The last post

[merlinofchaos]

My point, by the way, which I was too tired to make is...

In this country (and probably others), it's almost required for politicians to be Christian. For those that truly believe in religious tolerance, it's ok for politicians to be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindi.

But atheists? Get out of town. Apparently having some belief is better than having no belief at all.

The problem is, atheism isn't a lack of belief. It is specifically disbelieving in God. And I don't think those are the same thing, not by a long shot. It isn't coming across two paths (or fifty paths) and simply choosing not to pick one. That's agnosticism. That's saying you don't know. Atheism is saying you do know, and you do believe...that God or Gods do not exist.

Comments

[lurkingowl.livejournal.com]

Agnostic and atheist aren't exclusive terms.

It's certainly possible to be an agnostic theist (I don't think there can be proof of god, but I have faith he exists.)
or an agnostic atheist (I don't think there can be proof of god, and I don't have a positive belief in one.)

One can also be a "gnostic atheist," or strong atheist, which is what you're calling an atheist.

In short, the content of a belief is independent of the epistemological foundation of the belief.

[death-by-monkey.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I hadn't heard the term agnostic theist before. This is similar to the Baha'i view of God which is that God is unknowable (and as a corollary, the Baha'i writings also say that the purpose of humans is to know God).

And being a scientist, one who is religious, I particularly appreciate branna's discussion of agnosticism. Do I believe in creationism or intelligent design? No. Do I believe that God and science aren't exclusive. Yes. But that is where my faith comes in. And as I recognize that faith is what leads me to believe this, if your faith leads you to believe that there is no God - I can appreciate that, too.

But to speak to Earl's original point of whether or not an American politician can be anything other than Christian, it's certainly an uphill battle. If you think about other demographic facets of U.S. politics, though, religion isn't the only aspect like that. We're so far behind most other developed (and many underdeveloped) nations in terms of sexual equality in our politics (how many other countries have had at least one woman head of state by now?) as well as racial equality (how many black senators have we had?)

In general, for our country being the melting pot that it is, politically, the country doesn't stray far from it's leaders being white, male, and Protestant. As white Protestants -do- make up the majority of the U.S. population, though, at least on the national stage, our political system tends to lend itself to these outcomes. On the local or regional level it's easier to get more diversity, of course, but if you're going national and you're not white, male, and Protestant, you've got to find ways to get support across demographic lines in a major way.