Is President Obama secretly an atheist, who fakes being a Christian for political reasons?

[Nye Bevan]

Frequently on DU posters say something along the lines of, President Obama is much too smart to believe in invisible sky monsters, OBVIOUSLY he is actually an atheist, but since an atheist could never win election he pretends to be a Christian.

8 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Yes. President Obama is secretly an atheist, and lies about being a Christian for political reasons.
	2 (25%)
	No. President Obama is actually a Christian.
	6 (75%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[SecularMotion]

1. I love the smell of flamebait in the morning

[Nye Bevan]

2. Inspired by this post, as well as many similar ones:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2955601

[SecularMotion]

3. A suggestion

If you were to frame the question in regard to all politicians and not focus on President Obama, it may not be so inflammatory.

[Nye Bevan]

4. Thanks for the suggestion (nt)

[WovenGems]

71. Even better idea

If one has an IQ above 130 then what are the odds that one is religious? I think the Pope is an agnostic as is Obama. Atheist - doesn't believe while an agnostic just doesn't know for sure due to lack of evidence.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

5. You forgot another choice: Don't care

I mean that the actual answer is "Who gives a rat's arse?"

[Nye Bevan]

6. My general assumption is that people who really don't care don't click on the thread.

Last edited Thu Jun 6, 2013, 08:49 AM - Edit history (1)

Let alone respond to it. Twice.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

11. However, as I said

The correct answer is "who cares?"

And as was pointed out in the first post, your question is obviously flame bait.

[skepticscott]

15. Some of us think it's important

to know what may be influencing the president's thinking as he makes decisions that affect the lives of billions of people.

Silly us.

[goldent]

60. I was looking for the same choice.

[Iggo]

7. Yes.

[RevStPatrick]

8. I think Jimmy Carter was our last actual Christian president...

All the others since then have just paid it lip service.

[trotsky]

9. Why do you think that?

Is it because you believe all bad people are non-Christians? That only Christians are good people?

[trotsky]

10. The flipside, that actually IS seen on DU...

(disturbingly frequently) is that people like Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, etc. are too evil and hateful to be Christians. Ergo, they MUST be non-believers because only atheists can be truly evil.

It's funny that the post you linked to that "inspired" your thread said nothing about Obama being "too smart to believe in invisible sky monsters," only that the political reality in this country is a difficult one for an open atheist. I think all of us would acknowledge the truth of that.

[el_bryanto]

12. You should give more gradations - I have the Soul-o-scope so I know, but most people don't

See with the patented Soul-o-scope I can tell the religious fervor of anybody, down to the millicromwell. Unfortunately most people don't have Soul-o-scopes so they have to guess what state Obama's soul is in. So some gradations between 100% Christian and 100% Atheist might be useful.

Unless your point is really something else.

Bryant

[auburngrad82]

13. Would it matter if he was? nt

[Nye Bevan]

14. Does it really matter what anyone's religious beliefs are?

Why even have a Religion forum?

[auburngrad82]

16. To me, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are

I couldn't care less if you are Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Atheist, or anything else. It's your right to believe whatever you want to believe. For me, it's more about how you live your life than what you call yourself. To me, no one belief system is better than another. It's what works for you as an individual.

Is being an Atheist a bad thing?

I respect people much more for how they live, how they treat others, and how they treat the planet than for what they believe in.

[whathehell]

31. Thank you.

But I believe the relevant question on this board is "Is being a NON-Atheist a bad thing"?

We already know by the open level of contempt shown to Christianity, whose definition they conveniently,

and dishonestly, restrict to the Fundamentalist version, even though those are a MINORITY,

that being a Christian is a "bad thing" on DU.

[auburngrad82]

34. Unfortunately it's human nature to generalize

Generalizing makes it easier to put things in a box and makes it easier for us to understand. We're all guilty of it. I'm guilty of believing that conservatives are idiots. Obviously not all conservatives are idiots, but I generalize and my impressions of conservatives are tainted by my lumping all conservatives in the same category.

You're guilty by believing that being a Christian is a "bad thing" on DU. Obviously, with thousands of members, everyone on DU does not feel this way. I would venture a guess that it's not even a majority of DU users. But you generalize, just as I did above, that DU is anti-Christian.

There was a post yesterday where the person who started it implied that a majority of DU users would heckle Laura Bush. The actual poll that person referred to showed results of 74 individuals, a drop in the bucket when compared to the tens of thousands of DU users. They generalized, based on the responses of 74 individuals, that the majority of DU users were fine with heckling someone on the Right while professing to be horrified at the treatment of Michelle Obama by a heckler earlier this week.

The person who started this thread is guilty of generalizing that there are only two options- Christian or Atheist. It happens all the time and we all do it to some degree.

We all need to get beyond the labeling- myself included. There are way more important things than what religion you are, what color your skin is, or what your sexual preference might be. My priorities would be more along the lines of trying to keep Monsanto from controlling the world's food supply, Nestle from controlling the world's water supply (and I'm not being paranoid here- both Nestle's and Monsanto's upper management have publicly declared their intentions to control the food and water supplies), try to reduce the damage we're doing to the planet so that future generations aren't left with a cesspool for a planet, etc. I don't have any kids, so when my wife and I are gone we'll have nothing to worry about, but I feel that it's our duty to try to leave things a little better than what we started with.

[DrDan]

56. got that right - +1

[Still Blue in PDX]

17. Admittedly anecdotal, but people at work assume I'm Christian because I'm NICE.

It's sad that so many Christians assume a moral compass indicates Christianity.

It's just as sad that so many Atheists assume intelligence indicates Atheism.

It's been years since I've chosen to publicise my religious beliefs and think it is just silly that Americans feel it is necessary that politicians do so.

[Nye Bevan]

19. This is very, very much a US phenomenon.

In the UK, for example, two of the three major party leaders are self-proclaimed atheists, and nobody cares.

Kind of ironic given that the UK has the *opposite* of separation of church and state (official national Christian religion, and mandated prayers in public schools).

[hrmjustin]

18. I think he is a faithful Christian.

He does not ware his religion on his sleeve which I like.

[cbayer]

20. People that say the Obama is "too smart to believe in invisible sky monsters"

are bigots, no more or no less.

Only people who are very insecure and small minded need to see religious beliefs correlated with level of intelligence.

[hrmjustin]

21. I agree. It implies those of us who believe are idiots.

I am not complaining about the OP at all.

[cbayer]

22. There is no correlation between intelligence and religious beliefs, so anyone

who makes such claims can be easily dismissed.

The OP is pure flame bait. He says he started this to continue a discussion about how it is difficult to win elected positions if one has no religious affiliation, which is a valid discussion.

But the OP included needlessly provocative and offensive language and made the proposals that Obama is a liar and that intelligence is correlated with religiosity.

[Nye Bevan]

24. I didn't invent the term "invisible sky monsters",

so sorry if it is "needlessly provocative" but that is the term used very frequently by atheists on DU.

And it is a sad necessity that polticians need to lie. As another example, I sincerely hope that Obama is lying when he claims to support capital punishment, but sees the lie as necessary for electoral support.

[cbayer]

26. No, you just chose to use it. It's offensive to believers.

Do you not know that? The fact that it is used by a number of people on this site doesn't make it any less so.

[trotsky]

27. Maybe not, but you DID make this claim in your post:

"Frequently on DU posters say something along the lines of, President Obama is much too smart to believe in invisible sky monsters, OBVIOUSLY he is actually an atheist, but since an atheist could never win election he pretends to be a Christian."

The only post you've linked to only mentions how difficult it is to be elected in this country as an open atheist.

Perhaps - since this so "frequently" happens - you could link to several more posts that actually make the claim you are stating they do?

Otherwise, yeah, your OP *is* flamebait, and you should delete it.

[whathehell]

29. Correct...He should also bag the stupid, quite bigoted "skymonster" definition of Christianity

No Christian over age five thinks that way. Maybe he should actually educate

himself on the topic he loves to hate so much. Duh.

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. Actually, only one other person has used it once on DU

But you've repeated it more than once:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=290080
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2712028
and now this thread.

The original, which seems to still be burning in your soul:
http://election.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1022509&mesg_id=1023122

Those are the only uses of the term that Google finds on DU. Chris_Texas, the only other person to use it, got tombstoned on DU2, but what for, I don't know.

[Nye Bevan]

50. Hmmm. My Google seems to work better than yours.

Scootaloo (5,972 posts)
143. Because that's what religion does

Think of religion as a sort of browser hijack virus. If it can get into your system, it'll make it much easier for other malicious content to get in there too. If you're weak-minded enough to believe that an invisible sky-monster impregnated a virgin without harming her hymen and the kid that resulted bled water, transmuted water into wine, had replicator technology, and could come back from the dead and fly, then someone telling you that this guy wants gays dead isn't going to have a lot of trouble convincing you of this.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=888151

[muriel_volestrangler]

53. Ah, Google didn't show up results using the singular

which it normally manages to do. Still, we now have 1 other use of it (plus a couple of discussions saying that using it not a good way of communicating). Your relative obsession with it (repeating it more than it's used by others, and claiming it is "used very frequently by atheists on DU&quot still seems unwarranted.

[Nye Bevan]

57. Another?

justiceischeap (9,888 posts)
42. I'm going to reply to your question as a lesbian, not an atheist

Last edited Sun Jan 8, 2012, 04:21 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
As a lesbian, when someone questions my identity (say Santorum or other bigots), it offends me. I am aware that I am made up of more than my sexuality but my sexuality is a big part of my identity and when my identity is belittled (or I perceive as being belittled), I get defensive. For those of the religious persuasion, their faith is a big part of their identity. No one likes their identity denied. That would be my guess as to why you get the hostile replies.

That said, I think if things are written on DU in a way that their religion starts to infringe on something (like the LGBTQ community or women), then by all means, use your identity to debate their comment but to immediately jump on someone because they say they have faith in the big, invisible sky monster is akin to attacking them without reason.

Does that make sense? I only really get involved in religious discussion (that get heated) when we see threads about the fundies attacking choice or the LGBTQ community or women ('cause those tend to be the big 3 right now). I've found most of the faithful on DU get their backs up when one uses the blanket statement of "Christians suck!" or something to that affect. However, I've also found that if you say, "Some Christians suck!" they tend to do better with the discussion.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1230&pid=2128

This Googling is getting a little boring, so I'm done with it. But as you well know there are countless variations on the theme like "sky fairy" and so on:

Arugula Latte Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Aug-03-07 07:15 PM
Response to Reply #3
15. We should change it to "Grasp at any straw in a foxhole, including the Invisible Sky Fairy."

That would go over well.

[muriel_volestrangler]

63. That's one of the "not a good idea to put it this way" posts

and is said by an atheist to an atheist.

[trotsky]

67. You claimed it was said "frequently."

Even with the power of Google we've identified less than a handful of times.

I think you should retract/alter your original statement. It would be the responsible thing to do - otherwise you're just reinforcing a negative stereotype of atheists. Thanks to your thread, it will get burned a little more into someone else's mind, and they'll use it to bash atheists too.

[Goblinmonger]

35. Actually there is a correlation.

Not to be confused with causation. But there is a correlation between increased intelligence and atheism.

[dimbear]

40. You may want to avoid this scientific paper:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289608000238

Abstract

Evidence is reviewed pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief in the United States and Europe. It is shown that intelligence measured as psychometric g is negatively related to religious belief. We also examine whether this negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief is present between nations. We find that in a sample of 137 countries the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God is 0.60.

[Jim__]

41. Andrew Brown reviewed that paper.

It's an interesting read. Here's an excerpt:

OK, it's a naughty headline, but no less true than the one put on this survey at the aggressively atheist Sandwalk blog, which said "Atheists are smarter than agnostics". Both readings are justified. A large-scale analysis of the religious allegiance and measured IQ of a representative sample of 3,742 American adolescents found a clear trend: the more fundamentalist denominations had the more stupid believers, so that the bottom four places were occupied, from the bottom, by Pentecostalists, Baptists, Holiness churches and "Personal Philosophy", which I presume means a new-age-ish syncretism, while the top four places, again in ascending order, were taken by agnostics, atheists, Jews, and Episcopalians (Anglicans). So, atheists are smarter than agnostics, Jews are smarter than atheists, and Anglicans the smartest of the lot ...

But we should always be careful about science which tells us what we think we already know.

...

But is there not an overtone perhaps distressing to progressive opinion in professor Nyborg's thought? Should we really be quite so smug at his scientific discovery that Baptists make rotten servants? Should we really be quite so confident about the conclusions of a man who puts so much weight on IQ and its hereditary nature?

So I did a little digging around. I downloaded the paper, which costs, alas, $37.50 with VAT, and read it carefully through. It turns out that Nyborg is an enthusiast for scientific racism. It's not just believers who are more stupid, in his world: it's black people and women, too. In a collaboration with Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, he measured religiosity against IQ in 137 countries, and concluded that low IQ countries always had higher rates of religion. It's not religion that makes you stupid, he told a Christian paper at the time: but if you live in a very religious country, you are very likely to be stupid. And of course the correlation of religion and poverty is in global terms very clear, while the most religious continent of all is Africa.

more ...

[dimbear]

46. All those IQ comparisons are a little scary, but it's safe to say

the consensus of the investigators favors the concept that there is a correlation. One might find some unsavory investigators, they abound in IQ studies, but that wouldn't change the result. Honestly, the thing in question (and this certainly is in question) is whether the correlation is large or small. It's not zero or negative.

[Jim__]

47. The question of what can be inferred from any correlation is also important.

From the Brown review:

...

The thing that I found really fascinating in Flynn's lecture was his discussion of what makes for very low IQ scores. It is one of the paradoxes of the Flynn effect that it implies not only that our children will be smarter than we are, but that our recent ancestors were extremely stupid. Extrapolating back to 1900 on the two fastest-improving components of the IQ tests suggests that schoolchildren then would have had a mean IQ of either 50 or 70. "How did Englishmen play cricket in 1900" asked Flynn. "Taking their mean IQ at face value, most of them would need a minder to position them in the field, tell them when to bat, and tell them when the innings was over."

The answer, he says, is that one of the things that IQ tests measure is "post-scientific operational thinking". This is not the same as scientific thinking. But it is thinking about the world in terms of the categories by which science understands it. For instance, if you ask, "What do dogs and rabbits have in common", the post-scientific answer, that we would now regard as evidence of intelligence, is that they are both mammals. The pre-scientific answer is that you use a dog to hunt a rabbit. That's what matters about the two animals, not what class they belong to.

It is that kind of difference in reasoning which accounts for the huge measured IQ differences between urban and rural Brazil, and, of course, the fantastically low IQs measured in African countries.

...

And from wikipedia:

...

Even at the scale of the individual, IQ may not directly cause more disbelief in God. Dr David Hardman of London Metropolitan University says: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief." He adds that other studies do nevertheless correlate IQ with being willing or able to question beliefs.[11]

Researcher Gregory S. Paul's findings suggest that economic development has a closer relationship with religiosity.[14] He argues that once any "nation's population becomes prosperous and secure, for example through economic security and universal health care, much of the population loses interest in seeking the aid and protection of supernatural entities." Other studies have shown that increased wealth is correlated with a decline in religious beliefs.[15][16] Indeed, the majority of the nations that showed a strong relationship between low religiosity and high IQ in the 2008 study were developed nations.[10]

...

Correlation indicates a probable relationship. By itself, it is not a strong indicator of causation.

[dimbear]

49. I've no problem with trying to minimize the number, or to explain its causes.

Saying there is no correlation just isn't on the cards. I strongly suspect wishful thinking up-thread.

[cbayer]

59. Why would I want to avoid it?

All i can get is the abstract, so I can't even take a critical look at it.

Got anything else?

[dimbear]

61. Here's one in full as a pdf:

http://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/1197.pdf

You're going to love this one, because it support
both of us--it's murder on fundamentalists.

Sample size 2300, University of Edinburgh

"In conclusion, our investigation of religion and intelli-
gence in a large sample of US adults had the important
strength of assessing religious belief on a wide variety of
measures, as well as controlling for the effects of openness,
which may have confounded findings in previous work. We
observed that intelligence was negatively associated with
five of the six measures of religion, and most strongly with
fundamentalism, although effect sizes were typically modest.
In addition, openness positively predicted the spiritual
elements of religion, but was negatively associated with
fundamentalism."
***************
As I was remarking to Jim, the effect may be overestimated, may be explainable, but it's real.

[cbayer]

68. I think I have read something similar about fundamentalism, but

I can't open this link for some reason (I am extremely close to Area 51 right now, lol).

Anyway, I don't know what they mean by openness, but I would say that if this is the only available study, one would be walking on thin ice to make the claim that there is a significant correlation between intelligence and general religiosity.

Anyway, this is a pretty lame argument all the way around.

[LeftishBrit]

65. As a matter of fact, I do think that papers by Richard Lynn should be avoided!

He has a very simplistic view of IQ; considers that some races are genetically more intelligent than others (was cited approvingly in 'The Bell Curve') and that men are more intelligent than women; and is something of a latter-day eugenicist.

His views are not only 'politically incorrect' but mostly based on assumptions that are in my opinion logically incorrect.

The whole concept of 'national IQ' in this paper is suspect, as people in some nations are far more likely than those in others to have advanced education, leading to both better knowledge of the content of tests and to greater familiarity with the whole concept of a test. Related to this, poverty is likely to lead to lower IQ for all kinds of reasons (ranging from limited education to brain damage from malnutrition and poor health), and is much more prevalent in some countries than others.

On the whole, people who are highly educated are more likely to be atheists, because of greater exposure to the possibility of a variety of beliefs. Many people in the world will never have heard of atheism, or indeed anything other than the locally dominant religion! Education will make people familiar with the concept of atheism and that not everyone in the world believes the same thing. IQ is related, both as cause and effect, to educational level; so it is not surprising that there is a statistical correlation between IQ and atheism; it probably stems from the fact that both are correlated with education.

On a national level, I think this is basically saying that atheism is less prevalent in poorer countries than well-off countries. And perhaps also that theocratic governments tend not to provide a wide and varied education for their citizens.

[dimbear]

69. In going further I see that this paper is rather infamous. The truth seems to be

that the effect is real, but not as great as Lynn suggests.

I don't know why sociological papers are so boring, it's tough sledding to get through them, so I've run out of steam, but finding more wouldn't be a problem.

[DirkGently]

52. But we do all think fundamentalists are crazy, right?

There's a lot of doubletalk surrounding religion in American politics. It's not politically viable to be a non-believer in most cases, but if someone were to take the podium and start talking about recent conversations with Jesus, the coming Apocalypse, or any of a number of less savory parts of the Bible, we'd think they were nuts.

What the majority of Americans seem to require is lip service to the idea of religion. Our culture seems to argue that someone who doesn't believe in the Judeo-Christian god is morally suspect, but at the same time a literal belief in the supernatural is a bit much for most people.

The result is a lot of weird hypocrisy and silliness. Obama, for example, appears to be a middle-of-the-road Christian, but the fundamentalist right tries to scrutinize and attack him for not being observant enough, while the rest of us worry when he invites homophobic reverends to public events.

So which is it, really? Do want believers, non-believers, or this queer gray area where our leaders identify as religious, but don't embrace a literal belief in things that contradict reality?

[cbayer]

58. No, I don't think they are crazy. I just think they are wrong on the issues.

I agree that there is discrimination against non-believers. I would like to see that eliminated and more pressure put on the religious right to back away from the politics that inflict their beliefs on people in order to restrict civil rights.

[rrneck]

23. I don't care. nt

[Nye Bevan]

25. Thanks for your feedback. (nt)

[whathehell]

28. Why are there only two choices?...He may be an agnostic.

And by the way, screw your ignorant "Christians can't be smart" bigotry.

You do realize that a DUer who also happens to be one of THE brightest, most highly rated

Lefty Radio Talkers, Thom Hartman, is a self-described Christian, don't you?

[LuvNewcastle]

30. I think we've probably had some atheist Presidents who

couldn't admit it publicly. I can't say what's true in Obama's case. Some religious people don't wear their religion on their sleeve like others do. For some, their religion informs everything they do. I think that if he is a believer as he says he is, he's not particularly devout. He occasionally makes statements that seem to come from a Christian point of view, but I just don't get a vibe that he takes Christian principles into account when he's making the tough decisions.

[trotsky]

32. What exactly do you mean by this:

"I just don't get a vibe that he takes Christian principles into account when he's making the tough decisions."

Who defines what these "Christian principles" are?

[LuvNewcastle]

36. There are certain principles that, while they aren't

unique to Christianity, Christians recognize as part of their religion. I'm not even a Christian and I know that. I think you're being argumentative.

I shouldn't have to explain what I mean by that. Most people with a passing familiarity with Christianity can tell you some things that they believe. I'm not talking about fringe cults here, I'm talking about the major denominations. I shouldn't have to explain these things, but for the record, here goes.

The primary source of Christian doctrine is the Bible. Christianity is centered around the teachings of Jesus. Some people like Paul wrote books that are essentially commentary on Jesus's teachings.

Jesus taught that you should love your neighbor as you love yourself. He said that you should do unto others what you would want done to you. In short, those teachings are the foundation of Christianity. Jesus himself said that those teachings basically summed up the scriptures. Whether they're Protestant or Catholic, Christians either believe or at least pay lip service to these teachings.

Now, does Obama take these teachings to heart? Anyone can look at the President's actions and compare them to the tenets of Christianity and get an idea. Personally, I think Obama's a pragmatist at heart. He might consider some Christian principles in some of the things he does, but he probably thinks those ideas aren't very helpful with a lot of the other decisions he has to make.

[trotsky]

37. How much agreement do you think there is among Christians on these principles?

"Love your neighbor as you love yourself." What does this principle mean? Who is my neighbor? Is there agreement among all Christians on what it means? Which Christians are correct? How do you know?

"Do unto others what you would want done to you." Many Christians believe that abortion is murder. They would want someone else to protect them from being murdered, so they work very hard to try and keep fetuses from being aborted. Would you say they are following Christian principles? I know for certain that they claim they are. Who are you to tell them they're wrong?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I think you are looking at an incredibly complex issue (religious beliefs being used to justify behavior) and portraying it as if it were a simple one. It's not - otherwise we wouldn't, to this day, still have people killing other people because of a differing opinion on what "Christian principles" are.

[LuvNewcastle]

42. Instead of interpreting what those teachings mean,

which, as you describe, can be very complicated, let's think about what they don't mean. Are you treating others as you wish to be treated when you send out the drones? How about when you have someone arrested and throw them in jail indefinitely without a trial?

Most Christians that I know of believe that "love your neighbor as yourself" means love everyone as you love yourself. I've never heard anyone say that it meant just to love the people next door. In that light, it means pretty much the same thing as the other commandment. Are you loving your neighbor when you try to cut their Social Security?

Those are a couple of examples of things Obama has done that most would say are in direct conflict with Christian teachings. There are many more. That's what I mean when I say that Obama doesn't always adhere to Christian principles when he makes decisions. He might have reasons for the things he does, but it's obvious that those reasons have little or nothing to do with the things he learned in church.

Understand that even though I don't agree with Obama on the issues I've cited, it doesn't mean that I believe a President should follow his Christian beliefs to the letter. When Jesus said those things, he didn't have subordinate clauses in the sentences that said, " love your neighbor unless he does something you don't like." That's why Christian principles aren't enough to go by when you're making the really tough decisions. That's what makes the decisions so tough in the first place.

[trotsky]

43. "Instead of interpreting..."

That's precisely the problem. You can't put interpretation aside - it all hinges on it! (And the added wrinkle with a revealed religion like Christianity which must allow for the possibility of new interpretations, new messages, new edicts being delivered to humans through a new prophet.)

As far as sending out the drones - would you say that a true Christian can NEVER kill, even in self-defense or times of legitimate war?

I notice you skipped over my question about anti-choicers, too. I would appreciate if you could address that subject.

I still think you are trying to fit an enormously complex issue into a tiny simplistic box. What are Christian principles? I don't think you could find two Christians who would completely agree. But if you want to declare that it's YOUR interpretation of what those principles are, that YOU are the sole judge on who is correctly following them, go right ahead. About a billion or so Christians are going to disagree with you, though.

Let me also add that principles such as pacifism, compassion, etc. are found in human beings regardless of their religion. They aren't "Christian" principles (as you are identifying them) any more than they are Jewish principles, Hindu principles, or even atheist principles.

[LuvNewcastle]

45. You're talking to me as if I were a Christian and

I like I'm trying to make Obama behave. Nowhere did I say that other religions or the non-religious can't be moral, either. I'd like to think I'm a moral person. What you really want to do is have an argument, just as I suspected in the beginning. Sometimes things are simple. Sending a drone to kill someone is not treating them the way you would like to be treated -- unless you're a masochist. You see what I'm saying, you just want to drag this out into some big drama. I'm done with this; it's gotten tiresome and I have things i'd much rather do tonight.

[trotsky]

48. As I have stated repeatedly,

this issue is far more complex than you seem to want to acknowledge. You again ignored my very important question about anti-choicers, and from that omission I can only assume you realize the fatal flaws in your reasoning.

Are there just wars? If we had been able to use a drone to assassinate Hitler, would you have given the order to do so?

Sorry you've given up, but hopefully you've thought about some things you hadn't before. The world isn't quite as simple as you'd like it to be, I'm afraid.

[LostOne4Ever]

33. Haven't been here that long

But so far I have never seen anyone say "President Obama is much too smart to believe in invisible sky monsters, OBVIOUSLY he is actually an atheist, but since an atheist could never win election he pretends to be a Christian."

I have seen some DU posters imply that hes a closet republican though, that he hates left wingers, that hes authoritarian, etc.

Okay lets be logical about this. Nobody knows President Barack Obama's beliefs better than himself. So when we exam the evidence it overwhelmingly supports the conclusion he is a theist, and more specifically a Christian. There is little to no evidence otherwise to support him being an atheist.

So mostly likely he is a Christian.

Now could he be LYING about it? Certainly, but that argument could be made about every single person you ever meet. As with the god question itself, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. So where is the evidence? There is none. However, we have his testimony, his wife's testimony, his preacher's testimoney, fact that he has a prayer app or something on his phone, etc to show that hes sincere.

The preponderance of the evidence shows him to be both Christian and sincere about it. Its possible that it is all just a ruse, but its also possible an invisible pink unicorn is flying around the moon as well by that logic.

Now onto the real question: Is it possible that at some point in time that we had an atheist president and they pretended to be a theist to get elected? Absolutely.

We know for a fact that some politicians will lie about being part of unpopular groups in order to get elected. If this were not true we would not have antigay republicans getting caught in gay sex scandals

So what are the odds that we had an Atheist President at some point? Well the Atheist population is a rather controversial subject varying depending upon definition, where the calculation was done, who did the poll, and so forth. I tend to believe its between 10-20% myself. But im going to say that for the history of the entire US (remember that we did not make up as large a percentage back in 1800 as we do now) it averages out to around 2%. If you have any evidence to suggest a better number post it and ill update my post.

So back to my point what are the odds of us having an atheist president? Well we just take the odds of us having 44 theist presidents and subtract it from 1.

1-(0.98)^44=.589

So we have a 58.9% chance that at LEAST ONE PRESIDENT was a closet atheist.

If you increase the atheist population to 5% it becomes a 90% chance of having at least 1 atheist president.

If you increase that to 10% of the population it becomes 99.1% chance

If you increase it to 20% (the projected total of all atheists, agnostics, and nones in the US today) it becomes 99.995% chance.


I like these odds.

[Jim__]

38. In keeping with your reasoning, the probability that we've had a president with an IQ of 70 or ...

... below is about 67%.

All kidding aside, that's just wrong. The president is not randomly selected from the population.

[LostOne4Ever]

39. GWB (nt)

[MADem]

51. No "other?"

My answer is this: I don't know what his faith is, or is not, and I don't really care.

He can do what he wants, so long as it doesn't involve human or animal sacrifice or abrogation of the rights and freedoms of others.

[ZombieHorde]

54. You are missing the obvious poll option:

"President Obama is actually a secret Muslim."

[LeftishBrit]

66. Don't you mean that he's a secret MUSLIN?

[DrDan]

55. a Christian - hence held in disdain by many here who find those that believe

foolish, gullible and not worthy of respect

[uriel1972]

62. I don't know for sure but I think most atheists on this board...

Would say Obama is a Christian. He says he is often enough and I haven't encountered any evidence to the contrary, so I call him a Christian.
Intelligence and faith are not irreconcilable. Their have been plenty of intelligent, religious people.
Is he a good person? I think he genuinely tries to be one, but what he believes is the right thing to do may not be the same as my ideas.
As for frequently seen, I don't know about that. Usually when someone is accused of not being a Christian it is because the accuser doesn't want to be associated with a fellow believer for some reason.

[LeftishBrit]

64. Obviously we can't tell what someone inwardly believes...

but I see no reason to think that he is pretending. Not that I really care what a politician believes, so long as he doesn't use it as an excuse for warmongering, authoritarian policies, or any other politically nasty behaviour.

In the UK, it would be almost impossible to give an accurate estimate of how many prime ministers have been atheists vs believers, since a fairly large proportion have probably been vaguely agnostic or religiously indifferent, to the point that they probably couldn't give the answer themselves. This goes back nearly 300 years to our first Prime Minister Walpole; and people still have debates, for example, as to whether Churchill was a believer or not. Not that there wasn't a big intermingling of 'religion' and politics, but it wasn't about beliefs so much as the power struggles between the Established Church and other denominations.

[skepticscott]

70. I would tend to put Obama in the category

of a "habitual" Christian, much like the middle and upper-middle class, suburban, middle-of-the-road Protestants that the Midwest and Northeast are full of. They go to their nice Methodist, Presbyterian, ELCA or Congregationalist churches on Sunday morning because it's what their parents did and what they grew up doing, and because it gives them the social acceptability that being an open atheist wouldn't. Dad ushers, mom sings in the choir, they have the obligatory parties for Johnny's confirmation or little Susie's first communion, and they have their nice circle of church friends. But how much of what they mouth when the Nicene creed comes up in the service or when they say their habitual grace before meals they actually believe is another matter. A lot of them probably have more or less serious doubts about how much sense the whole thing makes, but they continue to go through the rituals because it's not an easy habit to break.