this battle lot. but i do think that as a voter, if i know that the person i m contemplating voting for, however good his beliefs on taxation and so on may be, if i know that he privately believes that a 19th century man called yoe self smith dug up some golden tablets, read them with the aid of a stone in a top hat and translated them into not 19th century english, but 16th century english. that man was a fraud and a chalten. that is a man that i m suspicious of voting for. i know those beliefs are private, but they are crazy beliefs. why should i vote for a man, however sensible his public beliefs may be, if his private beliefs are ridiculous and mad? . i think there s enough to question people about in terms of the relationship between their religious beliefs and
there some percentage of the population that simply because of their faith tradition or the figures in authority that they trust as opposed to the figures in authority that you or i or some of the viewers may trust, are just not going to accept this. is this sort of the a battle that will never be won in your mind? ever since the 1980s, a gallup polls have shown that more than 40% of the american people believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. that s an astonishing error. these people have the vote. these people are ignorant of science. and they are voting in politicians who are also ignorant of science. to yield power. lots of people who are ignorant about a lot of things have the vote. that s why we have representative democracy, rather than having plebiscites like they do in some areas of switzerland. but when you you have politicians who are apparently swaying to the wind of public opinion and who are legislating for truly ludicrous
hold to. and then of course there s a religious component to a lot of the disbelief as well. rick santorum is talking about climate scientists in the philadelph philadelphia inquirer op-ed. said that reassures us that global warming warming science is still settled. there s nothing to see here, move along. bob, how do you deal with the argument about skepticism that uses the open-mindedness in a liberal tradition, in a sort of jiu-jitsu move against itself. it s a challenge because skepticism is a good thing. and you should always up to a point question even what seems to be scientific consensus. in the case of evolution, i think we ve gone well past the point where you can reebly question the fundamental premise. climate science is tricky. because the truth is most of us haven t had the time to delve into the details. i don t think, i don t think those issues are comparable in
say yeah, basically, more or less. but if someone said i want you to list all the ways you identify yourself. i would get through pages and pages wildfire i got to that as an identity. i think of so many other things, of so much more core to who i am. why is it important to you as a sort of identity badge and how plausible is it that that can be extended outwards? i think in a per convict world what you said is correct. because what is atheism? a nonbelief. you don t list all the things you don t believe in when you are identifying yourself. yeah, like whoa, here s what i m not. the progressives go through this, too. you know a lot of times we aren t active. progressives or athiests do tend to be apathetic. because we tend to go, what, we re right, why do i have to go outside my breaking bad zone.
segregation was a live political debate. now it s pretty much dead. it s shifted to should there be similar penalties for different kinds of cocaine. it shows how far the racial debate has changed. sure, at the same time it s the more secular countries that first of all, often have more extreme income inequality to deal with with the safety net. and secondly, it s naturally going to be the role of government in a more secular society. in other words, there are religious societies where those services tend to get taken care of within the relidgen. that s not true if you look at the most religious community in america, african-american, church does a lot. but they do not have in any way the resources to do what a public safety net does. and also you mentioned this at the top of the segment. that religious liberals are making religious arguments against the ryan budget. certainly if you read the story