Scott Adams Suggests Bill Gates For President

gerrysteele writes to point out a recent post to the Dilbert blog, in which Scott Adams discusses the atheist ascendancy in America and rationalizes the need for an atheist leader. From the article: "Ask a deeply religious Christian if he'd rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don't seem so bad lately. I think that in an election cycle or two you will see an atheist business leader emerge as a legitimate candidate for president. And his name will be Bill Gates."

Comments

Re:neighbors

[Das Modell]

Atheism does not make you predisposed to any particular behavior, or increase your likelihood of doing or not doing something. The same cannot be said of Islam.

End of faith

[clickclickdrone]

Anyone interested in the possibilities of a world without faith could so worse than read the book "End of Faith" by Sam Harris. This book puts forward a powerful argument against all religions whilst putting forward insightful ideas for an alternative way to add value to our lives. It also has interesting views on radicalism within religion, primarily that the only true believers of any religion are the fanatics as they take the entire bible/koran/whatever at face value and live it whereas more moderates cherry pick the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't (stoning the neighbour for eating fish on a tuesday, nah, ignore that one. Hate gays? yup, tick) resulting in the vast majority of any given religions followers as basically failing that religons requirements.

Re:WTF is this intolerant bullshit?

[MichaelSmith]

It is interesting to me that the USA is one of the worlds most influential christian nations, and one of the few countries on earth with a constitutional separation between church and state.

By comparison my own country (Australia) is almost athiestic, yet our constitution bars anybody who is not a member of the church of england becoming head of state.

Is it possible that this is a passing phase for the USA? Is the religious right being supported by people who will be dead in 10 years? Or does this run right down through the younger generations?

I get the impression that religion, like support for guns, is just one of the symbolic markers which politicians use to stake their territory. Perhaps because the language of economics is too complex for most people so they have to base their campaigns on simple things.

The need for an _intelligent_ leader

[darekana]

We don't need an atheist leader...

We need an INTELLIGENT leader.

I propose a community service requirement, simple speech writing, debate, basic geography and IQ tests for potential presidents.

If we have tests for becoming a lawyer or doctor why isn't there a fricking test to become president.

Why do applicants to med school need 100 hours of community service and impeccable marks while Bush don't need shit.

We can't continue having senile or stupid people running America.

Re:How is this news?

[Beige]

Right now, generally speaking those with faith are thought of as uneducated and unenlightened.

Prejudiced as it may sound, there might be something in this idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intel ligence#Religiosity_and_education_in_the_United_St ates

Re:WTF is this intolerant bullshit?

[brianerst]

Is it possible that this is a passing phase for the USA? Is the religious right being supported by people who will be dead in 10 years? Or does this run right down through the younger generations?

Most likely, it's cyclical. The USA goes through periods of heightened religiosity every 50-70 years or so. They are widely recognized by sociologists as "Great Awakenings". See here for a brief article on the current (fourth) one, and links to previous ones. The Third Great Awakening of the late 1800s was probably the one with the greatest impact, as many important American protestant denominations had their starts during that era. It also had its biggest impact at the opposite side of the political spectrum - for America, the Third Great Awakening provided the moral force for the Progressive movement. Child and woman labor laws, compulsory elementary education for all, prohibition of alcohol and a whole host of other progressive causes were largely the outgrowth of that religious revival.

Some of this is no doubt due to the separation clause in our Constitution, but probably not in the way you're envisioning. The separation clause, I think, gives both sides enough latitude to swing too far - when the religious frenzy gets to be too much for sensible folk, the pendulum gets pushed back hard the other way. When secular excess seems to go too far (big changes in sexual mores and capitalism run amok), people start streaming back into churches. An establishment church, where everyone is required to give at least lip service to the church, appears to have a societal calming, but enervating to faith, effect. No one gets too worked up about the church (it's at some level compulsory, after all), but its widespread reach allows its hierarchy to speak with some authority long before the "pendulum" starts moving too fast. You end up with societies formed of irreligious believers - which is a nice, cozy place to be.

Has the Bush Sr. quote been posted yet?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots."

George H. W. Bush, August 27, 1987.