Could an admitted atheist ever be president?

Short answer: Yes, I hope so….

I’m pretty sure the answer to this question is no.

As much as i hate to say this, but no probably not. Not anytime soon at least.

If the “admitted atheist” decided not to “admit” until after his/her election, then yes. Otherwise, not any time soon.

I think it’s possible. If they are a respectable person, even atheism can be forgiven by the religious of America. As long as they don’t fight prayer and creationism in schools.

In schools? Not public schools, though. Right?

I think it will happen someday. I personally know (or know of) far more atheists today, than I knew (of) 20 years ago. It takes a while for any change to come about, but look at Obama…20 years ago I wouldn’t have believed this would happen in my lifetime!

If Obama is elected President and can point the economy in the right direction while at the same time at least maintaining the status quo in regards to the military and national security, then I would say that within 40 to 50 years that may be possible. It has been about that long since JFK was elected President despite being an “admitted Catholic” and change needs to happen slowly in a democracy.

I believe that it was 1968 when Robert Kennedy said that within 40 years it was possible for a minority candidate to be elected President.

Hmm, I would think not. Not ever, actually.

What is POTUS?

President Of The United States.

OH.

There has been rumor and speculation for decades, that Abraham Lincoln was really an avowed atheist, and many right-wing Christians claim that’s why he was assassinated, and that it also contributed to many states leaving the Union, which initiated the Civil War.

I do not know if any of the above is true, but those are what historians continue to debate and study.

I’ve tried to think of a strategy an atheist could take to become President. I think that the religion issue is about values. If an atheist demonstrates serious core values both through action, and with passion on the stump, I think that atheist could gain a lot of support.

Enough to overcome prejudice against atheists? Well, looks like we’re finally overcoming prejudice against blacks. Hell, that only took 150 years or so. How about an atheist president in 2158?

Some years ago the Crown Prince of Denmark stated in a radio interview that he was agnostic….but he’s still in line for the crown…Admittedly the Monarchs don’t really run the country, but then again, I don’t even know what faith the PM practices – if any.
Based on that, I’d say it’s possible….....but depends on the country and how much they want to be ruled by religion. It won’t happen in a theocracy.

Никита Сергеевич Хрущёв was an atheist, and served as the General Secretary and Premier of the Soviet Union during the 1950s and 1960s, so I would guess that if it could happen there, it could probably happen almost anywhere on Earth, right?

What’s funny to me, is that it is (supposedly) illegal to ask someone about their religious beliefs prior to hiring them and an election is, in a very real sense, part of the “hiring process” of a person for a job availability, so “We the People” shouldn’t even be asking about a candidate’s religious beliefs, should we?

The Soviet Union was an officially atheistic state, though. A Christian (or anyone who had any kind of admitted religious belief) would never have been put in that position there.

Михаил Сергеевич Горбачёв was in a similar position in the old USSR, but admitted during interviews that when he was an infant, his mother had him baptized “in the name of the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit, Amen.”

That made him a Christian ruler, right?

Fascinating when you start adding up all the sections of the population which have been or continue to be unable to win elections based on irrelevant issues. Sex, sexuality, colour, religion, etc.. None of which has to do with their possible worth as leaders.

Imagine all the potentially brilliant leaders who didn’t stand a chance. We’ve eliminated 50%! of the population from running for centruies just because they were women.

Anyways, I think the answer is not for a while yet (although Hitchens as an interesting take on this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3viGlD-6STs ) A Newsweek poll I read about second hand says that only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualitied Atheist as president. That’s a bit of catching up to do…

I believe that atheism generally increases with education level attained. By not considering atheists, American’s are ruling out, by default, some very bright people. Something to think about.

Please show me a correlation between Atheism and educational level.
You only degrade your comments with sweeping generalizations.

@Jack, it depends upon your definition of Christian. Some sects say that you choose to be Christian later, once you know the difference between right and wrong.

If Baptism/Christening makes you a Christian, then I’m a very surprised and inaccurate Atheist.

“Do you forsee a time when the POTUS is atheist? (I realize there are many who claim Thomas Jefferson didn’t believe in a literal God. But admitting this would have been the end of his political career.)”

a) Don’t know what a “literal” God is, but Jefferson did not believe that Jesus did the miracles that the bible ascribes to him. His fundamental belief (also mine) is that Jesus was the middle-eastern equivalent of Buddha, someone who espoused being a better human in the world you live in.

b) Jefferson was a lot closer to the period when the US was founded on the basis of “freedom of religion”, and the myriad of religions that exist today were either non-existent at the time or much lesser known.

c) Did you notice how John McCain’s original position about the core Christian Fundamentalists changed from discrediting them to sucking up to them – he needs their vote in spite of his own core beliefs.

d) These fundamentalists review history from a perspective that isn’t possible, and come to conclusions that are as unsound as denying evolution.

To answer question: No. Not in my lifetime anyway.

fireside said: “Please show me a correlation between Atheism and educational level.
You only degrade your comments with sweeping generalizations.”

Agreed no evidence to support the thesis, but I don’t think that is really the issue.The right wing group of fundamentalists who believe the bible is a historical fact in every situation is threatened by knowledge. Knowledge that demonstrates that the bible isn’t fact in every situation.

Conservative writers like George Will and David Brooks, once beacons of the conversative core are now disparaged by the right wing conservatives as “intellectuals” because they are intelligent and write in a logical, comprehensible manner and don’t simply buy into a candidate or idea simply because he or it is conservative. They flock, now, to writers like Michelle Malkin who merely inflame and espouse an anti-liberal life without expressing a philosophy based on logic and reason.

Einstein was a believer in God as expressed in his statement “God doesn’t roll dice with the universe”.

For the hard right fundamentalists, atheism is really a non-issue. Anyone who doesn’t believe the bible as a factual document is “unchristian”. Knowledge threatens that position.

“Please show me a correlation between Atheism and educational level.
You only degrade your comments with sweeping generalizations.”

Dear Fireside,

FYI, I’ve cut and paste this from Atheism- wiki

“A letter published in Nature in 1998 reported a survey suggesting that belief in a personal god or afterlife was at an all-time low among the members of the U.S. National Academy of Science, only 7.0% of whom believed in a personal god as compared with more than 85% of the general U.S. population.[103] In the same year Frank Sulloway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Shermer of California State University conducted a study which found in their polling sample of “credentialed” U.S. adults (12% had Ph.Ds and 62% were college graduates) 64% believed in God, and there was a correlation indicating that religious conviction diminished with education level.[104] An inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence has been found by 39 studies carried out between 1927 and 2002, according to an article in Mensa Magazine.[105]”

Any futher points of clarification I could help you with?

I wonder what book an Atheist would place his/her hand upon, while being sworn into office?

@jvgr- I’ve read a lot on the life of Einstein and I doubt if he really believed in a god. He was active as a Zionist because of the plight of his people, not because of a personal faith. As for the comment that he didn’t believe “God would play dice with the universe”, that demonstrates nothing more than Einstein’s difficulty accepting quantum theory. I often say “thank God” and other things invoking God’s name and I am 100% atheist.

@JackAdams: If I were sworn into office, I would have no problem laying my hand on the Constitution, as that is what I would be swearing to uphold anyway. The Declaration of Independence would also be a good choice.

@ Ac- God is a big term. here’s a quote attributed to Einstein:
I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

And another:
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness. ( Albert Einstein – The Merging of Spirit and Science)

@ Critter – here is a poll from 2006 that shows similar beliefs across educational levels in America.

Education / Strongly believe in God / Absolutely Certain of God
High School / 76 / 62
Some College / 74 / 57
College Grad / 64 / 50
Post Graduate / 73 / 53

——
@laureth – Strongly agree!
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@jvgr – agreed. Fundamentalists of all religions (and non religions) are a big problem

laureth, I would re-think about touching the DOC, because that is a paper that acknowledges the existence of a Gawd, to wit: “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

@fireside- Spinoza’s God was more of a metaphor than a literal God. He viewed God as nature encompassing all things, kind of like the force. Einstein was an admirer of his philosophies. Much of what Einstein had written and said invoked God’s name just as Benjamin Franklin would invoke God; as a generic and metaphorical God as many Unitarian Universalists view “Him”.

@ AC – That’s what I am saying. There are all different beliefs in God.
You don’t have to have a belief in a Personal God as described literally in the Bible (or any other holy text) to believe in a higher power.

I think that is an important distinction.

@ fireside, Your study didn’t exactly help your argument, despite the fact it was isolated to the most religious of the population. If the “absolutely certain there is a god” crowd drop in their conviction, doesn’t this at least make you pause for a second? What happened to those who just believe in god at a moderate or weak level. THe study doesn’t tell us, which I think is the more relevant aspect of the issue. Especially in light of the multiple studies I refer to which provide direct or implicit evidence of a correlation between education and atheism.

You asked me to back up my claim. I believe I have.

@Jack: Back in the language of that day, “their creator” didn’t necessarily mean the Christian God. It was, in fact, the way that the people we would now call Secular Humanists phrased things.

“A Gawd, by any other name…” (Apologies to Shakespeare.)

So you know that the Declaration predated Darwin, right? Jefferson et al. might not have quite had the data available to them that we do now, so they couldn’t have said ”...people evolved to have certain inalienable rights…”. The best they could do is say that whatever way we ended up here, whatever created us, we have these rights.

The Founding Fathers were wise people. They phrased things very carefully – they made rough drafts that we can still look at today. I think that if they meant The Christian God, or Jehovah, or JHVH, they would have called him that. Instead, they used the language of Science of that day – the equivalent of saying now that ”...they had evolved to have…”.

Maybe they meant their moms gave them the rights?

I would guess that an admitted atheist would get about 10% of the vote.

JackAdams
“laureth, I would re-think about touching the DOC, because that is a paper that acknowledges the existence of a Gawd, to wit: “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…”

Based on you choice of quotation, you’ve made the best case for laureth’s argument. The word’s “their Creator” pretty much the leaves the “GOD” issue open.

In the swearing in situations re: law courts, I do believe the option exists for a swearee to state, sans bible that “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

No, as a former attorney, I know that the word AFFIRM is used, instead of SWEAR.

When you Google “atheists in politics”, it asks you whether you meant ”athletes in politics”. I think that’s probably answer enough.

Hopefully that’ll change in the future, especially if nonbelievers become more vocal.

I find it so disheartening that the same people who find such pride when using words such as “free” and “freedom” have so little love for a “freethinker”.

AstroChuck, what’s even sadder, is that many so-called “believers” don’t see an Atheist as a “Freethinker,” as you and I do.

They see them as “NON-thinkers.”

It’s sad. But it’s a reality. The trick is to weasel our way into acceptance.

The movie Jesus Camp really drove in how brainwashed someone can be, and how that can affect the political landscape.

Thanks for that link. That’s frightening.

Even though I am not (and never have been) a Christian, my mother and brother were, at one time. Mom’s gone now, and I don’t know about my brother, as I haven’t seen him nor had any communication with him at all, since 1983.

But, one thing they both told me about Christianity, is that it appears to teach hatred of Atheists, and if so, that’s extremely wrong, IMHO.

I think it is a question of balancing humility.

There’s something to be said for a person who believe that they are not the ultimate authority, especially if we are handing them nuclear codes and the keys to the economy.

Not that that couldn’t be overcome by a good, thoughtful, well-spoken candidate.

I think the whole world would be far better off if those with access to nuclear codes were truly humble, and firmly believed that they were on a personal mission from God, and that without armageddon the second coming of Jesus will never occur.

Whoa!
Is this what you think Christians believe?

I’m not saying that we’ve picked the best people for the job every time, but I really doubt that any of them have thought that way.

That was sarcasm in response to your implication that an atheist might be more likely to drop a bomb on people. I can only hope you were joking too.

No, I was saying that, for the general public, that is the perception.

It is the primary blockage I see to an Atheist candidate running for President. I think that Atheists would be more accepted by the general society if they stopped attacking religion and just focused on their commonalities with everyone.

I straight out said that a thoughtful well spoken candidate could overcome that perception, the same way that Barack Obama has been able to live above the racism issue for so long.

He doesn’t try to play the victim card or spread divisiveness with vague platitudes about a large group of people.

We can all write things quickly and can be misinterpreted. The problem I had with your post is that it wasn’t written as a perception amongst the public. You state that there
“actually is something to be said for a person who doesn’t believe that they are the ultimate authority, especially if we are handing them nuclear codes..”

Good to know that’s not what you meant.

Absolutely agreed though. I think atheists do need to play the commonalities, at least some of the time. the problem is commonalities are difficult to define when people are being defined by their lack of belief in something.

Especially as I don’t think atheism is a goal in itself, I think it can be a positive byproduct of evidence based thinking, or it can forced on people like any dogma (think communism). So what defines us should not be the atheism, but perhaps evidence based thinking, or rationalism or freethinking. But such comments have an air of arrogance all their own, so are hardly likely to win more votes.

Regardless, for what it’s worth, I hope Obama wins.

Lets call into question our president now. He has said that God told him to go to war with Iraq. This means that our best case scenario is that the president of the free world was using his religion to manipulate dumb people all over the United States. If this is the case, then it really pisses me off that the president would be so manipulative and that churches have conditioned their flocks to swallow this type of message with no question.

The worst case scenario is that George Bush is schizophrenic and hears voices in his head that he attributes to God. This scares the crap out of me. I hope those same voices don’t tell him to use the nuclear codes. An atheist would know he’s mentally disturbed. He wouldn’t think he’s “getting closer to God”.

I would rather have a president that thinks this life is all we have. I wouldn’t want a president that thinks “well who cares if I screw the job up in this life, I’m still going to heaven anyway”.

It’s a truly telling sad state of affairs when a Mormon has a better chance at becoming president then an atheist. I doubt an atheist would even get 10% of the vote.

Like I said, we haven’t always picked the right people for the job.
We all know he’s an idiot who would never have been elected if it weren’t for his connections.

I think that Critter had some stats earlier about 37% of people saying they would vote for an atheist. I found a poll saying about 30% would and in the same poll only 3% admitted to being atheist. Those seem like pretty good odds for a minority.

It’s all about the approach.

Online polls aren’t really the end all be all in statistics.

I think atheist hate is far more powerful then what you are suggesting there fireside. Plus, not all atheists are going to vote for an atheist president. I personally would vote based on the issues I agree with even if this went against a fellow non-believer.

That poll also states, otherwise qualified. Otherwise qualified pretty much means that he would have policies that you would agree with. I think that if there was an atheist president who was pro-life, wanted to teach creationism in schools, supported wars, supported prayer in school, and supported religious statues and monuments bought with state money… maybe they would get 30% of the vote.

Richard Dawkins:

“Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one’s intelligence or educational level, all but 4 found an inverse connection—that is, the higher one’s intelligence or educational level, the less one is likely to be religious. […] We’ve reached a truly remarkable situation. A gross mismatch between the American intelligentsia, and the American electorate. […] If I’m right, this means that high office in the greatest country in the world is barred to the people best qualified to hold it—the intelligentsia—unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest. I am not a citizen of this country, so I hope it won’t be thought unbecoming if I suggest that something needs to be done.”

I advise everyone to watch An Atheist’s Call to Arms.

See, I’d rather have an atheist for President because that way, they can interpret the crazy voice in the head telling them to go to war is just a crazy voice – not a True Message From God – and act accordingly. Or at least there seems to be a greater chance of acting accordingly, even if some leaders (Godful or Godless) are crazy to begin with.

No. I hate to admit it but its just not possible with society as brainwashed as it is with religion.

Let’s say that an atheist is one of the top two contenders for the office of president. Now here’s a SMALL list of the obstacles that individual would have to overcome. For readability, these are broad topics. Hopefully your intelligent enough to draw some connections and realize the full scape of what atheists have to overcome if they ever want to be president.

televangelists, pastors, catholic church, Israel relations, Middle east terrorists, Muslims, major news stations, both major political parties, middle eastern oil companies, the average voter, the poor, morality, foreign relations, the elderly, and the list goes on and on.

In theory there ought to be seperation between church and state and one’s religion shouldn’t warrant someone capable/incapable of leading a country. However, as the majority of the U.S is still Christian I can’t see an aethiest making it far in an election, regardless of their political history. Nevertheless change is possible.

Recently, a woman who’s computer I was repairing had this email in her inbox. No one who forwards around emails about not even using unless it has in God we trust on it would ever support an atheist for any office (no matter how reasonable he is).

It’s garbage. It’s disgusting. I wish we did have a true separation of church and state.

Well, you can’t just look at the hopeless cases. There were people who would never vote for Obama because he’s black, just as some people wouldn’t vote for a candidate because he’s Catholic. But those aren’t the people you focus on – you go for the people who aren’t crazy, because expending energy trying to chip away at huge rocks isn’t worth it when the winds of change are going to blow them over anyways.