Since when was religion supposed to answer all or most of today’s or any era’s problems? What an odd polling question!

Let’s hope they are right that religious influence is waning. George W. Bush is the epitome of religious influence and he’s been a disaster for the country.

Religion has answers to just about all of the problems of life. The only problem is that the answers are usually wrong.

‘Bout time…now we can get down to the real business of religion! I am convinced that historically and currently the worst thing that has happened to Christianity was success. Once Constantine made his declaration we had to live up to all those wild expectations. It is much easier simply caring for folks.
And if W was a representative of the waning weligion, then we know what went wong.

There’s an interesting op-ed piece in the NYT about Americans’ beliefs about getting through those purported pearly gates.

Thanks for the op-ed piece nnmns. Interesting, if 65% of Americans polled said that they thought that other religions or none could lead to eternal life, etc. why is there so many disagreeable posts on belief.net for people with different beliefs. I guess ‘that’ 65% just find it non-essential to talk about diverse beliefs, and get disagreeable. So jestrfyl, Obama, and R. Warren are right we should talk about our differences, and stop being disagreeable.

What do you do with this when you try to post a comment and this comes up? mysqladmin flush-hosts—connection error—Connect error host ’64.27.70 is blocked. It happened twice today, once yesterday, and a couple of weeks ago.

Mostly I wait for better posting conditions. This system is surely creating a lot more problems than it solves; I for one didn’t see any spam anyway.

George W. Bush is the epitome of religious influence? Says who? People who hate religion? He’s a convenient target for critics of religion who want to point to him as the rotten fruit of all things religious, but to do that is to the tremendous influence of things like, say, the social gospel in the early part of the last century, and other examples of religious influence of which I’m sure nnmns would be far less critical. Heck, I might as well just point to Stalin and call him the epitome of atheist influence; that would trump any bad legacy that Bush might have left in the name of religion. But I don’t do that because that would be cheap, and because I realize that “the epitome of (x) influence” is a pretty subjective judgment, one that we determine based on our own values that we bring to the issue at hand.

Nate,
Your comments would be valid except this. Many people DO point to Stalin – still – as the epitome of atheism. The whole thing about being the head of a country and a frontman for a philosophical / economic / religious / political position is that you get little of the credit but most of the blame. It comes with the big bucks (drachma?) and the fancy cars. I don’t think W would have gotten much, if any, religious heat – he had little to actually DO with any religion while in office – except he made, and was made, a big deal by some hyper-conservatives. This is the shi tzu biting back.

As far as religion, fundamentalist religion, influencing a US election in the recent (and maybe not so recent) past GWB is the epitome. Of course if Nate, pulls out Stalin I can pull out Hitler and the Christianity that encouraged the Holocaust. But let’s not get into those things. And j is right, anyone around here long has seen Stalin brought up as the claimed result of atheism.
And yes, I can applaud (and have done so) those cases where Christianity or some other religion have led to good being done.

No, jestrfyl, my point stands regardless of the whether other people pull out the Stalin example or not, for the simple fact that other people’s behavior has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of my point. The point is, pulling out an unfavorable example and calling it the “epitome” of something is a cheap move, no matter who does it, except in perhaps a few rare cases where the claim might be true. To call George W. Bush the epitome of religious influence on American society is historically shortsighted, operates from a very narrow understanding of religion and how it can be influential, and probably even overestimates the extent to which Bush is a product of American evangelicalism/fundamentalism to begin with (from what I recall, religious conservatives weren’t particularly thrilled with him from the beginning, but we rallied behind him out of strong dislike for McCain and Gore). However understandable the backlash may be, that doesn’t make it defensible, and it doesn’t make the claim that Bush is “the epitome of religious influence” a true one. To say that is to say that the essence of religious influence is corrosive and destructive; i.e., it’s a statement of personal opinion, not of fact.

Nate: “from what I recall, religious conservatives weren’t particularly thrilled with him from the beginning, but we rallied behind him out of strong dislike for McCain and Gore”
Your recall is pretty bad. I don’t blame conservatives for wanting to shed GWB, but eight and four years ago he was your beloved baby. Check this from the Pew Research Center. You need only look at the box. Let me give you a little of the data from that article. Based on exit polling, it will indicate the percentage of people who voted for GWB as a function of how often they attended church:
Yr. 2000: More than once/wk, 63%; once/wk, 57%; few times/mo., 46%; few times/yr., 42%, never, 32%
Yr. 2004: More than once/wk, 64%; once/wk, 58%; few times/mo., 50%; few times/yr., 45%, never, 36%
So Bush’s elections were very much a product of the religious people of the country. For instance, only about a third of us non church-goers voted for him and almost two thirds of those who went more than once a week voted for him.
I fully understand you wanting to lose your culpability for what he’s done to America and the world but in fact that culpability is there in the record for all to see. And all your outraged tantrums won’t change it.

Nate: “from what I recall, religious conservatives weren’t particularly thrilled with him from the beginning, but we rallied behind him out of strong dislike for McCain and Gore”
That may or may not be but it speaks to the ease with which religious conservatives can be manipulated to choose the worst candidate if he talks their talk. And being easily manipulated is no excuse for making disastrous political choices.

Too bad that none of that refutes my point, nnmns, which you apparently failed to understand. The issue’s not how many evangelicals and fundamentalists voted for Bush, it’s the extent to which he was perceived as representing their image of an ideal leader. When you’ve got elections with only a handful of viable candidates, and only two after the primary season, the fact that people rally behind a candidate frankly doesn’t mean much. What it means is that they strongly dislike the opposition, in this case, McCain, Gore, Kerry, et al. The case is no different than the countless people I know who could never stand McCain who became enthusiastic him this year just because they dislike Obama even more.
This isn’t about trying to eliminate any culpability voters might have for his actions. It’s about challenging your unfounded claim that Bush is the epitome of religious influence on American society. The simple fact is that, in a two-party system, the mere fact that someone supports a candidate, even enthusiastically, doesn’t in any way demonstrate that said candidate represents the “epitome” of what the voter wants in office and the direction in which the voter wants the country to go.

OK, so the problem is with the word “epitome”. That is a summary, and abstract of sometihng. Is W the summary of all tings conservative? Though he might like to think so, I do not think anyone else would agree. Granted 4 and 8 years ago the superficial publicity was that W was the saving grace for the conservative movement. That the half of (or less)the American voters bought this cup of swill is a shame that they must share. But is he actually the epitome of conservatism – I have always – ALWAYS – maintained that he had not a single cell of Conservatism in his body, mind or spirit. All he wanted to conserve was his personal wealth and the sorry reputation of his dad (hence the invasion of Iraq under bogus pretences – and the loss of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives). That the Conservatives were willing to not only vote for him, but back him and promote him is their own condemnation.
But is he the epitome? No, and for that I am thankful. Perhaps the Conservative movement learned that backing a selfish brat who mimics what he is told and plays the willing puppet is not the best strategy.

“The issue’s not how many evangelicals and fundamentalists voted for Bush, it’s the extent to which he was perceived as representing their image of an ideal leader.”
The issue is that, based on their religious beliefs, a lot of people voted for GWB, arguably the worst president in a long time if not ever. So highly religious people are a danger to our society as long as a lot of them think they can choose a candidate based on religion. They chose GWB based on religion and he’s a disaster.
And several of them apparently liked Sarah the Incompetent who would also have been a disaster had she become president, and John the Careless who wanted to put her heartbeats away from the presidency.

nnmns,
For some reason, you don’t seem to be grasping my point, or at least you won’t address it. Yeah, a lot of religious conservatives voted for Bush, and their religious beliefs played a role in that decision. But the reason that many of them did so is because they didn’t have that many options. After eight years of Clinton and the option either McCain or Gore to take his place, conservatives turned to the most conservative candidate that was viable, and that just happened to be Bush. Even back then there were a ton of conservatives who didn’t think he was the best man out there; they were sorry they got stuck with the options they had and they rallied behind Bush because they didn’t have much else to do. What should conservatives have done? Rallied behind Al Gore?
And then you bring up the example of conservatives rallying behind McCain this time around, which only goes to further demonstrate my point. McCain wasn’t liked eight years ago by the conservative side of the Republican Party, and he hasn’t been for most of his career, but come election season 2008, with McCain against Obama, conservatives rallied behind McCain. They got excited about a man they never had any love for before, because they didn’t want Obama to win. This is my point, so get it through your head: in what is essentially a two-party system, where only a handful of candidates will ever be “viable” even in the primaries, people have to choose the candidates that look like they’ll be the closest to their own beliefs, even if the closest still falls far short of the ideal. Heck, I know several liberals who did the same thing with Obama; they thought he fell far short in many ways, but they got excited about him because he represented a change that was least somewhat in the right direction. Most blacks voted for Obama too. Would it be right to say that Obama is the “epitome” of African American influence on politics, and that everything Obama does is going to represent the African American perspective on the issue? Certainly not.
Admit it, you made a groundless comment and you’re trying to defend yourself by making more insipid remarks. (Soviet atheists supported Stalin, therefore atheism is a danger to society–see, two can play your dumb game!)
Jestrfyl’s right about this. Bush isn’t the “epitome” of religious politics or of conservatism in general. The only people who think he is are a few hardline, blind supporters of his administration and a lot of liberals who want to use him as a convenient example to discredit religion and conservatism altogether.

I used to be a (Goldwater) conservative and I’ll guarantee GWB isn’t that kind of conservative but my point is that conservatives voted for him, in numbers large enough to elect him. They could have stayed home, they could have voted for a third party, they could have voted for Gore and Kerry, all of whom would have been better for the country. But they voted for Bush, and the more churchy they were the more of them voted for Bush. The main Rove strategy was to get enough of them out to elect him and he did.
And the next time they vote for someone who talks their talk they are likely to vote for a bad candidate also. It’s easy to talk their talk, it’s hard to be a widely knowledgeable moral person with enough record to be judged and be electable.

Atheists supported Stalin, and he was bad for the country, so the next time atheists get involved in politics, they’re likely to support someone just as bad.

I’m not sure atheists supported Stalin more than non-atheists. It was a class thing. Find the figures, like I did.

“George W. Bush is the epitome of religious influence? Says who?”
Says the “religious” who voted for him. Don’t you pay attention?