Must a candidate be Christian to be elected President.

I forgot to add:

Now as to your point "And it surely is astray if all such historical, sociological or anthropological claims regarding causality (earlier thing influences later thing) are held as logically illegal."

I must point out your Straw Man Logical Fallacy as I made no such generalized claim. My claim was specific as per:

From a logic point of view, you cannot argue with specificity that "notions of charity and egalitarianism" are a product of "early Christian communities" unless you can successfully argue with specificity that similar "notions of charity and egalitarianism" would not exist without said product of "early Christian communities".

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It's not that you've made a claim. It's that it is a logical consequence of your suggestion that the fallacy applies here.

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I've used the word "claim" above in two different contexts. As to my second usage of the word, I do state that I've made a claim and that my claim is true.

Claim:
4. to assert or maintain as a fact
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/claim

Be careful when using claim to mean 'say', 'state', or 'declare'. The primary meaning of claim is to demand something that you are entitled to or to assert your right to it, in this case the right to be believed, and it implies that you may not be. He said he had been burgled is neutral: there is no reason to question the statement. He claimed he had been burgled suggests that he may not be telling the truth.
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/english/data/d0081751.html

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Logic will not benefit you a whole lot if you are unprepared to acknowledge when you've got something wrong.

It might help you, in a rather degraded sense of 'help', where you just wish to use logic terms to create or continue a snow job.

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Uphold the people who are rational and decent.
Admire those who avoid hypocracy.
Understand those who play with religous topic to get a banal attention.
Struggle survive and be sane.
Problems we have.
death levels all.
The worst democracy emanates from USA.
Democracy is a greek word nothing to do with chewing gum plutocracy.
Am I crazy or a staunch supporter of non-hypocracy?

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blatham wrote:

Logic will not benefit you a whole lot if you are unprepared to acknowledge when you've got something wrong.

It might help you, in a rather degraded sense of 'help', where you just wish to use logic terms to create or continue a snow job.

I do/did acknowledge that my preemptive guess was wrong as to logical fallacy in question. And I explained why saying that "the temptation was too great" (note: perhaps I chat too much with religionists!).

However my central argument as per Post: 2984337 still stands, and calling that a "snow job" does not address the substance of the argument nor produce evidence against the claim.

You would need to show me, in Logic Terms / Argumentation Theory where such presumed wrongness lies as per the central reference in Post: 2984337. This you have not done.

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Could you please paste in the specific sentence or sentences I wrote which you find troublesome.

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ehBeth wrote:

blatham wrote:
Chimpanzees don't have a sacred text and have built only a few churches.

I may have a use for this.

Thank you.

<curtsies>

ehB, what makes you so sure homo sapiens isn't a chimpanzee species? you might want to read The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond, the UCLA prof who wrote the highly regarded Guns, Germs, and Steel. and while chimps may display "humanitarian" behavior, as blatham suggested, they're also capable of savagery, like cannibalism as documented in a Planet Earth tv series episode.

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mysteryman wrote:

snood wrote:
mysteryman wrote:
As far as I am concerned, a candidates religion is meaningles.
The candidate can worship a mango for all I care.

I wanna know where they stand on issues, not their religious beliefs.

Oh? You'd have no problem with a fundamentalist Islamic person in high public office?

Not as long as they abided by and followed the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, and they left their religion in the Family quarters of the WH.

I have no problem with someone using their religious beliefs as a partial guide to their decision making and policy making, as long as they give more weight to what the Constitution says.

great posts, mm. we agree on this completely. the constitution specifies the legal qualifications for the presidency, and religious denomination isn't one of them. if a religious litmus test was a good idea for candidates, wouldn't it be a good idea for voters as well? it would keep the likes of muslims and atheists voting for say Giuliani to block Huckabee from being nominated.

on the other hand, i would expect an Islamic fundamentalist candidate to favor the imposition of sharia (Islamic law) and that would violate the establishment clause of the first amendment at the very least, so i'm unlikely to vote for one. i also like to have a sip of wine once in a while, without having to worry about being flogged.

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yitwail wrote:

ehBeth wrote:
blatham wrote:
Chimpanzees don't have a sacred text and have built only a few churches.

I may have a use for this.

Thank you.

<curtsies>

ehB, what makes you so sure homo sapiens isn't a chimpanzee species? you might want to read The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond, the UCLA prof who wrote the highly regarded Guns, Germs, and Steel. and while chimps may display "humanitarian" behavior, as blatham suggested, they're also capable of savagery, like cannibalism as documented in a Planet Earth tv series episode.

That degree of 'savagery' and cannibalism you refer to is rare in chimp behavior which is why it was such a long period of time before (and a rather big surprise when) Goodall and team observed it.

Further, these chimps she was observing at Gombi are but one of two species of chimps, the other being bonobo who haven't been observed demonstrating such behavior...they don't fight, they hump.

It's incorrect to suggest humans are a species of chimp. We have both sprung from a single precursor, neither chimp nor homo, then speciated.

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blatham wrote:

It's incorrect to suggest humans are a species of chimp. We have both sprung from a single precursor, neither chimp nor homo, then speciated.

i'm aware of your point--chimps have more chromosomes than people, for example. my question about chimps, and the book title i referenced, were both rhetorical. still, it seems likely that there's less overall genetic variation between chimps & humans than there exists within some other species. i say likely, because the once accepted figure of 98.5 percent has been revised both up & down, based on methodology used to calculate it. here are two links that provide two different figures:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_human_DNA_and_chimpanzee_DNA_98_percent_identical

Chimps are human, gene study implies - 19 May 2003 - New Scientist

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Gotcha. Yes, we are very closely related.

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I once saw a wildlife film about a boss monkey with a bunch of females. He had driven the other males off who had to watch him shagging from a distance and wait for him to slow up. He had got to simulating copulation which the females seemed happy with as long as it looked to the other females that he had performed. Actually, he looked quite fed up and didn't run when the temptation was offered as you might expect.

How did that evolve to playing golf in the Sea of Tranquillity? And monogamy.

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Quote:

And monogamy?

DNA technology has demonstrated that, in humans, monogamy can be pretense more than might have been expected.

Yet many mammals are monogomous. It's not difficult to see the evolutionary positives in this 'strategy'.

A reasonable anthropological hypothesis re humans relates to the benefits to both genders (where it takes so long bring a child through to the age where he/she can survive and produce progeny) for the female to keep a male around to help out. This is also a possible explanation for why human females (uniquely) have a hidden estrus cycle.

Obviously, evolution will favor strategies/behaviors which not merely produce offspring but carry them successfully through to the point where they can pass on their genes.

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culture evolved, spendius. thus, humans in social groups exhibit learned behaviors that are not innate. and not just humans, but domesticated animals as well. for instance, herding sheep is an unlikely behavior for dogs, which are genetically grey wolves.

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blatham wrote:

Could you please paste in the specific sentence or sentences I wrote which you find troublesome.

I have done so a few times but I will again at your request.

It would be much more accurate however to say I am posting to you for education / amusement / interest than it would to say I find a given posting of yours troublesome.

FWIW it's rare I find a given posting troublesome; after all it's an open forum and a bit of a free-for-all and nothing I say is likely to change anything.

However, I've learned - or been motivated to learn - one heck of a lot more by chatting with the denizens of A2K than I have by watching Star Trek re-runs.

Here you be:

blatham wrote:

As a liberal, I perceive and acknowledge that many of our liberal or progressive values are greatly informed by quite old and traditional notions of charity and egalitarianism which have come up over 2000 years from, in part, the early Christian communities (there are other sources too, of course).

Here I be:

Do you in any way claim that these "early Christian communities provided traditional notions of charity and egalitarianism" which would now not be present in "our liberal or progressive values" had there not been these "early Christian communities"?

If you do not in any way make said claim, then I see no relevance to your claim that these "early Christian communities provided traditional notions of charity and egalitarianism".

Why?

Because the "notions of charity and egalitarianism" would be there regardless.

From a logicality perspective blatham you have not shown the causality you claim! It's clear that in some way* you claim that these "early Christian communities provided traditional notions of charity and egalitarianism" which are present in "our liberal or progressive values".

But......

From a logic point of view, you cannot argue with specificity that "notions of charity and egalitarianism" are a product of "early Christian communities" unless you can successfully argue with specificity that similar "notions of charity and egalitarianism" would not exist without said product of "early Christian communities".

This is something you say cannot be done because you say "We of course don't have a world to look at where western civ evolved without Christianity."

Thus you present yourself with the impossible!

* blatham wrote: "So it's a matter of studying history and trying to tease apart the real and relative influence of earlier events, ideas, persons, etc"

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For crying out loud, Chumly, read what the man wrote. He says the values he's referring to (pardon the caps) WERE GREATLY INFORMED not SOLELY informed and arose IN PART from the early Christian communities . He then concludes by saying there were other sources, of course.

You then ask him:

Quote:

Do you in any way claim that these "early Christian communities provided traditional notions of charity and egalitarianism" which would now not be present in "our liberal or progressive values" had there not been these "early Christian communities"?

If you do not in any way make said claim, then I see no relevance to your claim that these "early Christian communities provided traditional notions of charity and egalitarianism".

BTW Quotations marks are supposed to be around quotations neither of the italicized examples are a quote from anyone.

You are asking Blatham a question about something he not only didn't say, but carefully avoided with what I thought read like a fair restatement of history.

Are you trying to make some claim here yourself? Oh, yes, that the notions of charity and egalitarianism would be there regardless.

Joe( I must remember to ask the Maori about that.)Nation

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Hi Joe Nation,

Yes I have read what blatham wrote. Yes you are welcome to any interpretation of both his text and mine you deem. Of note however is that the quotes I have used ad verbatim. It's my experience that blatham is quite capable of responding on his own behalf so consider granting this minor indigence.

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Hi Joe Nation,

Yes I have read what blatham wrote. Yes you are welcome to any interpretation of both his text and mine you deem. Of note however is that the quotes I've used are ad verbatim. It's my experience that blatham is quite capable of responding on his own behalf so consider granting this minor indigence.

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Back to the main subject of this topic.
There is a befitting answer in THE ECONOMIST

"MITT ROMNEY hopes to become America's first Mormon president. But, if he pulled off an unlikely victory, he would not be the first Mormon to take high office: his father was a governor and two current senators are Mormons. Nor would he be the first to break a religious barrier. John Kennedy was the first Catholic president; Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, was Al Gore's presidential running mate in 2000. And a Muslim congressman took his oath of office on a Koran in January, another first.

Mr Romney recently gave a speech extolling religious liberty, decrying religious "tests" for office, and invoking the faith of some of America's founding fathers. All this, naturally, was designed to help his quest for the presidency. The speech thrilled many religious conservatives, and plenty of pundits thought it served him well politically too. But members of one minority with virtually no political success in America were left sputtering with frustration. America's atheists and agnostics felt excluded when Mr Romney said that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedomfreedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

According to figures compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), almost 30m people claimed "no religion" in 2001, a doubling from 1991. This dwarfs America's 2.8m who describe themselves as Jews according to the same survey (although other estimates suggest that the Jewish population is much larger, at about 6m). Catholicism, the country's largest Christian denomination, boasts 51m followers. In other words, irreligion claims a surprisingly large number of adherents. Mr Romney's attack on disbelievers prompted Christopher Hitchens, a well-known polemicist and the author of "God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything", to describe him as "Entirely lacking in dignity or nobility (or average integrity)". Others cited Thomas Jefferson's ruder comments about religion. Even some conservative columnists chided Mr Romney for not saying, as George Bush has, that people of no faith at all are Americans too.

And yet those with no religious beliefs are shut out from political power
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10277230

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Must a candidate be Christian to be elected President.

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