What a minute.

What about those "religious" folk who are affiliated with some kind of belief because of:

* an indoctrinating upbringing
* a family tradition
* a naive faith they've never tested
* lack of alternatives being presented
* a vague fear of the unknown

That's assuming some of the claimants aren't just being good politicians (er... "good" meaning well-versed in the ancient tradition) wanting to win over the "at least he has some religion" crowd along with the "as long as he doesn't try to push it on me" camp.

And claiming a faint link to religion isn't necessarily hypocrisy.

It could be a different, perhaps less complex understanding of what religion means to each member of one's audience.

How many people are Catholic only when it comes time to be offended? Or when sharing horror stories of nuns and rulers? Or when you have to declare a faith to go on your dogtags, should a man be buried after fighting men more devoted to their religion than you'd ever considered for himself?

How many people live a principled lifestyle without signing up for the full dogma package?

You can be a person (politican or otherwise) and be exploring what religion means to you. That is often the time you should least likely commit openly to a set of values... when you aren't certain yet.

The closest thing to hypocrisy in this situation is the judgement of those who are fully versed in and fully committed to following a Christ like pattern for their lives, wagging the finger at a somehow "worse offender" on the sin score chart.

(Also, I did the jump-the-gun thing without reading the article... nor did I clean up the pronouns in the next to the last paragraph.)

I could barely get past his first premise:

Here is my premise: all men are religious, and all worldviews are religious worldviews.

He goes on to back up this premise with only Bible verses. Apparently he believes everyone based on his religious beliefs.

He goes on to say,

I assume that most religions teach something about the meaning of life and all that. Wellsir, that's worldview: the way you look at things, the way you think about things.

My worldview, and many others', do not define any meaning of life. Indeed, some worldviews, fatalists for instance, claim that there is no meaning to life at all.

Claiming a religion because of some "faint link" isn't hypocrisy. Claiming religion to win friends and influence people is.

A person who is talking about their religion likely has made their decision about one so I don't think he's talking about "seekers". But maybe he is since he says all men are religious. That requires a fairly loose definition.

And Sid, his backing up his beliefs with the Bible actually makes a fair amount of sense given what he's saying. But I hear you. And I think he'd argue that a belief that life has no meaning is a belief about life's meaning. You'd expect someone to act according to that belief (or lack thereof). You do what you do because of what you believe about the universe and your place in it don't you?

You'd expect someone to act according to that belief (or lack thereof).

Sure, but that doesn't make one religious. Allow me to take that idea to the extreme. A rock has a complete lack of beliefs. It is also acting in complete accordance with that complete lack. Thus the rock is behaving religiously, very religiously, in fact.

Clearly, acting based on a lack of beliefs doesn't make one religious. Similarly, lacking a belief that life has meaning doesn't make one religious even if that person acts in accordance with that lack.

In my case, I admit that I simply don't know if life has meaning. I don't know if I have any meaningful 'place' in the universe. Do you think Phillips would say that acting in accordance to one's ignorance is religious as well? Or would I simply be 'a fool' since I didn't think deeply enough about it?

I suppose what would be necessary is a clear definition of what Phillips means by 'religious'.

Was he just referring to Christian politicians in that piece? Is that why the Bible verses are relevant? I missed that if he did. He really though me off with the 'everyone is religious' statement.

Ahem. He really threw me off with the 'everyone is religious' statement.

My point in this (Dan's statement aside) is that anyone who says "I'm religious bt I won't let that affect my decisions/policy." is not one to be trusted completely. At best they're simply shallow. At worst they're pandering or outright lying.

And if you can't typo here you can't typo anywear.

This argument is circular - "You believe in nothing, therefore you are religious in your belief in nothing." - it's insane and ill-defined.

Given that "religious" is being defined as adhering to a belief in a higher being, a calling to a particular direction in life and/or the need to satisfy some construct of your own faith by way of action -- then the idea that a politician can claim a following to a particular religious faith but that faith does not indeed affect his or her actions or decisions is ludicrous.

The given definition of "being religious" means that your life and actions are affected by your religion. These are not mutually exclusive properties. If you claim religion, your actions, all of them, are predicated on that religion. If you denounce that and assert your actions apart from your chosen religion, you are being hypocritical and are therefore falsifying your religious principles.

However illogical, to attack somebody as being hypocritical and say they aren't following their own religious principles, using their actions as evidence of such hypocrisy is hypocritical in its own right.

Okay, Scott, I'll reread the post ignoring Phillip's unfortunate comment...

I see the point. My guess is that most politicians who make similar statements is a mixture of all three: a bit of a liar, a bit of a hypocrite, and a bit of a fool. But aren't we all?

Just to play Dan's Advocate, we speak all the time of doing something "religiously". That's not to say that everyone is religious, but I'd classify the rabid atheism of Hitchens, et al as a religion of sorts. There are certainly areligious people. I think what Dan's talking about is idolatry and as it is popularly defined in religious circles we all have idols that we "worship". For some folks it's sports, for others it's work. I think of the little Roman household gods and in our current culture we have much the same thing going on. After all Pat, your home theater strikes me as a bit of a shrine to entertainment. Not accusing, just observing. And I think that our current pantheon of household Gods definetly influence how people lead their lives and what decisions they make. For most Americans it's the god of security, be it financial or physical.

But that is basically saying that whatever anyone spends their time/money on is their idol, and they are idoliters. I suppose if you define an idol as "that which one spends a lot of time and/or money on", then everyone is worshiping something and is religious.

I would claim that that definition is too broad. It suggest that all it takes to worship something or someone is to spend money on it and time around it. That seems to drain worship of any 'spiritual meaning'; that aspect of religion that religionists claim makes their system of thought special.

So to your defense of Dan, I would say that he can't have it both ways, so to speak. Either his system of belief is special somehow because it has some elusive 'spiritual' quality, or everyone is religious since religion doesn't require that 'spiritual' quality.

The given definition of "being religious" means that your life and actions are affected by your religion. These are not mutually exclusive properties. If you claim religion, your actions, all of them, are predicated on that religion. If you denounce that and assert your actions apart from your chosen religion, you are being hypocritical and are therefore falsifying your religious principles.

The world is not black and white. It is incredibly narrow-minded to think that "all" can ever apply to something as broad as religion.

For example: I know my share of Bible-believing Christians who are ready to defend their faith and who honestly MEAN what they claim to mean. These same people make un-Christlike decisions, sometimes very casually.

So when these people fail to report extra income on their taxes, get drunk, watch films or TV with "sinful" themes, go to strip clubs (or google the online equivalent), are they hyopcrites?

When confronted (often times after a few minutes of blubbering and getting defensive), they mention that they are only human, and prone to slip up because they are only striving to be like Christ, they are not there yet.

Assuming that politicians (or anyone else) are discussing their own Christian background, I think starting with this humble kind of approach from the beginning is being more honest. Then it's easier to take the "I'm religious, but I slipped up and visited a hooker 2 years ago" in this light.

Your religion is in theory the guide you live by. But to claim it does affect everything you do becasue it's supposed to is not realistic. Religion is black and white, but the real world will always be gray.

On a separate note, how unfortunate are we that the major religions affecting our current climate (political or social) are all of the opinion that their way is the only true way?

That seems to drain worship of any 'spiritual meaning'; that aspect of religion that religionists claim makes their system of thought special.

Agreed.

I'd go on to say that religion is a belief system that's been identified as such by the practitioner.

How many people do you know who say "I am not religious, but I think of myself as a spiritual person"?

In a sense, that tells me they are open to the deeper mysteries of life.

But there are people out there who seem utterly happy to drag themselves through a work week in anticipation of beer and Sports Center, only to repeat it again a week later. I don't think this is their religion or a spiritual outlet.

I think they belong to one of two groups: (A) those who are too dim or too uneducated to have opened their eyes to such things, or (B) those who have decided there's nothing more out there and are just looking to enjoy what they can until they kick the bucket.

There is an abscence of deeper thought there... and that to me is a commitment that religion or spiritual thinking would have required.

(Of course, I've wandered away from how this affects politicians now.)

Well I don't think that either Dan or I would argue that our system of belief is special because it's somehow more "spiritual". It's special for more reasons than, but that's another kettle o' fish. Having said that, I agree that the definition is much too broad.

And Dave, your religion may not affect every nook and cranny of your life, but what most of these politicians are talking about is pretty major stuff.

Regarding your last question, most religions (and for that matter the "New Atheist" movement) believe that they have some sort lock on truth. So it's not that strange. Unfortunate that we can't work together in the here and now though.