Though surely, if we’re going to calculate the prevalence over the age of the universe of Boltzmann brains, why have we not also determined the effect on the fate of the universe of quantum fluctuations giving rise to Boltzmann black Mormon lesbians? and defeating Boltzmann atheists at the Boltzmann polls?

Then again Boltzmann brains are probably biased against atheism - after all, they did just pop into existence with no evidence for development by evolutionary processes, since none in fact took place. Any Boltzmann brain with half a brain is going to reflect that simply having popped into existence out of a quantum fluctuation is an unsatisfactory and highly unlikely model.

And your evidence for this is…? Given that there haven’t been any atheist American presidents for at least the last hundred years, it’s kind of hard to imagine you would have solid evidence for this assertion. Admittedly, US presidents have “coddled” numerous dictators — Duvalier of Haiti, Mobuto of Zaire, Habré of Chad, Marcos of the Philippines, the Shah of Iran, any number of Latin American dictators, etc. But those US presidents have all been Christians.

Although I know nothing of the business dealings of typical-prominent-Christian Pat Robertson, I’m sure that any of their detrimental effects have been slightly exceeded by those resulting from the activities of typical-prominent-atheists Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong-il.

Hmm… but they’re not Americans, and they’re not capable of running for US President, are they? Whereas Pat Robertson is, and has.

(For what it’s worth, Castro’s supporters have included Canadian Premier Pierre Trudeau, a devout Catholic. And Richard Nixon made supporting Mao and his successors official US policy.)

Belizean: then so what you are saying is that your problem with an openly atheist politican who you now nothing else about is that in your opinion they are likely to be opposed to your political views while an openly xtian politician who you also know nothing about is more likely to share your politics. In which case, all I can say is, doesn’t that say more about you than either of the unknown politicians. Especially when, from even recent history, it can be seen that most politicians who have claimed the mantle of xtianity act in ways that are invariably the opposite of their apparent core beliefs

Yes, it says that I am rational. That is, I assume that a politician who is likely to espouse my political views is more likely to implement them in office than a politician unlikely to espouse my political views.

…at least some of the people in your list are Christians, so we seem to be agreeing that being a “Christian” is no guarantee you won’t cozy up to nasty dictators.

Being a Christian is also no guarantee that you won’t commit mass murder. I would contend, however, that Christians are less likely to coddle dictators than are (their fellow) atheists. Although I know nothing of the business dealings of typical-prominent-Christian Pat Robertson, I’m sure that any of their detrimental effects have been slightly exceeded by those resulting from the activities of typical-prominent-atheists Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro, and Kim Jong-il.

But Pat Robertson was not just supporting Mobutu (Zaire) and Taylor (Liberia), and lobbying Congress and the State Department on their behalf — he was making business deals with them (gold and diamond mining operations).

In any case, at least some of the people in your list are Christians, so we seem to be agreeing that being a “Christian” is no guarantee you won’t cozy up to nasty dictators.

please don’t insult Fortran with analogies to the current administration. It’s still my favorite language.

Elliot

Herb said (#37):
Looking over post #29, I think what’s really going on is that Belizean thinks that atheists may be more likely to have certain political views that he disagrees with.

Could be… but that would certainly contradict his claim that atheists will believe absolutely anything, and that you have no idea what their values/views are.

In the context-free situation that I posed in which one literally knows nothing other than one candidate is an atheist and the other a Christian, I’d choose the latter for the reasons stated (insufficient knowledge of the atheist’s purported values).

In the context of American politics I’d choose the Christian, because the atheist is more likely to be a Leftist.

[Pat Robertson] has associated with and supported oppressive and brutal dictators

There seems to be a lot of that going around, such as the support for oppressive and brutal dictator Fidel Castro among leftist notables (including Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, Harry Belafonte, Oliver Stone, Norman Mailer, Jesse Jackson, Jack Nicholson, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Spike Lee, Kevin Costner, Alanis Morissette, Robert Redford, Sidney Pollack, Shirley MacLaine, …)

And the country bumpkin will thus ensure that he reproduces a society in which he remains a country bumpkin and that will do it’s utmost to ensure his children remain country bumpkins….When the code you are running is malfunctional, it is at least time to debug it or even compile completely new code.

The bumpkin’s only advantage is that his code runs, not that it’s optimal. The lesson to be learned from the programming analogy is not that you should never improve your code. The lesson is humility. You don’t roll out your code changes (irrespective of how confident you are about them) onto a live telephone network lest you bring it down (as an AT&T programmer did in 1990). Similarly, you don’t foist untested theories on an entire society lest you incur massive runtime errors (such as the 30 million needless internal deaths in the Soviet Union, the 30 million in Communist China, and the millions starved in North Korea ). Certain political factions have yet to learn this lesson. In these the prevalence of atheism is significantly higher.

Could be… but that would certainly contradict his claim that atheists will believe absolutely anything, and that you have no idea what their values/views are.

By saying that you’d rather vote for a candidate who declared himself or herself to be a Christian, you’re coming close to admitting that you’re naive and easily manipulated by politicians.

Looking over post #29, I think what’s really going on is that Belizean thinks that atheists may be more likely to have certain political views that he disagrees with.

In view of that the results make perfect sense, it just quantifies how much shame people feel discriminating against various groups, evidently people just don’t feel they need to hide their true feelings towards atheists.

This is not something you can necessarily say about an American politician who claims to be Christian.

The reality is that one can assume more about a person’s values from their culture than from a fill-in-the-blanks religious label. In this context, “atheist” would mean native-born American atheist, which already tells you a great deal about their probable values — which would include most of the values you listed (absent specifically theological ideas like “original sin”, though it’s certainly possibly for atheists to hold similar ideas).

By itself, a self-identification as “Christian” includes a huge array of possible values, from Saint Francis to Torquemada, from 19th Century pro-slavery Southerners to abolitionists, from Mother Teresa to Bishop Desmond Tutu to (openly gay) Bishop Gene Robinson to Pat Robertson to abortion-clinic bombers to the Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda.

As for Pat Robertson’s “values”: well, we can note that he has publically advocated assassinating foreign leaders, that he has associated with and supported oppressive and brutal dictators, and that he runs a large business empire (including past mining deals with dictators in Liberia and Zaire). I would suggest that, at the very least, he’s not that concerned about murder or greed.

Of course, he will publically say that he’s opposed to such things, which may be all that you want: the appearance of morality without the substance. By saying that you’d rather vote for a candidate who declared himself or herself to be a Christian, you’re coming close to admitting that you’re naive and easily manipulated by politicians.

When the code you are running is malfunctional, it is at least time to debug it or even compile completely new code. You don’t just keep running it again and again and getting the same old errors. Unless of course you are a “bible toting country bumpkin”.

“A bible-toting country bumpkin is more likely to get it right.

This is because the bumpkin relies more heavily on traditional views. These have the advantage over the academic’s ideas in having been tested over several generations if not hundreds of years.”

And the country bumpkin will thus ensure that he reproduces a society in which he remains a country bumpkin and that will do it’s utmost to ensure his children remain country bumpkins.