ApolloHoax.net
Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: Peter B on May 26, 2013, 12:23:33 AM
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Is this true?
...the neighbouring states, Arkansas and Texas, actually ban atheists from holding any public office. Arkansas goes even further, and says atheists can't testify as witnesses in court.
From: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-25/freedom-to-worship-and-the-freedom-to-not/4713420
:o
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Not that I'm aware of, Louisiana and Texas are very south from me. But I really doubt it because of the discrimination laws.
There used to be an ad on TV that said "Texas.......it's like a whole other country."
They ain't kidding.
Phil
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Many state-level laws and even constitutional provisions like that are still on the books. The US Supreme Court might have held them unconstitutional under the federal constitution decades ago, and they could never be enforced, but they don't automatically disappear until the state legislatures do garbage collection.
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And they are definitely unconstitutional. We're not even talking First Amendment, here; it's in the original text. From Article Six:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Of course, as we all know, "the Constitution says no" doesn't stop people from passing certain laws anyway, and it's only when they're challenged that anything is done about it.
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Well that's better - it certainly wasn't explained that way in the article I linked in the OP.
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The one thing that's interesting though is the mentality of the extremist.
There it is in the Constitution but there will be religious fundamentalists who will swear to God that it is un-American to allow a non-believer to hold office.
Never underestimate the capability of an extremist to see what he wants to see regardless of how blatant the reverse is.
Naturally, this applies to extremists of all forms.
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Well that's better - it certainly wasn't explained that way in the article I linked in the OP.
I'm sure it isn't. Article Six isn't brought up a lot, and failing to mention it makes the entire US look stupid, not just the people who passed those laws. And if you look, there are literally dozens of laws I could list which were either proposed or passed after a Supreme Court ruling that the law in question was unconstitutional. It's as if certain people think, "Well, they didn't really mean it!"
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No it is not true. Atheist in Texas are not prevented from holding public office. Only it can be difficult in many jurisdictions to get elected or appointed. The Mayor of Houston is an open lesbian, and quite likely an atheist. At least she has never made an issue of a religious affiliation. But Houston is a rarity on both counts in the very conservative Texas.
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Atheists actually successfully gaining public office in the US are rare in any state. It's easier if you at least pay lip service to the idea of Christianity than hold any alternative religious belief, from Judaism to Islam to Hinduism to atheism.
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The Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists
states "In the United States, six state constitutions officially include religious tests that would effectively prevent atheists from holding public office", and then goes on to list the relevant text from not six, but seven state constitutions (and then another one which is worded a bit differently). In some cases, the wording would seem to apply to specific types of religious beliefs - for example, in North Carolina, if you believe in a deity who is not "Almighty", you might have a problem. Not clear to me whether polytheists would be acceptable.
Regarding enforceability, I am not a lawyer, and I don't know the US system that well, so my comments below should be taken to be about as valid as "heard in a tavern" conversation. But, prior to 1866 or 1868, I think these sorts of laws would have been perfectly enforceable, since they are state rather than federal. But, an act passed in 1866, and the fourteenth amendment passed in 1868, seem like they would make these provisions of the state constitutions contrary to the federal constitution, and therefore invalid.
So if someone won a public office and was then prevented from assuming that office on grounds of atheism, I expect a court challenge would be successful. Whether that challenge would actually succeed before the term of office had expired is another question.
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Atheists actually successfully gaining public office in the US are rare in any state. It's easier if you at least pay lip service to the idea of Christianity than hold any alternative religious belief, from Judaism to Islam to Hinduism to atheism.
This is the thing that fascinates me, when comparing American secularism with Australian secularism.
The people who wrote the Australian Constitution in the 1890s were obviously influenced by the British system of government (which had already been adopted in the colonies - now states). But they also consciously copied aspects of the American Constitution. So our two houses of Parliament are the House of Representatives and the Senate, with seats in the House allocated in proportion to population and seats in the Senate allocated at a fixed number per state (currently 12 per state and 2 per territory). But the constitution also prevents Parliament from establishing a state religion, prevents the imposition of religious observances, and prohibits limits on the free exercise of religion.
So the first Australian-born Governor General (after a series of British appointees) was the Jewish Sir Isaac Isaacs, our current Prime Minister is an unmarried atheist woman, and the current Finance Minister is an openly lesbian mother.
ETA1: I don't know how many of you saw the story which popped up shortly after Obama won the last election: a young woman, unhappy with the election result, announced on Twitter that she was moving to Australia because "their president is a Christian and actually supports what he says". So she managed to get a trifecta of wrong, which mightily amused a lot of Australians.
ETA2: I know that when trying to explain why Americans are so religious when compared with people from countries in northern Europe, a lot of people point to the fact that the northern European countries have state religions while the USA doesn't. They propose that the American lack of government support for, or endorsement of, one particular church leads to a religious free market which forces churches to compete with each other to attract congregations.
But this argument doesn't explain Australia - like the USA we don't have a state church, but like northern Europeans we just aren't very religious. I suspect the explanation lies in the fact that in Australia and in northern European countries governments provide a generous social security system, thus greatly reducing a major reason churches exist - to provide charity.
Certainly churches dominate the charity sector, but to a large extent their role is limited to people on the margins of society. But because so much charity comes from the government in the first place, when governments cut back on social welfare and churches pick up the slack, I don't get the impression that church attendance increases. In other words, churches aren't really able to turn recipients of their charity into members of their church.
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Look, it took me quite some time to write a post explaining American gun culture to someone who asked me; I'm not sure I can manage to explain American religious culture just now. But there is a lot of history involved there in ways that I don't think Australia or even Canada have.
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Look, it took me quite some time to write a post explaining American gun culture to someone who asked me; I'm not sure I can manage to explain American religious culture just now. But there is a lot of history involved there in ways that I don't think Australia or even Canada have.
One of the best explanations of American Gun Culture I have seen is this...
WARNING: THIS MIGHT OFFEND SOME PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY NRA MEMBERS
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My explanation had a lot more historical data points, though I admit it also referenced Davy Crockett.
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ETA1: I don't know how many of you saw the story which popped up shortly after Obama won the last election: a young woman, unhappy with the election result, announced on Twitter that she was moving to Australia because "their president is a Christian and actually supports what he says". So she managed to get a trifecta of wrong, which mightily amused a lot of Australians.
Maybe she confused Australia with New Zealand, the Devil's Australia.
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ETA1: I don't know how many of you saw the story which popped up shortly after Obama won the last election: a young woman, unhappy with the election result, announced on Twitter that she was moving to Australia because "their president is a Christian and actually supports what he says". So she managed to get a trifecta of wrong, which mightily amused a lot of Australians.
Actually she was wrong on FOUR counts
1. Australia doesn't have a President, it has a Prime Minister
2. "He" is actually a "She"
3. She is a self-confessed Atheist, not a Christian
4. "supports what (s)he says". Really? Julia "back-flip" Gillard?
What would you call that, a "quaddie" or a box-trifecta?
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...But this argument doesn't explain Australia - like the USA we don't have a state church, but like northern Europeans we just aren't very religious. I suspect the explanation lies in the fact that in Australia and in northern European countries governments provide a generous social security system, thus greatly reducing a major reason churches exist - to provide charity.
Maybe it's just the general Australian culture, maybe it's the weather. Or both. As a famous Aussie surfer once said:
We may be descendants of white outcasts from England, but they threw us into a wonderful place in Australia. They consigned us to heaven, and they stayed in hell!
― Midget Farrelly, “Nothing to Hide – The History of Swimwear” TV2 (New Zealand) 27 Sep 1996 8:30pm
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My impression has always been that the USA tends to be more religious than most other "1st world western nations" due to the fact that many of our early immigrants left Europe for religious reasons, so that sort of more extreme piety that we still see today goes back to very early in our history. I'll admit that this is a somewhat simplistic explanation, but I really do believe that it's what set the early tone, and in many ways has led to what we see today.
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our early immigrants left Europe for religious reasons
At least one of my ancestors certainly did.
We still have a carry over that associates religion with political allegiance. I think it remains in part because we have never had a state religious institution to be opposed to. We tend to associate religiousness in our candidates by their abilities to use the right code words and pay the due attention to dominant groups rather than by personal behavior. But I guess that is true of pretty much all of politics.
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The history of our immigrants is a major part of the issue, certainly. Now, not all of the early immigrants left for religious reasons; Jamestown was unabashedly a commercial enterprise with a thin gloss of religious sentiment. However, several colonies were founded for specifically religious reasons. (Let me stick in a recommendation for Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates, which is a pretty good description of the religious nature of the early New England colonies.) Even when that reason was "because the colony next door is oppressing us," there was still sometimes the unmentioned "and we'd like to oppress other people instead."
This is probably part of why few listings of Presidents by religion ever have the word "deist," even when it's probably the best description. George Washington seems to have been a member of a church mostly because it was the socially correct thing to do at the time. Some Baptist congregation, I forget where, published a statement saying that it was better to vote for Jefferson than Adams, because the atheist probably wouldn't oppress them, and the Episcopalian might. Ben Franklin proposed (no one seems sure how seriously) that sessions of the Constitutional Convention begin with a prayer. The proposal was literally weeks into the convention and was never actually voted on, in part because they figured it would make it look to outside observers as though they were so stuck they needed divine assistance to form a working government.
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But this argument doesn't explain Australia - like the USA we don't have a state church, but like northern Europeans we just aren't very religious.
Err, have you ever spent any length of time in South Australia; Adelaide in particular?
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But this argument doesn't explain Australia - like the USA we don't have a state church, but like northern Europeans we just aren't very religious.
Err, have you ever spent any length of time in South Australia; Adelaide in particular?
No doubting there are some areas more religious than others - SE Queensland would be another area of high attendance.
But even the Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby says only 19% of Australians go to church at least once a month (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/05/24/3766988.htm). That seems to be a little under half the rate for Americans.
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My impression has always been that the USA tends to be more religious than most other "1st world western nations" due to the fact that many of our early immigrants left Europe for religious reasons, so that sort of more extreme piety that we still see today goes back to very early in our history. I'll admit that this is a somewhat simplistic explanation, but I really do believe that it's what set the early tone, and in many ways has led to what we see today.
I'm sure I read somewhere, though (possibly Shermer) that the rate of church attendance has steadily increased since the Civil War, suggesting that any early piety decreased until that time - perhaps something following on from one of the Great Awakenings?
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I'm sure I read somewhere, though (possibly Shermer) that the rate of church attendance has steadily increased since the Civil War, suggesting that any early piety decreased until that time - perhaps something following on from one of the Great Awakenings?
The Third Great Awakening supposedly started not that long before the Civil War. (I'm not as familiar with it as I am with the earlier ones; the class I took that would have covered it was covering a lot more to do with the politics of the era than the religion.) I must admit curiosity as to how much those statistics take into account what my sister and I used to refer to as the "C and E Club"--people who only went to church for Christmas and Easter. Does that count as church attendance? To my mind, it shouldn't, but I bet a lot of the people claiming to attend church only do so on occasion. I'm also aware that educational level tends to have an inverse correlation with church attendance, which skews my own perception of how common it is. Most of my friends don't even consider themselves Christian, but most of my friends are college graduates.
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All such laws are unconstitutional.
Torcaso v. Watkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcaso_v._Watkins), 367 U.S. 488 (1961) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court reaffirmed that the United States Constitution prohibits States and the Federal Government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office, in the specific case, as a notary public.
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So they reaffirmed that, for once, the words mean exactly what they say they do?
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I had a YouTube debate with someone who was adamant that the US Constitution was based entirely on the 10 Commandments. When I pointed out to her several of those commandments expressly forbade the freedom to worship any god someone wanted all she did was repeat herself.
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Yeah, it's kind of obvious that people never had to read the Constitution going through school, or if they did, they didn't actually retain the information. You can blame failure to understand that not all the Founding Fathers were more than marginally Christian at best on bad textbooks, but the words don't change based on your textbook.
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Yeah, it's kind of obvious that people never had to read the Constitution going through school, or if they did, they didn't actually retain the information. You can blame failure to understand that not all the Founding Fathers were more than marginally Christian at best on bad textbooks, but the words don't change based on your textbook.
When I lived in the US, I was amazed at some of the things that people claimed the constitution said, things that even I knew weren't true.
Then, somehow, I ended up on the mailing list of some political organisation (a bit pointless, since I couldn't vote), which sent me a paperback-bound copy of the constitution in the mail. So I put it in the side pocket of my computer bag, which I carried with me pretty much everywhere. When someone would claim "the constitution says X", I'd pull it out and ask them to show me.
We're still waiting for the first successful confirmation.
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Hee. As you might guess, when I say the Constitution says something, it's there--because usually what I'm pointing out is that the Constitution forbids religious tests to hold office or some such. Or that there are essentially no requirements listed for the Supreme Court; the number of justices is set by law, not by the Constitution. However, I also don't say that very often.
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But Houston is a rarity on both counts in the very conservative Texas.
Austin is also regarded as an island of blue in a vast ocean of red.
WARNING: THIS MIGHT OFFEND SOME PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY NRA MEMBERS
It certainly offended Trey Parker (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYWNXmXAuvU#t=0h2m38s)
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But Houston is a rarity on both counts in the very conservative Texas.
Austin is also regarded as an island of blue in a vast ocean of red.
Certainly true. Houston is a very tolerant city where people mostly just go about their own business while Austin is a left wing city that goes about everyone elses business. In both places the burbs are notably more conservative than the city.
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I had a YouTube debate with someone who was adamant that the US Constitution was based entirely on the 10 Commandments.
I haven't heard that one, but I have certainly heard people claim that the Founding Fathers were all devout Christians and intended the US to be a "Christian country". That one has become very pernicious.
In 1984, the government rewrote history. In reality, many ordinary people rewrite history for their own purposes.
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I haven't heard that one, but I have certainly heard people claim that the Founding Fathers were all devout Christians and intended the US to be a "Christian country". That one has become very pernicious.
Yeah, I like asking people who cite that one about Thomas Jefferson's edition of the gospels. Which left out "the obvious exaggerations by Jesus' biographers." Including, you know, the Resurrection.
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I haven't heard that one, but I have certainly heard people claim that the Founding Fathers were all devout Christians and intended the US to be a "Christian country". That one has become very pernicious.
In 1984, the government rewrote history. In reality, many ordinary people rewrite history for their own purposes.
And do so while conveniently ignoring all the discussion and writings that explicitly separate church from state. The lack of historical knowledge and respect for what makes America the country it is irritating, but even more so from people that claim to be traditional.