"Secular groups Monday applauded a public acknowledgment by Rep. Pete Stark that he does not believe in a supreme being, making the Fremont Democrat the first member of Congress — and the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. — to publicly acknowledge not believing in God." Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2007.
Well, there goes the neighborhood. Also, my own cover story for not running for office. In The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, he makes the point that a higher percentage of Americans voice their unqualified opposition to an atheistic candidate for President than for any other defining characteristic in a standard survey. Americans who have no qualms about voting for a woman or a minority for President draw the line at voting in a heathen. In Dawkins's view, in other words, a substantial majority of Americans demand that the President, first and foremost, be delusional. Certainly no one promoting deism in politics could have much to complain about in the last 7 years.
If Pete Stark is the "highest-ranking elected official" in the U.S. to renounce belief in God, then I suppose that none of the other 434 Representatives and none of the 100 Senators has ever done likewise. Thus, we're at the point where either (1) not one of the other nonbelieving 534 members of Congress has the courage to proclaim his/her apostasy, seeing it as political suicide; or (2) there is no such person; they all believe in God.
I was recently in a conversation about such beliefs where I was described as an agnostic, and I found myself saying, "beyond that." "Atheist?" she asked. "Beyond that too," I responded immediately. I wonder what I meant. Maybe something along these lines: If you tell me that thunderclaps are caused by Thor throwing his hammer while being carted around in the sky in a chariot drawn by his two goats, I will, of course, honor your belief and nod gravely in the way that my politically correct, respectful generation tends to respond to declarations of arrant nonsense. We're so-o-o nice and afraid of giving offense. If, however, you ask me whether I share this "belief," I will think (though probably not say) that the question is simply not meaningful. There aren't "two sides" to this "question." You believe something nuts and I don't think about it.
I liked Steven Weinberg's response to a religious group who asked him to participate in a "constructive dialogue" with religious thinkers. He declined, saying he maybe believed in a dialogue, but not a "constructive dialogue." Weinberg, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist probably best known for uncovering the cause of Reality (barely an exaggeration), has the right idea, if you ask me. What can science learn from religion, other than the importance of science as an escape from obscurantism? I don't see much difference between positing the idea of a god creating the Universe with lightning bolt-like conjurations and Thor throwing his Mjolnir and making the dogs run under the bed. The Biblical God is an update of the Nordic Thor; modern religion simply retreats before the advance of science by making God murkier and more ethereal, and doing away with the vaudeville routines of burning bushes and parting seas.
I suppose, if I'm running for President, I can finesse the point by telling the truth and saying I find the question of belief meaningless, along the lines of the above meandering explanation. I doubt it will work. Americans are intolerant of vacillation on matters of belief. They much prefer a straightforward declaration of lunacy.
