Meeting on politician's religious believes

We had our meeting last night on how a politician's religion may affect his ability to represent his constituents.

I introduced the topic and laid out the conflict of moral values between the religious and the atheists. One believes moral values are from god while the other does not.  The difference in moral values may put the politician in conflict with his constituents.

Mano and Shula both said that politicians should be chosen based on competency and they should be able to compartmentalize their personal lives from their professional lives.  They can live by the moral code they believe in but in their profession as a politician, they need to be able to accommodate the diverse view of their constituents.

They further consider religious believes as a form of bias, no different than ethnic origin or skin colour. 

Political parties go after the ethnic votes, and they are now smart enough to put forward political candidates in ethnic ridings that are not only representative of the ethnic mix there but also a capable person as well.

Voters tend to vote for candidates with similar ethnic background to themselves thinking that there is a better understanding of their issues and perspectives and that there is a better chance that their voice would be heard if needed.

In representative democracies systems like Canada, the political parties need enough elected seats to form the government.  Therefore, it is crucial to them to get enough members elected and if ethnic, religious, or other common causes will appeal to the electorate in that riding,  that is the candidate the party will put forward.

Once elected,  it is the politicians chosen to be in the ruling cabinet that really runs the government. The rest of the elected members follow to support the cabinet.

There was then a lively discussion as to whether a "good" and honest person can really compartmentalize the way he handle the different parts of his life.  Is this not what we consider as "two faced"?

The realist side said politicians have to make tough choices and we need a person that can compromise and make the best decision under the circumstances.  There is never the perfect answer and secrets is part of running a government.

The other side have trouble trusting a representative that is ready to change any time without fully explaining their rationale.

To Jerry's view that a person cannot change their character, Rafi mentioned the example of how we take one perspective as a driver, how the pedestrians seems to walk where ever they please. As soon as we park our cars and walk out the parking lot, we start to think that drivers are reckless in not watching where the pedestrians are going.  We change without even knowing that we have changed.

The significant thing for me from the discussion is that no one objected to the religious moral code being referred to as "a bias" equivalent to former attitudes towards skin colour, gender, and ethnic origin.  It is likely that the discussion group is not representative of our society in general, but we have certainly gone a long way towards a secular society when the religious can see the foundation of their value system as a possible bias to be put aside to accommodate other value systems.

A big part of this is we no longer want to be told what we should do, whether it is our government or religious authority and we want to figure out for ourselves.  

As to those of you who wonder whether we ever discuss sex in order to complete the triple taboo topics of sex, politics, and religion so avoided in "polite" social circles, we did refer to Bill Clinton's issue with his private sex life. Shula thought that it was the US public that had the problem of obsessing over scandals and the president's private matter has nothing to do with his competence and suitability as president.

The ending time for the discussion came all too quickly and I never got to raise the question of "if religion is considered a bias that a politician should set aside, is his political believes also a bias he should set aside?"

Topic for another meeting.

2/27/2013 Should a politician's religious belief affect his electability?

Next Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we are discussing whether our political representatives' religious believes matter to their electorate.

The famous concern for John Kennedy being Catholic while he was running for president was somewhat smoothed by his promise to keep his religious believes separate from his approach to the affairs of the nation, that the Pope will have no influence in his political decisions.

Was that a good enough argument for the current more polarized views of the fundamentalist versus the atheist communities?

When the avid atheist Richard Dawkins advocated that most people are atheists in that they do not believe in Thor, Poseidon, and a whole number of other gods and that he has just gone one god further to believe there is no god,  he said he had hate email from people who believed in Thor and Poseidon.

What if a politician professes his belief in Poseidon ruling the seas and pushes for rituals to ensure safety of mariners instead of spending on coast guards?  Is he exercising his freedom of religion and acting according to what he believe is right for his community?

If he does not go that far, have the coast guard because he realizes that most citizens do not share his belief, but still hold personal believes that the rituals to Poseidon would be a good thing, should we have him represent us? How will we know whether his next decision may be more biased towards his belief in Poseidon?

While Mitt Romney was running for the president of the United States, everyone knows that he is a Mormon but he seldom made reference to that but instead, referred to god in the general sense.  Shouldn't he be put under the same or more pressure than John Kennedy since most people consider Mormonism as more on the fringe than Catholicism?

Most if not all religion centers around behaving in this life in order to have a better after life while atheists believe in making the most of the life we have now as there is no life to go to after our death.

These two approaches to living is so fundamentally opposed that it is hard to find common ground among the two.
 
Can the religious trust an atheist politician who do not believe that there is an almighty that knows all and therefore he better behave even if no other human knows what he is doing?

Can the atheist trust a religious politician that devalue this life for a non-existent future life and go by cryptic holy books interpreted by foreign religious leaders?

Maybe we should be forming states along our religious believes so that like minded beings can exist comfortably among themselves and have the political leaders that reflect their values?

Is that just going to build distrust and hatred among nations instead of making the gradual move towards world peace?

Is freedom to have one's own religious believes just a convenient way of saying that it is too bloodied to "settle" religious differences and we should "agree to disagree"?

Should someone who openly believes in witchcraft have a serious chance to be our political representative?  If not, why not?  How is witchcraft different than any of the other believes?