Nathan Bond's TART Remarks

The leading science journal Nature has posed several science questions to the American presidential candidates. Senator Obama answered in writing; senator McCain did not reply.

This question is of extreme importance…

Nature: Do you believe that evolution by means of natural selection is a sufficient explanation for the variety and complexity of life on Earth? Should intelligent design, or some derivative thereof, be taught in science class in public schools?

Obama: I believe in evolution, and I support the strong consensus of the scientific community that evolution is scientifically validated. I do not believe it is helpful to our students to cloud discussions of science with non-scientific theories like intelligent design that are not subject to experimental scrutiny.

(McCain said last year, in a Republican primary debate: “I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.” In 2005, he told the Arizona Daily Star that he thought “all points of view” should be available to students studying the origins of humanity. But the next year a Colorado paper reported him saying that such viewpoints should not be taught in science class.)

Obama’s answer – and McCain’s silence – speak to a most imporant attribute: Respect for evidence. The White House should not be occupied by someone who disrespects evidence.

Several rumours that Senator Barack Obama is a Muslim – and therefore that Americans should not elect him to the White House – abound in the United States. So persistent are the rumours that Obama recently gave a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church a highly personal account of his spiritual journey and a promise that he will make “faith-based” social service “a moral center of my administration.”

Unless one subscribes to the beliefs Christians live by, one has no chance whatsoever of winning the White House. Americans demand their leaders be delusional. A 1999 Gallup poll found that 49 percent of Americans would vote against an atheist on the grounds of their atheism alone. Simply having a naturalistic view of the universe makes a candidate unelectable in American politics.

A national survey conducted by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology, the results of which appeared in the April 2006 issue of the American Sociological Review, indicated that Atheists are America’s most distrusted minority:

“Despite the declining salience of divisions among religious groups, the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in America remains strong. This article examines the limits of Americans’ acceptance of atheists. Using new national survey data, it shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups. This distrust of atheists is driven by religious predictors, social location, and broader value orientations. It is rooted in moral and symbolic, rather than ethnic or material, grounds. We demonstrate that increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to the nonreligious, and present a theoretical framework for understanding the role of religious belief in providing a moral basis for cultural membership and solidarity in an otherwise highly diverse society.”¹

Obama, should he have been a Muslim, would have had a better chance (by 10 points!) at the White House that had he been an atheist – the said Gallup poll indicates the following percentages of people saying they would refuse to vote for “a generally well-qualified person for president” on the basis of some characteristic:

Catholic: 4%
Black: 5%
Jewish: 6%
Baptist: 6%
Woman: 8%
Mormon: 17%
Muslim: 38%
Gay: 37%
Atheist: 48%

Beware: Both presidential candidates are Christian. Christians hear a Voice. And they act on the Voice…

Well, I guess it’s kinda cute – this belief thing; this naïveté. As long as God does not tell you to invade Iraq, as His Omnipotence apparently told George W Bush. ² As long as you don’t claim Jerusalem for the Jews in the face of the Palestinians, ‘cause the Bible tells John McCain so. As long as you don’t cry Allah Akbar before parking a Boeing in the World Trade Centre. As long as you aren’t convinced that consensual sex between men somehow irks some cosmic peeping tom as Bishop Akinola feels certain the Bible teaches.

Be careful. They are, the both of them, McCain and Obama, Christian.

Christians are deluded people – they believe that Homo sapiens sapiens will somehow live forever if only they accept some resurrected Galilean Shaman as their personal “saviour”.

Be warned: McCain is a Christian. For sure. Be careful. Obama is a Christian. For sure. Be careful. Be careful because religion is the single most destructive force ever to debase humanity… a pernicious bane, an insidious hegemony, a grotesque pasquinade of insight, an egregious insult to intelligence and responsible for well-nigh all of human suffering. Religion has failed mankind. The god-fearing has left mankind precariously perched on the precipice of catastrophe. The time is now for sentient beings to shed religion’s hegemony. Social dictates are to be purged of religious influence in the immediate term to give historically divergent peoples a reasonable chance at coexistence in the long term; to give ordinary people a better chance at life.

Physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg once observed that “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.” Northern Ireland, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, to name but the few most prominent hotspots, speak eloquently to this point.

The prime problem with Christians is that even the most intelligent ones (Francis Collins comes to mind… and very many individuals I know personally) and the most well-meaning ones (Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu… and very many individuals I know personally) are readily reducible to delusional idiots, believing all sorts of absolute nonsense, such as the supernatural, gods and demons, and everlasting life.

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(1) Edgell, Penny; Gerteis, Joseph; Hartmann, Douglas. 2006. Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society. American Sociological Review, Volume 71, Number 2, April 2006. pp. 211-234(24).

(2) “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.” (George W. Bush).

Bush made this statement, according to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas – from minutes acquired by Haaretz from cease-fire negotiations between Abbas and faction leaders from the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular and Democratic Fronts (circa June, 2003), quoted from Arnon Regular, “‘Road map is a life saver for us,’ PM Abbas tells Hamas” (Haaretz.com:June 27, 2003). See also Did Bush really say God told him to go to war?

Klaarblyklik gons dit in die VS van A dat Senator Barack Obama ‘n inikas Moslem is. Daarom moet daar nie vir hom gestem word nie.

Wel, John McCain is ‘n Christen.

Nuff zed.

Maar op ‘n ernstiger noot: Klaarblyklik het Obama groot geword met die Bybel, die Koran, die Bhagavad Gita, Griekse, Noorse en Afrika-mitologie. Godsk, dit klink te goed om waar te wees, maar se non è vero, è molto ben trovato*, of wat sê ek.

Dís mos soos ‘n kind moet leer!

* If it is not true, it is a happy invention was blykbaar ‘n algemene sêding in die 16de eeu. Giordano Bruno (1585) gebruik dit in hierdievorm; Antonio Doni (1552) gebruik Se non è vero, egli è stato un bel trovato. Se non è vero, è bene trovato het ek by ‘n Italiaanse grysaard wat ek ken gehoor, en hy vertel dat die Tjeggiese skrywer Karel Capek dit gebruik het.