1. Church and State: Divided we stand

Comment #63654 by AWACS77 on August 15, 2007 at 8:21 am

I really like his 10 commandments for Politicians.

[quote]1. Do not claim God as a member of your party or that God is on your side of an issue.

2. Do not publicly proclaim your religious devotion, affiliation, and practices, or attack those of your opponents.

3. Do not denounce those who differ with you about the proper role of religion in public life as anti-religious or intolerant of religion.

4. Do not surround your political campaign with religious trappings or symbols.

5. Honor and respect the diversity of this country, recalling that many Americans came to these shores to escape the tyranny of enforced religious uniformity and, more recently, enforced antireligious uniformity.

6. Do not seek the support of religious leaders who impose religious obligations on members of their faith to support or oppose particular candidates.

7. Do not accuse those who reject formal religion of immorality. Recall that some of our nation's greatest leaders did not accept formal or even informal religion.

8. Do not equate morality and religion. Although some great moral teachers were religious, some great moral sinners also acted in the name of religion.

9. When there are political as well as religious dimensions to an issue, focus on the political ones during the campaign.

10. Remember that every belief is in a minority somewhere, and act as if your belief were the least popular.[/quote]

Definitely good words to live by they should be sent to all "religious right" politicians.

2. God '08: Whose, and How Much, Will Voters Accept?

Comment #58086 by AWACS77 on July 23, 2007 at 11:06 am

So if a candidate should say that there faith has no bearing on their political decisions, do we believe them or do you think they say that just to keep secularists from going up in arms?

3. Face to faith

Comment #57736 by AWACS77 on July 20, 2007 at 8:44 pm

One of my best friends while I was at university was an Atheist who took a degree in Religious studies.

Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk are very brilliant men and their arguments are well made. However I would have hear would from my Atheist religious studies friend or others who have an educational background in the field (interestingly enough my friends favourite religious studies prof was also Atheist).