Dead last. This must not stand.
Muslims aren’t listed because they actually went into negative territory. Which actually can happen; someone says ‘no’ with such vehemence that it negates other people’s ‘yes’ votes and then some. Happened in Ohio, too.
But how come there’s no category: alcoholic with a criminal record? What would they score? Obviously between 49-51 percent.
A few reasons, perhaps. Atheists have been the Scary Monsters of the American political scene for fifty years. Everyone can dump on them with impunity. And why not? No one knows any atheists. Or if you do, they just tell you that your beliefs are made up, and who likes that? They have no morals, except for the ones they catch by osmosis from Christians. Plus they’re angry. Angry! Grrrrrr.
Wow, I’d scarcely vote for myself! Too scary!
UPDATE: I realised that ‘alcoholic with a criminal record’ doesn’t really cover Bush because the question said ‘generally well-qualified’. My bad.
20 February 2007 at 6:23 pm
I am an Australian, an atheist and I live in the USA. This poll does not surprise me. I was shocked with the degree to which people are religious in the USA when I first moved here. I was brought up an Anglican, went to sunday school every week for eight years, and have been confirmed. But my study of science combined with my own life experiences, such as surviving cancer, seeing friends and family fight to live, some of them passing away, and my own marriage has brought me to realise the 1) One can live a happy, compassionate life with morals and ethics without the need to draw on ‘god’ as a reference, and 2) The concept of ‘god’ regardless of how comforting it is to people close to death, is nothing compared to the survival instinct in an individual that exists in all creatures, regardless of religion. Unfortunately, most people I have met in the USA view athieism as an extreme akin to fringe political activisism. Some of those same people, I note, have broken marriages, have fallen to their own temptations, and are keen to judge others contrary to biblical teachings. It is almost as though people are afraid to cast off ideas about god and take responsibility for their own path, and acknowledge that chance is just a fact of life.
20 February 2007 at 8:24 pm
Here here I say to Anon!
21 February 2007 at 12:01 am
i am encouraged by anonymous’ (above, posted 2/21/2007 03:23:00 AM)
experience and decision. many people who went through very difficult situations in their life cannot resist the temptation of believing in a god.
i was a christian for 12 years. i stopped believing because:
1. i shouldn’t believe in a religion because i think it can explain
the wonders of Nature, including less tangible things like our moral
systems. In fact, religions just sweep these questions under the carpet.
2. there is no evidence for or against the existence of God. religions are
unjustifiable. so i am not motivated to believe until some evidence
exist. whereas a believer will continue to believe whatever new
facts against it we discover. this is called (dis)confirmation biases.
3. our minds are fallible. we know from very large amount of careful
research in neuro-cognitive sciences, psychology and anthropology that our beliefs,
prejudices and biases are more often wrong than right in the modern world.
the basic point is don’t trust your feeling or intuition. some believers argue even scientists practise faith, belief and intuition in their work. but the scientific processes are completely different from religious ones. ultimately, scientific ideas need to be developed into a stage where they can be tested objectively and rigously, with some high degree of reproducibility. in science, we can’t trust our own common sense and intuition.(see Lewis Wolpert’s the unnatural nature of science)
4. not everything natural is good for you. humans arrive in our modern
world with tremendous evolutionary baggages. the urge to consume
large amount of sweet or fatty food (like ice-cream and fried chicken) is
natural, but they are not good for you. it may seem natural to believe in
God when we are confounded by the problems and questions about the world
we live in, but it is ultimately not good for you.
5. some people argue that religions serve the common good of societies, so
who cares if they are wrong. i want to argue otherwise, i say religions
have done more harm than good over the history. moreover, we also know
that it is never a good idea to use lies to achieve our aims even when
those aims are honourable ones. lies lead to more sinister regimes.
6. i stop believing in the Bible. it was written by men, substracted from and added to and edited by men. these are men i couldn’t trust. why the religious lies are so convincing is because the leaders in the religions believe in these lies themselves. the best liars believe in their own lies. (by lies here i mean telling untruthful things).
7. most mainstream religions are exclusive religions. each of them claims
to be the only correct one. by this logic, most religions are also wrong (if not all are wrong, only one is correct). so what makes you think you got the right one? how can you
examine your own religious belief fairly and rigourously?
it is good to be a skeptic. have a look at http://skepdic.com/. look at entries like ‘confirmation biases’, ‘communal reinforcement’, ‘self-deception’, ‘subjective validation’, etc.
21 February 2007 at 2:02 am
“Hear, hear” I say to Anon 2!
24 February 2007 at 3:48 pm
I think after having listened to the interview with TB mentioned previously, I would never vote for someone who wasn’t an atheist ever again.