Romney Speech

for pat buchanans take on the speech:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/staticarticles/article59079.html

short version: he thinks it was a great speech and compares it very favorably to jfk's speech. jfk, attempted to distance himself from his faith and romney explains that his faith is part of who he is and is something he will remain true to.

as for me, i just dont see this as a big issue. very few evangelicals will in the end refuse to vote for him over this. it will be a non-issue.

when an evangelical is forced to choose between romney the mormon who they agree with on most issues or hillary there wont be an issue for them either.

Sam,

excellent points but the battle is for evanglical votes in the Republican primary who are flocking to Huckabee. There is no way Huckabee will be President, its a wasted vote in my view. What it comes down to is many evanglicals are losing church members to the Latter Day Saints and they dont like it and do not want to see Romney do well because it is seen as validating the Mormon faith which they do not want to do.

Old Man by the Sea wrote:

Sam,

excellent points but the battle is for evanglical votes in the Republican primary who are flocking to Huckabee. There is no way Huckabee will be President, its a wasted vote in my view. What it comes down to is many evanglicals are losing church members to the Latter Day Saints and they dont like it and do not want to see Romney do well because it is seen as validating the Mormon faith which they do not want to do.

i tend to agree with you. i do give huckabee a better shot than you do, but i dont know.

i am actually undecided about who i think is the best of the bunch.

Is there really any statistical evidence to support this notion that evangelicals are becoming Latter Day Saints?

A little off issue here, but you can't trust Mormon statistics. They claim to be the fastest growing religion in America, and I won't deny that they are growing, but look up the way they do their statistics. They keep someone as a member until they're 110 years old! No lie, look it up. They also don't keep track very well of people moving--that is, if an LDS person moves from one ward to another, it's sometimes added as a new member, rather than a moved member. Admittedly also, their growth is not the highest in America but outside the United states, where they get their numbers. If a Mormon missionary baptized one or two new members a year, that's considered success.

Yanqui wrote:

Is there really any statistical evidence to support this notion that evangelicals are becoming Latter Day Saints?

to clarify my thoughts on this...

the mormons are a growing church and this does bother evangelicals and others. the growth has to be coming from somewhere.

i dont think committed evangelicals are flocking to become mormons, but i think the common wisdom is that "un-churched" and poorly catechized people who only nominally understand what they believe are among those being converted. in a sense the jehovas witnesses and mormons represent competition for the evangelicals and this is troublesome to them.

whether, as someone mentioned, you can trust the mormon numbers or not, there is no doubt they are growing.

the concern some evangelicals have is that by electing romney, you give a certain air of legitimacy to mormonism. it makes it, and the belief there are many many gods more mainstream. and that is troublesome.

there really is no real difference between most of the main democratic candidates and the if given a choice b/t romney and clinton/obama/... evangelicals will clearly join in with romney to defeat a common "enemy."

romney simply is not the 1st choice among evangelicals and the party is having a fight over who the leader should be. nothing wrong with that, this is the time and place to do it - we call it the primaries.

whether he is the best choice or not evangelicals seem to be lining up with huckabee. huckabee is strongly pro-life, but liberal on many social issues. accepting huckabee is a bit of a faustian bargain.

i am a little disappointed in fred thompson who seems to show very little interest in actually running for president. had he shown more desire i think evangelicals would have gravitated to him.

mobile9 wrote:

You keep referring to the "intentions of the founding fathers" as if they're absolutely right on all matters. The founding fathers were also opposed to giving equal rights to non-whites and women. A lot has changed in 231 years.

I don't think I mentioned the founding fathers.

what are you still doing in this thread? i see that you've selectively chosen to ignore a post calling you out.

formidable doer of the nasty wrote:

wa runner wrote:

What I'm more interested in is why you feel that religion is a fairy tale.

No, you're not interested in that. If you were interested in an outsider's view on religion you would have gotten it a long time ago and you would have figured it out. You are just interested in dragging out a useless argument in infinity to see if you can find any minor discontinuity in what the other person is saying. If that were to happen you'd immidiately take it as proof that "anti-religionists" don't have one grand coherent story and then you jump to the conclusion that your myth is true by default. Kinda like how gaps in the fossil records somehow prove the myth of creation, rather than the fact of erosion.

formidable doer of the nasty wrote:

No, you're not interested in that. If you were interested in an outsider's view on religion you would have gotten it a long time ago and you would have figured it out. You are just interested in dragging out a useless argument in infinity to see if you can find any minor discontinuity in what the other person is saying. If that were to happen you'd immidiately take it as proof that "anti-religionists" don't have one grand coherent story and then you jump to the conclusion that your myth is true by default. Kinda like how gaps in the fossil records somehow prove the myth of creation, rather than the fact of erosion.

lol... Glad to see you understand me so well. To be honest, I've never met many true atheists. I don't care so much about your disbelief in God; I've wrestled with that enough myself to understand why someone would find it hard to believe in an unseen, omniscient being. And for the record, I am interested in what you believe. Like, where you believe we came from and whether or not you believe there is something after this life.

The problem I have with you, however, is that you take it upon yourself to bash those that choose to believe in something you have rejected. I don't bash you for your atheism. Don't bash me for my Christianity.

I'd argue that the pagan gods get more respect than YHWH:No-one is trying to deprive Thor and his buddies of their days of the week...or the deified CSR's Augustus and Julius of their months. No one is lobying the government to t

mobile9 wrote:

There's no reason why the God of Abraham should have any more validity than Zeus, Thor, Loki, Vishnu, etc.

You're a little early, dude.

I have read Kant.... so when do you want to start Lewis? ;)

I think you have some good points, and that quote from Einstein is certainly a good one. My original point was that, while people are making a much bigger deal out of our candidates' religion than they should, you can't totally ignore their personal beliefs when voting, because their beliefs help shape political views and decision making. The reference to Lewis was to support the idea that morality can be argued to be an eternal principle, not entirely separable from religion.

I agree that abused religion has caused a lot of problems in the world - you can look at the crusades, sexual abuse in churches, etc. to see that. But I think the potential that rests in religious belief is huge. I've seen a lot of people's lives who are far better off with religion than without, and when you see that kind of good, it's hard to dismiss it as just a "fairy tale."

if the president is going to rely on religious beliefs to guide his decisions rather than his own reason, than why even bother with a human leader, why not just let god run the show? seriously, if faith and religion are such important qualities, who better for the job than the big guy himself? if we just elected god president, all our troubles would be over.

Keep your Christianity out of my schools, courtrooms, etc. and I will have no reason to "bash" you.

wa runner wrote:

mobile9 wrote:

You keep referring to the "intentions of the founding fathers" as if they're absolutely right on all matters. The founding fathers were also opposed to giving equal rights to non-whites and women. A lot has changed in 231 years.

I don't think I mentioned the founding fathers.

We need a new Godwin's Law. As soon as the Founding Fathers are mentioned in any internet debate, the debate shall cease immediately and the perpetrator shall be declared the loser.

Mud Lark's Law

I'm sorry - but I have a hard time believing that you've read Kant when you ask people to prove god (or anything) doesn't exist.

As far as whether people are better or worse with religion, someone else on one of these threads said it best. Utility and truth are two different things. It concerns me when people base their belief system on utility rather than whether they think it's really true.

To twist Romney's words - Freedom and Justice cannot exist in society unless Truth is valued above all things. Religion values the protection of it's story above all things - even if facts and reason show it not to be true.

wa runner wrote:

My original point was that, while people are making a much bigger deal out of our candidates' religion than they should, you can't totally ignore their personal beliefs when voting, because their beliefs help shape political views and decision making.

To see how wrong and useless this argument is, consider that Hitler invoked God (the Christian version) in his justification of the holocaust.

Religious people are not inherently better or worse than others. But politicians who invoke religion should never be trusted. If they cannot translate their religious (dogmatic) values and beliefs into pragmatic political arguments, then that to me is evidence that they don't truly embody those values.

formidable doer of the nasty wrote:

To see how wrong and useless this argument is, consider that Hitler invoked God (the Christian version) in his justification of the holocaust.

Yes, and religion has a lot to do with Bush's opposition to stem cell research, for the old-time notion of "manifest destiny," and all sorts of other political views, decisions, and ideology. The Hitler example supports the point. Religion often affects politics, for good or bad, and it's good to have an idea of what the candidates' beliefs are before you vote for them.

Everything that needs to be said about this ridiculous hypcrites victim-mongering speech has been admirably condensed by Christopher Hitchens in today's Slate:

http://www.slate.com/id/2179404/

AS if Romney would make no case against an opponent who happened to be a Scientologist, Raelian or, God forbid, an outright skeptical atheist.