February 5, 2009 - Youtube copy
Partial Transcript:
Jon Stewart: Do you think we could ever elect an atheist?… Now, we have a black president. Could an atheist — What will come first: black, woman, Hispanic, gay, Jew, Atheist? Where do you go?(via Friendly Atheist)
Randall Balmer: I think, pretty much, in that order…
JS: [Laughs] I hope somebody wrote that down!
RB: And I think atheist is probably at the end. Because we Americans want to know about our candidates’ faith. What we really want to know is: Are they good people? Are they moral? Are they trustworthy?
JS: But when did “good person” get intricately linked to faith? Why can’t goodness be a virtue without fear of Biblical punishment or any of those other…
RB: Well, it certainly can. But in America… religion is a proxy for morality… the only way we can frame the question is ask, “Do you go to church?” “Are you a religious person?” And I think the problem is that we, as the voters, take those kind of blithe responses at face value and we should interrogate those claims…
No comments:
Post a Comment