Atheism is still a taboo for American politicians

[Torie]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/01/06/atheism-is-still-a-taboo-for-american-politicians

While 30% of the voters are now Godless, way up from the anemic 5% of 50 years ago (I guess I was in the vanguard), only two members of Congress have come out of the Godless closet.

Obviously politicians perceive there is no electoral upside to going Godless. The reasons for that would seem obvious, but one thing one might not know, is that the religiously unaffiliated  tend to be disproportionately disengaged from civil institutions in general, so they pull less electoral punch than their numbers might suggest.

[Torie]

Your link won’t work for me, but 30% of Americans are not atheists, lmao.  I know you want to swell your ranks, but “Unaffiliated” should cease to be grouped with those who positively self-identify as atheists.  Your “Godless” group is not cohesive.

I fixed the link.

About two thirds of the unaffiliated are “nothings in particular” rather than agnostic or atheist.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/

About one third of the unaffiliateds have some nexus with religious sentiments. Two thirds really do not.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-family/nothing-in-particular/

So about a 20%-25% of what I crudely call “Godless” actually do consider themselves religious in some sense.  

Atheists and perhaps agnostics for purposes of assessing the role of religion in the public square should be separated into non-theists and anti-theists. I am a non-theist. I don't consider religion and the religious to in general to be either a threat to me or our civic institutions, and neither a boon or a bane to living an ethical life. Some clergy are estimable, and some are hucksters.

[Torie]

So, in other words, what this study shows is that the actual proportion of atheists in the United States is 3%, about one-tenth of what was suggested in the opening post of this thread. I am far from convinced that this population including two members of Congress is strange or egregious.

I revised and extended my remarks even before you weighed in with your j'accuse. You perhaps are at your zenith in your confidence as to your sagacity and judgement. It is all downhill going forward. At this juncture, if anyone hired me for anything, I would sue them for malpractice.

I do think it odd that so few are quite confident that there is no supernatural power, but then move on, because in general it does not make much difference about anything. Let's work on the practical and get out of the not provable, because not subject to the scientific method, metaphysical wars. I say this as a descendant from a most famous witch. Leave our coven alone in peace.

[Torie]

Kind of silly, considering how few of them give the impression that they care about God.

     I wish I could recommend this twice. Outward atheism might be taboo, but politicians across the spectrum do a good job of instantiating inward atheism through their words and deeds.

No wonder I don't know the word. It's yet another product of the useless pastime!

in·stan·ti·ate
/inˈstan(t)SHēˌāt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: instantiating

    represent as or by an instance.
    "a study of two groups who seemed to instantiate productive aspects of this"
        Philosophy
        (of a universal or abstract concept) have an instance; be represented by an actual example.


I think it is more just another iteration of don't ask, don't tell myself. As long as you keep your atheism closeted, it's OK to actually be one and hold elective office. The kiss of death is to wear your atheism on your sleeve.

[Torie]

Kind of silly, considering how few of them give the impression that they care about God.

     I wish I could recommend this twice. Outward atheism might be taboo, but politicians across the spectrum do a good job of instantiating inward atheism through their words and deeds.

No wonder I don't know the word. It's yet another product of the useless pastime!

in·stan·ti·ate
/inˈstan(t)SHēˌāt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: instantiating

    represent as or by an instance.
    "a study of two groups who seemed to instantiate productive aspects of this"
        Philosophy
        (of a universal or abstract concept) have an instance; be represented by an actual example.


I think it is more just another iteration of don't ask, don't tell myself. As long as you keep your atheism closeted, it's OK to actually be one and hold elective office. The kiss of death is to wear your atheism on your sleeve.

     Undoubtedly that's true, but my point is more that this nation already lived as if it were atheist, even if it refuses to profess as much. A lot of conservatives look to the 1980s as a golden age, but I've seen enough movies from the era to know how worldly the culture was then. The decline of American faith in recent years is definitely not a positive development in my estimation, but it's also more an outward acknowledgement of what was already the content of the national heart.

Do you consider atheism a synonym for amoral? I ask because however delusional it may be, I consider myself to be ethical, and would never do something I considered "wrong" for personal gain, as a matter of honor if nothing else, and have been willing to sever ties over ethical concerns.

So ascribing atheism as the loci of what ails the public square, beyond perhaps missing the point, makes me uncomfortable as a personal matter. Make sense?

[Torie]

Kind of silly, considering how few of them give the impression that they care about God.

     I wish I could recommend this twice. Outward atheism might be taboo, but politicians across the spectrum do a good job of instantiating inward atheism through their words and deeds.

No wonder I don't know the word. It's yet another product of the useless pastime!

in·stan·ti·ate
/inˈstan(t)SHēˌāt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: instantiating

    represent as or by an instance.
    "a study of two groups who seemed to instantiate productive aspects of this"
        Philosophy
        (of a universal or abstract concept) have an instance; be represented by an actual example.


I think it is more just another iteration of don't ask, don't tell myself. As long as you keep your atheism closeted, it's OK to actually be one and hold elective office. The kiss of death is to wear your atheism on your sleeve.

     Undoubtedly that's true, but my point is more that this nation already lived as if it were atheist, even if it refuses to profess as much. A lot of conservatives look to the 1980s as a golden age, but I've seen enough movies from the era to know how worldly the culture was then. The decline of American faith in recent years is definitely not a positive development in my estimation, but it's also more an outward acknowledgement of what was already the content of the national heart.

Do you consider atheism a synonym for amoral? I ask because however delusional it may be, I consider myself to be ethical, and would never do something I considered "wrong" for personal gain, as a matter of honor if nothing else, and have been willing to sever ties over ethical concerns.

So ascribing atheism as the loci of what ails the public square, beyond perhaps missing the point, makes me uncomfortable as a personal matter. Make sense?

     I would consider it a synonym for a certain kind of amorality. Specifically as regards what Jonathan Haidt identifies as the dimension of sanctity. Very few politicians demonstrate high regard for sanctity in both their personal lives and their attitudes towards policy, which makes it odd that they are uniformly expected to profess a belief that carries implications in re sanctity. Atheists typically have low regard for sanctity, so I don't think you would see the things that concern me as a problem at all.

https://moralfoundations.org/

“5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).”

And there you have it. I suspect the LGBTQ goes into the degradation box without passing go. And then the “contaminants” bit to seal the deal. Yikes! OK, I’m done. Stick a fork in me.

I do appreciate my horizons being broadened though. Thanks. See even a really old dog can learn a new trick, even if not score one. 

[Torie]

For the record, you may have noted that I frequently refer to myself as Godless, and prefer the term when referencing myself. That is just a matter of my aesthetic tastes.

Thanks for the discussion from both of you btw. It's a nice change from situation normal around here, if you know what I mean.

[Torie]

     This connects to Tony's point as well; while it is true that wicked rulers who have failed to live what they profess have always been a thing, it is rather novel to see that ethos be normalized throughout a society to the extent that it was in America and Europe in the late 20th century. I understand the pushback to calling this "atheism", and I would note that I first described it in this thread as "inward atheism"; they may claim whatever they want about religion, but their actions lead one to believe that they do not fear God, and that they live much the same as they would if He did not exist. I could get more to the point and call it "godlessness", if that term helps clear the air.

I'll concede that wicked rulers of old probably did, in some sense, fear God and take seriously elements of their religious faith and practice (how they managed to reconcile that with their many evil deeds is another question, but not worth getting into here) in a way that today's political class clearly does not. I do think calling this "atheism" misses the mark in important ways, in that there is a fundamental difference between the affirmed nonbelief in God and the general nihilism that pervades our political class. We could get into arguments about how postmodern nihilism is an inevitable byproduct of the loss of faith in God, and I fundamentally disagree with this notion, but even if we granted that, we have to acknowledge that they are different phenomena with a different impact. Plenty of people have had strong ideals they believed in while being atheists, and vice versa, as you say, our modern religious leaders all profess Christianity regardless of their genuine faith. So talking about having genuine beliefs in something greater than oneself is not the same as talking about the dominance of ostentated religiosity. You might argue the two are correlated in some way, but not enough to justify this conflation.

     I've been busy lately, but I was thinking about this and it's definitely true that a lot of atheists can have deeply held beliefs that could be reasonably categorized as falling under the sanctity moral foundation; you see this in particular with communists and libertarians, though it is by no means specific to them. What I would say is that those people hold a conviction that is basically analogous to religion, and C.S. Lewis helps lay the groundwork for this idea when he describes man as a machine that runs on God; we intuitively seek something to worship and to place our trust in. In that sense I might say a lot of formal atheists are less inwardly unbelieving than those who stand at the levers of political power, with the general nihilism you observe in them (which from a Christian perspective would be explained as them deadening their conscience in exchange for receiving the things of the world).

     With that said, I will admit that the way I've used "atheism" in this thread is not coherent with how the term is typically defined, and that I should take care to use it in a way that does not cause confusion or unnecessary offense. I can understand why atheists would not appreciate being associated with the listless materiality of politicians in the West!

At the risk of repeating myself, my sense of things is that many if not most perceive that a considerable percentage of politicians, if not a majority, are disingenuous in professing to be God fearing, but they actually appreciate such disingenuousness as a sign of respect for the "civic religion," by keeping their true beliefs to themselves. To profess a disbelief in God is disrespectful and rude. People tend to shy away from people whose style is  confrontational.