These days it seems like people are going a bit crazy over the specific religious beliefs of politicians, in particular presidential candidates. While I dont really care which religion a person subscribes to, I do care about their specific beliefs.
We are seeing an unusual interest, this time around, in candidates religious beliefs. Because of the stress on this particular subject the candidates play along to try to win over as many voters as possible. In a sense, they are trying to out-religion each other. I find this distressing.
We are not voting for the leader of a theocracy after all.
I understand why people are concerned with this, after all, who wants a member of the KKK in office? I suspect only members, and supporters, of the KKK. Why dont we want one of them in office? Because we know that what they believe is irrational and leads to dangerous behavior. As steven Weinberg pointed out,"With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." I realize that the KKK is an extreme example, but you see my point. People can rationalize some terrible things through religion or a belief in a god.
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf Vol 1 Chapter 2)
There are politicians who dont let their religion influence their policy in any way. Some of them I support, but I appreciate their honesty moreso. Yet, unfortunately there are politicians that say crazy things and try to pass laws that are a direct result of their religious beliefs.
For this reason we need to know what they believe and why. We must know whether they will act on their specific religious beliefs while in office. It follows logically that people act based on what they believe, therefore we should know what that is in order to make an informed decision.
I sincerely hope that you will agree with me on this. Please, Please, please dont vote for a candidate just because he is more "christian", or because he belongs to your specific church. I beg you to choose the candidate based on previous actions, not what they say they believe. The bible does have a few good pieces of advice in it, the one I care to recite here is "...By your fruits ye shall know them".
Only by looking at what they have done in the past can we really see what they believe, for the simple reason that people only take action based on what they believe.
So lets get past all of these specific religions and consider their individual beliefs. No candidate is meant to be a representative of a particular religion or church. Thats not what its about.
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