Progressive Christian or Avaricious Atheist

[micatala]

This is a take off of the Apocalypse or Atheist thread.

I do not intend for this to be a debate about to our current administration.
Here is the scenario:
There are 2 candidates:
One is an atheist who has promised strong action in regards to pollution and global warming. He favors gay marriage, abortion rights and keeping prayer out of public schools. He does not attend church and has promised to block any attempt to teach the creationism in public schools. He is single and comes from Oregon.
The other candidate is a Christian. He has always gone to church, has a beautiful wife and children. He is from North Dakota. He also believes that Pastor John Hagee and other major fundamentalist Christian leaders are correct: The apocalypse is upon us and the 2nd coming of Jesus is eminent so we must prepare at all costs.

Who gets your vote?

I responded that I would pick the guy from Oregon, and then posed my own question, which is the debate question for this thread.

I'll pose another question:

Who would you pick?:

Candidate A: Christian, against abortion but does not favor a total ban but rather a regulatory process involving an application (something like licensing a gun), very pro-environmental and anti-war. Against the death penalty. Ambivalent on gay marriage. Honest as the day is long.

Candidate B: An atheist. Backed by big oil. Has changed views on a number of big issues for political expediency. Also touts his environmental views, but her votes show a tendency to forget these when oil is involved.

[Galphanore]

Who would you pick?:

Candidate A: Christian, against abortion but does not favor a total ban but rather a regulatory process involving an application (something like licensing a gun), very pro-environmental and anti-war. Against the death penalty. Ambivalent on gay marriage. Honest as the day is long.

Candidate B: An atheist. Backed by big oil. Has changed views on a number of big issues for political expediency. Also touts his environmental views, but her votes show a tendency to forget these when oil is involved.

I'd have to find out more information about them both. You didn't actually state most of the views of Candidate B or what they changed from for political expediency, or even what you mean by political expediency. If someone changed their personal views because the people they represented told them it was not what they wanted then, personally, I'd consider that a good thing. I'm really not sure where the validity of the belief that someone must always have the exact same beliefs they started with comes from, seems willfully ignorant to me.

Also you say Candidate A is Ambivalent on gay marriage, but don't specify what you mean by that. He is against abortion but wants to regulate it, again I would need to know more specifically as well as knowing how pro-environmental he is.

It seems that you split the Candidates not along ideological grounds about god but ideological grounds about the environment, which is a topic nearly everyone will agree on. I don't know anyone who would choose supporting big-oil over the environment so it was very disingenuous to try to link big oil to atheism in this way.

Personally, I don't care what religion a politician is as long as they don't try to force their religion into their secular position. There is no way to completely separate someone from their religion, but if they are making a law and their religious belief is directly contradicting the constitution then the constitution is the one the law should be based on, not their religious belief.

[Confused]

This is a take off of the Apocalypse or Atheist thread.

I do not intend for this to be a debate about to our current administration.
Here is the scenario:
There are 2 candidates:
One is an atheist who has promised strong action in regards to pollution and global warming. He favors gay marriage, abortion rights and keeping prayer out of public schools. He does not attend church and has promised to block any attempt to teach the creationism in public schools. He is single and comes from Oregon.
The other candidate is a Christian. He has always gone to church, has a beautiful wife and children. He is from North Dakota. He also believes that Pastor John Hagee and other major fundamentalist Christian leaders are correct: The apocalypse is upon us and the 2nd coming of Jesus is eminent so we must prepare at all costs.

Who gets your vote?

I responded that I would pick the guy from Oregon, and then posed my own question, which is the debate question for this thread.

I'll pose another question:

Who would you pick?:

Candidate A: Christian, against abortion but does not favor a total ban but rather a regulatory process involving an application (something like licensing a gun), very pro-environmental and anti-war. Against the death penalty. Ambivalent on gay marriage. Honest as the day is long.

Candidate B: An atheist. Backed by big oil. Has changed views on a number of big issues for political expediency. Also touts his environmental views, but her votes show a tendency to forget these when oil is involved.

I think the deck is stacked against either opponent. You provide no valid information in which to make an informed decision about. You provide religious background, environmental status, social issues such as homosexuality and abortion, and big company biases. But what do you present in regards to what each candidate can do for the country as a whole? What is their stance on international issues, trade embargo, illegal immigration, national issues such as unemployment, education, medical care, research into technology and medicine, decreasing independence of oil on foreign companies while still preserving as much environmental ecosystems as possible. I can't say that there is enough information to back either candidate.

[Cathar1950]

This is a take off of the Apocalypse or Atheist thread.

I do not intend for this to be a debate about to our current administration.
Here is the scenario:
There are 2 candidates:
One is an atheist who has promised strong action in regards to pollution and global warming. He favors gay marriage, abortion rights and keeping prayer out of public schools. He does not attend church and has promised to block any attempt to teach the creationism in public schools. He is single and comes from Oregon.
The other candidate is a Christian. He has always gone to church, has a beautiful wife and children. He is from North Dakota. He also believes that Pastor John Hagee and other major fundamentalist Christian leaders are correct: The apocalypse is upon us and the 2nd coming of Jesus is eminent so we must prepare at all costs.

Who gets your vote?

I responded that I would pick the guy from Oregon, and then posed my own question, which is the debate question for this thread.

I'll pose another question:

Who would you pick?:

Candidate A: Christian, against abortion but does not favor a total ban but rather a regulatory process involving an application (something like licensing a gun), very pro-environmental and anti-war. Against the death penalty. Ambivalent on gay marriage. Honest as the day is long.

Candidate B: An atheist. Backed by big oil. Has changed views on a number of big issues for political expediency. Also touts his environmental views, but her votes show a tendency to forget these when oil is involved.

I think the deck is stacked against either opponent. You provide no valid information in which to make an informed decision about. You provide religious background, environmental status, social issues such as homosexuality and abortion, and big company biases. But what do you present in regards to what each candidate can do for the country as a whole? What is their stance on international issues, trade embargo, illegal immigration, national issues such as unemployment, education, medical care, research into technology and medicine, decreasing independence of oil on foreign companies while still preserving as much environmental ecosystems as possible. I can't say that there is enough information to back either candidate.

What they said.
The guys should be running for office not trying to get a job in Iraq under Bush..

[micatala]

I accept of all of these criticisms regarding the lack of information on the candidates, the infeasibility of the actual existence of candidates with these combinations of views, and even my disingenuousness.

However, none of these is going to help you make your choice!!

Regardless of the above factors, in U.S. elections you typically get two choices and you are going to have to live with one of them. If we accept the previous criticisms (by Cephus I believe) that voting for a candidate with no realistic chance of winning, or not voting at all, is pointless, then we must vote. We do not get to change the choice first and then vote.

I accept that I could have presented different, more realistic choices. However, the whole point is to get people to choose between candidates when there are items of both we might find attractive, and also items we might find unattractice or even repugnant. Going to the polls and criticizing the election workers or even the Secretary of State about the options presented is pointless.

The subtext, of course, is to get people to weight the relative importance of certain aspects of a candidates views or beliefs. It is meant to be a little bit of a turnaround on the (legitimate in my view) criticism of some voters who will vote for the 'most Christian' candidate regardless of their other views, general character, etc.

[Galphanore]

I accept of all of these criticisms regarding the lack of information on the candidates, the infeasibility of the actual existence of candidates with these combinations of views, and even my disingenuousness.

However, none of these is going to help you make your choice!!

Regardless of the above factors, in U.S. elections you typically get two choices and you are going to have to live with one of them. If we accept the previous criticisms (by Cephus I believe) that voting for a candidate with no realistic chance of winning, or not voting at all, is pointless, then we must vote. We do not get to change the choice first and then vote.

I accept that I could have presented different, more realistic choices. However, the whole point is to get people to choose between candidates when there are items of both we might find attractive, and also items we might find unattractice or even repugnant. Going to the polls and criticizing the election workers or even the Secretary of State about the options presented is pointless.

The subtext, of course, is to get people to weight the relative importance of certain aspects of a candidates views or beliefs. It is meant to be a little bit of a turnaround on the (legitimate in my view) criticism of some voters who will vote for the 'most Christian' candidate regardless of their other views, general character, etc.

The point, though, is that we not only do not want to, but in fact no-one should, make their choices for a politician based on such flimsy information about them. I do not believe that thing things you presented are sufficient to actually judge the relative importance, especially because, as I pointed out, the only issues the two candidates had in common were that both of their religions were listed, which is irrelevant to my decision about who to vote for, and both of their environmental views were listed, which, as I said, you are not likely to find anyone who will actually say they would choose big business over the environment.

I am aware that you specifically designed the question in order to force people to reveal if they have an unreasonable distrust of Christians on principle, and I chose to show my answer in the form of disdain for the question it's self. Anyone who actually makes a decision about who to vote for on as little information as you provided, which there are some who do, really should not vote.

[micatala]

Certainly those who do not wish to make a choice are free not to do so, and you have given some reasonable arguments for not doing so.

However, although my choices are presented in an admittedly over simplified fashion, I do think there is value in this. Clearly the theme of 'solving a simpler problem first' is one that runs throughout many fields of knowledge, including science and mathematics, but also philosophy and even religion. The point is not to make people play an unrealistically simple game that is pointless, but to use the simpler situation to inform more complicated ones.

Obviously any of us could present candidate profiles that are more complete, but still with aspects that might present dilemmas to certain 'blocs' of voters or individual voters with certain views. I am certainly open to others inserting their own dilemmas into this thread, or starting a new one.

You might compare my thread with the one upon which it is based to see if your criticisms are valid there as well.

[Confused]

micatala wrote:
I'll pose another question:

Who would you pick?:

Candidate A: Christian, against abortion but does not favor a total ban but rather a regulatory process involving an application (something like licensing a gun), very pro-environmental and anti-war. Against the death penalty. Ambivalent on gay marriage. Honest as the day is long.

Candidate B: An atheist. Backed by big oil. Has changed views on a number of big issues for political expediency. Also touts his environmental views, but her votes show a tendency to forget these when oil is involved.


Ok, since I have to choose, and I know you will slap me with another thread off this response as is typical in which I will end up slapping myself anyways, I may as well choose:

Before I choose, is B and He or She. You make reference to both.

Regardless: if she is female, then I hate the idea of electing her, but from her connections with big oil companies I can likely deduce that she has successfully been involved with these companies successes in order for them to back her. While I think we need to preserve as much of the envirnonment as possible, I also believe that we need to consider decreasing our reliance on foreign companies for oil. Rather than wasting money on buying it overseas, we could easily tap into our own resources, while working on ways to reduce the economies dependence on oil overall. This person may have changed their views on political issues multiple times but when doesn't a candidate? And at least they address them. Candidate A addresses only issues related to moral and ethical values. That isn't going to get us very far with international affairs. And in regards to honesty, an active lie is the same as a lie of omission right? Do we really want someone who will say "here is all our secret intelligence" because they are asked of it? Ludicrous as it may sound, sometimes avoiding the truth or skewing it is needed in politics. Honesty isn't always the best policy.

So my choice is candidate B. Religious beliefs should not be a factor in determining the best candidate. Candidate A has a platform that screams of religion, whether it is for or against abortion, for or against gay marriage, etc..... These are all moral issues that shouldn't be the sole factor in determining the person best qualified for the job.

Now, I have prepared myself for all the illogical fallacies I have opened myself up to, but if nothing else, it will keep it entertaining.

[Galphanore]

You might compare my thread with the one upon which it is based to see if your criticisms are valid there as well.

They are.

[micatala]

Before I choose, is B and He or She. You make reference to both.

Sorry for the confusion. I usually try to leave both as possibilities. I would say you could ignore the gender, or if you feel it is relevant, say why.

Regardless: if she is female, then I hate the idea of electing her, but from her connections with big oil companies I can likely deduce that she has successfully been involved with these companies successes in order for them to back her. While I think we need to preserve as much of the envirnonment as possible, I also believe that we need to consider decreasing our reliance on foreign companies for oil. Rather than wasting money on buying it overseas, we could easily tap into our own resources, while working on ways to reduce the economies dependence on oil overall. This person may have changed their views on political issues multiple times but when doesn't a candidate? And at least they address them. Candidate A addresses only issues related to moral and ethical values. That isn't going to get us very far with international affairs. And in regards to honesty, an active lie is the same as a lie of omission right? Do we really want someone who will say "here is all our secret intelligence" because they are asked of it? Ludicrous as it may sound, sometimes avoiding the truth or skewing it is needed in politics. Honesty isn't always the best policy.

So my choice is candidate B. Religious beliefs should not be a factor in determining the best candidate. Candidate A has a platform that screams of religion, whether it is for or against abortion, for or against gay marriage, etc..... These are all moral issues that shouldn't be the sole factor in determining the person best qualified for the job.

I can see your honesty point. Part of it depends on the persons good judgment as well. Are they astute enough to know when to be brutally honest, and when to exercise discretion or what we might say 'beneficial hypocrisy.' (e.g. "of course that dress doesn't make you look fat, honey")

It is also true that no where do I say candidate B is dishonest. My 'political expediency' comment was meant to imply that the person might be more ocncerned about their future in power than creating sound public policy. However, as your comments imply, people's motives are widely open to interpretation, and my spare description does not give you much to go on. The question "is acting out of political expediency always a bad thing?" is certainly a legitimate one.

Ok, since I have to choose, and I know you will slap me with another thread off this response as is typical in which I will end up slapping myself anyways, I may as well choose:

I promise no new threads based on this post.

You could always try to turn the tables and start one of your own.

[Antigone]

This is a take off of the Apocalypse or Atheist thread.

I do not intend for this to be a debate about to our current administration.
Here is the scenario:
There are 2 candidates:
One is an atheist who has promised strong action in regards to pollution and global warming. He favors gay marriage, abortion rights and keeping prayer out of public schools. He does not attend church and has promised to block any attempt to teach the creationism in public schools. He is single and comes from Oregon.
The other candidate is a Christian. He has always gone to church, has a beautiful wife and children. He is from North Dakota. He also believes that Pastor John Hagee and other major fundamentalist Christian leaders are correct: The apocalypse is upon us and the 2nd coming of Jesus is eminent so we must prepare at all costs.

Who gets your vote?

I responded that I would pick the guy from Oregon, and then posed my own question, which is the debate question for this thread.

I'll pose another question:

Who would you pick?:

Candidate A: Christian, against abortion but does not favor a total ban but rather a regulatory process involving an application (something like licensing a gun), very pro-environmental and anti-war. Against the death penalty. Ambivalent on gay marriage. Honest as the day is long.

Candidate B: An atheist. Backed by big oil. Has changed views on a number of big issues for political expediency. Also touts his environmental views, but her votes show a tendency to forget these when oil is involved.

For the first group of candidates I would have to choose the Oregon person IF I HAD to choose that is. I refuse to vote for someone who believes the end of the world is coming soon. Believing the end is coming would make the guy less likely to make good and sound international decisions that would keep America and the world as a whole safe. He would likely assume, "this is God's will, the end is coming soon and there is nothing I or anyone else can do about it." Sorry, but I don't want the world to end, or for WWIII to take place! Though I do not like one position the other guy takes I would rather THAT than someone who wil help the end come.

As for the other couple, you need to say if person B is pro-abortion, pro-death penalty, and views on gay marriage, just like you did for person A. Just stating B is connected to big-oil and 'flip-flops' on issues is useless.
Also, being 'anti-war' isn't a political stance. I assume everyone is against war, no one sits back and promises war if they are elected pres. ... no one is exactly FOR war to suddenly happen. We need to know if person A is against war in every situation, what if Britian is attacked by Russia, would A not help because he hates war so much?? If N. Korea nuked S. Korea, would A not do a thing? That would make me NOT vote for him.

The fact that someone is Christian or not Christian matters very very little to me. What matters to me is if they would let their beliefs dictate what they do when they work for me and my fellow Americans! If they are the type of Cristain that 'knows' the end is coming that tells me they cannot separate their religion from their office. If they want to continue to harrass gays and lesbians because God says we are an abomination, then my vote goes else where.

However, Barak Obama is Christian, and I would definitely vote for him!! I would vote five times for him if I could