Meh, that’s representative democracy at work though. You want to elect someone who will represent your interests or at least vote much the same way you would vote in the same situation.
The case against Romney’s Mormonism or this hypothetical Muslim candidate is that their beliefs would cause them to vote or act differently than a “mainstream” Christian would in the same situation. The same case was made against JFK’s Catholicism.
And asking if a candidate’s beliefs or religiously-inspired practices would conflict with the public’s interests is appropriate, even if it is done as an attack against the candidate. JFK’s opponents said that because he was Catholic, he’d have to do the Pope’s bidding, which is a valid fear. JFK eloquently denied that would be the case, people nodded and moved on. I’d want someone to ask the same question to Jeb Bush or (especially) Rick Santorum if they became the GOP nominee.
But that’s different from simply discounting someone as a candidate for their religion.
RichVR
1923
So where are all the atheist candidates?
Telefrog
1925
I hate that being Muslim is a valid attack vector or sign of something bad to a lot of Americans. It’s bullshit.
Whenever someone accuses Obama of being a Muslim, I always think, “So what?” Like, what if he was a Muslim? Oh, no! That’s like the worst thing ever!
Murbella
1926
Being a member of a non western approved religion is even worse than being a non white male as far as becoming president. The only thing worse would be being atheist or gay.
These are not extremist views. They are by far mainstream, even in the dems (who would at least be embarrassed to admit it).
There has been recent polling done, and the majority of the US would now vote for an aetheist president. Of course, there’s still a large subset (38-46%) that wouldn’t and that’s pretty darn depressing. Still, the number that would accept it has increased steadily over the last decade. Interestingly, a gay president gets far higher levels of acceptance (Gallup pegged it at 74%) while a Muslim would only get 60%. Of course, all of those tags are on a generic, qualified candidate of one’s own party. The worst? Being an evil Socialist! You commies will never take our coun- er, sorry about that. Only 47% would vote for a qualified candidate of their own party if that candidate identified as a Socialist … because reasons.
The unaffiliated category of religious identification is the fastest growing in the U.S. as measured by percentage. Unaffiliated adults (22.8% of U.S.) are second only to evangelical Protestants (25.4%).
Meanwhile, the number of religiously unaffiliated adults has increased by roughly 19 million since 2007. There are now approximately 56 million religiously unaffiliated adults in the U.S., and this group – sometimes called religious “nones” – is more numerous than either Catholics or mainline Protestants, according to the new survey. Indeed, the unaffiliated are now second in size only to evangelical Protestants among major religious groups in the U.S.
-Todd
Yeah, but that’s not actually atheists, or even agnostics. If pressed, most of that 22.8% will admit that they are Christians, they just don’t have a “home” sect.
To be sure, that 22.8% also includes atheists (3.1%) and agnostics (4%), but the remainder are really just “undeclared”.
The “I’m spiritual, but not religious” group. For instance I’m a deist, but I don’t strongly affiliate with a particular religion despite my loosely Judeo-Christian upbringing.
Telefrog
1931
Look at this guy with his foreign car!
Yeah it is a diverse group, but I think one that, on the whole, is far more likely to vote for declared atheists. Also historically atheist simply meant–without a conception of god–and was nearly indistinguishable from agnostics and quite similar to deists. Only in recent times have some atheists proclaimed a positive denial of god which is kind of a perversion of the concept.
To be honest I actually think the religion of the president is less important to the average voter than a large list of really meaningful position stances. Every candidate needs to go through the whole song and dance during the campaign alongside the “I am a ferverent supporter of Israel” stance that seems mandatory, but I would argue is not high on the priority list for average Americans.
-Todd
Can you provide sources for this? I always thought atheism as a self-identifying moniker started in the enlightenment and indeed meant a positive denial.
Well the term Agnostic was only introduced in 1869 so before that time atheism was sort of an umbrella concept that necessarily included what we think of agnosticism today. Thinkers identifying as atheist, agnostic, and deist were all loosely related and joined more in their criticism of strict theism. Many “atheist” texts were written by self-identifying deists and so on. I also think that most philosophers familiar with the long history of trying to prove the existence of god would realize that a positive denial of the existence of god is just as futile and unsupportable.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The main purpose of this article is to explore the differences between atheism and agnosticism, and the relations between them. The task is made more difficult because each of these words are what Wittgenstein called ‘family resemblance’ words. That is, we cannot expect to find a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their use. Their use is appropriate if a fair number of the conditions are satisfied. Moreover even particular members of the families are often imprecise, and sometimes almost completely obscure. Sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalised philosophical scepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic.
-Todd
But that doesn’t mean that there’s been a perversion of the concept, but a separation of one too-broad concept into three different ones that signify different things (without any being a perversion of another).
Once upon a time, the word “literally” actually just meant “in a literal manner” (i.e. - language evolves whether we want it to or not, no matter how stupid the evolution seems)
Going back to topic, a question to you US guys. Is it really likely Trump gets the nomination or it is still accepted he has no real chance once things get real?
It’s hard to tell from here (not really that much US political commentary).
Honestly, this strikes me as incredible that he hasn’t plummeted to nowhereland as of yet. I mean, he seriously comes off as a joke/vanity/troll candidate to me, yet people keep saying they want him. At this point, I’d still think there’s a good chance that somebody is going to grab the lead from him, but the more time goes on the less likely that’s becoming.
Is the deadline (for when things don’t move too much) the first primary? Or can it still happen that if he gets the first primary he’s pushed back after that?
Basically, the primaries are what determine who the candidate will be, but they’re all staggered. He’ll likely win some states, but other candidates will win elsewhere. If it’s looking pretty bad for someone then they may drop out part of the way through, but in the end they’ll add up all the tallies and see who comes out ahead (note: it’s still not a pure democracy where it’s determine on a vote-by-vote basis). The primaries are interesting because of the trading that goes on - someone may be polling too low to win, and they’ll offer to throw their support toward the candidate in exchange for a cabinet position or something like that. That doesn’t require their supporters to vote for the new person, but it’s one heck of a campaign advertisement.
edit - in short, things can drastically change even after the first one begins, depending on how close somebody else is to him
The earliest primaries may be the hardest for him to nab, since those states (Iowa + New Hampshire) have some of the most complex, well-understood primary/caucus mechanisms in the country (particularly for states of their modest size). Since they go first, candidates and the media tend to “invest” a lot of effort and time there, which also means there’s all sorts of expert pollsters, local managers, door-knockers, etc. that have been reliably winning elections for decades now. Since Trump hasn’t invested much in these mechanisms, it’s not unthinkable that he might even enter these primaries with an overall polling advantage and still lose them to candidates who are doing those states “right.”
But, as McCain showed us in 2008, a couple of early stumbles don’t mean eventual defeat. In fact, of the first four primaries in the US, he only took 1! In the end, it’s a long game, and while media coverage of early victories can provide a strong narrative, it doesn’t guarantee an eventual total victory.
So, Trump’s overall viability, I think, is still pretty up-in-the-air. I wish I could say someone as obviously insane/vile as him wouldn’t stand a chance, but, well, you watch the news. The moderate/sane Republicans in the country–at this time–seem content to support the loonies if it gets someone with their preferred letter into the White House. But that may be my bias leaking, since I’m not sure if there’s anyone in the current top 7-8 that I wouldn’t consider a loony. . .
Anyway, he might struggle in the highly regimented early states, and his populism might well net him some unexpected victories. I think it’s slowly becoming clear that a gaffe from him (or maybe anyone) isn’t gonna be enough to knock him out of the election. If anything, I’d place his potential eventual defeat at the feet of his growing tired of the whole charade someday (we can only hope).
