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Old 02-08-2009, 07:34 AM
 
Location: DC Area, for now
3,517 posts, read 13,233,914 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hkgal View Post
I'm curious...has the 'requirement' of being a practicing christian to be US president been a relatively recent thing in the US? Were there any earlier presidents who were not such enthusiastic christians - even if they weren't outright atheists? I know almost NOTHING of historical US presidents so I have no clue.

Its so interesting to me because its the opposite where I'm from. If you discussed your religion in the lead up to the election people would look upon you with suspicion! I guess there is just so little crossover that most don't really see how religion/government have anything to do with each other.
It used to be like that in the US. In the early years, many of our leaders were deists who outright rejected Christianity and formulated a vague non-interested nature deity if they didn't outright proclaim there was none. There were vicious fights about whether this the Christian god should be a instituted as a state religion but the common excess of religious dogma were so fresh and current in their lives that those who wanted to keep religion's dictatorial fingers out of the nation's governance won.

Since then, it has gone back and forth with our leaders. Some have used their pious statements and others have argued against it as an assault on liberty. We are currently in a stage where the fundies have terrorized the politicians so they are careful to give lip service to religion and flaunt their religion credentials. I am hopeful that they are losing their political stranglehold after the excesses and disaster of having one of their own lead this country for 8 years.

One of the results of having the separation of religion from state dictated in our constitution is that is has allowed any crackpot to find a following and grow, or not with no interference. So the churched have grown in this country whereas in Europe which came to democratic forms of governance later and kept the state church, were free to dampen the free flow of some of these religious ideas during the big 19th century evangelical movement.
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Old 02-08-2009, 10:04 AM
 
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Well I reckon there could be an atheist president if the attitudes of the people and the media when it comes to campaigns changed a little. "What religion are you?" Isn't a question that matters when it comes to electing officials. It's "What are your policies?" or "what do you plan to do if elected?" that you should really ask in order to determine who to vote to.
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Old 02-08-2009, 12:56 PM
 
Location: Denver
690 posts, read 2,103,249 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hkgal View Post
I'm curious...has the 'requirement' of being a practicing christian to be US president been a relatively recent thing in the US? Were there any earlier presidents who were not such enthusiastic christians - even if they weren't outright atheists? I know almost NOTHING of historical US presidents so I have no clue.

Its so interesting to me because its the opposite where I'm from. If you discussed your religion in the lead up to the election people would look upon you with suspicion! I guess there is just so little crossover that most don't really see how religion/government have anything to do with each other.
I don't know a lot about historical US presidents, either. Maybe I should do some research. I do know that our money and our pledge of allegiance have references to God. So he was obviously important to at least some government officials back then.

I'm not sure why the majority of U.S. people want religious officials to represent them. It might be as simple as the majority of U.S. citizens are Christians and they just want somebody like them in office.

Or maybe fundamentalists just believe that atheists/agnostics don't have anything holding them back from murdering and raping people. Which is really disturbing, why do they think that religion is the only thing that holds people back from doing evil stuff? I thought most people have a basic sense of respect for one another and try to not do anything to others that they don't want done to themselves. Don't most of us refrain from doing awful things just because it's the right thing to do?
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Old 02-08-2009, 03:57 PM
 
Location: DC Area, for now
3,517 posts, read 13,233,914 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mjohnson4381 View Post
I don't know a lot about historical US presidents, either. Maybe I should do some research. I do know that our money and our pledge of allegiance have references to God. So he was obviously important to at least some government officials back then.

I'm not sure why the majority of U.S. people want religious officials to represent them. It might be as simple as the majority of U.S. citizens are Christians and they just want somebody like them in office.

Or maybe fundamentalists just believe that atheists/agnostics don't have anything holding them back from murdering and raping people. Which is really disturbing, why do they think that religion is the only thing that holds people back from doing evil stuff? I thought most people have a basic sense of respect for one another and try to not do anything to others that they don't want done to themselves. Don't most of us refrain from doing awful things just because it's the right thing to do?
We have laws against those crimes with severe punishment for them. No religion needed.

The pledge of allegiance god reference was inserted in the 1950s. It was not original to the pledge. It was the same period when civil rights protests began. A lot of people don't realize how recent this god insertion really is.
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Old 02-08-2009, 04:54 PM
 
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I firmly believe that Bill Clinton is an atheist. While he'd never admit it...it fits.

And I think Hillary is an atheist too.
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Old 02-08-2009, 06:49 PM
 
Location: Denver
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Maybe I'm narrow-minded, but I honestly don't see how any highly-educated person could be a Christian. From what I can tell, Christianity is all about doing what you're told without asking any questions. You have to believe with no evidence and vague explanations. And if you ask questions, you're gonna burn. Sounds like life under a dictatorship to me.
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Old 02-08-2009, 07:03 PM
 
Location: DC Area, for now
3,517 posts, read 13,233,914 times
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In all fairness, there are plenty of Christians who are not so literal in their beliefs. They believe in JC and the nicer parts of the bible but more as a symbol than a literal thing. These people also don't take the bible literally and outright reject the vicious parts as a description of ancient ideas than a way to live. They usually believe there was a living JC but are ignorant of the actual history of the creation of the bible.

Really, there are a lot of different kinds of Christians. The only thing they all have in common is believing in JC as a god who became human and went back to being a god who forgives their sins. Not all of them think it all happened literally.
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Old 02-09-2009, 01:16 AM
 
63,461 posts, read 39,726,177 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mjohnson4381 View Post
Maybe I'm narrow-minded, but I honestly don't see how any highly-educated person could be a Christian. From what I can tell, Christianity is all about doing what you're told without asking any questions. You have to believe with no evidence and vague explanations. And if you ask questions, you're gonna burn. Sounds like life under a dictatorship to me.
Not narrow minded . . . narrow focused on fundamentalists. They are not representative of Christians. I am a very highly educated person who was an atheist and Buddhist and is now a Christian . . . without all the magical thinking and mind numbed robot approaches to belief in God. My beliefs are entirely consistent with current scientific knowledge as well. I find Dawkins, et al. to be closer to scientific fundamentalists than objective scientists. Either extreme seems puerile and petty.
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Old 02-09-2009, 08:35 AM
 
Location: Texas
38,859 posts, read 25,395,132 times
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Lightbulb An Atheist President

Quote:
Originally Posted by mjohnson4381 View Post
I was watching Jon Stewart the other night, and they were speculating what order different minorities would make it to the White House. I think that they decided next it would be a woman, then a Hispanic, then everything else, then an atheist. I'm kind of happy they're at least talking about that stuff, but at the same time, I'm wondering why atheists are dead last? Why does everybody assume that a person has to be a Christian to be a good, competent person?

Atheists are the most distrusted and despised group in the US, according to surveys. That said, I'm of the opinion that America has already had more than one atheist/agnostic president.

Atheists Are Distrusted | American Sociological Association (http://www.asanet.org/cs/root/topnav/press/atheists_are_distrusted - broken link)

""When the crisis came, Jefferson, Paine, John Adams, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and many lesser lights were to be reckoned among either the Unitarians or the Deists. it was not Cotton Mather's God to whom the author of the Declaration of Independence appealed, it was to 'Nature's God.' From whatever source derived, the effect of both Unitarianism and Deism was to hasten the retirement of historic theology from its empire over the intellect of American leaders, and to clear the atmosphere for secular interests" -- The Rise of American Civilization," by Charles A. and Mary R. Beard. (Vol. I., p. 449.)"

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...residents.html
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Old 02-09-2009, 09:27 AM
 
Location: Denver
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Thanks, Tesaje and Mystic. I guess I am lumping them all under the same category. I shouldn't be doing that.
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