I'm glad you brought that up, since I agree. When you hire anyone for a job, you discriminate... that is assign values to a person's qualities and select them based on those values. For example, a job may discriminate on intelligence, knowledge, strength, talent, etc, relative to a particular function. That's totally valid.

However, what makes someone a "bigot" though, is when they are filtering based on irrelevant qualities for a particular function, such as age, sex, weight, eye color, race, religion, beliefs, etc, in their valuations of other humans. (Unless in rare occasion these factors are relevant, like in an acting role in a movie).

I understand if you don't like the term "discriminate" since it's admittedly ambiguous. "Bigot" I think is clearer in meaning, and yes, you and McCain are both religious bigots that continue to stand by your bigoted statements.

No. I'm not buying bigot either. Christians and atheists tend to have differing sets of value and principles and that will result in differing world views and philosophy. When you vote, you are basically going through the same process as when you hire someone.

Feel free to call McCain and asshole, make fun of what he said, tell us how much better an atheist would be as president - just don't tell us you're the victim of bigotry.

I'm a religious bigot? What religion do I belong to? And who is the victim of this bigotry?

You hire people based on their religion???

I'm not a victim ... you're just a bigot. I actually feel sorry for you.

Typical liberal response. Textbook. When you can't argue based on fact and reason, start calling names.

When I look at someone who wants to be my president, I look at the whole package. Most thoughtful people do too. McCain expects certain qualities in a religious person, particularly a Christian. So he assigns value to candidates that are Christian. That's not bigotry.

I'm sure you do the same thing in reverse. I would guess you'd expect an atheist to be more rational or whatever, so you'd apply a higher value to atheism.

I think that's what you're doing. I've presented plenty of reasons to back up my claims.

So, would you apply the same reasoning hiring someone for the position of CEO of a company? After all, all those same great mental qualities that being a Christian confers to the believer would also make a better business leader for Nike no? A business could sure benefit from that same wide reaching vision that belonging to a particular religion brings.

And likewise, when you hire anyone say a plumber or doctor, add a few points if they agree with you politically and religiously. Hell, it doesn't matter if they can actually cut with a knife, as long as they love Jesus. After all, whatever he screws up, Jesus will fix it no?

What's funny is, you can see that hiring a politician is just like hiring someone for any job, yet oddly you're handling religious discrimination differently ... .

Ten years ago I would have. I have my faults too of course... but does that mean you'll be happy to stoop to the lowest level of standards you can find in other people? Now I try to look purely at the relevant qualifications.

What you are making is known as a tu quoque arguement, and is invalid. For being the "Voice of Reason," you sure commit a lot of popular logical fallacies.

You don't have to agree with his reasoning. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean its bigotry.

As far as hiring someone - me personally, I am pretty sure it is against the law to ask them about religious affiliation. Depending on the position, I don't know if I'd ever take it into account. If I already knew something about their religious beliefs, I might take it into account.

If I were hiring someone to be a pharmacist, I wouldn't hire a fundamentalist Christian because they might refuse to sell some of my products.

If I were hiring a taxi cab driver, I wouldn't hire a devout muslim because they don't like picking up drunks and blind people with dogs.

Again, it all depends on a lot of things.

My point is there is nothing wrong, in terms of bigotry, with using someone's religious beliefs or anything else that affects their behavior to estimate qualities. I wouldn't expect a rabid atheist to like Mitt Romney's beliefs or some of the decisions he might make based on his convictions. That's not bigotry.

Sorry, i am not so naive that you can convince me that only few Christians only vote for Christian candidates just because they happen to agree with the points of view. I remember seeing a poll on how many people would not vote on someone who does not believe in a god, and the numbers where more then 10%.

Agree that they have the right to vote that way. And can not see this as victimisation either. It is just an awfully stupid move to not even consider other viewpoints(And their ability pursue them.), especially considering that many of the smarter people are not religious.

I dont know if there is discrimination of atheists in the US. But at least it is certainly not asked directly when applying for jobs and such. Question is, how about indirectly, and how about during work.(How do people respond to atheism.)

With a yawn usually.

I didn't know you were an atheist.

Sorry if I'm chiming in late on this thread, possibly at the risk of not getting the gist of some of the later posts.

It's perfectly reasonable to not hire someone who's religious beliefs or other convictions get in the way of performing the job. However, discrimination would be to judge based primarily on the religious affiliation, not the behavioral limitations. It's reasonable to ask, "being a <whatever>, would this stop you from doing <whatever>"? If you don't ask the second part of the question, and just assume something, you're being biased. I hope I'm just bludgeoning the obvious.

I hadn't actually noticed that Mitt Romney has convictions, any more than Hillary does. His "belief system" seems to involve saying whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. Did I miss something?

Interesting points...

Personally I don't have any problems with asking questions like "Do you have any objection to selling contraceptives?" ... which can be answered yes/no. It doesn't really matter to me what the reasoning behind the answer is. A person might hold a belief for any number of reasons, some rational, some not. (for example someone might refuse to sell contraceptives because they believe they are all poisoned.) I think hiring and firing should be based on a blanket policy about actions, not beliefs. Otherwise, if you target a demographic, it probably opens a person up to a lawsuit (and rightly so). People are individuals and should be treated like individuals.

If I had my druthers, the same higher(!) standards that are in effect when a person is hired for McDonalds should also be legally enforced for positions of higher office. IMO it should be equally illegal to ask any public-servant candidate about their religious affiliation ...

In any case, this thread is about McCain talking about his preferences for a president right?

I don't think you can point to any substantial trends where atheists are being turned down for jobs for religious reasons.

In public office, yes, near 100% discrimination. Other lower jobs, oddly, have a higher set of hiring standards, so the trend doesn't emerge at McDonalds. Seems a bit screwy that a higher office would have lower hiring standards.

It's interesting though, when doing a substitution on the concepts "white" and "christian" you remarked that McCain sounded "overtly racist." Then when I switch the concepts back, you say these irrelevant qualities are merely "preferences."

People are born a particular race, they have no choice what their race is, the their race has no impact on their decisions and actions.

Religion is chosen. Someone might be born into it, but they have to choose to stay with it. Religion does impact their decisions and actions.

"Discrimination" on the basis of race and religion are two entirely different things.

I want you to tell us exactly (copy and paste) what McCain actually did say that you thought was bigoted.

But there is a huge difference here. People are not held accountable for their vote or the reasons they cast them. If a majority of people refuse to vote for Obama because he's black, then nothing will be done. We'll cringe, but we can't do anything. No more than we can do anything about people refusing to vote for Clinton because she's a woman, or refusing to vote for Romney because he's a turd. It's just the way it is. And I wouldn't change it. I sure as hell don't want the Discrimination Police running around checking up on my vote to make sure that I didn't vote unfairly.

Ahh, I'm glad you brought that up.

Asking someone to conform their mode of thinking to a socially accepted thought process is no less creepy and repugnant, than asking a black person to bleach their skin. Micheal Jackson turned himself into a white woman after all. Why shouldn't an atheist conform their thoughts to theism to enjoy all the same privileges of a free society?

You only choose your beliefs to the degree that you ate shitting yourself. These tend to be dictated by the degree of available evidence. I don't know, can you believe in Santa?

No thanks, you already pointed out the satire sounded "overtly racist." I think you're just pretending to be a meat-head now, so that I end up answering an endless series of questions.

I don't know what this means. Clearly there's a typo, but I can't figure out what it should have been.

Whoops! Should be:

You only choose your beliefs to the degree you *are* shitting yourself.

Looks like the only way you can delude yourself into some imagined sense of winning this debate is by putting words in my mouth - building strawmen.

No one has been asked to conform to anything. Maintaining your beliefs is still the choice of those beliefs. You are free to believe anything you want, you just don't get to demand anyone likes you for it.