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Would you vote for an Atheist?

Would you vote for or consider voting for an Atheist for any public office?

  • Yes

    Votes: 62 89.9%
  • No

    Votes: 7 10.1%

  • Total voters
    69
That's because all groups have a natural distribution of reasonable folk and crazy folk, and the crazy folk in all groups tend to be the loudest.

Yup, pretty much. I guess the question comes down to who would you want for your president? A jerk atheist or a jerk Christian?

Or is that just debating whether you'd rather be shot by a bullet made of iron or a bullet made of lead?
 
Yup, pretty much. I guess the question comes down to who would you want for your president? A jerk atheist or a jerk Christian?

Or is that just debating whether you'd rather be shot by a bullet made of iron or a bullet made of lead?

Iron is a necessary mineral, lead is poison. So I guess I'd choose iron
 
It's an interesting premise. If natural rights are god given, then an atheist couldn't override that. But more to the point, currently there are lots of theist politicians (pretty much the lot of the main Republocrat party) who do not accept natural right and define everything instead by government power. So what are these people who refuse to vote for atheists really getting by not voting for atheists. It seems whether they are outraged by lack of moral compass or lack of belief in natural rights that our current politicians already violate all of that.

The only real reason why people wouldn't vote for atheists is rooted in prejudiced and bias because many of these people are supporting the same politicians doing things they claim they cannot vote for an atheist because. So it's obviously not so much the act in and of itself as it is being an atheist.

Ikari...I completely agree.

I'm totally perplexed with the the "Natural Rights" argument. It's not connected to anything we find in our modern day society and our system of government.

Other than the term "Natural Rights", which is linked to John Locke's publication "Second Treatise of Government" written in the late 1600's. I just don't see how it applies in the same manner in our Constitution. Sections related to rights to life, liberty and property aren't without conditions within our system of government and legal institutions. Nobody wants to lose their life unjustly...but people unjustly kill people every day despite our laws. Liberties are certainly not inalienable. The "right to own property"...? Uh huh, but conditional to obligations to pay taxes forever on property. There is a price that we all pay for our rights.

And while claiming them to be inalienable sounds great. In my reply to The Baron...why wouldn't god give natural rights to all people in every nation on the planet...and make damn sure they are enforced?

Atheists...wouldn't know where to start to "strip" individuals from their god given rights...as The Baron contends. God simply doesn't compute in the minds of atheists.

On the other hand, as you've already pointed out...we might have plenty of people in government who are way more interested in stripping away or reducing our rights.

Thanks...
 
Ikari...I completely agree.

I'm totally perplexed with the the "Natural Rights" argument. It's not connected to anything we find in our modern day society and our system of government.

Other than the term "Natural Rights", which is linked to John Locke's publication "Second Treatise of Government" written in the late 1600's. I just don't see how it applies in the same manner in our Constitution. Sections related to rights to life, liberty and property aren't without conditions within our system of government and legal institutions. Nobody wants to lose their life unjustly...but people unjustly kill people every day despite our laws. Liberties are certainly not inalienable. The "right to own property"...? Uh huh, but conditional to obligations to pay taxes forever on property. There is a price that we all pay for our rights.

And while claiming them to be inalienable sounds great. In my reply to The Baron...why wouldn't god give natural rights to all people in every nation on the planet...and make damn sure they are enforced?

Atheists...wouldn't know where to start to "strip" individuals from their god given rights...as The Baron contends. God simply doesn't compute in the minds of atheists.

On the other hand, as you've already pointed out...we might have plenty of people in government who are way more interested in stripping away or reducing our rights.

Thanks...

No right has ever been without condition, but that doesn't mean that natural rights do not exist. In the end, all humans are human and because we all share a base commonality, we all share a base set of rights. Those are natural rights.
 
No right has ever been without condition, but that doesn't mean that natural rights do not exist. In the end, all humans are human and because we all share a base commonality, we all share a base set of rights. Those are natural rights.

Well, now I'm completely at a loss. So you believe that there are "natural rights" god given?
 
Well, now I'm completely at a loss. So you believe that there are "natural rights" god given?

No, there are natural rights but they are not god given. Since there are no gods, they cannot be god given.
 

And yet I've provided you with a definition of the term going all the way back to the 1500's and yet all you can manage is "bs".

Your response is unintelligent, uninformed and uninteresting.
 
No, there are natural rights but they are not god given. Since there are no gods, they cannot be god given.

Ahhhhh...thanks, I thought I misread something in the post I responded to.

Okay....to go out on a limb here...

What natural rights are you talking about specifically? In what form do they exist? How are we as a nation protected by them? Or as far as that goes...how are we as individuals protected by them? Who enforces them?
 
If you see Natural Rights as those being found in Nature, which is nonsense, then you are incorrect. Who invented or created Nature becomes the issue then. God, a big dog with fleas, or the Universe itself? You don't have to believe in God to rights as Natural.

Yet it was Sir Edward Coke that defined the term in the 1500 / 1600's, Blackstone utilized the term in his writings and Jefferson studied Blackstone. Jefferson understood the meaning of the term natural law to mean God's law. You have to redefine the word to make it fit your argument.
 
Ahhhhh...thanks, I thought I misread something in the post I responded to.

Okay....to go out on a limb here...

What natural rights are you talking about specifically? In what form do they exist? How are we as a nation protected by them? Or as far as that goes...how are we as individuals protected by them? Who enforces them?

Life, liberty, and property form the basis of natural rights. Property is expanded not only to the physical form but to privacy (all privacy rights stem from property). They exist as they exist, these are abstract concepts born of intellect and empathy and we can understand that at heart all humans are human and because we are all fundamentally the same there are limits to force you can apply to me even if you hold monopoly of force. We are not protected by rights, we need to protect rights. Enforcement is mostly done through proper construct of government and law, and on extremes at the end of a gun.
 
That's incorrect, you only want to make that point but there's no argument to support it.

So what you are saying is that your major contention is the acceptance of natural rights, but even if an atheist were to accept natural rights you still couldn't vote for them because you don't think it's possible for a human to not believe in god while simultaneously accepting that at base all humans are human. It's not the most self-consistent of all arguments.

See my post no. 110.
 
See my post no. 110.

Yeah, it does nothing for your cause. Jefferson wasn't even particularly religious, but evoked religion for propaganda purposes.

Just because you want to state they are god given doesn't mean you have made any demonstration that they are (which would likely revolve around the demonstration of a god to give rights in the first place).
 
What's god's role in all of this as you claimed in your previous post?

God gives us our rights.

When did god publish these so called Natural Rights and where can they be found?

He didn’t have to publish them. As Jefferson said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

How would an atheist strip away individual's god given rights? And who is US? Why didn't god do the same for Iran or Cuba or Syria?

Ask Lennin, Marx or Obama. They’ve all laid-out their plans on how to do that very thing.

The Declaration of Independence doesn't grant rights. And it certainly doesn't create a government authority to impose and enforce "Natural Rights"....

Point of fact, the Declaration establishes this country and does so based on the reasoning that we all have “certain unalienable rights”.

In case you haven't noticed, we are a nation that is ruled by laws created by bodies of governments elected by the people?

Yea, I noticed.

How can any person determine who or what my creator is...or isn't for that matter?

Our Founding Fathers didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding who the Creator was. Why do you?

The Bill of Rights...? Certainly an advantage to us, but I won't go as far to say that they are inalienable.

And yet the reason they were placed there was to protect the individual from his government. As such, you may wish to re-think that whole “but I won't go as far to say that they are inalienable” position.
 
And yet I've provided you with a definition of the term going all the way back to the 1500's and yet all you can manage is "bs".

Your response is unintelligent, uninformed and uninteresting.

What is BS is your belief that without god there are no rights. define the words all you want but atheists are neither more nor less moral than any theists.
 
I'm sure those who believed in Zeus felt the same thing during their time as well.

I wouldn't know. They're all dead.

Yet the Judeo / Christian belief system has been around for thousands of years and were still here so, go figure?
 
Yeah, it does nothing for your cause. Jefferson wasn't even particularly religious, but evoked religion for propaganda purposes.

Really? Ever hear of the Jefferson Bible?

Just because you want to state they are god given doesn't mean you have made any demonstration that they are (which would likely revolve around the demonstration of a god to give rights in the first place).

I don't have to prove any such thing. All I have to do is point to what the Founders thought and point to the wisdom that we all best believe in God given rights as all other may be taken away by the whim of the state.
 
What is BS is your belief that without god there are no rights. define the words all you want but atheists are neither more nor less moral than any theists.

Well, that's another debate, now isn't it?
 
I would have no problem with that at all. Being Christian does not make you qualified to be President, right along with any other Religion. Personally when any Polotician starts a bible thump it scares the heck out of me.
 
Not a book of rules but an openness to a higher power that can help guide your decisions.

A higher power that you can't actually demonstrate exists. I think we're seeing a pattern here.
 
I'm getting tired of trying to have adult discussions with people that just come here for childish bickering, have a nice day.:2wave:

No, you got caught and now you're trying to squirm out of it. Typical.
 
People interpret the bible in different ways, I am not a fundamentalist bible thumper, the book has been altered to much by man to take literally. You have to look for the root messages in it.

So in other words, you just pick and choose what you like and ignore the rest.
 
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