Appocolypse or atheist?

[Cmass]

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?

[Cathar1950]

I was just joking about bears. did he get away and the dog most likely made the bear crap in the woods.

[Cmass]

Yes, the bear got away - although not as quickly as I had wanted. As a matter course I keep bear spray and fireworks near my door to scare the bears, cougars and deer away from my garden.

So, would you vote for my dog, Zeus or the bear as you next leader?

[Cathar1950]

I don't like things getting killed unless you are going to eat them.
I am glad he got away and the dog was alright.
I know what it is like with gardens.
I might vote for the garden.

[Cmass]

I don't like things getting killed unless you are going to eat them.

I agree. I wonder what Christians taste like? (OK, now that was completely uncalled for and sick. My God Cmass, how could you even joke like that? You sick bastard)

I am glad he got away and the dog was alright.

The dog has fought him head on before & came back with only a few bite marks & scratches. (There are wolves in Alaska that actually eat Grizzly bears.)

I know what it is like with gardens.
I might vote for the garden.

It's God's plan: Grow the garden, wait for the deer to arrive, shoot & dress the deer, harvest the vegetables & you are set for the winter. Now, if my wife will only let me buy a rifle.

I have yet to hear from Easyrider on the Hitler/Gandhi issue.

[achilles12604]

I don't like things getting killed unless you are going to eat them.

I agree. I wonder what Christians taste like? (OK, now that was completely uncalled for and sick. My God Cmass, how could you even joke like that? You sick bastard)

I am glad he got away and the dog was alright.

The dog has fought him head on before & came back with only a few bite marks & scratches. (There are wolves in Alaska that actually eat Grizzly bears.)

I know what it is like with gardens.
I might vote for the garden.

It's God's plan: Grow the garden, wait for the deer to arrive, shoot & dress the deer, harvest the vegetables & you are set for the winter. Now, if my wife will only let me buy a rifle.

I have yet to hear from Easyrider on the Hitler/Gandhi issue.

AHEM! If you would kindly look back, you will see that it was I who wrote about Ghandi v Hitler.

Anyhow, my point was that if you take all the negative attributes you can find from one viewpoint and compare it to the positive attributes of an alternate viewpoint, you are stacking the deck.

Why not address Mit's suggestion? Who would you vote for in his slightly more fair scenerio?

[Cmass]

AHEM! If you would kindly look back, you will see that it was I who wrote about Ghandi v Hitler.

Whoops! See what happens when you leave us be for too long? I can hardly remember what the thread was about.

Anyhow, my point was that if you take all the negative attributes you can find from one viewpoint and compare it to the positive attributes of an alternate viewpoint, you are stacking the deck.

Yes, the deck is stacked - carefully. I just stacked it myself so please don't tip it over. So, now that you know that, who would you vote for and why?
BTW: You would find similar questions in any ethics 101 course where the Professor stacks the deck for the whole class.

Why not address Mit's suggestion? Who would you vote for in his slightly more fair scenerio?

I would gladly address Mit's scenario in another thread.

The grand assumption you are making is that this scenario could not possibly take place. You are also inferring through your protest that candidate #2 has all the bad qualities while candidate #1 has all the good qualities.

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.
I know plenty of people like this.


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.
I know people like this too.

I know people who would choose candidate #2 in a heartbeat. In fact, you may want to read up on pastor John Hagee a bit and learn, what he believes, who he has access to and who believes what he is saying is the absolute truth. (Hint: On holidays he plays on his ranch with a horsy while wearing a cowboy hat and pretending to be a cowboy)

This is meant to be a thread about who you trust for your information and what you value. I set up the scenario in very stark terms because I was anticipating some people might squiggle around if I was not explicit clear about the situation. I am not tricking you into anything......trust me.

[achilles12604]

AHEM! If you would kindly look back, you will see that it was I who wrote about Ghandi v Hitler.

Whoops! See what happens when you leave us be for too long? I can hardly remember what the thread was about.

Anyhow, my point was that if you take all the negative attributes you can find from one viewpoint and compare it to the positive attributes of an alternate viewpoint, you are stacking the deck.

Yes, the deck is stacked - carefully. I just stacked it myself so please don't tip it over. So, now that you know that, who would you vote for and why?
BTW: You would find similar questions in any ethics 101 course where the Professor stacks the deck for the whole class.

Why not address Mit's suggestion? Who would you vote for in his slightly more fair scenerio?

I would gladly address Mit's scenario in another thread.

The grand assumption you are making is that this scenario could not possibly take place. You are also inferring through your protest that candidate #2 has all the bad qualities while candidate #1 has all the good qualities.

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.
I know plenty of people like this.


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.
I know people like this too.

I know people who would choose candidate #2 in a heartbeat. In fact, you may want to read up on pastor John Hagee a bit and learn, what he believes, who he has access to and who believes what he is saying is the absolute truth. (Hint: On holidays he plays on his ranch with a horsy while wearing a cowboy hat and pretending to be a cowboy)

This is meant to be a thread about who you trust for your information and what you value. I set up the scenario in very stark terms because I was anticipating some people might squiggle around if I was not explicit clear about the situation. I am not tricking you into anything......trust me.

I would vote indepentent -

Maybe Ross Perott would chose to run again . . .

Actually, in my humble opinion, we havn't had a truely great president since kennedy. The Lincolns, Roosevelts, and other greats seem to be gone. One possible exception would be Reagan. I don't know much about him but he seemed to be well liked. Perhaps I should read up on him.

[Cathar1950]

I think that a better question would be are people like Hagee, Pat Roberson, and others sane and what if our leader believes the same things and has policies that reflect the near demise of our planet and rest their hopes on the return of Jesus to rapture them out of the world?
What if the people believe that if we start wars God will be on our side and come save us as we push buttons and drop bombs? Does it matter if the person is an atheist? Why would being an atheist disqualify a person where having weird ideas not?

[Cmass]

Actually, in my humble opinion, we havn't had a truely great president since kennedy. The Lincolns, Roosevelts, and other greats seem to be gone.

It will be luck if we ever elect a "great" president again. We have set ourselves up for failure in this regard. You cannot possibly get elected if you don't pretend to be something you are not in at least some regard. Nor can you get elected if you are not good on TV - which means you have to be an actor. We would never elect Lincoln again: He's too ugly. We could never elect Roosevelt: He was in a wheelchair...etc... We will keep electing people based on our very weak TV perception of them. As long as Fox gets good ratings, we will never elect a decent president.
We elect people who are "like us". Down home folk who we can relate to. Folks who talk like us: Usually with a Southern drawl.
Personally, I DON'T WANT a president who is like me. I want someone far more intelligent and far more worldly. I can say for the first time in my life I am absolutely sure I am more intelligent, better educated, more articulate and far more in tune with the people of the world than our current president. And that ain't sayin' much pardner.

I would like to see a highly educated person elected. Someone who has studied other cultures, traveled widely. Someone who has been involved in science and really understands it. I crave such a person because what we have now is an absolute embarrassment of intellect. When I travelled to Mexico 2 year ago, I told everyone I was Canadian. When I spent some time in Canada working I told them I was from BC (an area I know well enough to fake it). For the first time in my life - beyond the policy issues - I am embarrassed to be an American. I am embarrassed that my country has deteriorated so far that it twice elected one of the least intelligent president in history. Here are the facts:

Bush IQ low on presidential league
Roger Dobson
GEORGE W BUSH has the lowest average IQ of all but one American president since the start of the 20th century, according to the estimates of psychological researchers.
His intellect falls below all other presidents of the past 110 years except Warren Harding, who was in the White House briefly in the 1920s and regarded as a failed president.
Bush’s estimated IQ is about 20 points below that of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, “a disparity that may have created a contrast effect that made any intellectual weaknesses all the more salient”.
Simonton has drawn up a table of estimated presidential intelligence by amassing data created by other researchers. Writing in the journal Political Psychology he says that estimates of Bush’s IQ range between 111.1 and 138.5, with a mean of 120, “which is about the average for a college graduate in the United States”.
Clinton’s IQ ranged between 135.6 and 159, and Ronald Reagan’s between 118 and 141.9. John Quincy Adams, president from 1825-9, was the cleverest with a range of 165 to 175, well into genius territory.
The data used by Simonton was created by the filtering and analysis of personality descriptions from biographical sources — an academically recognised system known as a “historiometric” study.
Bush may be “much smarter” than the findings imply, says Simonton, but he scores particularly unimpressively for “openness to experience, a cognitive proclivity that encompasses unusual receptiveness to fantasy, aesthetics, actions, ideas and values. In the general population this factor is positively associated with intelligence”.
Bush’s openness score of zero — compared with 82 for Clinton and John F Kennedy, 95 for Abraham Lincoln and 99.1 for Thomas Jefferson — “placed him at the very bottom of US presidents”.

This assessment can only be considered tentative because of lack of available evidence on a sitting president, but it is corroborated by a measure of Bush’s “integrative complexity”. Simonton says: “Low scorers on integrative complexity can only see things from a single perspective — their own.”

Bush’s score, he says, is comparable to “extremist Islamic fundamentalists in the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leadership — with the notable exception of Osama Bin Laden, who is lower still”.

Trevor McCrisken, lecturer in American politics at Warwick University, said: “This is going to give added ammunition to those who dislike Bush, and who particularly dislike his folksiness, and his apparent lack of intellectual vigour. A major part of his public persona, to some extent, I think deliberately, is that he is not an intellectual.”

[Cmass]

Cathar those are all very good questions and the fact is we DO have leaders that believe Hagee/Falwell/Roberston Inc. They actually have conferences with these people and listen to their advice. Thus, we actually do have these people in power right now.
But that is not where I wanted to take this thread - as inviting as it may be. I really want to know who people would vote for given the scenario I described.