Moniker wrote:Coggins7 wrote:A candidate's religion, and how deeply the candidate practices their religion, is a viable factor in politics. Not everyone in this country is whatever the religion the candidate is. I want to know how the candidate deals with reality. Looking at religion can give insight into the candidate's way of looking at reality.
And what, pray tell me, does belief in the literal truth of the Fall, or in a global flood, have to do with dealing with Iran, or tax policy?
I think it speaks to the evolution vs. ID debate. For one.
Other issues that may relate to religious persuasion:
Stem cell research. Abortion. Social welfare. Vouchers. Homosexual issues.
Bush -- faith based initiatives that provides grants to religious institutions.
There are plenty of ways in which religious views can be reflected in policy.
This is a scattergun of ideological positions and policy preferences. What does
any of this have to do with the question at hand?
First of all Moniker, the origin or intellectual core of my or anyone else's beliefs are irrelevant to one's right to participate in the political life of one's country, or to serve in positions of political power. The position you have taken here would eventuate in a religious test to judge qualifications for office, in this case, a test administered by anti-religious secularists for the purpose of barring the religious from participation in polices because they fear such beliefs would influence decision making and eventuate in policies they don't like. This is so typical and indicative, yet again, of the totalitarian mentality that lurks just below the surface of many of those who call themselves 'liberals".
From a constitutional perspective, whether my views of ID, abortion, stem cell research, or any other issue, are influenced by religious beliefs, or by purely secular concerns, have no relevance. Nor does a religious template that sets standards and creates a central bias through which issues are seen preclude in any way, critical thought (the same critical thinking processes can and do lead different people to quite different conclusions). It does condition the central assumptions from which critical thought proceed, but not necessarily the thought itself.
What you really want to do is preclude the participation of religious people from participation in the political life of the nation because you are threatened by what this might mean for public policy.
The only thing I can do is point you to the founding documents. This is a representative democracy; we are free to elect and be governed by whom we choose. Setting up a caste system that precludes entire classes of citizens from participation in the political process, as Blacks were in the old South, is just the bigot's way of winning all political battles by default and circumventing the arena of ideas, where, in many cases, they know they will lose.
Your list of issues is interesting for the manner in which it appears to be a set of issues, the right answers to which are a foregone conclusion and upon which debate has ended. The influence of religious conservatives in positions of power, does, indeed, threaten the hegemony of the Left in such areas, and threatens to keep debate and controversy on these issues open and vigorous (except for the evolution thing, which is a massive waste of hot air for all involved in a political sense (and the debate is between Creationists and Darwinian fundamentalists, not between ID and evolution. Many defenders of the Darwinian world view like to pretend that ID is the same thing as "Creationism" as a debate stalling tactic, but the serious ID folks saw through that ruse long ago. The overwhelming majority of people involved in the forefront of ID believe, as I do, in evolution as to its basic framework. Some in ID are religious, a number are not. The debate between ID and evolution is about the plausibility of the evolution of life as a purely blind, random chance process, not necessarily about whether evolution occurred. There are issues regarding the degree to which macroevolutoin occurred, but that is a relatively tertiary issue)).
And, in any case, what on earth does evolution have to do with anything of any substance in American politics? Who cares what the President thinks about it? This is another issue, like abortion, that has no business as a
national political issue at all in any event.