raise, for myself. I'm happy and healthy and I do everything I want to. I don't sit around and wait to die.

[vindicatorx]

On the contrary. I live my life every day, for my husband, my nephews I help raise, for myself. I'm happy and healthy and I do everything I want to. I don't sit around and wait to die.

Isn't that enough?

[Mnevis]

Comparing the Bible to Lord of the Rings isn't the worst comparison, but its also not 100% accurate. The Bible is, if nothing else, historical fiction. For example, it's a fact that the Jews had an exodus from Egypt, and there's a pretty good chance they were led by a man named Moses. Heck, the story that he was an Egyptian prince before he led the Jews is also quite possible. However, there's no proof that he actually spoke to a god. Hence 'historical fiction'.

This is from a ways up the thread, but I wanted to comment. It's not an accepted fact that the Exodus was a real thing.

A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness, and most archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as "a fruitless pursuit"

Wiki

NOVA did an excellent documentary a few years back on the most recent archaeology and understanding of the history of ancient Israel.

I say this not to be a shitlord, but because I think an understanding of the Biblical stories as mostly metaphor for natural processes occurring in ancient history is deeper and more interesting. The Egyptians had control of Canaan, their empire and some of the other bronze age societies in the area suffered a setback, the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which upset the balance of power enough that the peoples who came to call themselves the nation of Israel had freedom and space to prosper. This transition from bands of hilltop nomadic herders to a nation-state is what came to be immortalized in the book of Exodus.

It's history, but not in the modern sense. It's closer to fiction in the modern sense, but it's neither. It's the story of a people and their religion. It's true enough, but we moderns understand the word "true" far differently. Most of the Bible is not true in our sense, yet half of the USA insists that it is, and that I'm going to hell for not believing their assertions about it. And they definitely would not vote for me if I was running for office while openly holding that position (even if it wasn't something I made a big deal about). It's changing, but it'll take more than one more generation for an atheist President.

[Asrialol]

Kinda disgusting that people are so sure it wouldn't happen any time soon. What does religion have to do with politics? Nothing. And it should stay that way.

[SocialJusticeWarrior]

Atheist democrat? But you repeat yourself, no? If current immigration trends continue it won't matter what democrats believe because they'll always win (until La Raza gets back together). That being said, the democrat that is at least nominally religious and makes a show of it would probably beat out the blatantly atheist one. Mainstream atheism doesn't stop with disbelief in god, it comes with connotations of affected and condescending behavior that is not like to enamor the proles, even if curtailed on the campaign trail. There is a danger of tacitly seeming 'above it all, above you mere mortals who cling to vestiges of the past for hope', like a Mitt Romney without the religion.

And while American politicians are no longer 'of the people', not even minority candidates whose life experiences hardly mirror that of their less advantaged peers (Obama), the one who at least makes an effort to seem like 'one of us' will be the likely winner. Atheist might be able to counter that by bribing voter demographics with aid programs since people can't make dinners out of a good personality alone, but if the other candidate promises the same things, then it goes to he who seems the most pious.

[Deathcries]

If Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot could do it, I don't see why any other atheist couldn't make it to any office.

[Lothaeryn]

Maybe subtlety is lost on you, but I found it pretty obvious that Muslims were on that list because its a public perception and not his. The hint is that the list was about people not being trusted in general. It wasn't a list of people he personally distrusts.

except he said:

... and we didn't even blow anything up!!! :P

Which gives the premise that, even if he does not agree with the demographic survey, he agrees in some form to the connotations against them, which does infer a sweeping generalization bias.

If its not of his own opinion then he really did a poor job of emphasizing it.

[rayvio]

yeah, I'd say it's more cynical than disgusting. and like a lot of cynical thinking, it's deeply ground in realism
but I still think the US is a lot closer to accepting atheism than some would think. but nobody seems to really be raising the issue a lot in a constructive manner (in US politics, not in these forums. I'm pleasantly surprised at the level of mature discussion here from all sides of the issue) right now

[vindicatorx]

yeah, I'd say it's more cynical than disgusting. and like a lot of cynical thinking, it's deeply ground in realism
but I still think the US is a lot closer to accepting atheism than some would think. but nobody seems to really be raising the issue a lot in a constructive manner (in US politics, not in these forums. I'm pleasantly surprised at the level of mature discussion here from all sides of the issue) right now

Most religious people have the false impression atheists have no morals and do whatever they want.

- - - Updated - - -

If Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot could do it, I don't see why any other atheist couldn't make it to any office.

Like this everyone always loves to list 3 guys who did shitty things and just happened to be atheist. I mean it's not like we could begin to scratch the surface compared to all the people who did shitty things in the name of religion.

[zorkuus]

Kinda disgusting that people are so sure it wouldn't happen any time soon. What does religion have to do with politics? Nothing. And it should stay that way.

Right... unfortunately religion is in politics so why are you so disgusted at people who see this?