Would you vote for an atheist? YES

But only if he promises to eliminate ALL the church priviledges and give all that (WASTED!!) cash to workers.

Even more, I say religions or beliefs CANNOT be over the laws, it has to be the LAW first, then if the law permits, the religions. That's the reason islamic countries will never get out of their medieval status, you cannot ever get democracy when your religion tells you have to stone a woman to death for doing whatever they call a deadly sin

if the state tells you to burn people it is because there's a law backing it, and the law was approved by some people you (or the most) voted, so you still have a (small) power of decision, and there is a parlament to stop that law and mechanisms to fire the gobernment.
But if the religion tells you to burn people, and religion is above the law, then you cannot do anything about it, because it is supossed to be a direct order from god, so you can refuse to burn people and then be burnt for not obeying your god, or you can act like they want you to and burn people, crash planes into towers, etc...

Khaz I always vote for ecologists, no matter they have no chance of winning. Anyway, in case I cannot vote for ecologist and I have to decide my vote between two liers then I'd manage to get a good photo of both and stare deeply into their eyes (like my avatar does). That way I could differ who's guilty or more guilty, who is hiding a shame inside (and the size of the shame), who is cruel with animals (because then it's only a small step to be cruel with humans), etc... you can literally detect the amount of trash in one person if you stare long and deeply into his eyes.

Abstain is a good option too when both are shit, you know, anarchy is a dream we can make true when our politicians are all a waste, and our generation may live anarchy the way things are going, might be hard, bloody, etc... but it is like when you have your computer so infected with deadly virus you cannot kill and the only solution is reset and format. It is like a huge wahsing up, friends and foes all are erased, but still the surviving get the chance to redo the world knowing the past mistakes.

I would have no problem voting for an atheist even though I'm a lifetime member of a conservative christian party

the claim that only religion has something meaningful to say about morals and that only religious people can be moral people is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated on man...

If two condidates with two identical, agreeable, policies stood for office, and the only difference between them was that one was an Atheist and one was a Theist I'd be more inclined to vote for the Atheist simply because I am prejudiced towards my own idea that Atheists are less prone to flights of fancy, and outright irrationality.

In other words, I would not have voted for a guy who openly admits he is a literal-creationist. It's like giving a reincarnationist a job at nuke-command; "I'll get you next time...."

> Petrolstone wrote:

> No I wouldn't. <

Racist.

If you vote for an Atheist you vote for reason and sense.

If you vote for a Religious person you vote for supersitition and faith.

The Choice seems easy to me

Because the people are ignorant sheep. Duh.

I have no problem voting for an atheist, just as I have no problem voting for a man of faith. They're both believers. I'm not.

> Chris_Balsz wrote:

> Reason tells me I can rob Noir of everything if I put the resources of a govt into getting away with it

Sense tells me thats a dandy reason to run a govt

reason is always a construct of the human mind, you really don't need a supreme being to tell you that you can't go around looting and raping everyone

in a civilised society a constitution is much more valuable than stories about the boogeyman

"It's like giving a reincarnationist a job at nuke-command; "I'll get you next time...."
Roflmao.

> Khaz Modan wrote:

> A constitution based upon the moral guidance of those who believed in said Boogeyman.

what's your point? I have been known to watch porn, but that doesn't mean I treat women as sluts by definition

If you look at e.g. the ten commandments you will find that not even half are relevant for issues our modern legal systems are concerned about (namely murder, theft, perjury and to some extent honoring your mother and father). And just because some dudes said that their god(s) frown upon e.g. killing people that doesn't mean everyone who says it is doing so because of moral guidance from the teachings of the boogeyman.

"I think you would be hard pressed to find an intelligent theist who would argue that you need to be religious to know murder is wrong, that is not really the point, otherwise in the eyes of God that believer would merely be a bad person too cowardly to act for fear of punishment."

That reasoning is actually precisely the underlying connotation between religion and morality many people make, that people who don't believe in a divine basis for e.g. the right to live and in a corresponding divine punishment ultimately have no incentive to be good people.

also obviously there are many good scientists who are/have been religious throughout the ages. It is only problematic when religion gets in the way of proper scientific method, like e.g. religious figures espousing that to claim the earth revolves around the sun is contrary to their religion and a sin. I also do fear that e.g. Einstein was a bit unproperly biased in some respects, such as his saying that "god does not play dice". This was an intuition which was rightly countered by "Einstein, stop telling god what to do". Fortunatly he was not a fundamentalist thinker and was willing to recant positions which he felt were properly disproven.

Also Stephen Hawking's position is not relevant. Obviously the existence of a divine being can be neither proven nor disproven. It would be unscientific to claim that god doesn't exist. We can only say for sure that we haven't seen any conclusive evidence of him existing. What we do know is that many claims of religions are either false or inconclusive when you apply scientific methods to them.