Bad day, yes, but NEVER a Bad Hair Day in the Romney Campaign. Can Rudy claim that?
tbladesays
There are many grumblings in the nutty Evangelical world that Christian offshoots like the LDS Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses (some even say that Catholicism is polytheistic). Huckabee is aware of the Evangelical cult opinion and doesn’t want to upset the apple cart.
<
p>Huckabee is guilty of indirect religious bigotry and pandering to bigots.
tbladesays
..Some Evangelicals say LDS and JWs are cults.
stomvsays
to un-bigify his bigot supporters. It’s not like he’s a minist….
<
p>
<
p>oh wait. Huh. I wonder if his being a minister comes with responsibilities as well as benefits. I’m sure he’ll work on that LDS-bigotry thing right after the primary. He’s really busy doing other bits of God’s work until then.
kbuschsays
What you and I, stomv, might regard as bigotry, Huckabee and his fellow believers might regard as speaking the Truth or fighting Satan.
<
p>If it were really okay to discuss religion in the public context, we might insist on only electing adherents to faiths imbued with ecumenicalism.
eddiecoylesays
I had naively thought that this “religious test” business had been buried by Jack Kennedy in the 1960 election with his oft-quoted speech to the Southern Baptist Convention.
<
p>Now, I understand that this Lil’ Abner/Billy Sunday character, Mike Huckabee, has coyly and snarkily attempted to inject the religious question into his battle with Romney for the votes of Republican caucus voters in Iowa and other states with a heavy evangelical population.
<
p>As one who was often disappointed by his lackluster performance as Governor, I genuinely hope (dare I say, pray) Romney hits a home run in tomorrow’s much anticipated speech and kicks Huckabee’s sanctimonious ass all the way back to Hope, Ark. In Hope, Rev. Huckabee will be free to return the glory of his dime-store preaching and crappy guitar playing days, while the other candidates conduct a presidential campaign free from the odious stench of religious intolerance and sectarianism.
stomvsays
Try running as an atheist, even for local government. You’ll get creamed — not just in the South, but just about anywhere.
<
p>There was a study that made the rounds a few years ago, something like: “Would you consider voting for a candidate who was __________” where the blank was things like
* black
* Hispanic
* female
* gay
* Jewish
* atheist
and atheist “won”. To be complete, I don’t remember if “Muslim” was a choice… but we do have 1 member of the House who is Muslim, and to my knowledge not a single member who claims he’s an atheist in public.
laurelsays
tbladesays
If prayer is so powerful, why doesn’t the Huckabee machine pray that people stop getting blown up in Iraq or that cancer gets cured? Not a very utilitarian approach. Perhaps that’s why Evangelical Republicans are against universal health care – they believe if we pray hard enough, we won’t need doctors.
<
p>And if God gets the credit for the poll surge, does he get the blame if Mike loses?
kbuschsays
This is very scary, Laurel. Huckabee is claiming that his rise in the polls has nothing to do with the standard machinery of public opinion but with God. The comparison to the loves and fishes miracle is extra creepy.
Stomv, there is one avowed atheist in the house – pete stark of ca. He “came out” recently, and as an incumbent, so that doesn’t prove that it’s possible win a contested seat, but at least he’s there.
<
p>Trying the new bmg “mobile” posting feature! This comment brought to you by blackberry.
as a member of one cult, I don’t think I’m allowed to learn about another cult…unless it’s to better equip myself to belittle it in the furtherance of my own.
<
p>nice try. do you usually work the airport, go door-to-door or serve as a missionary with that routine?
rajsays
…a saffron robe was, the 12th of never đŸ˜‰
ed-prisbysays
Jessica Simpson dating Tony Romo can’t be good for the Cowboys’ offense down the stretch.
My point exactly. You are a genius, Ed. Why don’t you run for State Senate?
migrainesays
Why is it that we can’t judge a candidate on the things he or she believes re: religion? I think it’s vital that we evaluate everything we know about a candidate… for example, can you vote for POTUS — our fearless leader who believes this:
<
p>
It was also in 1827 that Smith was finally able to remove the golden plates from their original site, at which point he undertook the translation of the plates. Sometimes seated behind a curtain, sometimes with his head buried in his hat, and always using the two special stones, Smith dictated the English translation to various scribes – among them his wife, Emma, Martin Harris, and Oliver Cowdery. Sometimes the tablets were not even present at the time they were being translated.
She was the church organist, teacher of a women’s class, a devoted wife and the mother of four. Energetic, attractive and dutiful, Sonia Johnson, 43, seemed the very model of a modern Mormon matron. But she was also a militant lobbyist for the Equal Rights Amendment. Last week, apparently as a result, she found herself excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sterling Park, Va. She can still attend services, but can take no active part in the life of the congregation. More important, Mormons believe that if she does not repent and get rebaptized, she presumably will be eternally separated in the afterlife from her husband and children.
Emphasis added.
<
p>And personally, in addition to looking at the beliefs of the church and deciding that I can’t vote for someone who believes these things, if you think voting for a minister like Huckabee is a stretch (I’m uncomfortable with that) then how about voting for someone who has at some point been much higher ranking than just a minister:
<
p>
In the mid-1980s, Romney became the ecclesiastical leader of the Boston stake, which is roughly the Mormon equivalent of being the bishop of a diocese. He managed this while maintaining his own successful career as a consultant and venture capitalist. If the church asks him, he could serve as bishop, or pastor, again.
<
p>I think judgement, even on religious issues, is a perfectly legitimate issue to judge a candidate on.
ed-prisbysays
Catholics believe if you’re not baptized (splashed with water), you still have an “original sin” (from Adam, the first human ever, as a result of Eve’s…ahem…eating an apple). Original sin is a deal-braker with St. Peter at the pearly gates.
<
p>Christians world-over believe that Jesus was the literal son-of-God. His mother conceived him magically without ever having intercourse.
<
p>Oh yeah, and he also died and came back to life. Three days later.
<
p>So… you really want to go toe-to-toe over whose religion requires (or at least encourages) belief in far-fetched stories? Probably not.
laurelsays
i wish more religionists would go toe to toe, and in so doing realize how ridiculous their beliefs seem to outsiders. there would at least be honest self-assessment in such an enterprise.
<
p>i think too many people are members of a particular religion simply because they were indoctrinated with it. so simply by dint of familiarity it seems natural and right to them, and obviously, to them, it is “the truth”. is it any wonder that most americans, who are indoctrinated with christianity, “know” that ‘jesus is the way’? whereas most arabs, indoctrinated in islam, “know” that muhammad was ‘the last prophet of god’? the particulars of fervent religious belief are situational more than people are willing to admit. it is sad to me that so many people are blind to this reality, and so also blind to themselves and to what society has done to their minds (albeit with benign intentions). too few have the courage to face this distressing realization.
…and I want to post here a response I had made to a person who had also identified religion as a movtivator of the world’s ills:
<
p>
Toasty – due respect, but ‘moderate zeal’ is an oxymoron.
I THINK you are trying to say that you distrust and fear the religious impulse; you are concerned with its effects, and if the cure is worse than the disease. As far as Muslims vs. Christians, goes, I would say that many of the fires that consume Muslims now burnt out in Christianity some 500 years ago, with the Reformation. Islam has no Martin Luther, no change in 1,800 years. It has been hard for Islam to adapt to the 21st century, and its overwhelming impulse is to keep modern culture at bay, by force if need be.
And yet – the sense of the spiritual, the emotion of awe, the reverence of the sacred – these are as hard-wired into human consciousness as are sexual desire, hunger, and greed. Some cope with this by making a religion out of secularism or science, which seems to those who do believe as a wan and sad substitute.
It doesn’t matter. We are all going to die, and when we do, the mystery will be revealed to each of us. Nobody knows, and everybody is affected. So bless you on your journey, and wish me well on mine.
<
p>So – can you live with that as a vision? It’s like wearing a red hat – others may think it looks silly, but if you don’t run around mashing one on people’s heads, and YOU are happy and enriched – what is the harm?
laurelsays
i never said religion was the cause of all the worlds ills. read my comment. it says that societies attempt to indoctrinate their people with certain styles of religious belief. i’m not going to respond to a reply that didn’t even address my original point.
p>82% of Americans believe in God
79% believe in miracles
75% believe in heaven
72% believe Jesus is God
62% believe in hell and the devil 42% believe in evolution.
<
p>Considering roughly 1/3 of the country is fundamentalist Christian, and many of those people do not see the Iraq war as a political war but as a religious war, considering the amount of terrorists in the US motivated by Christian Dogmas, and considerg that many support Isreal for the sole reason of that they belive it plays a critical role in the Second Coming (which is scheduled in the next 50 years according to them), I don’t think it is accurate to say that Christians have burnt out the fires of zealotry to the degree which you claim.
<
p>I don’t care what anyone believes. I don’t care if you wait all October for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Good luck. But when you oppose the Morning After pill based on the question What Would the Great Pumpkin Do, and that decision goes against rigorous scientific and medical scrutiny, and you pander to a voting base that bases their decisions on the same Great Pumpkin despite what the evidence says, then it becomes an issue.
<
p>My analogy is this: I care about which God you pray to and which traditions are observed in your household as much as I care about whether you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore. To each her own, but making complex policy decisions for the entire country based on narrow and often arbitrary theologies is as silly as doing the same based on the diet one observes at home.
<
p>Jesus doesn’t want you to use a condom or the morning after pill? Fine, don’t use a condom or the morning after pill. Just don’t tell me that I’m required to follow the same arbitrary rule when the evidence suggests it is prudent to do otherwise.
<
p>And don’t be like Mike Huckabee who, as an Evangelical Christian, said that gay marriage will mean the end of civilization. Because it won’t. Either Huckabee is a bigot here and using his faith as a shield or he really bases his opinion that the world will end on some wacky Bible teachings that other Christians manage to interpret differently. If that is what Huckabee’s faith does for him, I cannot wish him well on his journey and I must criticize those beliefs – in part by blog commenting and in part by voting against him and candidates with similar beliefs.
p>PS: How about a cite or a link for those statistics about U.S,. religious beliefs that you so, er, devoutly profess?
tbladesays
First let me fervently recommend to anyone looking for data on religion in the US The Association of Religion Data Archives at Penn State. Wikipedia is also a good place to get quick religious demographics.
<
p>The US is 80% Christian, 52 % Protestant, 33% Born Again, 25% Catholic, give or take. These terms aren’t always mutually exclusive, meaning Catholics are Christians, some Born Agains are Protestant, etc.
<
p>What percentage of the US population is Christian (out of 300 million)?:
p>There is a December 2004 Newsweek article (no longer available on line. It looks as though MSNBC and Newsweek have terminated their partnership) that quotes a 2004 Princeton/Newsweek poll that cites 15% of Americans believe that Jesus will return in their lifetime. In 1999 The Pew Research Center released a survey called “Americans look to the 21st century” showing that 44% of Americans believe Jesus probably will return in their lifetime and 22% of Americans believe Jesus will definitely return in their lifetime. Even if you don’t find these numbers accurate, it is strong evidence suggesting a not insignificant percentage of Americans conduct their lives believing (or paying lip service to the belief) that Jesus will come back and the world will end in the next 50 years.
<
p>Lastly, here’s another fascinating contradiction illustrating American ignorance from The Washington Post:
<
p>
The United States is the most religious nation in the developed world…Americans are also the most religiously ignorant people in the Western world. Fewer than half of [Americans] can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount….
More than 10 percent think that Noah’s wife was Joan of Arc. Only half can name even one of the four Gospels, and — a finding that will surprise many — evangelical Christians are only slightly more knowledgeable than their non-evangelical counterparts.
rajsays
42% believe in evolution
<
p>I don’t believe in evolution, either. I know that evolution occurs. It has been observed.
<
p>I believe that Darwin’s theory (modification with descent) is the most reasonable explanation for how evolution occurs.
<
p>”Believe in” is a religious concept. “Believe that” is not a religious concept. If you insist on using the religionists’ phraseology, you are giving them the upper hand.
tbladesays
I’ve noted that you mentioned this before. In this case, I simply used the phraseology of the Reuters article.
kbuschsays
Islam has no Martin Luther, no change in 1,800 years. It has been hard for Islam to adapt to the 21st century, and its overwhelming impulse is to keep modern culture at bay, by force if need be.
Various strands of Islam have in fact been working at adapting. Americans, who have just recently learned that Islam is split between Sunnis and Shi’as, would be hard pressed to name prominent religious thinkers within any of Islam’s traditions — or even one prominent thinker within its traditions. In fact, we even appear (ahem!) to have trouble dating the beginnings of Islam.
<
p>This is almost an argument from ignorance. “If I haven’t heard of it, it’s not important.”
Islam hasn’t changed in 1,800 years?
First of all, wrong.
Secondly, the religion is just over 1,400 years old.
Thirdly, remember how Crusadistic the Christians were at that point?
centralmassdadsays
I think they were done with Crusades by 1400, though they had a few hundred years to go before reaching the point that I think the earlier comment was referring to.
<
p>Aquinas and Maimonedes incorporated philosphy into religious thought during the 1200s, which began the process of accomodating science and rationality into Christian and Jewish theology. (Many of today’s so-called fundamentalists explicitly reject Aquinas, and therefore their religious views are in extreme tension with science.)
<
p>I am not aware of this happening within Islamic thought to any widely accepted degree, though it is true that there are glimmers, particularly in the USA. It is possible that this movement is coming from the USA out of necessity: to my understanding, Islamic thought, liberal, conservative, or otherwise, draws no distinction between the civil and the religious. The religious authority is, or aspires to be, the civil authority. Sharia is intended to be religiuously-based civil law. This is beyond the realm of the possible in the US, and perhaps that is why Islam is being rethought to an extent by Islamic Americans.
The Crusades against the Muslims had largely stopped by the 1400s, not least of all because the Avignon Papacy, and the “Great Schism” that resulted in 3 popes allowed Christians to carry out religious wars with each other, from the convenience of the home continent.
<
p>Oddly enough, science and tolerance were hallmarks from the Abbasid Caliphate, not too far off of Islam’s birth. But it’s important not to confuse a religion with its secular leaders. My grasp of Muslim intellectualism is weak, but I don’t see how the idea of secular law evades Islam any more than other faiths which have a long tradition of it. The difference is what political leaders choose to implement, and many of them indeed choose to implement Sharia. But many don’t. The forefront of secular law and Islamic religion I would expect to find in Indonesia and Turkey, two secular countries that are almost entirely Muslim. I do assume that there’s some grounding to those legal systems…
p>Let’s not forget that most of what we know of the ancient Greek scholars like Plato and Aristotle — often thought to be bedrock exemplars of rationalist thought — comes via the Islamic world.
centralmassdadsays
It is also fair to say that the Islamic world of the Middle Ages is the source of the West’s Renaissance and thus the Enlightenment.
<
p>I do not know how the Islam of the Middle Ages came to be the modern Islam. I gather that, while reformers survived the “fundamentalist” attempts to purge in the West, they did not in the Islamic world.
rajsays
I think they were done with Crusades by 1400
<
p>The crusade by the RCCi against the Cathars (the Albigensian Heresy) was over by the 12th century, but the crusade by the RCCi, against the Lutherans which laid waste to much of Germany, was in the 17th century. The former is largely overlooked, but the latter is referred to as the 30 years war.
<
p>Establishments of religion are some of the most vile establishments that ever existed.
“I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.”
<
p>Or maybe the forbidden fruit was a metaphor. Let’s just say I’ve met a few women whose pomegranate juice were forbidden to me.
Bad day, yes, but NEVER a Bad Hair Day in the Romney Campaign. Can Rudy claim that?
There are many grumblings in the nutty Evangelical world that Christian offshoots like the LDS Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses (some even say that Catholicism is polytheistic). Huckabee is aware of the Evangelical cult opinion and doesn’t want to upset the apple cart.
<
p>Huckabee is guilty of indirect religious bigotry and pandering to bigots.
..Some Evangelicals say LDS and JWs are cults.
to un-bigify his bigot supporters. It’s not like he’s a minist….
<
p>
<
p>oh wait. Huh. I wonder if his being a minister comes with responsibilities as well as benefits. I’m sure he’ll work on that LDS-bigotry thing right after the primary. He’s really busy doing other bits of God’s work until then.
What you and I, stomv, might regard as bigotry, Huckabee and his fellow believers might regard as speaking the Truth or fighting Satan.
<
p>If it were really okay to discuss religion in the public context, we might insist on only electing adherents to faiths imbued with ecumenicalism.
I had naively thought that this “religious test” business had been buried by Jack Kennedy in the 1960 election with his oft-quoted speech to the Southern Baptist Convention.
<
p>Now, I understand that this Lil’ Abner/Billy Sunday character, Mike Huckabee, has coyly and snarkily attempted to inject the religious question into his battle with Romney for the votes of Republican caucus voters in Iowa and other states with a heavy evangelical population.
<
p>As one who was often disappointed by his lackluster performance as Governor, I genuinely hope (dare I say, pray) Romney hits a home run in tomorrow’s much anticipated speech and kicks Huckabee’s sanctimonious ass all the way back to Hope, Ark. In Hope, Rev. Huckabee will be free to return the glory of his dime-store preaching and crappy guitar playing days, while the other candidates conduct a presidential campaign free from the odious stench of religious intolerance and sectarianism.
Try running as an atheist, even for local government. You’ll get creamed — not just in the South, but just about anywhere.
<
p>There was a study that made the rounds a few years ago, something like: “Would you consider voting for a candidate who was __________” where the blank was things like
* black
* Hispanic
* female
* gay
* Jewish
* atheist
and atheist “won”. To be complete, I don’t remember if “Muslim” was a choice… but we do have 1 member of the House who is Muslim, and to my knowledge not a single member who claims he’s an atheist in public.
If prayer is so powerful, why doesn’t the Huckabee machine pray that people stop getting blown up in Iraq or that cancer gets cured? Not a very utilitarian approach. Perhaps that’s why Evangelical Republicans are against universal health care – they believe if we pray hard enough, we won’t need doctors.
<
p>And if God gets the credit for the poll surge, does he get the blame if Mike loses?
This is very scary, Laurel. Huckabee is claiming that his rise in the polls has nothing to do with the standard machinery of public opinion but with God. The comparison to the loves and fishes miracle is extra creepy.
<
p>P.S. Have you considered doing oppo research?
Stomv, there is one avowed atheist in the house – pete stark of ca. He “came out” recently, and as an incumbent, so that doesn’t prove that it’s possible win a contested seat, but at least he’s there.
<
p>Trying the new bmg “mobile” posting feature! This comment brought to you by blackberry.
They are ALL cults. Some are more popular than others.
<
p>My cult is the coolest.
<
p>This would be silly if it weren’t so sad.
…Church of the SubGenius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C… is absolutely hilarious. Intentionally so.
as a member of one cult, I don’t think I’m allowed to learn about another cult…unless it’s to better equip myself to belittle it in the furtherance of my own.
<
p>nice try. do you usually work the airport, go door-to-door or serve as a missionary with that routine?
…a saffron robe was, the 12th of never đŸ˜‰
Jessica Simpson dating Tony Romo can’t be good for the Cowboys’ offense down the stretch.
<
p>Oh… wait… the other headline?
My point exactly. You are a genius, Ed. Why don’t you run for State Senate?
Why is it that we can’t judge a candidate on the things he or she believes re: religion? I think it’s vital that we evaluate everything we know about a candidate… for example, can you vote for POTUS — our fearless leader who believes this:
<
p>
<
p>Or that this (in recentish history) is ok:
<
p>
Emphasis added.
<
p>And personally, in addition to looking at the beliefs of the church and deciding that I can’t vote for someone who believes these things, if you think voting for a minister like Huckabee is a stretch (I’m uncomfortable with that) then how about voting for someone who has at some point been much higher ranking than just a minister:
<
p>
<
p>I think judgement, even on religious issues, is a perfectly legitimate issue to judge a candidate on.
Catholics believe if you’re not baptized (splashed with water), you still have an “original sin” (from Adam, the first human ever, as a result of Eve’s…ahem…eating an apple). Original sin is a deal-braker with St. Peter at the pearly gates.
<
p>Christians world-over believe that Jesus was the literal son-of-God. His mother conceived him magically without ever having intercourse.
<
p>Oh yeah, and he also died and came back to life. Three days later.
<
p>So… you really want to go toe-to-toe over whose religion requires (or at least encourages) belief in far-fetched stories? Probably not.
i wish more religionists would go toe to toe, and in so doing realize how ridiculous their beliefs seem to outsiders. there would at least be honest self-assessment in such an enterprise.
<
p>i think too many people are members of a particular religion simply because they were indoctrinated with it. so simply by dint of familiarity it seems natural and right to them, and obviously, to them, it is “the truth”. is it any wonder that most americans, who are indoctrinated with christianity, “know” that ‘jesus is the way’? whereas most arabs, indoctrinated in islam, “know” that muhammad was ‘the last prophet of god’? the particulars of fervent religious belief are situational more than people are willing to admit. it is sad to me that so many people are blind to this reality, and so also blind to themselves and to what society has done to their minds (albeit with benign intentions). too few have the courage to face this distressing realization.
…and I want to post here a response I had made to a person who had also identified religion as a movtivator of the world’s ills:
<
p>
<
p>So – can you live with that as a vision? It’s like wearing a red hat – others may think it looks silly, but if you don’t run around mashing one on people’s heads, and YOU are happy and enriched – what is the harm?
i never said religion was the cause of all the worlds ills. read my comment. it says that societies attempt to indoctrinate their people with certain styles of religious belief. i’m not going to respond to a reply that didn’t even address my original point.
Scary:
<
p>82% of Americans believe in God
79% believe in miracles
75% believe in heaven
72% believe Jesus is God
62% believe in hell and the devil
42% believe in evolution.
<
p>Considering roughly 1/3 of the country is fundamentalist Christian, and many of those people do not see the Iraq war as a political war but as a religious war, considering the amount of terrorists in the US motivated by Christian Dogmas, and considerg that many support Isreal for the sole reason of that they belive it plays a critical role in the Second Coming (which is scheduled in the next 50 years according to them), I don’t think it is accurate to say that Christians have burnt out the fires of zealotry to the degree which you claim.
<
p>I don’t care what anyone believes. I don’t care if you wait all October for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Good luck. But when you oppose the Morning After pill based on the question What Would the Great Pumpkin Do, and that decision goes against rigorous scientific and medical scrutiny, and you pander to a voting base that bases their decisions on the same Great Pumpkin despite what the evidence says, then it becomes an issue.
<
p>My analogy is this: I care about which God you pray to and which traditions are observed in your household as much as I care about whether you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore. To each her own, but making complex policy decisions for the entire country based on narrow and often arbitrary theologies is as silly as doing the same based on the diet one observes at home.
<
p>Jesus doesn’t want you to use a condom or the morning after pill? Fine, don’t use a condom or the morning after pill. Just don’t tell me that I’m required to follow the same arbitrary rule when the evidence suggests it is prudent to do otherwise.
<
p>And don’t be like Mike Huckabee who, as an Evangelical Christian, said that gay marriage will mean the end of civilization. Because it won’t. Either Huckabee is a bigot here and using his faith as a shield or he really bases his opinion that the world will end on some wacky Bible teachings that other Christians manage to interpret differently. If that is what Huckabee’s faith does for him, I cannot wish him well on his journey and I must criticize those beliefs – in part by blog commenting and in part by voting against him and candidates with similar beliefs.
<
p>
My rating options only go to 6. Forget Spinal Tap, I’d like to go beyond 11 and give tblade something more like a 40.
<
p>Peter, if people would leave their hats in the closet, there wouldn’t be a problem. (pun intended) Alas, they do not.
<
p>And so if we are going to clothe ourselves, I cannot support unproven stories and unseen people floating in the sky being the basis of our opinions.
<
p>The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the way and the light. Prove it to be not so!
Consider it noted.
<
p>PS: How about a cite or a link for those statistics about U.S,. religious beliefs that you so, er, devoutly profess?
First let me fervently recommend to anyone looking for data on religion in the US The Association of Religion Data Archives at Penn State. Wikipedia is also a good place to get quick religious demographics.
<
p>The US is 80% Christian, 52 % Protestant, 33% Born Again, 25% Catholic, give or take. These terms aren’t always mutually exclusive, meaning Catholics are Christians, some Born Agains are Protestant, etc.
<
p>What percentage of the US population is Christian (out of 300 million)?:
<
p>ABC News/Beliefnet: 83%
The CIA: 78%
The US Census Bureau: 80%
The City University of New York: 77%
Princeton University/Newsweek: 82% (no longer online)
Association of Religion Data Archives at Penn State: 84%
<
p>Protestant vs. Catholic*
<
p>Protestant: 52% of US population
Roman Catholic: 25% of US population
<
p>*Source: CUNY The American Religious Identification Survey { Original | Religious Tolerance.org }
<
p> How many Americans are Evangelical/Born again?
<
p>University of Akron: 78 million (26% of the US)
Baylor University: 111 million (37%)
Gallup Poll: 120 Million (40%)
ABC/Belifnet: 114 million (38%)
Pew Research Center: 111 million (37%)
Wheton College Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals: 100 million (33%)
<
p>There is a December 2004 Newsweek article (no longer available on line. It looks as though MSNBC and Newsweek have terminated their partnership) that quotes a 2004 Princeton/Newsweek poll that cites 15% of Americans believe that Jesus will return in their lifetime. In 1999 The Pew Research Center released a survey called “Americans look to the 21st century” showing that 44% of Americans believe Jesus probably will return in their lifetime and 22% of Americans believe Jesus will definitely return in their lifetime. Even if you don’t find these numbers accurate, it is strong evidence suggesting a not insignificant percentage of Americans conduct their lives believing (or paying lip service to the belief) that Jesus will come back and the world will end in the next 50 years.
<
p>Lastly, here’s another fascinating contradiction illustrating American ignorance from The Washington Post:
<
p>
42% believe in evolution
<
p>I don’t believe in evolution, either. I know that evolution occurs. It has been observed.
<
p>I believe that Darwin’s theory (modification with descent) is the most reasonable explanation for how evolution occurs.
<
p>”Believe in” is a religious concept. “Believe that” is not a religious concept. If you insist on using the religionists’ phraseology, you are giving them the upper hand.
I’ve noted that you mentioned this before. In this case, I simply used the phraseology of the Reuters article.
Various strands of Islam have in fact been working at adapting. Americans, who have just recently learned that Islam is split between Sunnis and Shi’as, would be hard pressed to name prominent religious thinkers within any of Islam’s traditions — or even one prominent thinker within its traditions. In fact, we even appear (ahem!) to have trouble dating the beginnings of Islam.
<
p>This is almost an argument from ignorance. “If I haven’t heard of it, it’s not important.”
Islam hasn’t changed in 1,800 years?
First of all, wrong.
Secondly, the religion is just over 1,400 years old.
Thirdly, remember how Crusadistic the Christians were at that point?
I think they were done with Crusades by 1400, though they had a few hundred years to go before reaching the point that I think the earlier comment was referring to.
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p>Aquinas and Maimonedes incorporated philosphy into religious thought during the 1200s, which began the process of accomodating science and rationality into Christian and Jewish theology. (Many of today’s so-called fundamentalists explicitly reject Aquinas, and therefore their religious views are in extreme tension with science.)
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p>I am not aware of this happening within Islamic thought to any widely accepted degree, though it is true that there are glimmers, particularly in the USA. It is possible that this movement is coming from the USA out of necessity: to my understanding, Islamic thought, liberal, conservative, or otherwise, draws no distinction between the civil and the religious. The religious authority is, or aspires to be, the civil authority. Sharia is intended to be religiuously-based civil law. This is beyond the realm of the possible in the US, and perhaps that is why Islam is being rethought to an extent by Islamic Americans.
The Crusades against the Muslims had largely stopped by the 1400s, not least of all because the Avignon Papacy, and the “Great Schism” that resulted in 3 popes allowed Christians to carry out religious wars with each other, from the convenience of the home continent.
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p>Oddly enough, science and tolerance were hallmarks from the Abbasid Caliphate, not too far off of Islam’s birth. But it’s important not to confuse a religion with its secular leaders. My grasp of Muslim intellectualism is weak, but I don’t see how the idea of secular law evades Islam any more than other faiths which have a long tradition of it. The difference is what political leaders choose to implement, and many of them indeed choose to implement Sharia. But many don’t. The forefront of secular law and Islamic religion I would expect to find in Indonesia and Turkey, two secular countries that are almost entirely Muslim. I do assume that there’s some grounding to those legal systems…
May interest you. Worth reading.
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p>Let’s not forget that most of what we know of the ancient Greek scholars like Plato and Aristotle — often thought to be bedrock exemplars of rationalist thought — comes via the Islamic world.
It is also fair to say that the Islamic world of the Middle Ages is the source of the West’s Renaissance and thus the Enlightenment.
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p>I do not know how the Islam of the Middle Ages came to be the modern Islam. I gather that, while reformers survived the “fundamentalist” attempts to purge in the West, they did not in the Islamic world.
I think they were done with Crusades by 1400
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p>The crusade by the RCCi against the Cathars (the Albigensian Heresy) was over by the 12th century, but the crusade by the RCCi, against the Lutherans which laid waste to much of Germany, was in the 17th century. The former is largely overlooked, but the latter is referred to as the 30 years war.
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p>Establishments of religion are some of the most vile establishments that ever existed.
Maybe a pomegranate.
“I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.”
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p>Or maybe the forbidden fruit was a metaphor. Let’s just say I’ve met a few women whose pomegranate juice were forbidden to me.