Carnal Reason notes a difference in how politicians’ religious beliefs are often regarded, depending on their politics:

Many critics stand ready to mock Palin’s Christianity. Fair enough. Will they also mock Obama’s and Biden’s?

Christianity is a miracle religion. Absent belief in the miraculous, there is nothing left of Christianity worth the name. Here is the story in a nutshell: Christ was both man and God. God took on human flesh and entered into the physical world to perform a mission. The mission was to save the fallen human race, and to do so Christ had to die and then rise from the dead. That is why Easter, not Christmas, is the greatest of Christian holidays. It celebrates the Resurrection, the central dogma of Christianity. This is not my just my opinion, it is orthodox Christian teaching. In Corinthians 15:17 Paul states that “if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain”.

Obama has gone on record as stating that Christ is his Lord, that he prays to Jesus. I see three possibilities: 1. Obama was lying: he believes no such thing, but finds it politically expedient to claim he does. 2. Obama accepts as fact the Resurrection of Christ. 3. Obama is an idiot.

Obama is no idiot. So does he believe that a corpse dead on Friday came back to life on Sunday? And if so, does he accept as facts the rest of Christ’s miracles? Prior to his death, Christ is said to have resurrected a corpse, made the blind see, walked on water, and turned water into wine. I can’t see why anyone would believe in the Resurrection, and deny the rest. Why strain at gnats? The theory that the earth is only 6000 years old appears to be pre-scientific nonsense. It contradicts known facts about the rates at which radioactive materials decay. By the same token, a corpse coming back to life violates the laws of thermodynamics, and walking on water violates the laws of gravity.

So far as I know Palin is not a Young Earther. But if she were, her belief would be no more at odds with science than is Obama’s stated belief that Christ is Lord. I suspect those who mock Palin’s belief without mocking Obama’s do so because in their hearts they imagine that Obama does not actually believe. He just says what he has to say to attain power. And they’re ok with that.  They mock Palin because they imagine she means what she says.

I do not see how belief in the Resurrection or in the Young Earth theory has much practical bearing on fitness to execute the responsibilities of office. I do think it would be gross dishonesty to claim to believe in Christ, if one does not so believe, merely to gain office. The man who would lie about that would lie about anything.

The whole thing.

Update:

In the comments, Georges points out that a willingness to lie about religious beliefs, if that’s what’s happening, doesn’t prove that a candidate would therefore “lie about anything.” I agree. But CR’s broader argument does highlight an assumption and double standard which seems fairly common and ought to be noted for what it is. Perhaps some voters prefer suspected insincerity (in this matter at least) to suspected credulousness and irrationality. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better, if not good, to acknowledge that is what’s being assumed? I also like the notion of weighing Biblical miracles and trying to decide which is less impossible and thus more rational. Is a resurrected messiah less or more impossible than, say, walking on water? Can an impossible thing be more impossible than another impossible thing? Is that how impossibility works – in degrees? Or is it a matter of counting the number of impossible things a given candidate believes, or claims to believe, and opting for the one with the shorter list? The assumptions being made aren’t entirely obvious.

Hats made of hair. And they look like animals. // The perils of showing off. // Zo explains his politics. 1, 2, 3. (h/t, The Thin Man) // “Evil imperialist hegemon” remarkably popular. // Radical Lesbians versus Libertarian Trannies. // Real-life Transformers. Well, nearly. // A Reggie Perrin moment. // Nifty subwoofers. // Opniyama. // Interact with zombies. (nsfw) // Plants have rights and feelings too. Or not. // Food sculptures. // A century of toothpaste. (h/t, Coudal) // The fearsome Sun. // Saturn V slow-motion launch. // More high-speed photography. // Machines that draw. // Reconstituted Star Trek. // River deep, mountain high. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s The Skatalites.

Space station toilet malfunction. 

“It failed late yesterday,” NASA spokesperson John Ira Petty said of the Russian-built space commode in televised commentary from Mission Control in Houston. “Russian specialists are troubleshooting. The problem appears to be a [gas] separator issue. In the meantime, the crew has been instructed to use the toilet in the Soyuz [TMA-12] spacecraft.” NASA has paid $19 million for a second Russian-built space toilet, which will be delivered alongside other life support, exercise equipment and sleeping quarters during a November shuttle mission. Having two working main toilets is vital for the space station, which is expected to double its crew size to six astronauts next year.

I know, I know. I must resist the urge to post distasteful bathroom items.

In a piece pondering the nature of the political middle ground, Fabian Tassano spots a little sly projection:

According to the Guardian, for example, Cameron recently claimed that “the poor, obese and lazy spent too much time blaming social problems for their own shortcomings.” However, that looks like a bit of tendentious rewriting on the part of the Guardian since, as far as I can make out from other media coverage, what Cameron actually said during his tour of Glasgow in July is that “social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.” The distinction between the quote and its misrepresentation is illuminating, since the people who blame ‘society’ for poverty, disease and so forth are not typically the poor themselves, but the il-liberal elite (e.g. Guardian writers).

The rest.   

What can it possibly mean to ask candidates what they’ve done lately to demonstrate their “public commitment to equity?” Any chance that an acceptable answer would be the following: “In view of what happened in the USSR, China, Cuba, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world under communist rule, I believe that the best thing I can do to promote equity in our society is to help strengthen capitalism and democracy in every way I can and, toward that end, I actively promote Republican candidates”?

Daphne Patai notes yet another effort to ensure faculty display the “correct” political orientation:

The legality of the questions suggested by Sandler and her co-authors seems dubious, though I am not aware of any lawsuit that has challenged them. They are also patently inappropriate. Gauging levels of “commitment” to what are essentially political issues has nothing to do with one’s academic expertise. Rather, it resembles the effort by Schools of Education to gauge potential teachers’ “dispositions,” a practice challenged and publicized by K. C. Johnson. It is also in the same league as the still widely prevalent speech codes and harassment policies that elevate sensitivity and comfort into major academic concerns… Potential faculty are thus being pressured to adopt and embrace – or merely pretend to do so – the requisite “attitude” toward minorities, political activism, and social issues, and to provide evidence that they have acted on these supposed commitments. And, scarier still, these questions by implication are presented as legitimate requirements for employment, though they have nothing to do with either education or intellectual and scholarly accomplishments. And, even worse, the questions are designed to weed out the merely formal assenters from authentic true believers.

The whole thing.

KC Johnson’s encounter with the academic policing of “disposition” is unlikely to reassure: 

[As] the hotly contested campaigns of 2000 and 2004 amply demonstrated, people of good faith disagree on the components of a “just society,” or what constitutes the “negative effects of the dominant culture,” or how best to achieve “world peace… and preservation of the environment.” An intellectually diverse academic culture would ensure that these vague sentiments did not yield one-sided policy prescriptions for students. But the professoriate cannot dismiss its ideological and political imbalance as meaningless while simultaneously implementing initiatives based on a fundamentally partisan agenda. […]

At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been translated into practice through a required class called “Language and Literacy Development in Secondary Education.” According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognize “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.

Again, worth reading in full.

I’ve been told I make too much of these academic issues, as if such things are unimportant or indicative of nothing in particular. But given the number of incidents of this kind gradually swelling the archives, I’m inclined to wonder exactly how egregious and pervasive this phenomenon has to be before concern becomes legitimate. After all, if you want to propagate tendentious ideology and make it seem normative, respectable and self-evidently true, insinuating that ideology into schools and universities would be a pretty good way to do it. “Debate” can then be had on what is most likely an unequal footing, thus arriving at the approved conclusions with a minimum of informed and realistic opposition. If faculty and students are obliged to regurgitate that ideology and perhaps internalise it, while mouthing fuzzwords like “social justice,” all the better. Is it enough to bemoan certain socio-political trends or bias in areas of the media if one doesn’t also address the place where many of these things originate? And are we supposed to believe that the ideologues who push for such measures are going to get tired and desist of their own volition, and then politely roll back the idiocy they’ve been so keen to put in place?

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