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| dark_gh0st_b0y said: The same athiest defnition of politeness, well-reasoning and open-mindness that brings people like Trump and Vance to power. Enjoy! |
Pardon me, I just had to single out this one sentence since it made so little sense to me. Do you think that atheist mindsets and sensibilities are what lead to the Trump/Vance victory?
Trump is immensely popular among religious voters; and the more religious, the more likely you are to vote for him. Evangelicals are by far the strongest group in the Trump camp, with Catholics as second.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/09/white-protestants-and-catholics-support-trump-but-voters-in-other-us-religious-groups-prefer-harris/
This graph seems to suggest the direct opposite of your claim - Trump was and is largely driven by religious majority vote. He's famously unpopular among progressives and atheist/agnostic groups, even across cultural and ethnic boundaries and intersections. His style of authoritarian actions, paired with grandiose speeches, based on the belief that one possess the greatest minds, morals, rights, and sentiment, falls directly into the core tenets of most major religious doctrine and practice of faith.
https://apnews.com/article/white-evangelical-voters-support-donald-trump-president-dbfd2b4fe5b2ea27968876f19ee20c84
There are even several instances of Trump allowing religious zealot groups or individuals to pray over him, in person, and more than one organization of that ilk has painted him as a Jesus-figure of sorts in politics. There's even popular merchandise tied to this image. The strong connections between religion, Christianity in particular, and Trump's success, are incredibly well-known and well-established at this point. To attribute his win and continued influence to atheism is not a leap of logic; it's a rocket-ship well on its way out to unknown space.
If the comment refers to atheism somehow being behind progressive notions that have driven the average Joe away from such ideas and into a more conservative lean, even that's a really long stretch. Atheism, as being a personal, specific lack of belief in supernatural or deity-like entities and forces, is not the primus motor in any major social movement. It's not something that mobilizes, gathers large masses to stages to hear speeches out on streets or near the known monuments of any nation. Nor is it the motivation behind hostile, and even deadly actions taken against opposition (imagined or otherwise). Some of the brilliant minds of our time, who happen to occupy various spaces within natural or theoretical sciences, and are also atheists, did not first decide not to believe in God and then subsequently choose their majors as a result of this. Most who achieve success within these disciplines simply, slowly, come to the realization that their work and insights are incompatible with any sort of creation myth, supernaturally guiding entities, or divine aspect of coherence and reality.
Someone mentioned Pol Pot in one comment, framing his slaughter of religious practitioners as some sort of proof of an atheist agenda. Well, he also butchered educators and scholars with equal fervor, seeing knowledge and education as enemies of his grand scheme, so that falls flat as a part of "science vs. faith" scenario where stoic defenders or rationality are dangerous to believers.
I had a discussion with two colleagues a few days back, both of whom are believers (Muslim), and they both argued that the Theory of Evolution was not only false, but that it was created entirely out of spite to "disprove God". Upon pressing the issue, I quickly realized that neither of them understood Evolution at all, to the point where they used arguments like "why haven't humans evolved gills when living near water" and "it's just a theory". I left the conversation citing that a failure to understand a scientific discipline is not in itself proof against its validity. To underline the point, I referred to my own complete ignorance on astrophysics not being grounds for dismissing the discipline. Such arguments ultimately fall flat though, in the face of a mind who knows the one truth, and whose imam, priest, rabbi, or pujari, as well as parents (not seldom wielding a belt or a slipper) worked them since early childhood.
From where I sit, Trump/Vance rode a wave of Biden failures, coupled with strong appeals to the religious core of the American people, and it paid off. One could argue which had more impact at the end of the day, but there's simply no scenario where one can attribute Trump's rise to power to atheism as a concept.
