Letters to the Editor
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Faith?
Enough! I want a candidate to stand up and say there is too much of this patronizing talk about faith. This government is being stampeded into accepting religion, and the pandering of the Democrats is going to make it that much harder to disable bullshit like abstinence programs.
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Do you belieive in a talking snake?
That didn't get asked, but it might as well have.
Jeebus what a clusterphuck of a panderfest.
Isn't there something about no religious test for public office in America?
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Jesus F'ing Christ!
Can we get god out of our Government already?
I didn't see it, but I caught some of the highlights on NPR this morning.
What bugs me the most is how all candidates feel the need to pander to the god vote. Both of the had what to me are disturbing words about how god guides, or informs, their choices. It's language like this that we heard from Bush, like they're hearing voices in their head. I'd like to think that our elected officials can think outside of the highly subjective bible box.
Side note: There was an interesting review of a book in the NYT Book Review on Sunday - "Founding Faith" - Talking about the complexities of the faith of the founding fathers.
Can't we on the left do good for it's own sake, not as some exterior obligation to god?
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I'm tired of Democrats trying to win by being alterna-Republicans
If there is a "God gap" it's media created. This focus on Christian fundamentalism as a mirror into the character of a candidate is a trap and the reliance on a veneer of piety is a big part of the black hole this nation was shoved into in 2000.
The people who knight the candidates with the mighty sword of Jesus aren't ever gonna bestow that mantle on a Democrat ... no matter how many scriptures they quote.
Besides, does anyone really believe Hillary is a devout Christian?? I don't. She's a political panderer .. that's her true religion.
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Can you say "whited sepulchers," or will someone call that racist?
Two weeks ago the talking heads and right wing smear machine couldn't stop trashing Barack Obama for not "distancing himself" from the church he's attended for 20 years, and the pastor who baptized his children. The reason for all this guilt by association, of course, was that Rev. Wright (who by the way served his country in Vietnam, unlike most of the Very Patriotic Bush Administration and its enablers) said pretty much the same things that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said after 9/11, except that he phrased it in terms of black anger instead of white male anger.
And now, because Obama quite correctly pointed out that in bad economic times, when people feel bitter about the state of their country, they cling to their core values and consequently are vulnerable to demagogic manipulation on issues relating to them, he's suddenly not religious enough.
Reality check, folks, who are some of the people in public life today who make the most noise about how much their Christian faith means to them? I think of Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, who more or less precisely correspond to what Jesus was describing when he spoke of people who pray loudly on street corners but don't live by their faith.
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I watched it
I watched it and I was troubled by everyone's concern about pandering. Until the very end.
Barack Obama then put on his constitutional law scholar hat and talked about the separation of church and state, and the idea that candidates, if they so desire, should reveal the moral and religious ideals that guide them, but when in public life, they must have the ability to listen to all, including every faith and atheists, and look for common human ground, and make decisions under law.
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But not science?
I agree this is a fine kind of forum, as long as the questions are actually smart and useful in distinguishing the difference between candidates who rely on a tradition of faith to enrich the possibilities of action in the world and to see a deeper humanity in everyone, including our enemies, and ones who seek public office to impose litmus tests and orthodoxies on government workers and policies. Such a forum for a large audience could have exposed GWB for the retrograde, undemocratic ideologue that he is.
But these same candidates have declined to participate in Science Debate 2008's forum on science and government policy, which was to be be held at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Clarifying one's stand on faith in public life may be helpful for getting elected, but one's attitude toward science will actually matter IF a candidate's elected. I think Americans are entitled to know if they're going to get another faith-based presidency that sees science as just another set of facts to be ignored, or worse, manipulated to fit the decisions they've already made.
Go to sciencedebate2008.com if this strikes a chord with you.
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You know
one of these days I would like to see an atheist actually run for office.
Okay, that atheist stands less of a chance than a pedophile with a prediliction for canabalism (Who would have the backing of the religious right) but it would be quite amusing watching someone actually take on the whole "We must have faith" thing on that level.
Up until that day comes though, this sort of event is going to give me pause about whichever candidate I support.
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The Passion of the Chief
No, I didn't watch.
The fact is that although there is theoretically no test of religion for public office, we are a long way from the situation where a (wo)man may be judged by the content of her/his character rather than by the religion she/he pretends to believe in.
None of the candidates for office really believe in the faiths they profess, yet to declare themselves to be atheists would be political suicide.
Where candidates shoot themselves in the foot is when their professions of religiosity are transparently false, for example 1) when they quote the Bible incorrectly like Howard Dean in such a way that even a hardened infidel like myself sees right through their pretense, or 2) when they make nonsensical statements like George Bush Jr. saying that Jesus is his favorite philosopher when any fool knows Jesus was not a philosopher, or when 3) they fail to have a basic understanding of religious history or ideas, such as that of a Just War, a Crusade, martyrdom, or 4) they do not understand the difference between creation myths and science, oir 5) they have no comprehension of the development of Christian thought relative to abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, slavery, and so on.
It is the lies!
For example when Huckabee was asked about how his religious beliefs would influence his administration, he cited the Golden Rule of doing unto others as one would wish they do unto you which is a general bromide that no candidate would have any difficulty agreeing with, and yet he failed to mention any of the dogma peculiar to his own branch of Christianity that many people would find repulsive.
For example in the furore over Terry Schiavo when politicians decided they would overturn the courts when they didn't like the verdict, no politician was able to come up with a theological sound rationale for interfering with the judicial process.
During a teleconference with reporters on January 15, 2004, Howard Dean claimed "no doctor is going to do an abortion on a live fetus. That doesn't happen. Doctors don't do that. If they do, they'll get their license pulled, as well they should." How can someone be President if he is a doctor who does not know what an abortion is?
Claims that the US is founded on "Judeo-Christian values". Inasmuch as there are common "Judeo-Christian" values, these are the values of the Old Testament (thou shalt not steal, an eye for an eye) rather than the values of the New Testament (Good Samaritans, all men are brothers). But in any case this is a lie, because the Constitution is much more heavily based on ideas of the eighteenth century enlightenment, and in fact ideas like thou shalt not steal, kill, commit adultery are common to the legal codes of all nations regardless of religion.