Atheists can't hold office in the USA?

You are trying very hard to convince yourself, but you are not convincing anyone else. Can I ask what you find objectionable in saying "I don't know" when in fact you don't know? Wrong. It is a lack of knowledge about the answer. I don't disbelieve, but I don't know what I believe.If I flip a coin and I ask you what is it going to land on -- you have three choices ... "heads," "tails" and "don't" know. If you answer "don't know" and I say that means "tails" because you didn't pick "heads" ... am I correct? The result is a binary choice ... you can believe it will land on "heads" and you can believe it will land on "tails" and you can know that there is equal probability of either, objective knowledge that does not convince you that either "heads" or "tails" is a correct response to believe, ... and so the only logical answer based on the degree of knowledge you have is "don't know" ... and there is nothing ambivalent about that answer, it is based on objective empirical analysis of facts.The "don't know" response means "don't know" and nothing more ... and if the reason you "don't know" is because of a lack of convincing evidence pro or con, then "don't know" is a valid answer based on the degree of evidence: it is a statement of the degree of knowledge. That is how knowledge is applied to the question/s ... and lumping that into either "yes" or "no" is equally fallacious because you are applying your belief rather than taking a proper look at the response data.If you answer "yes" and there is still a lack of evidence pro or con then you are stating a belief unfounded on evidence, not a statement of knowledge.If you answer "no" and there is still a lack of evidence pro or con then you are stating a belief unfounded on evidence, not a statement of knowledge. Another answer could be "sometimes" ... EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : No reason given.Edited by RAZD, : .

And if this was done within 50 years of the initial amendment the people would have had a good understanding of the intent. So you don't trust the Founding Fathers and Mothers to write the constitution in the first place. At some point you need to hold your nose and jump if you hope to improve things.Curiously I trust the public more than I trust the politicians ... especially those corrupted by campaign contributions and who cater to special interests.We see an overwhelming tide of decisions state by state authorizing marriage of LGTB people, and it is now going to the Supreme Court to review 4 states in addition to 32 that already allow it, with the understanding that they may rule for the whole US to allow marriage of LGTB people. If this happens then that would become one of the provisions that could then be incorporated, along with voting rights for women and people of color and similar changes that have occurred, that have been passed by amendment and that have been reviewed by the courts.Roosevelt (FDR) wanted to pass a second bill of rights that included healthcare and minimum wage provisions, things being discussed these days:

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FDR's Second Bill of Rights

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The Second Bill of Rights was a list of rights proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944.[1] In his address Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognize, and should now implement, a second "bill of rights". Roosevelt's argument was that the "political rights" guaranteed by the constitution and the Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness." Roosevelt's remedy was to declare an "economic bill of rights" which would guarantee eight specific rights:

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• Employment, with a living wage
• Food, clothing and leisure
• Farmers' rights to a fair income
• Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
• Housing
• Medical care
• Social security
• Education

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Roosevelt stated that having these rights would guarantee American security, and that America's place in the world depended upon how far these and similar rights had been carried into practice.

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And there are a number of amendments pending that I would not mind seeing voted on by the public.Enjoy

There are British subjects and there are people who are not British subjects - British and aBritish. There are people who understrand binary and people who don't understand binary - binarists and abinarists.The two concepts are not directly related.Your claim that there is nobody who doesn't understand binary is absurd.

I have no objection at all to saying that I don't know, when I don't. However, when the question is "do you believe in god?" I know the answer.What is your fear of owning to a belief or lack of belief? Then you can not believe and are therefore an atheist. Obviously. Really? How surprising!You're really overcomplicating this - and obviously not reading the other posts I've made. Agnosticism can't exist when applied to belief - people either believe or they do not. It has nothing to do with information. Correct and when you sometimes believe you are a theist and when you sometimes don't believe you are an atheist. In neither situation is someone an agnostic.

Yes they are because the feel that they do not know.Faith is a gnostic Theist. Faith knows there is a god. Faith is delusional but Faith self defines as a gnostic theist.

That was pretty random.

Non sequitur. You tried to define me out of existence, hence the empirical evidence that I gathered while shaving that confirmed my continued existence disproves your spurious claims that I do not exist. As far as I know, nobody has tried to claim that you do not exist, therefore the fact of your continued existence is moot and does not pertain in any manner to this discussion.I am an atheist. I am also an agnostic. I am also many other things (eg, software engineer, US citizen, California resident, male, Irish, Scottish, German, veteran and retiree, chief, Trekker (by definition, a Trekkie owns two pairs of Vulcan ears while a Trekker only owns one pair; I own none), Whovian, polyglot, Unitarian Universalist, dancer), none of which contradicts any of the other many things that I am.Being an atheist may be slightly related to being agnostic, but they are still two different things pertain to two distinctly different questions. You are making the mistake of conflating them to both be answers to only one single question. That is incorrect. IOW, you do not understand what agnosticism is and so you persist in conflating it with atheism.But if you want to play the silly game of "Argumentum ad dizionario" (usually the last desperate act of a failed argument), then you need to administer full disclosure. What is the definition of "agnostic" in your dictionary? Is it defined as being synonymous with "atheist"? Or does it reveal that your argument is incorrect?Here is what my dictionary, The Merriam Webster Dictionary, says:

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atheist -- one who denies the existence of God

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agnostic -- of or relating to the belief that the existence of any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and prob. unknowable.

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They are not the same thing! As I have already said, agnosticism deals with the question, "Is it possible for us to know about the existence of the gods?", whereas atheism deals with the entirely different question of "Do I believe in any of the gods?" Those are two different questions! Do not conflate them!As I already said in Message 71: I am agnostic because I do not believe that humans could acquire actual knowledge of the supernatural, but rather have had to make stuff up about it over several millennia. The gods are all of human invention, attempts by fallible humans to describe and account for things that they could not understand or that they have imagined. Since I cannot trust or believe any such groundless and wild speculation, I cannot bring myself to believe in any of the gods nor in any of their accompanying theologies, all of which are man-made. If the supernatural were to actually exist, I am extremely doubtful that it would resemble what human imagination has produced. And if supernatural entities were to actually exist, I am extremely doubtful that they would resemble the gods that human imagination has created.I am both an atheist and an agnostic. No, those are not the same thing.BTW, remember that in Message 89, to which you replied, I also said: And what did we find in my Merriam Webster Dictionary? Precisely that definition (the only definition it offers):

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atheist -- one who denies the existence of God

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So you see, I'm not making any of this up!

If they don't know, they don't believe. It's not terrbly complicated. Yes, I've often heard her say that. Not.Look I totally understand the argument, I just say that it's total semantic baloney. People either believe in a God or they don't. If they say they're not sure, they can't, by definition and the simple meaning of words, believe in god.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

But what about the third group, a large one, that simply couldn't care less?Imagine some kind of over-blown sports event that inexplicably excites much of the national or regional or world population, possibly because it gets hyped-up all out of all proportion. Two opposing teams. Applying your argument, everybody must support either one team or the other; there can be no third position. But there is a third position, the only sane one: "I couldn't possibly care less!"A very large number of people just do not care about religion and many of them even try to avoid the subject as much as possible. They're not believers, but they're also not non-believers; they just do not take any kind of position. They couldn't possibly care less.But then none of that has anything to do with agnosticism, which is an entirely different question from atheism. They are not the same thing!

Those that couldn't care less, obviously do not believe. If they couldn't care less, then they do not believe and are therefore atheistic. Of course they're not the same thing! In matters of belief, agnosticism is irrelevant. It concerns itself with knowledge not belief.

Really? Are you sure about that?To begin with, by my sports analogy you are expecting everybody to choose between Team A and Team B. No other choice is allow, like "neither". So, by your logic, if anyone who couldn't care less is obviously cheering from Team B. How much sense would that make? Absolutely none.But we don't need an analogy, because we have real-world people who do not fit your model. People who are not interested in religion, couldn't care less, and yet identify as belonging to a religious group. A common scenario would be one who grew up in a church, had put in his pew-time, and is not inclined to continue to participate while still self-identifying. Couldn't care less, but still not an atheist.For example, my cabin mate on one cruise was completely uninterested in religion. He grew up in an extreme sect, something like Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists, but was no longer active and was very disinclined to have anything to do with religion. In case you are tempted to think that he had deconverted, his position was that what they had taught him was true, period. Before you try to tell him that he's an atheist, you should know that he traveled over half the Caribbean looking for a chain necklace with links large and heavy enough for that necklace to serve as an emergency set of brass knuckles.In most situations where you cast a vote, you have three choices: yea, nay, or abstain. In the situation under discussion, those who are interested in religion will deliberate and decide yea or nay or possibly abstain. Those who are not interested will abstain, most commonly by default since they are not interested and won't even consider that they should make a choice. In the case of those who are not interested, they will simply gravitate to their own default setting, which would be just as likely to be theistic than atheistic.Tangle, your extreme either-or position makes you sound like a creationist. In their infamous "Two Model Approach" (TMA), they claim that there are two and only two mutually exclusive "models" for origins: the "creation model" and the "atheistic" "evolution model". They never devote much effort in presenting their "creation model", which they hand-wave as being some generic "some unidentified Creator done it" and that it includes all such creation accounts, whereas in reality it only includes the fundamentalist Christian beliefs that we know all to well as YEC. They devote all their effort in attacking and "disproving" their "evolution model", which is everything that is not in the "creation model". Their "evolution model" includes all scientific and quasi-scientific and worse ideas about "origins", almost all of which contradict each other and have been rejected by science. Their "evolution model" also includes all religions, both ancient and modern, with mythologies that differ from those of fundamentalist Christianity.So you're starting from a definitely defined theistic position and positing that everything that differs from it is atheism. That is simply not true. Well if you do realize that they are not the same thing, then why do you persist in conflating them?And, no, agnosticism is not irrelevant in matters of belief. Those who do attempt to make a choice need to have something to base that choice on. The question of whether it is possible for you to actually know about the supernatural or of how reliable you can consider other sources of information to be could very well play a role.And remember that an agnostic could choose to become or remain a theist.

How do you know what he actually believes? He could be believe or not.The answer to the question 'do you believe in god?' Is 'yes' or or 'no'.
The answer to the question 'does god exist?' Can rationally only be 'I don't know'. Though of course you'll get the irrational others too.Bored now......

I think the better analogy would be "Do you like (aka - "believe in") Team A - Yes or No.and"Do you like (aka - "believe in") Team B - Yes or No.If you answer "Yes" to one but not both (which is your "choose between Team A and Team B"), you are "monotheist".If you answer "Yes" to both, you are a "polytheist".If you answer "No" to both (which is your "couldn't care less") , you are an "atheist".I think this might be the only clunker message you've ever done (and I've given you a lot of POTM's).Moose

Correct - the sports analogy is 'do you support the Jets?' The 'I couldn't care less' response is a defacto 'no'.

How do you know what he actually believes?I went with the actual evidence, his own testimony that he believes that what he was taught as a child is true and that settles that.You are pushing your own idea in spite of the actual evidence.Like the Two Model Approach which is the principal tool of "creation science", you are creating a false dichotomy by artificially insisting that there are two and only two mutually exclusive positions, thus excluding the other positions that do exist. Such as abstaining. Such as not caring.Not knowing is not a reliable predictor for atheism. Nor is abstaining from deciding. Nor is not having any interest.And agnostics do indeed exist!Also, you are thinking like a "true Christian". You pose the question as "Do you believe in God?", which only asks about YHWH. To a "true Christian", not believing in YHWH would make one an atheist, but that would include those who believe in a different god. Remember, the gods are many. But if one believes in any of the other gods, then he would in fact not be an atheist regardless of how much others misunderstand atheism.