Thursday, October 30, 2008

Is Elizabeth Dole Godless?

Campbell Brown certainly pulled no punches in ripping into Elizabeth Dole for her attack on opponent Kay Hagan. Dole accused Hagan of not believing in God. Huffington Post has the CNN video (which for some reason I couldn't get to embed - darned Blogger!)

Huffington Post also points out that CNN's Brown wasn't the only journalist to take Dole to task for this. The Asheville Citizen Times called it "misleading." Here's the quote:
The ad is not only a gross misrepresentation of the circumstances surrounding the fundraiser, the implication that Kay Hagan believes “there is no God” flies in the face of her long and close involvement with First Presbyterian Church of Greensboro, where she is an elder and has taught Sunday School.
All this refers to an attack ad Dole's campaign aired on North Carolina television accusing Hagan of being an atheist because a sponsor of one of her fundraisers is one. The whole basis for the attack is because apparently one of 40 sponsors who held a fundraiser for Hagan actually does belong to Godless Americans PAC. But this was a large fundraiser sponsored and attended by many supporters who are not atheists. In fact, John Kerry, a life long Roman Catholic, also attended the event in question, which had nothing to do with religion.

The bigger issue though is that atheists actually have rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They are citizens. They have served in our Armed Forces and sacrificed their lives for our country just as believers of many different faiths have. And many of them have been more honest and upstanding citizens than so-called people of faith, including Elizabeth Dole.

In fact, she perhaps ought to have posted the Ten Commandments in her home and looked at it more often. If she did she would see that she violated the 9th Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

What good is believing in God if you lie and break his commandments, Elizabeth?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very well said!

As a Christian, when I saw this ad, it made me sick to my stomach. How can someone be so self-righteous and tell lies in the name of God? I remember learning about the Salem Witch Trials as a kid & thinking to myself, "Nothing like that would happen these days. People are smarter than that now." Well, it just happened. To falsely accuse someone of not believing in God when that person is indeed a Christian simply to try to get votes and advance their career, makes me stand up as a Christian and say enough is enough. This is not what Christianity is all about. This gives Christianity a bad name.

I will never ever vote for someone who resorts to such low levels to advance their career.

Anonymous said...

And as a christian, will you vote for an atheist if they share your views (except for the God thing)?

As an atheist, I am sure I have never had that opportunity. Forget your christian values for a minute and use your own sense of ethics. Is that fair?

Karen Duncan said...

Actually Brian, I suspect you've voted for a number of atheists and so have I. Bill Maher once made the point on a television show that not all the professed believers really are.

Ronald Reagan's smarter son (and also his favorite), Ron, was once asked if he would follow his father's foot steps and run for office. He said he would probably not get elected because he was an atheist. That's true.

But I have often wondered how many closet atheists are really in Congress and in state houses.

I think there are universal human values that transcend sectarian faith traditions. No Hindu ever taught his children that it's ok to steal. No Muslim told his children to lie. No Buddhist tells his offspring to harm another. Christians are not taught to murder or be cruel. Most people of faith put high value on love, kindness and compassion. And so do atheists.

On the other hand, no faith tradition has a monopoly on evil either. That's the dark side of human nature. Christians have killed in the name of their God and so have Muslims and Hindus. Some people claim that the only faith that hasn't required holy war is the Buddhist religion. True, but they've gone to war and had fistfights among monks (I read Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine and they do a very fair job of reporting the quirks in their religion).

In the secular sphere - the civic square - I vote and judge people by their values. By that I mean honesty, integrity, compassion. None of those values are exclusive to people of faith. They are human values and human traits.