I would argue that people who don't believe in god but act ethically are the most moral people in the world, for the very reason that they are doing it out of deep belief in those values and not the fear of external punishment or reward.

If the only thing keeping some people from hurting others is belief in an eternal reward or eternal punishment, so be it.

Not everyone needs superstition to lead an ethical life.

Reason and compassion suffice quite well, thank you very much.

Exactly.

A long time ago I realized the I do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because the Invisible Man might punish me after I'm dead.

And meanwhile - hello? Morality and religion? Anyone paying attention at all? Haggard? Robertson? Baker? Has there even been a big-time preacher who actually wasn't an immoral hypocrite?

Religion is for idiots.

By the by, is there a statute of limitations on being AWOL?

Recall that when assigned to Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama in 1972 George W. Bush was a no-show according to fellow officers, Bob Mintz and Paul Bishop. When Bush did show up at Dannelly, it was only to get his teeth fixed.

Just asking . . .

Whew - that was more of a stereotype sorter than anything else. And I get really disgusted by people who insist that morality flows only from god. Pious idiots.

And I get really disgusted by people who insist that morality flows only from god.

The trouble is - which god?

Are the Jews right, are the Catholics right, are the Muslims right, or the Hindus, or Zorastians, or Rastafarians?

If one believes in a given faith that rejects the other beliefs, then the idea that the next guy's illegitimate faith still has moral weight...

I just don't get it.

But believers are much more comfortable with the guy with the illegitimate faith than the guy with no faith whatsoever.

I don't get that either.

Ah Liberals,

I suppose you think that passing out needles on street corners and volunteering at planned parenthood are examples of moral behavior. Discussing morality with athiests is like discussing NASCAR with my wife . . . pointless.

The more strife (particularly in the middle east) the more prescient the bible. The more prescient the bible, the more resolve found in christians.

The christian solution to our middle east "problem" is to nuke 'em all - turn the whole place into a sheet of glass.

That's your christian morality.

On the contrary, believing in God seems to help justify all sorts of immoral stuff.

Seriously though: since most liberal principles are derived from secular foundations, throwing God into the mix at best changes nothing, but more likely will worsen the fit between your moral system and those secular foundations. So belief in some God probably anti-correlates with liberal morality, overall.

As with all issues with liars and hypocrites. Define your terms.

Among the religious wingnuttery, ask them to define what "morality" really means. Not only will you get some really bizzarre definitions, you'll get wildly varying ones too. (and even self-inconsistent ones).

Believe, as in, pretend there's a god?

And which god are we talking about for morals?

There's more than one god concept ya know.

I wish god would straighten this out.

Whoever she is.....

Whomever?

Hmmmmm...

Question 4 ("Most elected officials care/don't care what people like me think") looks even more ropey to me. It's so context-dependent: "people like me" and "most elected officials" both change depending on level of government, time (who is in government) and who "me" is. Drawing any conclusion from an answer to that one without first determining "me" from my answers to the other questions is pretty unsupportable.

The problem is, on that survey, "it is NOT necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values" needs to be the MIDDLE value. The value on the left should be "it is IMPOSSIBLE to believe in God and still be moral and have good values."

I'd be voting for the middle option, but the real left option needs to be available.

Discussing morality with athiests is like discussing NASCAR with my wife . . . pointless.

Oh, man, this is so ripe. The guy just lays himself open and asks to be skewered.

The test asks you if you are a liberal then tells you You are a Liberal.

And, according to this website, 2% of liberals voted for Bush in 2004.

Hawk-did you mean to tell us (and i say this as a southerner) that your wife is smarter than you? Because that's the take away.

Anyway, I'd say that the members of "the religious community" (there's only one?) who are willing to turn off their TVs, get out in the street and work for social justice, and stop trying to convert anyone except by example, are welcome to be PART OF the conscience of the Democratic party.

A Catholic liberal speaking here (note that in my case, Catholic liberal is not the same thing as liberal Catholic. My religion informs my politics rather than the other way around.)

Big time preacher who's not a moral hypocrite? Off the top of my head, I came up with Billy Graham.

From the secular perspective, you tend to get a rather skewed perspective. Most of the time, religious figures only get press when they do bad things, and, it's treated as a much bigger deal if a religious figure has, say, an extramarital affair, than if it's someone in the secular realm.

Most of the priests that I have known take their vow of celibacy very seriously, and are neither pedophiles nor sex maniacs (I have known one priest who had a girlfriend, and while that was a failing on his part--he had taken a vow of celibacy which he was pushing if not breaking--he was not a hypocrite about it: He openly expressed his disappointment when the pope announced in the early 90s that clerical celibacy was not to be revisited, and in his ministry, he was better at the pastoral aspects of the job than any other priest I've known).

I've also known a lot of people for whom religion is the motivation for some seriously holy stuff: From inviting the poor to come live in their homes, to going out and feeding the hungry on a daily basis (spending their own money to buy food for hundreds of sandwiches or gallons of soup) to going to jail after protesting American military policy.

Try plugging some of these names into Google some time and see what religion does: Philip and Daniel Berrigan, Ardeth Platte, Jackie Hudson, Carol Gilbert, Dorothy Day, Jeff Dietrich, Catherine Morris, Chris Ponnet. That's just a few off the top of my head. Only one close to a household name, but all names worth knowing.

And speaking of hypocrisy, I find it amusing to hear the tone of posts from people who would doubtless get upset about people shoving their beliefs down others' throats.

The overwhelming question is much simpler: Is it possible to be a moral person if your are a right wing conservative or a Republican?

The answer of course is a resounding no.

AMERICAN HAWK: Discussing morality with athiests is like discussing NASCAR with my wife . . . pointless.

When asked, I usually respond that out of all the gods worshipped by the various peoples of the world, I believe in only one less than most other people.

For the record according to the Valde Specialis Libri Ioculus locked deep in the Vatican archives
this is how God sorts out who the most moral/ethical people:

Jesuits
Irish Catholics
other Catholics not involved in Opus Dei
atheists
agnostics (He thinks you should pick a side however)

Jews
Muslims
Hindus
Shinto Buddhists

other polytheistic traditions
Tibetan Buddhists (not a big fan of Richard Gere)
most Protestants
Opus Dei members
Japanese golf religion
Scientologists
Lutherans (holds a grudge about the Reformation)

And speaking of hypocrisy, I find it amusing to hear the tone of posts from people who would doubtless get upset about people shoving their beliefs down others' throats.

This is a place were most of those people can rely on people either supporting those views, or have enough sense of perspective not be offended by them. How is that forcing anybody or shoving their beliefs down others' throats?

If they went around in the bible belt, visiting people to convert them to atheism then you'd have a point.

Now I've been visited by quite a few people who wanted to lead me to Jesus. I've yet to come across an atheist who knocked on my door to convince me to denounce G-d.

So can you show me the hypocorism you claim?.

it's treated as a much bigger deal if a religious figure has, say, an extramarital affair, than if it's someone in the secular realm.

Yeah, I find that so hard to justify. Just like it's such a big deal news story when a pro basketball player says he's gay, whereas when a novelist does, nobody seems to care. And when they catch an arsonist and it turns out he's the local Fire Chief, that's treated like a national story, whereas other arsonists barely get a mention. Why your average drug hoodlum can be convicted of three homicides and not make it past the local rap sheet, but let a police officer commit just one little murder, and it's all over the evening news.

papist:

Does the Vatican believe there's something called a "Shinto Buddhist"? Didn't Francis Xavier set them straight on that five centuries ago? I mean, there are Buddhists involved in kami worship, there are state-shinto adherents, there are even Buddhists who are Japanese nationalists, but I can't imagine what a "Shinto Buddhist" would be. Does the hidden document define the religions, as well as ranking them?

For the record according to the Valde Specialis Libri Ioculus locked deep in the Vatican archives this is how God sorts out who the most moral/ethical people:
Jesuits
[snip]
Shinto Buddhists
[snip]

Posted by: papist on February 15, 2007 at 3:17 AM |

When Mara Vanderslice says that she believes "the religious community can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic party," that actually seems like pretty harmless boilerplate to me.

Your harmless boilerplate, I find to be close to fighting words.

I hear Vanderslice saying that Atheists, Jews, Muslims need not apply.

You would have to be a pretty arrogant jackass to make her statement and not expect it to be poorly construed by others.

Don Hosek: ...From inviting the poor to come live in their homes, to going out and feeding the hungry on a daily basis (spending their own money to buy food for hundreds of sandwiches or gallons of soup) to going to jail after protesting American military policy.

I know plenty of secular people who do such "good works" too. One does not have to believe in God to be moral and have good values. There's this thing called humanity, compassion, altruistism that isn't necessarily religious.

Some of the ugliest behavior I have ever witnessed and experienced has come from religious people. History is full of atrocities committed in the name of God, Allah, etc., so turn off the TV if you think that's a skewed perspective and open some history books. Far worse historical facts than mere sexual indiscretions splashed in newspaper headlines.

While, yes, there are "good works" coming from believers, there are also "good works" coming from nonbelievers. I think that's admirable, don't you?

You are able to express your opinion here because of the generosity of our host, Kevin Drum, a nonbeliever, and that's a kindness not extended at some rightwing blogs that practice censorship and that also claim to support Christian values. Ironic, eh?

And speaking of hypocrisy, I find it amusing to hear the tone of posts from people who would doubtless get upset about people shoving their beliefs down others' throats.

Why do you find that amusing, Don? How about a bit more "uniter" attitude than "divider" rhetoric? You don't find any secular folks trying to repeal the First Amendment, do you? Nonbelievers support your free exercise of religion. Do you support their free speech? How about seeking common ground to build on?

I'm not a Christian but I believe in a Creator, the Universe, All That Is. My atheist friends scoff at my belief but I respect their opinions and my faith is in no way damaged or assaulted because I am the thinker in my life. Dissent cannot harm me but listening to others does accomplish understanding and promote compassion and respect.... the common ground I mentioned previously.

When prayer was banned in schools, it didn't stop me from praying to the Creator of my choosing. But I did not like being forced to recite the NT Lord's Prayer every morning in third grade. It was imposed meaninglessness compared to my own personal prayers as a child.

I wish that more Christians would behave more Christ-like. I would find no argument with that proposition and I would welcome a revival of forgiveness, compassion, "judge not" and the Golden Rule. I daresay secular folks would welcome it, too, as long as religion wasn't a requirement for them. The First Amendment permits nonbelievers to assert there is no god. Let's respect that principle in politics. Surely, in stating, religion informs my politics rather than the other way around, you don't advocate repealing of the First Amendment, do you? I don't think so--assuming that you are expressing a personal preference--but I don't know you as a poster here.

As far as Kevin's and Atrios' beef, it's legit. Atheists and agnostics are marginalized, ignored, discounted. And that's a shame if one values egalitarianism...a value I believe Jesus espoused.

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.� --Abraham Lincoln

Personally, I think the answer to that poll question -- "Is it necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values?" -- can best be answered by saying, "It depends on what you mean by God." It's quite possible to be religious without believing in a personal God; the Buddhists manage it just fine, worshipping a spiritual principle instead. And the same thing is true of all atheists and agnostics who nevertheless believe strongly in the principle of morality and of moral duty -- they may claim to be "nonreligious", but at least they worship something other than themselves. (Indeed, one can argue that members of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths properly worship not only a personal God but a spiritual principle as well -- that is, the idea that God should be obeyed for some reason OTHER than his supposedly being all-powerful. C.S. Lewis, in fact, used the Chinese name for this principle: the Tao.) It's on this point that liberals (and, for that matter, non-Judeo-Christian conservatives) had better make their stand.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557

Morning Edition, November 21, 2005 · I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.

But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Bruce Moomaw on February 15, 2007 at 6:34 AM

Excellent comment.

I also appreciate your comment, Penn...[making] this life the best life I will ever have.

I know I'm in the minority on this but I was brought up with an unaffiliated belief system and a healthy skepticism about organized religion.

As an American, I'm generally committed to a laissez faire attitude about religion but have to admit to private doubts about religions which encourage self-identification as god's chosen people or indulge in ceremonies of mock human sacrifice and cannibalism.

At the same time, I understand and respect the role of religion in cultivating caring community
and moderating serious dialogue about moral choices.

"Whatever gets you through the night, it's all right" I guess, but I'm inclined to judge people's beliefs by their actions.

About 20 years ago, when I was a grad student in Psychology, I read a paper on the relationship between 'religiosity' and measured moral behavior (e.g., arrests, drug use, parking tickets, etc.) There was a 'U'-shaped curve... that is, hard-core atheists were *very* moral (no arrests, no overdue library books, well, you get the idea). As beliefs went up the scale to agnosticism and mild religious beliefs, moral behavior dropped. Then, as religious belief went up to 'very very religious,' moral behavior rose again. I don't recall all the details of that paper, unfortunately, but I certainly remember the gist of it: atheists are just as moral as very religious people, and are more moral than the occasional church-goer.

I wish that more Christians would behave more Christ-like.

Yep. Starting with me. There are two commandments: love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. The second one is the hard part; it's also everybody else's business, unlike the first.

I've always objected to the code phrase 'morality' which always and exclusively means a certain rigid 'just say no' sexual morality.

So as long as you're monogamous it's okay to cheat on your taxes, pave over critical wetlands for a new strip mall, dump toxic chemicals in poor communities, sell defective products, off-shore jobs, lay off thousands and award yourself hundreds of millions in bonuses, take and give bribes and drive a Hummer...all good Republican 'virtues, right?

"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty, he is always in allegiance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. ... History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. ... Political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves [of public ignorance] for their own purpose." -
Thomas Jefferson: (1743-1826), third U.S. president.

At least the Aztecs were upfront about their use of human sacrifice - Our President merely sends more into harm's way in order to purify his soul.

As Pete Seeger would sing, "Give me that old time religion....Good enough for my Aztecian grandma, it's good enough for me."

private doubts about religions which...indulge in ceremonies of mock human sacrifice and cannibalism. - BroD

What, you only like religions that practice the real thing? You essentialist.

There are lots of things to question in the wording of the poll, e.g., "immigrants" in one question, and "newcomers from other countries" in another (what's wrong with legal and illegal?), but I think most folks are missing the basic technique: it's the Rule of 4.

The purpose of questions phrased like this is to do two things. First, by giving just four choices -- a little this, a lot this; a little that, a lot that, you can draw a line down the middle and say so many folks support this, and so many support that. There isn't any room for nuance, because you want to exclude the middle. You don't WANT nuance. It works.

Second, it measures intensity. When ES quotes the u curve that you get examinig the relative scrupulousity of profoundly faithful people, whether the godly or atheists (if you don't think a passionate atheist is faithful, perhaps you should re-think what the word means), remember that the curve measures INTENSITY, in exactly that way the Rule of 4 does.

I suspect Kevin didn't quite analyze his own assumptions in reacting to the question. It looks like he assumed that most folks would agree that being good requires belief in God, more or less, but that's only part of what the question is intended to reveal.

The classic example is abortion: polls consistently show, depending on how they are phrased, that a substantial majority of Americans are either sorta pro-choice, or sorta pro-life, with a significant minority that is INTENSELY one way or the other. (That's why the phrasing is important, it shows what moves folks from one category to another. But folks who feel intensely are the hardest to move.)

From the intensity of the reaction here, self-selected as it is, clearly many atheists strongly disagree that morals depend on divinity.

Get a proper sample, and the poll would measure that intensity clearly.

So face it - what you guys mostly object to is that you're simply not that numerous: and the fact is, atheists DO, so, proselytize, every time you insist that measuring how most people think and feel, since most people are believers of one sort or another, is somehow unfair to you.

Atheists are an exception, not the rule. Get over yourselves.

Faith--you either have it or you don't. From my experience, the people who have it are usually happier.

Since the survey was done by Pew one could assume that the people who came up with it were professional social scientists who have some evidence of a correlation between how one answers that question and whether or not they would nominally be considered liberal or not. But it is possible that this particular survey was not put together with that level of professionalism - and if it wasn't then I believe Kevin's point may very well be valid.

I definitely do have a concern with this, though: Mara Vanderslice says that she believes "the religious community can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic party". Political parties are fundamentally about trying to achieve certain goals with respect to the relationship between individuals (or groups of individuals) and government. Saying that the religious community can be the conscience and soul of the Democratic Party implies that the goals strived for by the party are most properly determined by religious principles. It isn't surprising that people like me who are not part of a "religious community" take this as meaning that what we value is not important to helping determine what the goals of the Democratic Party should be.

Why can't people like Mara Vanderslice be satisfied with saying that people of the religious community can find a great deal in their belief systems to rationalize their advocacy of the goals of the Democratic Party? I don't think you can avoid the implication that her motive in framing the issue the way she did is because she feels that secular rationalizations of the goals of the Democratic Party are fundamentally deficient. Gee, I wonder why progressive and liberal non-theists would take affront.

As a generally liberal person of faith I am annoyed by questions (and assumptions) like that too!

I think Vanderslice is wrong in saying Christians can be the conscience and soul of the party; but I do think they can be, and have been, a valuable part of progressive activity.

I have a friend who is very involved with the immigrant population in our rural meat-packing town. He often gives presentations on diversity.

A while ago he went back to his home church which is about 40 mile away and out in the county to make a presentation to the adult Sunday school class. (stick with me I have a point) When a few people made comments that showed a strong distain for immigrants, he said, "'Red and yellow black and white they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.’ I learned that here, from you people."

He called them back to what they say they believe and challenged them to live it. There is a mix of good and bad in Christian tradition (and I say that as a minister). Liberal leaders who are adept at identifying the good stuff in Christian belief and challenging Christian people to action will be very successful.

Don't make the assumption that all Christians are conservative. Most American Christians still don't identify themselves as 'Evangelical'. Just because the press doesn't have any mainline (moderate to liberal) religious leaders in their rolodexes doesn't mean that there aren't legions of people who support liberal causes precisely because of their faith. Or who can't be convinced by carefully framed appeals to their faith.

Incidentally the Democratic candidate who is best at appealing to people who are motivated by Christian faith is clearly Barack Obama. He uses Christian code words and phrases better than most conservatives. I remember an example from his convention speech when he said, ‘what a mighty God we serve’. Younger, evangelical Christians would spot that immediately as a quote from a contemporary hymn. When Hilary does it, it is just about as awkward and obvious as when the Republicans do it.

Discussing morality with athiests is like discussing NASCAR with my wife . . . pointless.
Posted by: Amerlcan Havvk on February 15, 2007 at 12:24 AM

Dear Fake Havvk, pointless from your point of view or hers?

Swinty's point is excellent. There is absolutely no benefit to secular liberals to let the religious right highjack religion just because secular liberals get (justifiably)annoyed at a popular misconception. I'm a secular liberal myself but I have no intention of isolating myself from the majority of Americans who are not secular just because the noisiest ones have such toxic rhetoric. If you are pissed that pundits assume a lack of moral values in secular people, then fight back by, as Obama does, showing how our secular values are parallel to, if not identical too, the best values of other religions. It is counterproductive to get all miffed and rejectionist when there are so many relgious people out there who are ripe to be progressive if the message is delivered the right way.
There is snobbery in the assumption that the only people we can talk to are people who conceptualize things the same way we do. here's anexample: my motherr-inn-law is a Bible literalist fundamentalist. She also managed to bully her church into passing a resoltion condemning bigotry against gays because her son is gay. She is also a life long Democrat. When secular liberals get suspicious of or hostile to the notion of putting values and policies into the context of the best religous values, they are playing politics exactly the way the relgious right wants it to be played.

The notion that non-believers know there is a God, but enjoy their sins too much to commit to God -- it is wide-spread. and wrong.

I'm an existentialist because I'm a good scientist; I make judgments based on the best evidence available. There's no evidence for a soul, God or afterlife. There is evidence for love, grace, pride, longing, etc.

Back to politics/religion:
Most moderate Christians I know think the Christianists can go to hell (pun intended). Who wants those Mother Superiors running our nanny state?

That poll question was the topic of one of Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" shows. An atheist woman went to live with a devout family. I don't remember if the husband of the religious family came out and said it, but he clearly had no idea that a person could be morally upstanding, or a even a good mother, if she was an atheist. It was very revealing. Again, I don't remember exactly, but I think he still wasn't convinced after living with the woman for a month.

After reading Kevin's post, and during my reading of the comments up to this point, I was reminded of not one but two quotes.

The first was by Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota: "Religion is a crutch for the feeble-minded." Or words to that effect. I don't live in Minnesota so I can't vouch for his effectiveness as governor but methinks his words are quite accurate. The comments by certain parties, who shall go nameless, in the threads on this website seem to prove his point.

The other quote is in Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamozov--the famous line "Without God everything is permitted." And indeed that is quite true. But Dosteovsky conveniently overlooks the other side of the coin--that WITH God everything is also permitted.

Indeed, the religious--Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, Buddhist, Hindu, you name it--have been, over the past three or four thousand years, responsible for a vastly greater share of the evils committed on this earth than agnostics or atheists.

I'll take an ethical agnostic or atheist over a true believer any time, thanks.

Don't judge the perfection of God by the imperfection of man. If man could achieve perfection, aka God status, we would have no need for a God. Man does, however, work diligently to take God status for himself.

If the lowly masses were not regulated by the religious installation of conscience, and if their pitiable lives were not recompensed by some after-death reward, anarchy would rule. Everyone would feel entitled to act and be as they thought best and those in power would have a hell of a time keeping same. Those operating outside the moral framework can obtain goals not available to persons hampered by morals.

Then again, as Catcher just demonstrated: The notion that believers are weak-minded people who commit genocide-- it is widespread, and false.

First, you use a 'birds of a feather' argument for atrocities committed by believers, unless you just enjoy bad logic.
Second, Ventura was paraphrasing Nietzsche. Whether he was correct or not is not bolstered by your endorsement of it, or your use of Shakespearian language.
Third, Buddhists -whom you group with believers, are usually atheists.
Finally, it's not helpful to be rude, or to use bad logic.

It is hard to write this because it seems like self grandizement. I am an athiest. I have been since the age of 15 and I am 73. I am just not able to make a leap of belief. I will be married to THE SAME woman 49 years in March. We have 2 lovely, intelligent daughters and 4 grandchildren. My wife was/is a stay at home wife except for a time of hard ship after being terminated as an air traffic controller in 1981. I have over 50 years in the work force. I spent 4 years in the US Navy 1952-1956. I cared for my elderly mother for 8 years until her death in 2002. My wife is a practicing Catholic with no anti-religious remarks from me who does not share William Donohue's bigoted hateful thoughts. She did leave the Church for a period when the priest didn't have time for her when she needed them. My cadaver will be used at the Case- Western University Medical School Anatomy Dep't after my demise. If you can prove to me my life is empty or unfulfilled by the lack of religion, you will be a great persuader.

"Indeed, the religious--Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, Buddhist, Hindu, you name it--have been, over the past three or four thousand years, responsible for a vastly greater share of the evils committed on this earth than agnostics or atheists."

I'd say that agnostics/atheists have the edge, actually. Leninism was an actively atheist ideology, and the Thirty Years War was small potatoes compared to the devastation of WW II, the Great Terror, Year Zero, the Ukrainian famine, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Even Tomas de Torquemada would have a hard time competing with Laventy Beria in the Historical Depraved Monster stakes. In terms of Megadeaths, I'd say the atheists have the edge.

[Fascism both co-opted religious institutions and sought to supplant them, so I'd put their bodycount in the 'undecided' column.]

(Unless you're counting communism [and to some exent, fascism] as religions, with the Volk and the Proletariat in place of Christ.)

Where is the missing option
"It is necessary NOT to believe in GOD in order to be Moral and have good values."

I'd say that agnostics/atheists have the edge, actually.
Still a 'Birds of a Feather' argument.
Inadmissible in court! Your Honor! Sustained!!

It is necessary to believe in God in order to morally drop white phosphorus bombs on children.

Reason: you clearly misunderstand the POINT of the question.

The purpose of the poll is to identify political affliation (viz. liberal or conservative) by grouping answers to questions.

It's like asking if people hate the Yankees a lot, or a little; then if they remember who Bill Russell was a lot, or a little; then if they know that Coke is a 'tonic', a lot, or a little; measuring how viscerally they react to the word "Buckner" a lot, or a little, and so on until you can reasonably conclude the respondents are people from New England, and probably the Boston area.

It doesn't mean that Coke is a 'tonic', the way the word is ordinarily used in the rest of the country. It doesn't mean the Yankees are evil (although of course that is empirically true). It's simply a way of identifying folks by testing attitudes.

A reality check question: do you think a bunch of self-selected religious conservatives would have so much trouble with the purpose of a polling question to ground political identification in predictable attitudes?

Ah, I feel like a kid in a candy store this morning!

Still a 'Birds of a Feather' argument.
Inadmissible in court! Your Honor! Sustained!!

no such objection in court exists. The kangaroo court in your basement doesn't count.

Kevin,

Why would you be annoyed by the question about God and moral values? Sure, there may be many who agree enthusiastically with the sentiment on the right, but there would also be many who agree with the one on the left, which should include relatively more liberals than conservatives- which serves the purpose of the survey.

A quick scan of the comments on this thread and others like it show a show a very common complaint about the religious- that they try to actively convert non-believers, and try to pass laws that accomodate their beliefs. One commenter above wrote that no atheist has ever come to his door to convert him. In the most narrow sense, he may be correct, but I see many, many people of a non-religious bent trying to convert others to their beliefs in what government should do or not do, and try to pass laws that accomodate their beliefs. Please tell me what the difference is.

nikkolai: "Faith--you either have it or you don't."

Actually, every human has a faith. Every human has a religion. For some it is clearly quantified for them and they are able to associate with it readily. Not so with everyone.

The day that Creationists are able to articulate this fact to the general public is the day that science will really be in trouble with society at large.

I see many, many people of a non-religious bent trying to convert others to their beliefs in what government should do or not do, and try to pass laws that accomodate their beliefs.

Yeah, and those who follow the loony libertarian faith are as annoying and dangerous to the American body politic as the fundamentalists.

From Gregory: Yeah, and those who follow the loony libertarian faith are as annoying and dangerous to the American body politic as the fundamentalists.

Using Gregory's typical weak debating technique, I come up with the equally valid counterargument:

Yeah, and those who follow the loony progressive faith are as annoying and dangerous to the American body politic as the fundamentalists.

Gregory, do you ever engage in debate without resorting to childish antics and comments like the one I quoted above? I am still waiting to read any comment of yours that actually has any content beyond the ever present insults you dish out. Certainly your mind is not so empty that you can't do better than that. Hell, you could even take the time to answer the question I posed at the end of my first comment- you might even take a whack at it in a civil manner.

the Americanist...
Have you no sense of humour sir? God (oops) Americans!

no such objection in court exists. The kangaroo court in your basement doesn't count.

You've heard of Guilt by Association, (i.e., each believer is guilty because some other believers committed genocide, etc.) It's not only logically flawed, but it is not grounds for conviction in court either.

BTW.. It's my Mother's basement, you'idiot. GOsh!

Secular humanism is a very good moral basis. It asks government to protect people from being put in the straight jacket of someone elses superstitions. Anyone who wants to be in a straight jacket is free to do so, no laws needed.

Yes, shouldn't there be one that says:

It is necessary to NOT believe in God in order to be moral and have good values, because to believe in God is to cede moral responsibility to an outside agency, instead of to take responsibility for oneself.

SoCalAnon

What? Was there a gem of wisdom hidden in that or is it just the gobblegook it sounds like? Hidden deconstructionalism perhaps?

As a secular humanist, I parse secular as been - not pertaining to religion. Is there a part of that that you don't understand? NO RELIGION. Don't like it - don't like any fixed ideology actually. Science though - testing ideas methodically, now that I like. But the connection to reality bit probably freaks you? I'm just guessing.

Some people (like me) don't like getting their ideology in convenient prepackaged chunks from authority figures, they like to be convinced by tangable evidence. Hence this bit about creationists and articulation reads like hogwash to me. In fact, creationists are continually trying to equate science to a religion, but no-one is buying it because it is NOT the same. You not being able to see that doesn't make it so.

Obviously philosophy and religious worship and practice are supposed to lead us toward more moral compassionate behavior. It doesn't always succeed.

But, where some Conservative religous folks disagree very sincerely and vehemently with everyone else is whether it's possible for someone to be good without having been saved. They believe that before being saved a person is in a 'fallen' state, suffering from 'original sin', and they cannot be good, moral and compassionate.

Of course, the idea of 'original sin' impelling a person to be less than moral and compassionate is debatable. And, the idea that a person is 'fallen' is always related to the specific religion involved. And, the idea that we are all fundamentally evil, by nature, was debated hundreds of years ago and discarded during the Enlightenment.

The Bush administration endorses and supports a return to fundamentalist Christian doctrine from many hundreds of years ago. Idiots.

They seek some 'return to the good old days' which never existed. Idiots.

We live today. We must get along as a nation and people. We must accept ourselves, whatever we are, and improve ourselves, our families, our nation and either find salvation or just begin, as some Catholics suggest, to practice being better, more moral and more compassionate, in hopes that one day we will BE those things.

When we're children we don't know we should comb our hair and brush our teeth and wash behind our ears. Does that make us evil? I don't think so.

When we're young we don't always think about things from someone else's perspective, and feel compassion. Does that make us evil? I don't think so. Does that make me a pinko faggot Commie? I don't think so.

YMMV

Yancey Ward wrote: Using Gregory's typical weak debating technique, I come up with the equally valid counterargument:

Yeah, and those who follow the loony progressive faith are as annoying and dangerous to the American body politic as the fundamentalists.

Ah, but Yancey, progressivism doesn't need to rely on faith. By contrast, loony libertarianism -- and I'm grateful to you for providing so many ruggedly individualist examples! -- relies on nothing but.

Including, I might add, an overinflated faith in one's own debating skills.

Gregory, do you ever engage in debate without resorting to childish antics and comments like the one I quoted above?

Yes, but not with you; Yancey. There's no point in debating flat earthers, conspiracy theorists or loony libertarians -- no amount of emperical reality can shake their faith.

It's interesting to know how easy it is to get under your ruggedly individualist skin by taking a poke at your faith, though.

Oh, I almost forgot:

I am still waiting to read any comment of yours that actually has any content beyond the ever present insults you dish out.

Judging whether this is a comment on Yancey's reading comprehension or intellectual dishoensty is left as an excercise to the reader.

he may be correct, but I see many, many people of a non-religious bent trying to convert others to their beliefs in what government should do or not do, and try to pass laws that accomodate their beliefs. Please tell me what the difference is.

I know you're looking for an argument, and I'm not inclined to give you one, but I can't help myself.

When legislators, politicians, etc. try to, and occasionally do, pass laws to legalize gay marriage/civil unions what have you, they're not attempting to turn the general populace gay.

When evangelicals attempt legislation to restrict individuals' rights based on a religious belief they are attempting to force someone else to live by a different faith. That's the difference. The same as trying to alter the definition of science to fit their faith.

The easy counter-argument that scientists are forcing their beliefs on religious folks, is wrong. Because intelligent design, fundamentalist geology, etc, is not science. Just like science is not religion. Anytime a group (majority or otherwise) attempts to restrict an individual's human or legal rights on the basis of their faith they are pretty much in the wrong.

Belief and faith are not interchangeable words.

i thought atrios was getting excited over nothing. Inviting liberal christians to be the conscience of the party doesn't mean the are the ONLY conscience. For example, I view the congressional black caucus as the consciense of the party, but also labor, and other groups who stick to their guns on various issues. I don't view the party as having a single conscience. God knows the triangulating, appeasing Republican, democratic establishment could certainly use as much conscience as it can get, whereever it is found.

Somehow, Atrios found the comment exclusionary, which i certainly didn't. I veiwed it as being inclusive.

Gregory,

You really don't get under my skin. I find your childish antic sometimes amusing, occasionally interesting, but that is as far as it goes.

Progressivism doesn't have to rely on faith? Really? Where is the proof it has done more good than bad? You believe it to be better, it may even be that your fellow believers are in the majority, but it is still a belief.

However, on thinking through your first comment, I realized it actually supports my contention that there is no fundamental difference between the religious preaching and taking political actions and those in the secular realm doing so. You implicitly agreed with it.

On whole, it is clear that you don't understand what debating is and, in any case, you seem to be incapable of civil discourse with those with whom you disagree- as you have proven over and over on this site.

Yancey Ward wrote: You really don't get under my skin.

So you say.

I find your childish antic sometimes amusing, occasionally interesting, but that is as far as it goes.

Ah, well, I guess I'm one up on you, then. I find your childish faith in loony libertarianism amusing, but not really interesting. Ruggedly individualistic, though!

Obviously philosophy and religious worship and practice are supposed to lead us toward more moral compassionate behavior.

This is neither obvious nor even universally true; while certainly it may be trivially, tautologically, true that any philosophy or religion seeks to lead us toward more "moral" behavior—as that philosophy or religion defines "moral"—it is equally clearly that not all such philosophies or religions seek to encourage compassionate behavior, even theoretically.

On whole, it is clear that you don't understand what debating is and, in any case, you seem to be incapable of civil discourse with those with whom you disagree

Once again: Judging whether this comment reflects more on Yancey's reading comptehension or intellectual dishonesty is left as an exercise for the reader.

When confronted with the canard that one must be threatened with eternal punishment to behave well I like to bring Hindu thinking into the discussion. There are four purposes that can motivate one's life: pleasure, duty, service, and enlightenment. A life lived at the lowest level, simply for pleasure, already by necessity contains the idea of morality. To avoid enemies you must treat others well. To avoid guilt you must treat others well. To be cared for in times of trouble you must have treated others well. etc. Lives devoted to duty, service and enlightenment merely add levels of understanding and selflessness to that basic morality.

Kevin wrote: Mara Vanderslice says that she believes "the religious community can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic party" ...

To the extent that the "Democratic Party" (which is far from a monolithic entity) is lacking "conscience and soul", it is because like the Republican Party, too many of its leaders and Democratic officeholders are bought-and-paid-for bootlicking servants of America's tiny, hereditary, ultra-rich, neo-fascist, corporate-feudalist ruling class, and don't give a damn about governing for the "general welfare" of the American people, and only care about getting more and more money from corporate America to run their multi-million dollar election campaigns.

If "the religious community" -- or any "community" -- wants to make a case that it can be the "conscience and soul" of the "Democratic Party", then it needs to first show that it is not similarly beholden to corporate America's ruling elites (and the so-called "religious right" is clearly their tool), and then set forth a political agenda that focuses on the well-being of all human beings and not enriching the rich and empowering the powerful.

Why would you be annoyed by the question about God and moral values?

I have to second this question (surprising, considering the source). I don't get the objection: the question is, as best I can tell, a very legitimate, well constructed and relevant one in constructing a political typology.

Right now, we have a government run by supposedly "Christian" people, which is a good example of lies, death, destruction, murder, torture, and war. I don't see God and moral behavior in any of those attributes of the Bush Administration. I don't see God or moral behavior in any thing Bush does or says.

The title of Kevin's post is "MORAL VALUES".

How exactly does "moral values" differ from "values"?

I think this is a perfect example of "moral" being used as a noise word.

For once, albeit in his deadly pompous manner, Dice gets it: when you want to find out what people think and what moves them to change their minds, you have to start with HOW they think.

Speaking as a practicing contrarian, the reflex here really does explain why progressives have such trouble with people of faith. We alienate 'em, literally, through reification. (to get highfalutin' and dialectic about it)

Remember, the question does NOT assume that the only way to be moral is to believe in God. It simply asks if people agree, or disagree, a little or a lot with two phrasings that are carefully instructed to measure... something.

It WOULD be a legitimate objection if it didn't help to reliably measure political identification.

Has anybody even raised that objection?

Kevin objected because he actually thinks it DOES reliably help to measure political identification.

And a long series of posters strongly underscore WHY.

Remember, the key to political identification is the latter part of the term, the identity, rather than whatever set of political positions anybody holds. Millions of Americans disagreed with Reagan about all kinds of stuff, but they IDENTIFIED with him in two national elections that he won, easily.

What causes people to identify with one or another political entity, e.g., "Reagan Democrats", is well worth analyzing and measuring.

(musing) Yanno, it occurs to me that there may be something lying way down underneath all this, particularly regarding Christianity and politics. It's remarkable how many folks who dis a large majority of their fellow Americans because they have faith of some sort, do so based on a presumption of superior knowledge and wisdom, of 'logic', as opposed to ignorance and superstition.

Much of what we think of as 'rational' starts with Greek philosophy, particularly logic. The ur-heresy in Christianity is Arianism (Greek-influenced in Alexandria), which rejected the utterly illogical proposition of God the Father and God the Son, each equal to the other. Gregory of Nyssa explained how folks argued about this before the Nicene Creed: "If in this city you ask a shopkeeper for change, he will argue with you whether the Son was begotten or unbegotten; if you inquire about the quality of the bread, the baker will answer 'the Father is greater, the Son is less.' And if you ask the attendant to draw you a hot bath, he will tell you the Son was created out of nothing."

The history of Christianity as a unified faith begins with the very Roman rejection of that logical approach to religion, replacing it with an even more Roman authoritarian 'mystery of faith'. Yet in the odd dialectic of history, that is what makes modern republics possible -- folks don't HAVE to be consistent in their beliefs.

I mean, hell, look at it: there's a lot more tolerance for non-believers among the faithful, a lot more respect, than we've seen here by atheists.

LOL -- and THAT's why the question works to quantify political identification.

How exactly does "moral values" differ from "values"?

It specifies that the values at issue are (or are considered in the context of) behavioral norms, "being close to ones family" may be a "value", but until it is connected with the idea that one should act in a certain way to realize that value, it is not a "moral value".

So, no, I can't agree that "moral" adds nothing to "values", (though the popular "moral" vs. "ethical" distinction is, IMO, vacuous when it comes to values.)

Speaking as a practicing contrarian, the reflex here really does explain why progressives have such trouble with people of faith.

Explaining something which isn't established as true in the first place may be premature; most progressives are “people of faith”. Progressives, even progressive secularists, aren't coextensive with secular progressives.

When confronted with the canard that one must be threatened with eternal punishment to behave well...

Its worth noting that while that is one form of the claim that it is necessary to believe in God to have morals and good values (or to believe in universal values), its not, IME, the most common form of that claim (though it is the most common characterization of that claim by those who disagree): the most common form of the claim is an assertion that the belief in universal morality is itself a prerequisite to really having good morals, and further than that belief requires belief in a universal source of authority that defines that universal morality, which source of authority is God, whatever dispute about particular attributes of God people may have.

To 'Reason'

You have faith that everything around you is real and not imagination. You have faith that you are sane. You have faith that your sanity, as applied to this reality, can result in quantifiable outcomes which are useful to further define this reality.

As metaphysical as it sounds, it is 'faith' precisely because we cannot extract ourselves from this existence and perform scentifically pricipaled tests against this existence and/or in comparison to other existences. So we cannot do any better than to have our faith in this existence.

The fact that this degree of faith does not yet have the ability to grapple with creation does not mean that it is off the hook with respect to that issue. The fact that codified and organized faiths, as represented here as 'religions', dealt with creation first does not empower them with truth on that issue.

At some point, Creationists will find a way to ply a larger wedge between science and society by articulating further that scientists have faith in the reality around them. Society, in turn, will trust science less. And we will all be the poorer for it.

Yeah, but that just proves my point: parsing distinctions like that fails to generate momentum for identification.

A real world example: there continues to be a mindset among Democrats that the real motivator for "Reagan Democrats" was race, that the Democratic Party's support for civil rights begot Nixon's Southern Strategy, which begot "law and order" which begot values voters (throw in abortion, and) -- thus, Reagan Democrats weren't comfortable in the Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party wasn't comfortable with THEM: closet racists, all of 'em, speaking in code against affirmative action and crime and for "values", which as we all know are suspect, especially when they talk about 'the culture war' and the backlash against 'political correctness". These folks just hate people of color and gays and women...

A more generous, but to be cynical, EFFECTIVE way of understanding the phenomenon is that "Reagan Democrats" (who have been called "white ethnics" by Democrats since the Clinton years, since after all Reagan's last election was a generation ago), are folks who tend to vote their values more than their economics. (In game theory, they tend to be cooperators, often reciprocators, but rarely defectors.) The belief in God question, in fact the whole survey, is written to let people self-select into categories.

So when you look at a question like this, and even more when you look at the REACTION to it, you see an immediate impulse on behalf of a vocal minority to disrespect a substantial majority of the electorate with absolutely uncoded words like "superstition" -- INCLUDING the folks who might otherwise identify themselves with "progressives".

That's where the ones who are reciprocators go the other way: once diss'd, it's hard to get 'em back.

Insisting that "progressives" include progressives who are themselves religious, misses the point (but then, I'm talking to Dice, here).

LOTS of religious people will identify themselves with political attitudes that include 'em, as well as lots of others. But very few will identify with political attitudes that qualify that inclusion with characteristics like "superstition".

Remember the genius of Barry Goldwater, when he was confronted with the support of the loony right for his 1965 candidacy: "I'm not buying into their beliefs, they're buying into mine."

Look at this thread, you can see it is not people of faith who are exclusionary.

When legislators, politicians, etc. try to, and occasionally do, pass laws to legalize gay marriage/civil unions what have you, they're not attempting to turn the general populace gay.

When evangelicals attempt legislation to restrict individuals' rights based on a religious belief they are attempting to force someone else to live by a different faith. That's the difference.

That's not really a difference, just a sloppy comparison: when legislators, politicians, etc. try to, and occasionally do, pass laws to legalize gay marriage/civil unions what have you, they are attempting to force other people to live by their value system (to wit, one of tolerance, acceptance, and equal treatment of homosexualities in certain contexts.)

Pretending that every bit of legislation isn't imposing the legislator's value system on people who may not share it is an unproductive effort that often seems founded on self-delusion.

A real world example: there continues to be a mindset among Democrats that the real motivator for "Reagan Democrats" was race

Since there is considerable empirical support that, whatever descriptive political typologies things like the Pew survey may come up with, the only two axes of political orientation that have substantial salience in explaining voting behavior in the US are (in order of importance) an economic/class axis and a race issues axis (see, for instance, Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries), that's probably a fairly reasonable assessment.

Look at this thread, you can see it is not people of faith who are exclusionary.

except that they exclude everyone from salvation who doesn't subscribe to their particular faith, which in fact is very much exclusionary.
but other than that, they're not exclusionary(oh, and the whole excluding gay people from marriage and equal rights, other than that too).

If one wants to get a grasp of this argument, one needs to understand who the protagonist is.

The rise of the new class in 1960’s America represented the culmination of a worldview to a heretofore unknown prominence. The bohemian, intellectual, counter cultural stance became mainstream and acceptable.

Certain Christian principles are inherent and express in both legislative and case law. The dismantling of those principles and their replacement with autonomy principles is an obvious feature of the new left I describe.

Our political debate concerning “non-believers� versus “believers� dose not limit itself to narrow sectarian understandings.

Rather it is the clash of two distinct worldviews within culture and politics, with the political left being the clear aggressor.

SoCalAnon,

You are engaging in equivocation; while certainly one sense of “faith” involves belief concerning matters that cannot be addressed by empirical inquiry, that is different in kind from the sense of “faith” that involves belief that concerns matters that are subject to empirical inquiry but is contrary to the best evidence of that inquiry.

Underlining the widespread nature of the former kind of “faith” does nothing to reinforce the credibility of the contentions of the latter kind of “faith”.

Certain Christian principles are inherent and express in both legislative and case law.

What are you talking about?

Our political debate concerning “non-believers� versus “believers� dose not limit itself to narrow sectarian understandings.

There is little genuine political debate pitting "non-believers" against "believers" in those categories at all; certainly, the elite of the American political Right try to paint their defense of maintain the grip on power of the currently power in terms of preserving religious tradition in vague terms, and like to paint their opponents as enemies of "people of faith" in similarly sweeping terms (despite the fact that most of their enemies are, in fact, "people of faith".) And certainly there is a narrow subset of the political Left that is rabidly anti-religious, but its far from the majority of the Left and includes few, if any, of the prominent political figures of the left.

Rather it is the clash of two distinct worldviews within culture and politics, with the political left being the clear aggressor.

Well, though as noted above it has little to do with any real conflict between "believers" and "non-believers", the political left since its genesis in the birth of classical liberalism has always been a kind of "aggressor" against the entrenched, exclusive, hereditary power structures defended by the Right since its genesis in the defense of aristocracy and monarchy against liberalism. And certainly, the Right has, from its birth, always sought to wrap itself up in religious (specifically Christian in European and American history) and nationalistic traditions, even though its values are at odds with those embraced by Christ and the interests it promotes have been those of a narrow elite against the broad interests of the nation's people.

But, of course, the Right relies on lies: you can't motivate people to support their own oppression to serve the self-interest of a narrow elite honestly.

Allow me to quote Aristotle:

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

ChrisS,

Your argument holds no water- the two scenarios you outlined are attempts to force a value system on those who disagree with it. For example, you might as well have outlined the attempts at passing laws forcing all pharmacists to distribute birth control pills or PlanB, or outlined attempts to keep blue laws in effect in CT (a pet peeve of mine since I like to drink wine all days of the week).

Gregory,

When I make a snide remark following every comment you post, then you will know that you have "gotten under" my skin.

Yancey Ward wrote: When I make a snide remark following every comment you post, then you will know that you have "gotten under" my skin.

You mean, something like Using Gregory's typical weak debating technique, I come up with the equally valid counterargument, posted directly after I needled you for your loony libertarian faith?

Rather than take your word for it, Yancey, or accepting your own self-serving (but ruggedly individualistic!) post-hoc definition, I'm sure that I'm comfortable with letting the readers of these threads judge for themselves.

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Moral behavior is simply 'preferred behavior.' In Buddhist practise, moral behavior follows naturally from seeing deeply into the nature of the world, and the purpose of meditation practise is to see deeply into what really is.

When I make a snide remark following every comment you post, then you will know that you have "gotten under" my skin.

Congratulations, Yancey! Rarely has there been a post that is such a perfect example of that which it describes.

Ya know, every now and then Dice amazes even me with his astonishing ability to obnubilate.

I pointed out: "Millions of Americans disagreed with Reagan about all kinds of stuff, but they IDENTIFIED with him in two national elections that he won, easily."

Which Dice somehow managed to convert into "the only two axes of political orientation that have substantial salience in explaining voting behavior in the US are (in order of importance) an economic/class axis and a race issues axis (see, for instance, Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries)..."

ROFL -- dayum, some folks are educated beyond their intelligence, and THEN go to law school.

It's a core question: why do folks vote against their economic interests?

I used a real example: ""Reagan Democrats" (who have been called "white ethnics" by Democrats since the Clinton years, since after all Reagan's last election was a generation ago), are folks who tend to vote their values more than their economics. (In game theory, they tend to be cooperators, often reciprocators, but rarely defectors.) The belief in God question, in fact the whole survey, is written to let people self-select into categories."

Rather than scoff at Fitz, it'd be more helpful to UNDERSTAND him. He wrote: "The rise of the new class in 1960’s America represented the culmination of a worldview to a heretofore unknown prominence. The bohemian, intellectual, counter cultural stance became mainstream and acceptable..."

Dice (being stupid, if educated) must disagree, since he cited some dumbass political scientist to the effect that there wasn't actually a change in American culture in the 1960s EXCEPT for the demise of Jim Crow, that after all the only 'axes" that predict "salience" in political identification are race... or economics.

Since "Reagan Democrats" voted against their economic self interest, why, it MUST be race that motivates 'em: QED.

Golly, if it was only possible for you guys to be dumber, it might be productive, like scientists seeking maximum ignorance to start probability analyses.

Isn't there ANYBODY reading this thread who understands how conservatives and values voters think OF THEMSELVES? Buckley wrote long ago that a conservative stands athwart history, yelling Stop!

Sure, the National Review was publishing white supremacist crap at the time, but that doesn't mean he thought of himself as a white supremacist, and damned few conservatives think of themselves that way. The ones I know are damned proud of demanding a color-blind society, which is hardly a white supremacist's attitude -- and there are LOTS more issues than race involved. How people perceive themselves is damned important to how they identify themselves, which is what the survey was about.

You could argue that a values voter who is uncomfortable with the devaluing of marriage is misguided or moralistic, but a voter like that doesn't think of herself as misguided, obviously, and more than likely thinks of herself as practical: there is lots of evidence that marriage is a good thing.

When a values voter is also religious, and self-identifies as such, it is a mark of how reflexively progressives -- even religious ones, like Dice -- alienate her, BECAUSE there is simply no way, in his widely educated and profoundly narrow worldview, for her to vote against her economic interests EXCEPT race.

Wow.

cmdicely,

LOL! Unfortunately, while it is an example of a snide remark, it isn't a perfect example of what I describe, since I would have to post one after every comment he writes. Since I reply to less than 1% of the comments he directs at me, that is unlikely to happen.

Looks like the party's pretty much over, but just a quick bit of term-defining:

"Proselytizing" doesn't mean "speaking one's mind."

So whoever says atheists proselytize is either being lazy with the language or needs to find some new atheist friends.

How would that even work, anyway? "Hi there! When you die that's it! Here's a pamphlet!"

To be fair, us atheists overuse the word too, but since it's a bedrock principle of the Christian faith that the world would be better if everyone came to Jesus, it's an easy mistake to make.

I pointed out: "Millions of Americans disagreed with Reagan about all kinds of stuff, but they IDENTIFIED with him in two national elections that he won, easily."

Yes, you claimed that.

Which Dice somehow managed to convert into "the only two axes of political orientation that have substantial salience in explaining voting behavior in the US are (in order of importance) an economic/class axis and a race issues axis (see, for instance, Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries)..."

Er, no, I didn't convert the claim of yours quoted above into this. I responded with this (not "converted" anything you wrote into it) to something else you wrote in the same post as the quote you are now pointing to of yours.

Why you choose to make baldface lies about events that are visible in black and white in this thread is beyond me, but its pretty amusing.

Dice (being stupid, if educated) must disagree, since he cited some dumbass political scientist to the effect that there wasn't actually a change in American culture in the 1960s EXCEPT for the demise of Jim Crow

Actually, no, neither I nor the book of Lijphard's I cited make that claim. Perhaps you should read and respond to what is written rather than inventing claims to attribute to me.

Since "Reagan Democrats" voted against their economic self interest, why, it MUST be race that motivates 'em: QED.

I've never asserted that Reagan Democrats voted against their economic self-interes, either, nor applied the logic you suggest here. Perhaps you ought to read and respond to what is actually written rather than inventing claims to argue against.

Isn't there ANYBODY reading this thread who understands how conservatives and values voters think OF THEMSELVES?

"Conservatives and values voters" is a redundant phrase; to the extent it is meaningful at all, "values voters" is a label for a particular kind of conservative.

Yes, I have a pretty good (general) idea of how a number of different kinds of conservative voters see themselves. So what?

Buckley wrote long ago that a conservative stands athwart history, yelling Stop!

Er, yes, quite; I think I cover well how that is an accurate characterization of the entire history of the Right is in my 3:31pm response to Fitz.

Sure, the National Review was publishing white supremacist crap at the time, but that doesn't mean he thought of himself as a white supremacist, and damned few conservatives think of themselves that way.

Yes, damn few racists consider themselves racist. That's truly a deep insight.

You could argue that a values voter who is uncomfortable with the devaluing of marriage is misguided or moralistic, but a voter like that doesn't think of herself as misguided, obviously, and more than likely thinks of herself as practical: there is lots of evidence that marriage is a good thing.

Very few people (except for a narrow fringe on both the libertarian left and the libertarian right that propose government should have no role in recognizing marriage or marriage-like unions at all) favors “devaluing” marriage.

Where the left disagrees with your “values voter” (whether of today or of earlier this century) is not about the idea that devaluing marriage is bad, but the idea that allowing members of different races or the same sex to marry “devalues” marriage in either way, rather than re-emphasizes that marriage is a good that transcends bigotry against different groups.

When a values voter is also religious, and self-identifies as such, it is a mark of how reflexively progressives -- even religious ones, like Dice -- alienate her, BECAUSE there is simply no way, in his widely educated and profoundly narrow worldview, for her to vote against her economic interests EXCEPT race.

When such a “values voters” votes based on the desire restrict public benefits like marriage to themselves and people who are like them, they are not, in that narrow action, voting against their own economic interests. (They not be considering them that deeply because they are blinded by the narrow exclusionary self-interest that a clever policy entrepreneur has manuevered to the forefront of their consciousness, but that's a different issue.)

Of course, though, the ideas you argue against here are ones you have invented, not ones that anyone arguing against you has actually presented. Perhaps you should try to debate what is written here, rather than what is spoken by the voices in your head.

...discussing NASCAR... Amerlcan Tavvk at 12:24 AM

...believing in God seems to help justify all sorts of immoral stuff. ...Jack at 12:31 AM

For the first 18 years of my life I attended church every Sunday, attending bible school, vacation bible school, even the summer church camps. The result of all this is that for the next 40 years I have refused to go to church. Knowledge bred my atheism. But I can argue the bible pretty well.

People who spend all their time being full time Christians, like Amy Sullivan and Mara Vanderslice, forget that Jesus taught that people should hide themselves away in a closet to pray to God instead of loudly praying on the street. His point was that when people make a show of being religion they are not really being religious.

ROFL -- Dice, you remain simply too stupid for adequate description. It's marvelous, you're like an invented character, viz. "I think I cover well how that is..."

No doubt you do.

Since somebody emailed me happy about its aptness, did you even bother to look up what 'obnubilate' means, dude?

Cuz -- you just proved my point, again.

Fitz": Rather it is the clash of two distinct worldviews within culture and politics, with the political left being the clear aggressor.

You raised a very interesting point: Secularism has been encroaching on religious politics/culture ever since the 1950s. That doesn't prove which one is better, though. It offers no evidence.

Who cares which one started the fight, when we only really care which will end it. I'm picking secularism, since younger people are much less racist, less homophobic, less church-dictates-my-beliefs... in general, more pragmatic than their elders.

Also, remember "under God" was added to the Pledge in '56 during McCarthy, as was "so help me God" to oaths, and also "In God we Trust" to all money. The '50s were not so different from the 2000s, the only difference being back then our leaders scared us shitless over Communism, while they now use Terrorism. In the end, it's the same nationalist, in-God's-name authoritarianism. And lots of us hold firmly the priciples of classic liberalism; of self-determination; of life, liberty & pursuit of happiness; and of "fuck you, i won't Do what you Tell me." ...with all politeness, mind you.

That's what the 60's were to me. And I'm hoping that what the '10's will be as well.

What a ridiculous post/thread. As long as us atheists/agnostics/secularists/whatevers know that we don't need "god" or "religion" to be "moral", everything's fine - for now. Also - for now - hollering too much about statements like Vanderslice's does the Democratic Party and its candidates about as much good as Nader did in 2000. Much as I agree with and admire the eloquence of Penn Jillette and others, in a political/electoral context, it's all so much unnecessary, and possibly damaging, wankery. Besides, that question on the political typology survey was far from the stupidest one. That award goes to: 21. The best way to ensure peace is through military strength (vs.) Good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace.

LOL -- El C is right, of course. It's like the court cases that appear now and again over whether the First Amendment suddenly somehow bans a phrase like "In God We Trust" on our coins, as an establishment of religion.

So both sides go into court, and the side that ostensibly BELIEVES in God, argues that the phrase is meaningless, while the side that believes the phrase really is meaningless (since they do not find that God exists) argues that it has an unmistakeable and malevolent meaning...

Since, as Americans, we all believe that collectively we're smarter than we are as individuals, let us recall the insight of Mark Twain's schoolboy: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

SoCalAnon
Yup sounds like deconstructionalism to me.
Yes science is predicated on the assumption that the repeatability of experiments in the past means that that they will be repeatable in the future. May not always be true but it is demonstrably more reliable than taking someone's (usually some one who claims special connections) word for it. But for the religious to claim that that pragmatic faith (of sorts) means all faiths are of equal value, destroys their own claim to priority so they won't do it. They can't have it both ways.

ROFL -- Dice, you remain simply too stupid for adequate description.

Coming from someone who just blunders aimlessly into every thread they participate in, never once posting anything that shows an understanding of any of the material they are nominally responding to, but always throwing plenty of (usually vague, ungrounded) insults and general claims or insinuations of superiority to everyone else here, well, this is par for the course.

Since somebody emailed me happy about its aptness

Yeah, the anonymous supporter-by-private-email, since the dawn of online message groups, a source of (claimed) validation for the friendless too lazy to put together public sock-puppets.

did you even bother to look up what 'obnubilate' means, dude?

What makes you think I would need to look it up?

Cuz -- you just proved my point, again.

Ah, yet another vague insult not grounded in anything specific, and yet another post entirely devoid of any direct response to anything it is nominally responding to.

I'm with J.S.

The highest ethics are those that are not "bribed" out of people. And we've certainly seen what kind of "ethics" people can develop when they are promised 72 virgins awaiting them in Paradise.

Papist, tell me more about the Japanese golf religion. Questions of moral/ethics aside, that sounds like a religion that might actually interest me.

As to intense Christianism and good deeds (as a stand in for those less concrete terms "morality" and "ethics"), this discussion brought to my mind a conversation (for lack of a better word when one person does all the talking and the other tries not to pay attention) with my very religion sister-in-law.

She told me of going with her church group to work on an Indian reservation the previous summer. All she could talk about was how dirty the place was. How much trash there was everywhere. How lazy and addicted the people were. Etc. Without any compassion at all. And with big pats on their collective backs for going to help such people.

Was she doing good works? I would challenge her Christianity to her face, but I just can't stand her pious bigotry and prefer to avoid her altogether.

"[Fascism both co-opted religious institutions and sought to supplant them, so I'd put their bodycount in the 'undecided' column.]"

How convenient.

Dice writes: "What makes you think I would need to look [obnubilitate] up?"

Cuz you made yourself such a perfect example without irony.

"Obnubilate" means to change clarity into fuzz, to lose focus and mistify. It's a kind of evaporation.

You're a bit too easy to provoke (I know, it's a character flaw on my part, but I swear, I mostly do it only to make a larger point), but personal exchanges don't do much good. (Besides, you simply don't do invective well: there's no challenge in punching out a paraplegic.)

The purpose of a Rule of 4 question in a survey (or rather, of using 'em in a series of surveys) is to identify what moves people from one category to another. The question Kevin posted is a Rule of 4 question. Didn't you notice?

So much for "never once posting anything that shows an understanding of any of the material they are nominally responding to...", since this was and remains the point of my posts in this thread.

The question is phrased as a Rule of 4 cuz you can draw a line down the middle, and identify folks who are this or that. It excludes the middle -- which is what Kevin was objecting to: the bloody purpose of the technique.

A Rule of 4 question also measures intensity of feeling -- as noted in my first post. You might get a 50-50 split of folks who are this or that, but it isn't an even division if most of the "that" folks, let's say, are STRONGLY "that", while most of the "this" folks are only "sorta" this.

This is why Rule of 4 questions are designed to exclude the middle.

When I noted all this -- which is like grammar school stuff to political people, Dice -- I don't recall you added anything useful. I didn't expect you to.

To illustrate how it works, I cited a real example: "Reagan Democrats", and how they have actually voted over the past generation or so, e.g., as "white ethnics" in the Clinton administration. I noted that there are folks on the left who delude themselves that what motivated Reagan Democrats was race -- Clinton's success, of course, proves otherwise. (IF they were motivated by race, they would have voted against Clinton, cuz it would have trumped what DID motivate 'em to vote FOR Clinton.)

You interjected that (ahem) some scholar in some book you read reveals that the ONLY axes on which voters move are race and economics.

LOL -- bullshit. Anybody who does this stuff for a living knows better.

That's what a Rule of 4 question illustrates, Dice. You phrase it one way, e.g., to gauge how folks consider faith in God motivates morality, then another, and so on, to see what moves strongly this into sorta this, and sorta this into sorta that. There are LOTS of things that move voters -- hell, read any news article that quotes Frank Luntz, much less his book.

So what you did, instead was... obnubilation. I was talking plain facts (folks voting against their interests), clear voting behavior (Reagan's two landslide victories), and so on... and it would be hard to come up with a better example of evaporation than your responses.

LOL -- now, if you DID learn how to do invective, well...

Pope John Paul ll descibed God as the all-knowing absolute, but absolute is basis, not apex, so the spiritual absolute would be the source out of which we rise, not a being from which we fell.
Good and bad are not a top down universal dual between the forces of light and darkness, but the most basic binary code of bottom up biological calculation.
To me, fear of God is staring into the abyss we've climbed out of and will fall back into, if this house of cards that is civilization crumbles, not some preacher stirring up his flock.

You're a bit too easy to provoke (I know, it's a character flaw on my part, but I swear, I mostly do it only to make a larger point), but personal exchanges don't do much good.

While I certainly see lots of both specific personal attacks and general assaults on the intelligence of the other posters on this site as a group from you, I haven't seen much that advances any “larger point” from you. Maybe you ought to actually read and respond to what other people write if you want to debate them, rather than rambling trains of irrelevances and insults.

(Besides, you simply don't do invective well: there's no challenge in punching out a paraplegic.)

I think you are mistaking my simply pointing to your unresponsiveness and failure to engage in actual debate rather than vague personal attacks and claims of superiority for attempts at invective.

And apparently you think its some kind of competitive invective game, which I suppose explains your continued gratuitous use of fairly generalized personal attacks without addressing the substantive claims in the posts you are responding to; OTOH, if that's the case, you clearly don't do invective well, as your attacks are dull, repetitive, and generic.

The purpose of a Rule of 4 question in a survey (or rather, of using 'em in a series of surveys) is to identify what moves people from one category to another. The question Kevin posted is a Rule of 4 question. Didn't you notice?

Quite. What's the purpose of this bizarre tangent, which doesn't support any of the claims you make in this thread or contradict any of the things anyone else has said that you've characterized as wrong?

You have this habit of posting tangentially relevant material without ever connecting it to any point you are making while accusing everyone else in the discussion of being idiots. But, you know, if you were have as much smarter than everyone else as you pretend to be, you could manage to actually connect your tangents to some actual relevant point.

The question is phrased as a Rule of 4 cuz you can draw a line down the middle, and identify folks who are this or that.

This point is not in contention (one might debate the utility of artificially forcing respondents to pick aside, and whether it reveals real distinctions or artificially creates the illusion of such distinctions where they don't exist, but that's a separate question from the purpose of such techniques.)

It excludes the middle -- which is what Kevin was objecting to: the bloody purpose of the technique.

Nowhere does Kevin say anything suggesting that he is objecting to the exclusion of the middle. He seems more to be objecting to asking the question on the misguided basis that asking the question validates the right hand response, not because the particular form in which the question was asked excludes the middle.

And this is another illustration of why I keep saying that you respond to your own inventions rather than what the people you purport to be responding to have actually written.

A Rule of 4 question also measures intensity of feeling -- as noted in my first post. You might get a 50-50 split of folks who are this or that, but it isn't an even division if most of the "that" folks, let's say, are STRONGLY "that", while most of the "this" folks are only "sorta" this.

This is why Rule of 4 questions are designed to exclude the middle.

No, that's why Rule of 4 questions are Rule of 4 questions rather than say, “Rule of 2” questions that still exclude the middle but don't indicate strength of agreement with the opposed options.

Rule of 4 questions exclude the middle not for the reason you've just stated, but to prevent weak agreers from being tempted to choose the “no preference” middle when they really do lean one way or another, just not that strongly, though arguably (as noted above) it creates the possibility for the opposing distortion.

When I noted all this

You didn't “note” any of that until just now.

which is like grammar school stuff to political people, Dice

Indeed; but then, as noted above, you still get it wrong. What does that say?

I don't recall you added anything useful. I didn't expect you to.

Again, since none of this is what you “noted” earlier in the thread, it would have been hard for me to have responded, usefully or not, to your “noting” it until now. It is therefore rational of you—uncharacteristic as that is—to have expected me to have responded to it earlier.

To illustrate how it works, I cited a real example: "Reagan Democrats", and how they have actually voted over the past generation or so, e.g., as "white ethnics" in the Clinton administration.

As is common for you, its not at all clear what you mean by “it” in this sentence; it appears, looking at this post alone, to refer to the use of Rule of 4 questions, which is what you've been discussing up to this point; OTOH, you hadn't discussed that at all when you raised the issue before. These kind of vague references are common in your writing, perhaps because you don't have a clear idea of what you are talking about.

I noted that there are folks on the left who delude themselves that what motivated Reagan Democrats was race -- Clinton's success, of course, proves otherwise.

Clinton's success proves nothing of the sort.

(IF they were motivated by race, they would have voted against Clinton, cuz it would have trumped what DID motivate 'em to vote FOR Clinton.)

This presumes that changing circumstances didn't change the saliency of various issues for them. For instance, assume for the sake of argument that (as investigations like Lijphard's have suggested), economics and race are the principal salient policy axes in the American electorate, and that the Democratic and Republican parties differ, generally, on both of those axes. We'll make the further simplifying assumption that the relative position of the parties on those two axes is constant, and the relative preferences of members of the electorate on those two axes is constant. We'll assume that the only thing that varies over time for individual voters is the salience of each axis, that is, the weighting they apply. Assume further that each voter simply votes for the party that has the smallest weighted sum of difference from his position on the two policy axes.

Then if you had a substantial group of voters that were aligned with the Republicans on race issues but with the Democrats on economic issues, who were Democratic voters prior to the Reagan years, they could become Republican voters during the Reagan years because the relative salience of economic issues vs. race issues declined for them because of changed circumstances (either economic pressures receding or race issues being driven to the fore), and could then return to the Democratic fold during the Clinton years if the reverse salience shift occurred.

The rise and fall of the Reagan Democrats thus can be explained completely consistently with their being motivated by race.

You interjected that (ahem) some scholar in some book you read reveals that the ONLY axes on which voters move are race and economics.

Er, no.

You seem to be leaving out the mention of significance in order to lie about what I said. Typical of you, though.

LOL -- bullshit. Anybody who does this stuff for a living knows better.

Does what “stuff”? Invent B.S. to post on blog comment threads without concern for facts? Perhaps so, though few people do that for a living. Do empirical research on voting behavior? Clearly, not everybody who does that for a living “knows better”.

That's what a Rule of 4 question illustrates, Dice. You phrase it one way, e.g., to gauge how folks consider faith in God motivates morality, then another, and so on, to see what moves strongly this into sorta this, and sorta this into sorta that.

No. Ideally, what a series of Rule of 4 questions illustrate is correlation (though not driving) between different opinions. What they don't do without extending the questioning to voting behavior is demonstrate what differences in beliefs are important to voting behavior.

They just let you construct interesting typologies of political opinion.

There are LOTS of things that move voters -- hell, read any news article that quotes Frank Luntz, much less his book.

Luntz is a professional, highly partisan, paid propagandist, in a competitive market of such propagandists. What he says reflects his interest in selling particular ideas and his own services; while, no doubt, he has some valid general insights, its in both his personal and factional interests to obscure those in many cases, and to obscure his methods which impedes independent analysis of his conclusionary claims; there is certainly plenty of reason to prefer the peer-reviewed work of actual empirical scientists in the field when it comes to objective, factual description.

Plus, which book? Its hardly as if Luntz only has published one.

So what you did, instead was... obnubilation.

Er, no, it was clearly and directly pointing to an error in your claims. Which you responded to with vague insults and misrepresentation, rather than engagement.

I was talking plain facts (folks voting against their interests)

That is not a “plain fact”, you have neither established (or, previous to this, even clearly claimed, though you appeared to attribute that claim to me previously) anyone voting “against their own interests”.

clear voting behavior (Reagan's two landslide victories)

While clearly Reagan was elected, you have provided no substantial basis for believing it has anything to do with anything besides shifts in the relative salience of the well-established axes of economics and race.

and so on... and it would be hard to come up with a better example of evaporation than your responses.

My responses to you were direct and specific to the points they responded to. Your responses have been vague handwaves that don't address the points raised in the posts they respond to. You seem to have things completely backwards.

LOL -- now, if you DID learn how to do invective, well...

I'm satisfied, for now, with focussing principally on substance. Perhaps you ought to try to do the same, for once.

CMDicely - thanks for understanding the real issue of the question.

For starters,I think the question is well worded for its purpose. It is not designed to get at any philosophical truth, only to distinguish between conservative and liberal traits. For most people who do not think about this too deeply it will do this purpose.

Now beyond that matter it is obviously true that you must believe in some standard reference frame to measure anything.

You can't measure goodness if you have no universal standard for goodness.

You can't hold people accountable if they're actions are just programmed response to stimuli.

So... if, as I do, you equate disbelief in God with physical materialism the astounding conclusion is this:

If you are true to materialism and do not believe in God it is impossible to be moral in your own eyes. You believe that you are only responding to stimuli that has been programmed into
you by upbringing and genetics. You can not judge your life or any other life to be "good".

Ironically, the religious who do believe in God can look at your life behaviors, see that they match up to the universal morals held by their religion and pronounce you "good".

Sorry, substitue "their" for "they're" in the last post.

Now beyond that matter it is obviously true that you must believe in some standard reference frame to measure anything.

While that's true, there is no reason for morals that needs to be any kind of God, or to come from any kind of God. Nor does the assumption of a God really do much to help in that regard.

You can't hold people accountable if they're actions are just programmed response to stimuli.

Certainly, you can; indeed, if they are just programmed responses to stimuli, it may be more useful to do so than if they have an undetermined free will, as actions taken to impose accountability are stimuli which can provoke responses.

So... if, as I do, you equate disbelief in God with physical materialism

Why would you do that, in the first place? Its quite possible not to believe in a Supreme Being and not to be a “physical materialist”.

the astounding conclusion is this:

If you are true to materialism and do not believe in God it is impossible to be moral in your own eyes.

I would say that this seems clearly false. Nothing about physical materialism conflicts with having a set of standards of desired behaviors, or judging actual behaviors against those desired behaviors and seeking out opportunities to apply knowledge of the relationship between stimulus and response to encourage the desired (“moral”) behaviors and discourage the undesired (“immoral”) ones.

You believe that you are only responding to stimuli that has been programmed into you by upbringing and genetics.

Perhaps a physical materialist believes this, but as noted above that doesn't prevent them from being able to have a moral code and evaluate behaviors against that code.

You can not judge your life or any other life to be "good".

Why not? Whether or not you should is another question; many moral codes, both religious and otherwise, strongly disfavor this kind of judgementalism about people or their lives, favoring instead that moral judgements be restricted to individual acts, and even then that they be focussed first and foremost on the acts of the evaluator, not other's acts. But what you believe about what is does not prevent you from having beliefs about what ought to be, which is all morality is.

JH:Now beyond that matter it is obviously true that you must believe in some standard reference frame to measure anything.

CM:While that's true, there is no reason for morals that needs to be any kind of God, or to come from any kind of God. Nor does the assumption of a God really do much to help in that regard.

I'm sorry, I made a logical leap there to God as the defining reference frame. Maybe you can replace belief in God with belief in a universal ethical reference frame. I see your point, but I don't see how you have a universal ethical reference frame without an outside judge making up the rules. I call this rule maker - God. Please respond with a consistent hypothetical belief system that can have belief in universal moral constraints, yet not believe in a God.

JH: You believe that you are only responding to stimuli that has been programmed into you by upbringing and genetics.

CM:Perhaps a physical materialist believes this, but as noted above that doesn't prevent them from being able to have a moral code and evaluate behaviors against that code.

Yes, but the minute someone admits to there being a moral code that is universal they must postulate a source for that moral code. If it is just opinion of the majortiy - how can this be connected with morals - it is simply ethical democracy. If it is their own personal viewpoint, how can they consider their ethics to be above others. Why is their moral code the right one? What are they trying to optimize?

When I say someone cannot judge their own life or any other life as "good", I mean they can not remain consistent and do this. Certainly I allow that people may be inconsistent in their thought.

I am confused by what you would postulate as a position where someone would refuse to believe in God, yet believe in some universal reference frame. However, as I recognize you have probably taken much more philosophy than me, I await your response. Perhaps I just can't see it due to my own ignorance.
Sorry for the repetitive nature of the post, I'm just trying to get my point across without knowing the exact terms to express it.

As noted, Dice is simply too dumb to argue with. So I'll just note his error and be done with it.

"Rule of 4 questions exclude the middle not for the reason you've just stated, but to prevent weak agreers from being tempted to choose the “no preference� middle when they really do lean one way or another..."

Not so.

For one thing (typical of Dice's errors), the Rule of 4 is not about keeping respondents from temptation.

The purpose of Rule of 4 questions is to find out WHAT moves respondents. I said so -- three times, I think.

Got a literacy problem, dude?

With a question like this, as everybody has more or less accepted, Kevin's objection is simply wrong: whether he likes it or not, accepting a correlation between faith in God and morals is a pretty fair indicator of someone's political identification. Somebody might object (as the ignorant often do to polls) that the poll doesn't measure nuance, but that simply demonstrates the person objecting doesn't understand the purpose: its NOT about nuance. It's not about crafting a question that allows all, or even most respondents to express the precisely calibrated nature of their opinions and principles.

You're trying to get information out of folks which they very often won't know about themselves, and may even reject: but which is measureably true nevertheless. (Dice's stupidity being a case in point. It's abundantly clear that he's never considered the evidence that he's as dumb as a doorknob.)

So the question works, it achieves its purpose.

Cuz it's a Rule of 4 question (like the others in the survey) you can examine the data to see what moves folks from one category to another: it's not about 'temptation', which Dice obviously misunderstands. (Begging the question if he has a clue about theological issues, as well.)

F'r instance, if responding to another question that measured, say, whether folks generally believe that government is the problem or the solution found that most of the folks who were sorta liberal on the God question were sorta conservative on the government question, you'd KNOW something potentially useful about how that identifiable, quantifiable bloc chooses to identify themselves politically.

If you wanted to move those votes your way, you could craft a message that, Luntz-like, pushed their buttons on the role of government and the importance (or unimportance) of faith. This craft has designed every significant political formula of my professional lifetime: "safe, legal, and rare"; "death tax"; "earned legalization", etc.

You can even get 'em to vote against what might reasonably be considered their economic self-interest with such appeals (e.g., the legendary limousine liberals) -- but that's hardly coded speech about RACE, Dice.

When pushed on facts, you get insulting -- and obnubilate.

So, this is just one more reason why I conclude, over and over again, that you're simply stupid.