Would you vote for an Atheist presidential candidate?

   A recent poll showed that Americans are least likely to vote for someone who identifies as an Atheist.  I find this fact interesting because I know several atheists and they arrived at their beliefs through considerable reflection and study.  The conclusion I reach is that people of faith would prefer not to question but instead believe.  W.J. O’Malley, a Jesuit priest, writes in his book, God, the Oldest Question, “The greatest obstacle in the search for God is indifference, what George Eliot calls “unreflecting egotism”.

   Unreflecting egotism requires at least two attributes to exist:  A disinterest in asking questions and the natural human preference to believe everything we think.  But what we think about religion is often wrong.

This brings to mind the following study that showed atheists scored the highest in a quiz on religion.  The case in point, Laurie Goodstein wrote, “Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.  Researchers from the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life phoned more than 3,400 Americans and asked them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and other world religions, famous religious figures and the constitutional principles governing religion in public life.  On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.”  So, many Americans are deeply religious about the religions that they don’t deeply understand.

   To recap: For 43 percent of Americans, the acid test for a presidential candidate is adherence to a religious belief system even though most Americans who claim to be religious fail a test on religion.  Which means that the people who know the most about religion are thought to be unqualified to be president while those who know less can fill the job.

   Now before you disqualify my opinions because you think I’m biased, I’m an agnostic not an atheist.  But I do know several atheists because I attend the Carbondale Unitarian Fellowship where on any given day you can find real atheists.

   If you know anything about Unitarians, you’ll know that you can be a member without believing in God.  And believe it or not, you can also be a moral person too.  But some of my religious friends can’t understand how Unitarians can be moral without a God as the central point in their belief system.  Well check for yourself.  There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:

1.         The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2.     Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

3.     Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

4.     A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5.     The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6.     The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

7.     Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

I don’t know about you but if an atheist believed in these seven principles as a creed to live by, I’d say he or she is perfectly qualified for any public office, up to and including the presidency.  And my reasoning is simple.  This creed is non-judgmental and is inclusive of everyone.  And many religious are judgmental and exclusive of people who don’t live by their rules.

If my choice is between a non-judgmental, all inclusive human being as opposed to a judgmental, exclusive one, I’ll choose the first every time.  Because a president is everyone’s president and not just of those of his or her religious or political persuasion.  At least that’s what I was taught in high school.  But then again, that was a long time ago.

Robert DeFilippis