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.

[Confused]

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.

You give me hope that I am gaining in knowledge and experience. I would love to start a thread related, but as you can tell, I am awful at getting my point across on my opening posts, though I will try to word one that will stimulate the debate with a twist to it.

[Bugmaster]

I'd pick whichever candidate is likely to do less damage to the country, regardless of his religious affiliation. For example, if one of the candidates is an Islamic terrorist who wants to kill us all (unlikely, I know), then I won't vote for him -- but only because he wants to kill us all, not because he's a Muslim.

Of course, if two candidates are evenly matched, I'll use religious affiliation as the tiebreaker.