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FaRmLaNd on 19 October 2010
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Kasz216 said:
ManusJustus said:
Kasz216 said:

Aren't you the one who thinks most politicians are atheists and only pretend to be christians to maitnain power?

They are.  10% of Americans are atheist, and that percentage is mostly made up of educated doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and so forth.  The same type of people who end up getting elected to political office.  Yet, almost 100% of Congressman are religious, with the only outlier being one represetantive from California.

Since 10% of America is atheist, and they are the most productive and well-behaved members of soceity, you'd better hope that more than 0.2% of Congress is atheist.  :)

So, in otherwords.  You concede the Hitler point.

Well I don't know what Hitler really was. But he did actively call upon God and a divine providence in his speeches and opposed Atheism because it was tied to marxism. Does that mean he was Christian? No. He may well have been, but he might not have been. Unlike now, a far larger percentage of the populace of western countries were Christian back then so the odds were that he was, but I don't think it really matters.

If you're in the dictator business you'd be a fool not to use such a great tool. Or in Stalins case, create things like the personality cult to replace it. Remember that Stalin was trained at a seminary, it probably gave him a lot of inspiration.

What worries me are Atheists that would be hypocrites and use religion in such a way. For example, the current Australian Prime-Minister Julia Gillard is an atheist. However she opposes gay marriage on cultural grounds, as does one of the ministers in her cabinet who is actually a lesbian. The labor party would have lost a lot of votes due to such hypocrisy. What it clearly was, was pandering to the Christian vote.

Which I doubt was actually a useful tactic because the vast majority of Australians support gay marriage and the really hardcore Christian that wouldn't vote for the Labor party because of its support of gay marriage would probably not vote for her party anyway because she's an atheist. It just seemed counter productive and hypocritical.