Revere reminds us of the low esteem in which atheists are held, and specifically, that we are regarded as much less trustworthy than Mormons, a question brought up by the candidacy of Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (24% would refuse to vote for a Mormon for president, while 53% are against the idea of an atheist president). It’s hard to feel much solidarity with our Mormon countrymen, though, when one of their more prominent representatives can say something like this.
We need to have a person of faith lead the country.
It seems to me a little odd that people can have temper tantrums over a campaign worker criticizing Catholics, while a presidential candidate outright disenfranchising everyone in the country who rejects the nonsense of religious belief doesn’t seem to be stirring much concern at all. All together, everyone: Mitt Romney is a bigot who does not deserve to be in public office.
Romney should be pressed on what he means by ‘faith,’ and whether he considers his particular faith equivalent to all others. I’m sure he would invite the opportunity to have Merkins discussing the intricacies of Mormonism.
Only 53% of people are against the idea of an atheist president? I hear so much hate talk against atheists that I thought for sure the number would be higher.
I am from MA the Land of Romney (I also think he went to High school with my older brother at the snobby Tabor Academy).
I am sick of Mitt. Most of his entire time he spent here as a “Political leader” was trying to suppress gay marriage, using the idea of “Let the people vote”. I think we should face it, “The people” are idiots and bigots, and more often than not, they vote on the side of prejudice. Mitt shows no sign of understanding the job of the Government when it comes to protecting minorities from the the Majority. With his reasoning, it was wrong when judges made it legal for people of separate “races” to marry, because the greater majority of people were against such at that time…
Another thing that gets to me, is that Romney was not originally against gay marriage. He only jumped on it when it became a hot-button issue when Bush started to use that shiny object to confuse the American people during his political campaigns.
I wouldn’t use the word “bigot” here as it sets you up for trouble later, even though literally it makes sense. Then we’re “bigots” when we criticize religious hogwash – it opens the door for all sorts of silly relativism. I try to reserve it for bias against more intrinsic characterists (race, sex, sexual orientation, eg) than beliefs and opinions – I find it frames the discussion better.
Raelians have lots of faith. So do most Ufo cultists. Why is “faith” automatically considered a positive attribute?
Wasn’t it not too long ago that people thought the idea of a Catholic being president of this country to be anathema, too?
I want my leaders to decide things based on objective reason, not faith. They are free to have whatever faith they want, FSM included, but if I hear much about it, I will assume they are driven by faith which has led to ruin so many times it is hard to keep count.
We need to have a person of faith lead the country.
Why not just settle for competance.
We need to have a person of faith lead the country.
Did anyone ask the obvious next question:
“Why?”
I don’t see how that statement is any more bigoted than “We need to have a liberal to lead the country” or “We need someone who believes in reason to lead the country.” Telling people whom you’d rather see in the White House is in no way even close to disenfranchisement of those you’d rather not elect.
Just as I wouldn’t like to be represented by someone I consider deluded on matters of great importance, I see it as totally reasonable for “people of faith” not to vote for atheists or those of hell-bound religions.
Hi!
I’ve been lurking for a while. I enjoy reading about other atheist’s beliefs, and I have to say I really enjoy your blog. I was finally compelled to comment because of the Asshattery of my former Governor, Mitt Romney. The fact that ANYONE is seriously considering him for president creeps me out. He ran here as a social liberal/fiscal conservative oxymoron. He didn’t even have legal residency, if I remember correctly. After he started considering a national run, he began to prop up his conservative cred. He couldn’t really do that much damage here, as we are pretty much the bluest a state can get without trying to extradite GWB from Crawford to stand trial for crimes against humanity. (Although I have heard it mentioned…) But the thought of what he could do with the whole propaganda machine of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy behind him frightens me a little.
I would much rather vote for a trained chimp than Mitt. Hell, I would vote for an untrained chimp first.
Sorry for rambling, keep up the good work.
–brtkrbzhnv
There is no hell and one doesn’t “believe in reason”.
Romney is a pro waffler from the get go. The local media (I’m in RI so we get MA news too.) has been doing a little smash job on him. So too has the national media.
They’ve got clips of him in support of abortion rights, gay rights, etc. some years back.
Of course he now tries to distance himself in order to become a darling of the religious right. But that same religious right wants nothing to do with him because of his Mormon beliefs.
Meanwhile in RI our Governor Don Carcieri, speaker of the house William Murphy, and now under investigation president of the senate Joseph Montalbano are all staunchly opposed to a gay marriage bill that for the first time last year cleared the judicial committee. All cite their Catholicism. So I find them just as reprehensible as Mormons.
But… he has a great chin. And he looks like a Mountie, according to Chris Matthews. People like Mounties.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200702140001
Also: please refer to him as Willard. That’s his real first name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! PZ Myers calling someone a bigot! Can you sense the hypocrisy? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
While we all should work to keep him from getting elected, it is a bit odd to call on him to resign. He does not hold any office to resign from.
Hush, now. Don’t confuse PZ with inconvenient facts when he’s trying to make a witty point. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.
This is supposed to be news to somebody?
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! PZ Myers calling someone a bigot! Can you sense the hypocrisy? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!”
If one is a bigot against bigots, then it sorta cancels out the being a bigot factor. Don’t believe me? Then let’s look how silly this sounds:
“You have some type of problem with racists there buddy? What, are you some type of bigot, or something?”
See how silly?
“If one is a bigot against bigots, then it sorta cancels out the being a bigot factor. Don’t believe me? Then let’s look how silly this sounds:
“You have some type of problem with racists there buddy? What, are you some type of bigot, or something?”
See how silly?”
Hush now. Don’t confuse DSM with inconvenient facts when he is trying to make a witty point about inconvenient facts.
Besides, how can you question someone with so many witty HAHAHAHAHAs posted to back himself up?
Did anyone see Chuck Hagel (R-NE) on Meet the Press today?
He included agnostics in the cross-section of Americans:
“You know Tim, war does not discriminate as to casualties. Republicans, Independents, agnostics, Bolsheviks, Democrats all die in war and that’s what the polls show very clearly across America today about position on where we are in Iraq.”
Notice that he mentions Democrats AFTER agnostics and Bolsheviks. It is also interesting that he includes agnostics in a list of political groups.
As noted by a few other Massachusetts residents, the really great thing about Mitt is that you don’t have to not vote for him because he’s a Mormon, he gives you so many other reasons. He’s an opportunist huckster, plain and simple, and I can’t understand what a Republican voter would see in him.
By the way, first time poster, long time lurker.
Oops. My post should have begun with “putting a quarter in the troll-food vending machine now.”
Just being a perfectionist.
Bill Maher had a bit about him the other night too. The only video that someone put of it on Youtube doesn’t seem to work and it isn’t on the HBO site either:
BTW, that Meet the Press clip from MSNBC won’t load unless you are running IE. Is it time to bust some trusts yet?
It seems to me a little odd that people can have temper tantrums over a campaign worker criticizing Catholics, while a presidential candidate outright disenfranchising everyone in the country who rejects the nonsense of religious belief doesn’t seem to be stirring much concern at all.
Especially when President Bush, a professed person of faith himself, intentionally misled us into a needless war in Iraq. I am sick and tired of all the hypocrisy from theists about how morally superior they are to atheists, given that their own record of immoral shit stinks to high heaven, just like everyone else’s.
and which would those be?
Faith in what?
Also, is “person of faith” supposed to be code for Bible Thumper?
I’m a Mormon atheist. I guess if I ran for President only my mom would vote for me. It is actually quite easy to slip from Mormonism with all this absolutes and hyperdogmatic beliefs. For me, it was a refusal to believe that ‘the Devil controls the water’. At the age of 17, I was treated as a heretic in my congregation because I rightfully thought the teaching was silly. I also accepted the idea of evolution. Man, did that blow the top off of local church leaders. After that, all the other other absolutisms of the religion just crumbled. Many of my Mormon friends now include themselves as ex-believers.
I really hate the expression “person/people of faith” … it makes it sound as if religionists are the ones who are vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination, by analogy to “person/people of colour”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’m on a one-person campaign to discredit that expression, but I’m not having a lot of luck so far. Who wants to join in?
“I would vote for an untrained chimp first.”
Bush can’t run again.
Russell Blackford, I’ve been on that campaign for a while now too. I don’t seem to be getting much accomplished though.
Russell, I think it would be nice to hear this from Obama in response to Romney’s statement:
“I think we need a person of color to lead this country.”
Then again, Obama himself has a mighty god he leans on when talking on the stump, so I won’t hold my breath.
What does that mean?
“For me, it was a refusal to believe that ‘the Devil controls the water’.”
What the hell?
Please, please, please explain this. I’m dying to know.
And I gotta say: As much as Andrew Sullivan gets up my nose (and he gets up my nose a LOT), good for him for his rant about this.
Personally, I’m having difficulty with the Mormon belief that there is an invisible planet in the Solar System, on which Jesus lives. There is only one invisible planet, Skaro, and that’s where the Daleks live. If there were another, the Daleks would have exterminated them.
That, and the undergarments.
I think Romney will end up being a publicity decoy while they prime Huckabee in Arkansas to be the front runner, the sleeper candidate that turns into a bombshell. My thoughts are that the Republicans are going to try pulling a Bill Clinton candidacy off. The basic ingredients are there: a faith-based conservative, he’s Arkansan, he’ll rake in 98% of the southern vote the second he announces his bid, and he has managed to stay out of the limelight for the most part. I think this makes him ripe for the picking on their part. By this time next year all the publicity-hogging repub candidates you’re hearing about now will be well wrung out by the MSM, and the republicans will prop up Huckabee as the squeaky clean choice.
As far as the Democratic candidates go, I have no idea who I really want to be the front-runner, but whoever it ends up being had better be unusually fast on his toes, great with improv, and very likeable. At this point, as much as I like Obama and the way he’s been playing his hand lately, Edwards is about the best thing they’ve got aside from Bill Richardson. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the Dems will put Richardson up for consumption over the next 12 months…
I thought the number of people who rejects an atheist presidente in USA is higher…
This is really one of the better posts on the whole issue yet.
Good stuff, Prof.
The Satan/water thing came from a trip that Joseph Smith took down the Missouri in hired boats. He was unhappy with the way the boatmen were handling things and decided to take over. His bungling of things almost got everyone killed and so he quickly had the following revelation (found in the church Doctrine and Covenants, Section 61:14-16, 18, 19.
SECTION 61
Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, on the bank of the Missouri River, McIlwaine’s Bend, August 12, 1831. HC 1: 202-205. On their return trip to Kirtland the Prophet and ten elders had traveled down the Missouri River in canoes. On the third day of the journey many dangers were experienced. Elder William W. Phelps, in daylight vision, saw the destroyer riding in power upon the face of the waters.
14 Behold, I, the Lord, in the beginning blessed the awaters; but in the last days, by the mouth of my servant John, I bcursed the waters.
15 Wherefore, the days will come that no flesh shall be safe upon the waters.
16 And it shall be said in days to come that none is able to go up to the land of Zion upon the waters, but he that is upright in heart.
18 And now I give unto you a commandment that what I say unto one I say unto all, that you shall forewarn your brethren concerning these waters, that they come not in journeying upon them, lest their faith fail and they are caught in snares;
19 I, the Lord, have decreed, and the destroyer rideth upon the face thereof, and I revoke not the decree.
Note the clever use of the passive “many dangers were experienced.”
This is the origin also, of a longstanding policy that missionaries are not allowed to go swimming during their missions. Satan might get them.
Also, the invisible planet is not invisible and is not actually in this solar system. It is far, far away in a galaxy…oh, wrong sci-fi…
We need people of faith to lead our world.
-Osama Bin Laden
…See how it begins?
As a resident of Cape Cod, the bright magenta tail of true-blue Massachusetts, I want to apologize to the country at large for inflicting Mitt Romney on the rest of you. Although I didn’t personally vote for him (I voted Democrat), Cape Cod is probably the area most responsible for his victory as governor. Lots and lots of Repubs in Barnstable county, including (sadly) a good number of friends of mine.
Well said, John (Comment #23). I’m also a Masachusetts resident (And a Pharyngula-phile) and Romney is like sea weed. He flows in and out with the tide on many key issues. Unfortunately, he may get pretty far in the presidential race because he’s shrewd enough to feel out and capitalize on the electorate’s whimsy, almost like a parasite.
The one who laughs last hasn’t understood the joke.
The one who laughs last hasn’t understood the joke.
I still haven’t figured quite how this worked, but the state known to fly-over country as the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts elected Romney. Massachusetts (and Rhode Island) are the most heavily Catholic states, but Romney’s cult membership was not an obvious issue. I think it was seen as just a character quirk, like being gay. He claimed to be a moderate, so we continued the recent tradition of Republican governors ineffectively restraining the Democratic patronage machine.