- Jun 26, 2007
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If you've been paying much attention to the U.S. presidential campaign - particularly the Democrats - you've probably noticed (OK, more like "you've probably been clubbed over the head with") the sudden effort that the candidates have been making to show how oh-so-faithful they are. It's gotten so bad now, Time Magazine did a cover story on it for their July 23 issue.
There is a Dem presidential debate coming up on July 23, and for this one, the facilitator, CNN, is calling for questions from the general public. CNN will select 20 or 30 questions they think are appropriate and timely, and present those questions to the candidates. On (what I consider) a gimmicky note, the questions will come from a pool of YouTube video submissions. Several hundred videos have already been submitted, and there is still time for more prior to the July 22 deadline. As I said, CNN has final editorial say over which questions will air. However, we can still vote on which questions we think should be answered by the candidates. Our votes make certain videos stand out to CNN's editors, so videos with more community approval do have a better chance of being aired.
The video I'm hoping y'all will vote for is in the lead as I write this. It's by "Lunch4lyfe", and he asks "We all have heard how you will appeal to religious voters. My question is - unlike George - how will you appeal to non-religious voters?" You can vote for or against this and other videos at the Community Counts website. As noted at that site, please remember that you're voting for which questions you want the candidates to answer, rather than which questions you agree with.
If you already agree with me that the candidates should leave their faith out of the campaign, go vote for Lunch4lyfe's video. If not, read on, and I'll try to persuade you. (Or don't; I suppose there's nothing I can do to stop you from voting against it.) There's been plenty of other stuff written about Lunch4lyfe's video. Namely, he started a thread over at IIDB.org, where he goes by "UnsavedSinner". Also, due to the popularity of his video, Newsweek interviewed him last week, and is currently running a story in their July 23 issue. That IIDB thread goes into quite a bit of detail about the pluses and minuses of the video, and also what sort of answers we'd like to see from the candidates.
OK, so why is faith in politics so bad? Lots of reasons. First though, you should know what I'm talking about when I say "faith". There are several different definitions for the word, and the one I'm talking about is the one regarding stronger belief in a proposition than the available evidence actually justifies. I am not talking about trust, as in "I have faith in my friends". That's actually inductive inference, and relies on past evidence to predict future events. Nor am I talking about a religion, as in "JFK was a follower of the Catholic faith."
Just what use might faith have in politics? Typically, it's employed by politicians to help market themselves and their ideas. They start out with an idea for say, increasing taxes on certain people, while decreasing them for others. The plan has various merits and drawbacks. They need to market the plan to the public, so what do they do? They present facts, figures, and calculations. So many billion dollars will go to X, and come from Y, and so on. So far, so good. But perhaps the merits of the plan aren't quite good enough to convince the public that it's a good idea. IOW, it's probably not a very good plan. That's no problem for the politician, though. He just has to tack on a bunch of language about faith, and suddenly the public seems more pliable. The faith part gets people to stop paying so much attention to the evidence. Oh, Mr. Politician shares our faith, so he must be looking out for our best interests; faith makes people good, they think. Faith-infused marketing is a great way to pass off a lot of poor legislation on a faith-dazed public.
If a candidate or his idea is a good one, there will be no need to include talk of faith in the marketing plan. Good candidates/ideas stand on the basis of the evidence. Bad ones ask you to believe in them despite the insufficient evidence.
Have you ever noticed how much fundamentalists Christian Republicans stand by Bush, just because Bush is a Christian? I haven't heard it quite so much recently, but from 2001 to 2005 or so, I'd hear from Average Joe voters that they thought Bush was a good president. When asked why, they would typically say that although they didn't know much about his policies (or disagreed with those policies), they knew he was a good Christian man, and thus, a good president. That, folks, is the main reason why we need to reassert the primacy of reason and evidence over faith in politics. A bad politician with bad policies should not suddenly become a good politician when you find out he shares your supernatural beliefs.
But there is more. Evidence brings convergence, while faith fosters division. Why? Simply put, evidence can be shared with anyone who requests to see it, but faith is personal. Evidence is objective, but faith is subjective. If you're having a debate with someone (as politicians often do with each other), you can persuade them to your side using evidence, but you cannot debate using faith. People can say "I believe in my heart..." all day, but until supporting evidence is presented, no one else will be convinced of the position.
Something I'm less worried about with Dems than with Republicans - but that nevertheless bears mentioning - is the constitutional separation of church and state that we're supposed to have in the U.S. Neocons have been trying to foist sectarian, faith-based laws on the population at large. But the law must serve everyone - not just those who want to impose their personal faith on the rest of us. "God says so" is not a sufficient basis for lawmaking. We don't all share faith in your god, or what your god supposedly says. Our laws must have a secular purpose to pass constitutional muster. Good laws are based on evidence and the common good of the people. They do not need backing from faith if they have evidential support. Nor do they need backing from faith if they have support from a wide variety of the common people. This sort of support comes with evidence, not with faith. Convergence of evidence, versus division of faith, remember.
Finally, there's the slime factor of campaigning on faith. Campaigning on faith is slimy because it's cheap, calculated grandstanding. As the Time article says, candidates have strategists who tell them whether and/or how to present their faith while on the campaign trail. Nothing could be more disingenuous, more phony. Dems saw how Bush exploited Christian conservatives for cheap votes in 2004, and now they want a piece of the same pie. Ironically, Jesus specifically forbade such practices. In Matthew 6:5-6 Jesus said, "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." The supposedly pious Christian candidates are systematically ignoring Jesus' instruction to avoid grandstanding. Luckily for the candidates, the preachers who know this verse can usually be bought, and the congregations who should know this verse don't, because their preachers don't cover it in church.
Ok, so how do all these arguments about how faith doesn't belong in politics actually relate to a video that asks the candidates how they'll appeal to non-religious voters? Simple. That which appeals to non-religious voters is that which appeals to anyone who can agree that politicians should use evidence, and be reasonable and inclusive, rather than faithfully divisive. United we stand; divided we fall.
Will you vote for the video now?
There is a Dem presidential debate coming up on July 23, and for this one, the facilitator, CNN, is calling for questions from the general public. CNN will select 20 or 30 questions they think are appropriate and timely, and present those questions to the candidates. On (what I consider) a gimmicky note, the questions will come from a pool of YouTube video submissions. Several hundred videos have already been submitted, and there is still time for more prior to the July 22 deadline. As I said, CNN has final editorial say over which questions will air. However, we can still vote on which questions we think should be answered by the candidates. Our votes make certain videos stand out to CNN's editors, so videos with more community approval do have a better chance of being aired.
The video I'm hoping y'all will vote for is in the lead as I write this. It's by "Lunch4lyfe", and he asks "We all have heard how you will appeal to religious voters. My question is - unlike George - how will you appeal to non-religious voters?" You can vote for or against this and other videos at the Community Counts website. As noted at that site, please remember that you're voting for which questions you want the candidates to answer, rather than which questions you agree with.
If you already agree with me that the candidates should leave their faith out of the campaign, go vote for Lunch4lyfe's video. If not, read on, and I'll try to persuade you. (Or don't; I suppose there's nothing I can do to stop you from voting against it.) There's been plenty of other stuff written about Lunch4lyfe's video. Namely, he started a thread over at IIDB.org, where he goes by "UnsavedSinner". Also, due to the popularity of his video, Newsweek interviewed him last week, and is currently running a story in their July 23 issue. That IIDB thread goes into quite a bit of detail about the pluses and minuses of the video, and also what sort of answers we'd like to see from the candidates.
OK, so why is faith in politics so bad? Lots of reasons. First though, you should know what I'm talking about when I say "faith". There are several different definitions for the word, and the one I'm talking about is the one regarding stronger belief in a proposition than the available evidence actually justifies. I am not talking about trust, as in "I have faith in my friends". That's actually inductive inference, and relies on past evidence to predict future events. Nor am I talking about a religion, as in "JFK was a follower of the Catholic faith."
Just what use might faith have in politics? Typically, it's employed by politicians to help market themselves and their ideas. They start out with an idea for say, increasing taxes on certain people, while decreasing them for others. The plan has various merits and drawbacks. They need to market the plan to the public, so what do they do? They present facts, figures, and calculations. So many billion dollars will go to X, and come from Y, and so on. So far, so good. But perhaps the merits of the plan aren't quite good enough to convince the public that it's a good idea. IOW, it's probably not a very good plan. That's no problem for the politician, though. He just has to tack on a bunch of language about faith, and suddenly the public seems more pliable. The faith part gets people to stop paying so much attention to the evidence. Oh, Mr. Politician shares our faith, so he must be looking out for our best interests; faith makes people good, they think. Faith-infused marketing is a great way to pass off a lot of poor legislation on a faith-dazed public.
If a candidate or his idea is a good one, there will be no need to include talk of faith in the marketing plan. Good candidates/ideas stand on the basis of the evidence. Bad ones ask you to believe in them despite the insufficient evidence.
Have you ever noticed how much fundamentalists Christian Republicans stand by Bush, just because Bush is a Christian? I haven't heard it quite so much recently, but from 2001 to 2005 or so, I'd hear from Average Joe voters that they thought Bush was a good president. When asked why, they would typically say that although they didn't know much about his policies (or disagreed with those policies), they knew he was a good Christian man, and thus, a good president. That, folks, is the main reason why we need to reassert the primacy of reason and evidence over faith in politics. A bad politician with bad policies should not suddenly become a good politician when you find out he shares your supernatural beliefs.
But there is more. Evidence brings convergence, while faith fosters division. Why? Simply put, evidence can be shared with anyone who requests to see it, but faith is personal. Evidence is objective, but faith is subjective. If you're having a debate with someone (as politicians often do with each other), you can persuade them to your side using evidence, but you cannot debate using faith. People can say "I believe in my heart..." all day, but until supporting evidence is presented, no one else will be convinced of the position.
Something I'm less worried about with Dems than with Republicans - but that nevertheless bears mentioning - is the constitutional separation of church and state that we're supposed to have in the U.S. Neocons have been trying to foist sectarian, faith-based laws on the population at large. But the law must serve everyone - not just those who want to impose their personal faith on the rest of us. "God says so" is not a sufficient basis for lawmaking. We don't all share faith in your god, or what your god supposedly says. Our laws must have a secular purpose to pass constitutional muster. Good laws are based on evidence and the common good of the people. They do not need backing from faith if they have evidential support. Nor do they need backing from faith if they have support from a wide variety of the common people. This sort of support comes with evidence, not with faith. Convergence of evidence, versus division of faith, remember.
Finally, there's the slime factor of campaigning on faith. Campaigning on faith is slimy because it's cheap, calculated grandstanding. As the Time article says, candidates have strategists who tell them whether and/or how to present their faith while on the campaign trail. Nothing could be more disingenuous, more phony. Dems saw how Bush exploited Christian conservatives for cheap votes in 2004, and now they want a piece of the same pie. Ironically, Jesus specifically forbade such practices. In Matthew 6:5-6 Jesus said, "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." The supposedly pious Christian candidates are systematically ignoring Jesus' instruction to avoid grandstanding. Luckily for the candidates, the preachers who know this verse can usually be bought, and the congregations who should know this verse don't, because their preachers don't cover it in church.
Ok, so how do all these arguments about how faith doesn't belong in politics actually relate to a video that asks the candidates how they'll appeal to non-religious voters? Simple. That which appeals to non-religious voters is that which appeals to anyone who can agree that politicians should use evidence, and be reasonable and inclusive, rather than faithfully divisive. United we stand; divided we fall.
Will you vote for the video now?