Atheists are the embattled minority, not the religious

The more my agnostic mind ponders Mitt Romney's Faith in America speech, the more I get irritated by it. It's nonsensical – his notion that the United States is threatened by a "religion of secularism."

I only wish.

This country is one of the most overtly religious in the world. We vie with Saudi Arabia and other super-fundamentalist nations for the dishonor of having the most religious crazies per capita.

Yesterday I said on my Church of the Churchless blog that Mitt Romney's weird religion is relevant to voters. His chosen faith, Mormonism, is strange even by religious standards. It's "revelation" came via golden plates.

In 1827 the golden plates supposedly were dug up in New York by the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. They'd been protected by an angel named Moroni and engraved by Mormon, a pre-Columbian prophet-warrior. Smith translated the plates by looking into seer stones called Urim and Thummin.

Yet it's eminently possible to run for president of the United States and believe in this unbelievable stuff. More: it's not only possible, it's required.

An atheist candidate would be dead in the campaign water. Probably ditto for an agnostic. It's extremely difficult to conceive that anyone could be elected to a high public office in this country if he or she honestly said, "I don't believe in God," or "I don't know if there is a God."

Of course, nobody else knows either. But lots of people think God exists, and when it comes to God, subjective thoughts are the presumed reality– not anything objectively true.

Jack Oceano asks, "An Atheist as President of the United States?" His right-on answer:

Americans will not elect an atheist who doesn't hide his beliefs. In fact, atheism carries such a stigma in the United States that most Americans will not even conceal the fact that they wouldn't vote for a candidate who declared he was an atheist.

If an American stated outright that he or she would not vote for a candidate because the candidate was a woman, an African-American, or a Jew, that American would be criticized, ostracized, called a hateful bigot. But if that same American were to say that he or she would not vote for an atheist, there would be no such backlash. And sadder still, most Americans would agree.

Sometimes, half-seriously, a friend or acquaintance tells me that I should run for public office. My usual response is, "No way. My past would come back to haunt me."

But I'd have some ready responses if the unthinkable ever happened, and I found myself on the campaign trail. If I were asked whether I'd ever used psychedelic drugs, I'd say: "Absolutely. And I can promise that even if I was high, I'd be able to make better decisions than my opponent."

That'd get a laugh.

Because the whole issue of drug use isn't a big deal to most voters. Hardly anybody cared about our current president's cocaine days. Or Bill Clinton's marijuana use (though he supposedly didn't inhale, which also should earn a laugh). Barack Obama's pot smoking is pretty much a non-issue.

However, imagine if I were asked, "Do you believe in God?" and said, "Heck, no. Why should I?" I doubt that I could be elected dog catcher, even though I've got a dog, and I'm pretty good at catching her.

So here's where our befuddled country is at: If you have blind faith in a divine being for whom there's no evidence, you're considered to be qualified to serve in a public office. If you kneel at the altar of reason, science, and factual reality, you're facing a steep uphill battle in an election.

If you ever blasted your consciousness with illegal drugs, though, no problem. Probably because religion requires the same sort of Far out! way of looking at the world.

Unbelief in God should be as irrelevant to a person's electability as Mitt Romney wants his Mormonism to be. Only when it is can we say that there truly isn't a religious test for public office in the United States.

Comments

[Buddy Greed]

Mormon beliefs are pretty hard to swallow (how do they get people to buy that stuff?), and Romney's statement that freedom depends on religion is absurd. Wasn't it Chris Hitchens who is offering $10,000 or something like that to anyone who can prove that any ethical behavior is dependent on religious belief? He's made a safe bet.

Now, Romney seems to be a pretty sharp and pragmatic guy who knows how to get things done. Maybe he's just never stepped outside his beliefs and taken a look at them. It's like he's on auto-pilot. I think a lot of religious people are that way. Afraid to say, what if all this isn't true? Then what do I do? It's safe to believe because others do and they all can't be wrong. Right? Wrong, in my opinion.

About belief in God Brian wrote: "Of course, nobody else knows either."

Well, maybe they know, but they can't prove it. All they can say is it's here, but you have to see it for yourself.

[Manjit]

This is an incredibly thought provoking post.

Very good points made.

[HM]

It is said that a Jewish Rabbi about 2000 years ago was born from a Virgin mother, God is his father, he walked on water, and kinda like did what Egypt ion Gods were famous for. Some other Jewish folks started talking about him in Rome and Greece, his image turned to look like Alexander, his birth day became like on the same day the Roman God was born, and like 300 yeas later a Roman Emperor who never became Christian until he was on his death bed converted and then suddenly we had a new God. He is now not only God's son, but his sole and himself. Then they wrote this book called bible with and put in there all kinds of myth and stories that was going around 1700 years ago.
We are in 21st Century, and we have seen the Mars up close and walked on Moon and we have learned about the earth and universe and the age of the world that we know, we have space stations and we know all life has evolved and is evolving.
Americans, have taken this Jewish, Roman story from 1700 years ago as their religion and they actually live by it.
During last 1700 years the Church has executed and killed, or raped or molested more people than all the wars in history of man.
I don't get it.
For my life I don't get this.
I am not saying there is no creator, actually I personally believe in a creator, because I feel its existence. But this creator, is not a man, or nothing like this bible story. I don't know what it is. I just feel it. But I don't go killing people, pushing them to believe my belief, or even teach my belief.

What gives these folks the right to impose their belief on me or like me? Why the government by the people for the people has to be Christian?
I cannot accept my God has a son that was executed like a criminal so that what I do that is not nice is fogiven by his dady.
I cannot believe people follow this idealogy. Just listen to it. It sound strange.
Doesn't add up.
Read first 3 pages of the bible, and you find nothing ads up.
Nothing.
How can they believe in this stuff is beyond me. Pushing it on us is worst

[poetryman69]

Capt Shenanigans of the anti-Easter Bunny brigade here! Dedicating my life to the defeat of something I don't believe in because apparently, that's what really, really intelligent people do? Looking to hook up with the ban the Santa Claus coalition so that we may expend the sum total of our existence battling against the figments of someone else's imagination 'cause we are really, really smart and that's what really smart people do?

[Eric]

And you forgot to mention that both the tablets and the seer stones were taken back by the angel so we have no proof of their existence. Hmm, that was convenient.

I would vote for an atheist, even an agnostic, over a bible-thumping cretin anyday!
Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie, who was his own father, can make you live forever if you simbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood, and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove some evil force from your soul, present in all humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat the fruit of a magic tree.... Yeah, that's likely!

[Deist]

People have a difficult time swallowing Mormonism, not because it is so much different on the absurdity scale as Christianity, but because it is so new. We give Christianity and the other big religions a pass for the most part, because people were still trying to explain thunder and lightning when these religions were created. It's sort of folksy and we overlook some of the bigger gaps in exchange for the values gained from the allegories and parables, etc. But Mormonism was created in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. We're talking post-Enlightment period. Science and all that book-learning. It's hard to swallow, even compared to some of the eyebrow-raising facets of Christianity.

Religion, in my view, plays a big role in politics for two distinct reasons. First, politicians have put themselves on a pedastal above the masses. Those masses like to know that politicians (whether fabricated or not) view themselves as accountable to a higher power. If you are not accountable, how can you be trusted with the public's money and welfare?

Second, is that politics is about connecting with people. To come out and say that you don't believe in a higher power...or that you prefer higher power who is in the regional minority, is not a way to connect with people. We go nuts when we learn a candidate's favorite book or tv show...because it give us something in common. To say they eschew religion when a vast majority of the people don't, is to say at best that you don't have that common sense of accountability with the people, and at worst, you are saying you are smarter than they are because you have stepped out of the cave and stopped looking at your shadow on the wall. Neither of those is very inspiring when it comes to voting.

[poetryman69]

My proof is that you people call me names. As for what I think of you, fuzzy snuggle bunnies and cuddly kittens in your general direction. All that you can stand. I don't need to disrespect you what you don't believe. But don't worry, I accept your admission of defeat gracefully. All you have to do is call me a single name--as opposed to say a logical reasoned argument, and I win!!!

Thanks. 'cause like that guy with the puppet in movie Magic, we all know, you can't help yourself. Why is that?....

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

In the antepenultimate paragraph of your essay I believe you meant to place "don't" between the words "you have" (or else change "unqualified" to "qualified"). Such would make your statement(s) more consistent with one another.

Robert Paul Howard

[Robert Riovite]

If you don't believe in God, then how do you explain yourself and the world around you? Aren't you left with "pure chance" for an answer? That can't be right.

[Brian]

Robert, are you familiar with modern Big Bang cosmology? While complicated, the basic ideas are pretty simple. There isn't agreement among scientists on all of the ideas, just as there isn't agreement among religious believers about God.

But science has compelling arguments against the necessity of a creator who stands outside of the creation. The universe simply is. It doesn't need to have a creator. For then we'd have to ask, "Who created the creator?"

I mean, whether you say "the universe is" or "God is," at some point there has to be something that simply is -- with no cause behind it. Otherwise we're left with an endless series of causes. That could be true, but ending with an "is" is more satisfying and believable, to my mind at least.

The universe has its own ways of going about things. Chance is one of them. That's one of the foundations of quantum theory. But chance is lawful in its own way, being governed by laws of probability.

It's sort of like evolution. This involves "chance" mutations, but natural selection of which mutations are advantageous has nothing to do with chance. Similarly, chance is involved in the Big Bang (in the form of quantum fluctuations), but how those chance events turned into the universe we know now isn't chancy at all.