Atheism & Politics

“..And one nation, Under God…” As schoolchildren this was a phrase we all repeated on a daily basis when it was time to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But as we get older, our views do not stay the same. Not everyone continues to believe that we are “under God.” Church and state are supposed to be separated, and to an extent they are, but how many politicians can you list off the top of your head that are openly atheist or not a follower of Jesus Christ? Not many, if it all. Today, I would like to explore deeper into the connection between religion and politics and why it is so necessary to be a follower of God to be considered a worthy leader.

Many people would consider that only Liberalists would be atheists, and it's true that you'll probably find more liberal than non-liberal atheists. Atheism represents a challenge to or dissent from traditional beliefs and traditional religion. Liberalism, through most of Western history, has also challenged traditions and traditional ways of doing things. Liberalism has additionally generally done more to promote the rights of various minority groups, something which atheists obviously benefit from, given how much discrimination they tend to encounter. Atheism among conservatives is unusual, but not unheard of. Conservatism seeks to "conserve" traditional values and ways of doing things; atheism, however, challenges or rejects many traditions. Theistic religion is a sort of storage area for traditions in the West and if atheists don't accept such religions, upon what can they base their conservatism? It's not impossible, but it's more difficult than for many theists and presents a real challenge.

Only one of the 535 members of Congress, Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, publicly identifies as an atheist, according to the Secular Coalition of America, a lobbying group based in Washington. For that matter, the coalition has existed for only three years and runs with two staff members and an annual budget of about $300,000. As both presidential candidates were fervently court religious voters, atheist support is considered so controversial that several Democrats writing on the atheist blog “Petty Larseny” joked that the best way to hurt the Republicans was to form a group called Atheists for McCain. One problem with turning out the atheist vote is finding it. Atheists do not reside visibly in certain neighborhoods like blacks or Hispanics or gay men and lesbians. They do not turn up on the databases of professional associations like doctors or lawyers. And as nonbelievers, they do not come together for worship, since they do not worship anything. So where do they fit in the world of politics if they are virtually invisible? The problem is that they don’t. It is still so frowned upon to be a non-believer, and not only in politics, in other aspects of life. With someone that has very religious parents and grandparents, I know that they would be EXTREMELY upset if I was an atheist and would most likely think that I was just rebelling against the system and trying to be different.

The fact of the matter is that atheism is not accepted yet, and while I doubt that there will be riots by atheists to get fair treatment, because they do, politics hasn’t exactly welcomed them in with open arms quite yet. Many people think if a leader doesn’t have a certain belief in Jesus, then they do not hold the qualities to lead a country which is quite disappointing. In a country where there is a decent percentage who says they have ‘no religion’ in the census, it is odd that there aren’t more politicians who say they are atheists. According to religioustolerance.org, only 13% of people view atheism as positive and only five out of ten would vote for an openly atheist leader. Another poll I found was even more eye-opening: the participants would rather have a homosexual leader then an atheist leader. In fact, it was the least appealing to all of the given options, which included black, Jewish, a woman, Hispanic, Mormon, married for the 3^rd time and older than 72 years old. (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/black_president_more_likely_than_mormon_or_atheist_/) Out of all the research I did, I think that was the biggest sign of them all. Atheism clearly does not have a spot in politics no matter how much is claimed for the separation of church and state, because the separation between the two is so completely blurred.

What are the main issues that people have with atheism to make them view them as such terrible leaders? To start, intelligence is a factor. How can intelligence come from non-intelligence? How can blind chance result in intelligence? How can an intelligent human mind come from mindless random processes? If there is no God, no original intelligence, then where did intelligence come from? That is a very fair argument; however, that is an assumption. I would bet that not many Christians actually look into atheism and why a person would come to settle in that view. Another common problem is the problem with morality. If someone doesn’t have the 10 commandments to follow, then what do they follow? Do they believe in sinful behavior, or are they indulgent in whatever they want to do? People can be atheists but believe in righteous behavior, just as a Christian could go to church and read the bible, but be a murderer. It goes both ways and it is unfair to view atheists as dumb crooks.

Bill Maher recently came out with a movie, “Religulous” where he explored religion throughout the world and tries to dig deeper to why people believe the things they do. He was frequently greeted with hostility when he asked why they believed in a certain way instead of just explaining their view point. The main point is that we cannot judge someone on their religious beliefs if they want to be a leader. Church and state MUST be separated and that currently isn’t happening. Let’s leave it with a quote by the late, great Bob Marley: "Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect - and I don't live to be. But before you start pointing fingers... make sure your hands are clean."

Obama & the Internet

“The times, they are a’changin.” No less true words have been spoken by singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. That song may have been released in 1964, but it continues to relate to the world. In 1964, the internet was something nobody had even had a clue about yet, but in 2009, it is something that many people in the world couldn’t live without. According to www.internetworldstats.com, there are currently 6,767,805,208 in the world and 1,668,870,408 are internet users. In the United States though, 74.1% of our population are frequent internet users. One comparison President Barack Obama received throughout his campaign was to John F. Kennedy Jr. The difference however, is when JFK Jr. used television to his advantage, Obama used the internet.

Arianna Huffington, the editor in chief of the Huffington Post, said “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee.” By using interactive web tools, Obama changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents. He used the Internet to organize his supporters in a way that would have in the past required an enormous mass of volunteers and paid organizers throughout the nation. Barack Obama won every single caucus state that matters, and he did it because of those tools, because he was able to move thousands of people to organize. Obama’s campaign took advantage of YouTube for free advertising. These videos were more effective than television ads because viewers chose to watch them or received them from a friend instead of having their television shows interrupted. According to Joe Tippi, a political consultant and runner of Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, the campaign’s official videos they created for YouTube were watched for 14.5 million hours. To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million. Another prominent figure that agrees with Huffington is Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. He discussed the internet and its current affect on politics at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver and how much has changed even since the 2004 election. The republicans were completely blindsided by the advancement Obama used in technology. Erik Telford, the executive director of RightOnline.com said "The left was far ahead of us. The efforts that Obama put into internet campaigning and what he accomplished were extraordinary.” He used social networking, and email recruiting, among many other techniques to outwit the Republicans. When the Republicans tried to propel their smear campaign, Obama turned around and threw it right back in their face with FightTheSmears.com, which was a website ran by Barack Obama’s campaign which faced the accusations head on and gave the real answers. That includes the rampant rumor about Obama not being born in the United States, and the website put up a picture of his official birth certificate. The website also has links on the left side of the page, such as “Donate Now!” and buttons to click on that lead to other social networking pages such as MySpace and Facebook. You can “become a fan” of Obama on Facebook and also follow him on Twitter. The connection between our generation and our political leaders are becoming closer and closer which is exactly what Obama’s goal was. Homophily should really be his middle name, but that probably would have caused as much as a stir as his real one (Hussein). Obama says at the top of website: "What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon - that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize."

A common phrase connected to Barack Obama is the “Internet President” which is very true. During the campaign, I received e-mails almost daily from him (supposedly), Michelle Obama, and the campaign director to keep the followers updated to what the campaign had achieved, where Obama would be speaking, and of course to remind me to donate to the campaign. The constant e-mails made a huge impact on followers and Obama raised an incredible amount of money through this and his other internet campaigning. Some 3.2 million people donated to the Obama campaign through its Web site. The Obama campaign used Google Maps mashups to help volunteers find local campaign resources and people to contact and try to persuade. Using a custom social networking site, created with the help of a Facebook co-founder, Obama supporters were able to log in and find lists of people they could call, or whose doors they could knock on, to try to persuade others to vote for their candidate. In addition to the internet, he asked supporters to supply their cell phone numbers, and sent out regular text message chains, even announcing his vice-president selection via text. Barack Obama’s website received 5.5 million unique visitors, compared to John McCain’s, which received 3.1 million, according to Compete.com data. In social networking, Obama easily outweighed the amount of “fans” that McCain had to his own. McCain had garnered the support of 572,009 "fans" on Facebook, which is among the highest on the site. However, it doesn’t hold a candle in comparison to Obama's 2,071,473 fans. Obama's lead is even larger than this indicates because these numbers don't add in separate fan pages for Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, Students for Obama, Women for Obama, etc. Unfortunately for McCain, he didn’t have many of these support pages. For example, Michelle Obama has 127,000 fans, while Cindy McCain has 758 fans. Unfortunately for the McCain ticket, their largest supplementary group was the "I Have More Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin," with 220,000 participants. The "friend" divide is just as prevalent on MySpace with Obama having 697,535 friends to McCain's 169,326. More comparisons just show that the “Internet War” was won by Obama by a landslide victory.

So the question remains: did the internet elect Barack Obama, and could he have done it without it? On a financial level, of course, the Internet really has changed everything about American politics. Certainly Obama couldn’t have challenged Hillary Clinton or radically outspent John McCain without the estimated $500 million in small donations mostly raised on the Internet. Nor could his campaign have had its remarkable success without its effective use of the most up to date viral marketing tools of digital technology such as the microblogging service Twitter and the cell phone texting technology Obama used to broadcast his selection of Joe Biden as his Vice-Presidential pick. But then again, the 2008 election proves that popularity on the Internet doesn’t guarantee success. The more than $20 million the libertarian Ron Paul raised on the Internet is now forgotten. Internet evangelists also conveniently forget the other 50% of Obama’s money which was raised conventionally, by a wealthy, politically powerful leaders calling other wealthy leaders on the telephone or meeting them at their private clubs. What Obama’s success proves is that having a strong Internet presence is only half the story; the other half is having the Chicago Senator’s charisma, his political judgment, his speaking skills, his intellect, his personal network, his advisers. And, of course, what is also conveniently forgotten by the digital crowd is that while Obama himself is a BlackBerry addict and a social network fiend with hundreds of thousands of Facebook “friends” or “fans”, his key political relationships, with advisors David Axelrod and David Plouffe and with Joe Biden, were all forged in the classically analog environments of the US Senate or on the streets of Chicago rather than in the concept of cyberspace.