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Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 191

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 (Edited)

A rather interesting development in the “Russian” narrative at a crucial time for some. This is the same company the FBI agreed to accept as a 3rd party analysis of “russian hacked” DNC servers which still have not been turned over to the FBI directly to examine. It is also this analysis that was used by the Democrats to claim “russian” interference in the election by hacking their servers. A bit of a quandary I’d say.

http://www.voanews.com/a/crowdstrike-comey-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-trump/3776067.html

WASHINGTON —

An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.

The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.

But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened.

A CrowdStrike spokesperson told VOA that it stands by its findings, which, they say, "have been confirmed by others in the cybersecurity community.”

The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering.

Alperovitch has said that variants of the same software were used in both hacks.

http://www.voanews.com/a/cyber-firm-rewrites-part-disputed-russian-hacking-report/3781411.html

WASHINGTON —

U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year’s American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.

In December, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russian separatists.

VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.

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Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFqNSkr9mr4

VERY good Trey Gowdy Interview with CNN reporter. Now I have little use for CNN as a source but this is an interview with a member of the Investigation Committee. Trey Gowdy is a boss as far as I’m concerned and he is well spoken and respected by many. He does not mince words.

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 (Edited)

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49902/the-russian-emigre-leading-the-fight-to-protect-america/

Oddly, this Dimiti Alperovitch, is apparently a Russian expatriate (fixed). He was also Shawn Henry, a tall, bald fifty-four-year-old former executive assistant director at the FBI and the chief threat officer at the antivirus software firm McAfee in Atlanta in 2011.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/shawn-henry-named-executive-assistant-director-of-the-criminal-cyber-response-and-services-branch

He retired from the FBI in 2012. His career promotion happened in 2010 during the Obama administration.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/shawn-henry/

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Time
 (Edited)

Nitpick: the word is expatriate. It shares a root with “patriot” but there’s no relationship meaning-wise. You can be a patriot expatriate, not a problem.

Yeah, all the Russia-related scandals make it sound like all Russians are money-laundering hacker assassins (in much the same way the “Islamic State” makes Muslims seem like antidemocratic misogynists) … if you don’t actually know any, you can’t easily dispel the stereotypes. I’m sure the Russian community has a “please don’t let it be a Russian” reaction to the news sometimes, so it’s good to hear a positive story about Russian good guys now and then.

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

Re: the rest. Wikileaks and Sputnik (unintentionally) released the only publicly-available evidence tying Russia to the election that I know of. By the time the array of experts finally voiced their opinion–very late in the game–everyone already knew. If CrowdStrike never came forward with whatever secret evidence they thought they had to add to the pile, nothing would have changed. Same with the 17 intelligence agencies for that matter, although I was pleased to see they weren’t napping.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Time
 (Edited)

Of course, not all Russians are rotten apples. All those people protesting government corruption there recently, (probably at great risk to themselves) is proof.
There’s just decades of nefarious activities by the Russian government to deal with. They’ve been pulling sneaky stuff since the end of WWII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Where were you in '77?

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CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

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 (Edited)

CatBus said:
Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of >us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing >than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in >the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re >inherently superior to everyone else.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when >Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” >hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: >“That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of >debating if atheists can actually be Americans.

I’m agnostic so this made me giggle a bit. Sorry about the arrows in the quote, I don’t know why it did that.

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DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]

Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]

And here’s Trump:

Religion

The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]

After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]

Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]

Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]

Now do I think that Obama is probably more on the agnostic side of the coin? Yes. But he definitively states that he is a Christian, and has explicitly said ‘I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.’ Although Obama is good at weaseling his way around a question and exaggerating when necessary, I do not doubt that he values the truth and wouldn’t simply lie.

Trump, on the other hand, lies without a second thought, yet even when he could lie to protect his political prospects he says that ‘he has not asked God for forgiveness’. It’s not exactly possible to be a Christian in that situation.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

Author
Time

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]

Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]

And here’s Trump:

Religion

The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]

After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]

Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]

Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]

yet even when he could lie to protect his political prospects he says that ‘he has not asked God for forgiveness’. It’s not exactly possible to be a Christian in that situation.

Why not?

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Jeebus said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]

Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]

And here’s Trump:

Religion

The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]

After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]

Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]

Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]

yet even when he could lie to protect his political prospects he says that ‘he has not asked God for forgiveness’. It’s not exactly possible to be a Christian in that situation.

Why not?

According to Christian dogma, a person is inherently sinful, deserving eternal damnation. In this dogma, accepting the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ is the only way to avoid this punishment. To become a Christian, a person must acknowledge that they are sinful, and accept that Jesus is the only way to absolve themselves of this sin. A person cannot ‘make things right’ as Trump says, because sin is unavoidable and only Jesus led a sinless life. In essence, a person becomes a Christian when they ask God for forgiveness for their sins. The person who hasn’t done that cannot call themselves a Christian, and I say this as someone who was confirmed in the Presbyterian Church (Trump’s church) as a teenager.

I am now quite non-religious (though not atheistic or agnostic, long story), but I know rather more than I’d care to know about this religion.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

Author
Time

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Obama is a Muslim.

Author
Time

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]

Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]

And here’s Trump:

Religion

The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]

After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]

Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]

Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]

Now do I think that Obama is probably more on the agnostic side of the coin? Yes. But he definitively states that he is a Christian, and has explicitly said ‘I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.’ Although Obama is good at weaseling his way around a question and exaggerating when necessary, I do not doubt that he values the truth and wouldn’t simply lie.

Obviously Obama seems like He who is without sin himself next to Trump. There’s no doubt he values the truth. But I also don’t doubt the very good chance he’s lying about this I wouldn’t consider it weaseling either (this isn’t a lie he’s just made up in interviews, it’s a planned and consistent one). And I don’t blame him. If he didn’t self identify as a Christian (and make it sound like he really meant it), he would never have been president. I don’t think it’d be very hard for him to pretend (I’ve done it myself with certain members of my family), not all atheists are militant about their beliefs. I think he probably just tries to appreciate the good will towards man and community aspect, and doesn’t think too much about the whole God part.

Could I be wrong? Sure. But I’m probably not.

Author
Time

TV’s Frink said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Obama is a Muslim.

YOU WERE GOING TO MAKE THIS FORUM GREAT AGAIN!
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DESTROY THE TROLLS, NOT JOIN THEM!

But yes, I hear that Trump has people in Hawaii looking into the ‘Muslim’ thing. Or was that the Birther thing? Ah, whatever.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

Author
Time

DominicCobb said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]

Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]

And here’s Trump:

Religion

The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]

After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]

Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]

Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]

Now do I think that Obama is probably more on the agnostic side of the coin? Yes. But he definitively states that he is a Christian, and has explicitly said ‘I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.’ Although Obama is good at weaseling his way around a question and exaggerating when necessary, I do not doubt that he values the truth and wouldn’t simply lie.

Obviously Obama seems like He who is without sin himself next to Trump. There’s no doubt he values the truth. But I also don’t doubt the very good chance he’s lying about this I wouldn’t consider it weaseling either (this isn’t a lie he’s just made up in interviews, it’s a planned and consistent one). And I don’t blame him. If he didn’t self identify as a Christian (and make it sound like he really meant it), he would never have been president. I don’t think it’d be very hard for him to pretend (I’ve done it myself with certain members of my family), not all atheists are militant about their beliefs. I think he probably just tries to appreciate the good will towards man and community aspect, and doesn’t think too much about the whole God part.

Could I be wrong? Sure. But I’m probably not.

Like I said, he’s probably more agnostic than he’d ever admit. It’s terrible that in the US, you have to lie about your religion if you’re anything other than Christian or a branch of it. But Trump is the exception, isn’t he? Perhaps if the ‘horrible because he’s an atheist’ thing doesn’t stick, future presidents will have an easier time of it.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

CatBus said:

On a related note, this has been bumping around in my mind for a while now, and I just don’t like it. Trump is our first atheist President. Yeah, I know, he passes for Presbyterian–a lot of us have to pass for something for various reasons, and most of us are way more convincing than he is. But leaving that aside for a moment, what “bad reputation” do atheists have in the larger culture? Let’s see: amoral, untrustworthy sociopaths who think they’re inherently superior to everyone else. Uh-oh. Oh yeah, and at least during the Cold War they were also Russian agents. Igh.

So I’m really, really hoping, in spite of his ongoing collapse in popular support, that when Trump eventually slouches off stage left, that whatever mysterious hypnotic “I’m one of you” hold he has on white Christians remains firmly in place. Because otherwise they’ll say: “That’s what happens when you put an atheist in charge,” and we’re back to the days of debating if atheists can actually be Americans. That’s all assuming that the evangelical support isn’t due to some speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory, but I’ve been assured by people who actually travel in evangelical circles that this is not the case. And I checked with multiple people, because I didn’t believe their assurances the first few times 😉

I’m with you there, except you’re forgetting Obama.

Wikipedia (yes, I know, thank you) says this:

Obama is a Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.[77] He wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he “was not raised in a religious household”. He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He described his father as a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.”[78]

In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: “I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”[79] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying “I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t – frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.”[80][81]

Obama met Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in October 1987, and became a member of Trinity in 1992.[82] He resigned from Trinity in May 2008 during his first presidential campaign after some of Wright’s statements were criticized.[83] The Obama family has attended several Protestant churches since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, but are not habitual church-goers.[84][85][86]

And here’s Trump:

Religion

The Trump family were originally Lutherans in Germany,[52] and his mother’s upbringing was Presbyterian in Scotland.[53] His parents married in a Manhattan Presbyterian church in 1936.[54] As a child, he attended Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, and had his confirmation there.[55][55] In the 1970s, his family joined the Marble Collegiate Church (a New York City affiliate of the Reformed Church in America) in Manhattan.[56] The pastor at that church, Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Art of Living, ministered to Trump’s family and mentored him until Peale’s death in 1993.[57][56] Trump, who is Presbyterian,[58][59] has cited Peale and his works during interviews when asked about the role of religion in his personal life.[56]

After marrying his first wife Ivana in 1977 at Marble Collegiate Church, he attended that church until 2013.[60][55] In 2016, Trump visited Bethesda-by-the-Sea, an Episcopal church, for Christmas services.[61] Trump has said that he participates in Holy Communion. Beyond that, he has not asked God for forgiveness, stating: “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture.”[62]

Trump refers to his ghostwritten book The Art of the Deal, a bestseller following publication in 1987, as “my second favorite book of all time, after the Bible. Nothing beats the Bible.”[63][64] In a 2016 speech to Liberty University, he referred to “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians”, eliciting chuckles from the audience.[65] Despite this, The New York Times reported that Evangelical Christians nationwide thought “that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure”.[66]

Outside of his church affiliations, Trump has relationships with a number of Christian spiritual leaders, including Florida pastor Paula White, who has been described as his “closest spiritual confidant”.[67] In 2015, he asked for and received a blessing from Greek Orthodox priest Emmanuel Lemelson[68] and, in 2016, released a list of his religious advisers, including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Ralph Reed and others.[69] Referring to his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism before her marriage to Jared Kushner, Trump said in 2015: “I have a Jewish daughter; and I am very honored by that […] it wasn’t in the plan but I am very glad it happened.”[70]

Now do I think that Obama is probably more on the agnostic side of the coin? Yes. But he definitively states that he is a Christian, and has explicitly said ‘I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.’ Although Obama is good at weaseling his way around a question and exaggerating when necessary, I do not doubt that he values the truth and wouldn’t simply lie.

Obviously Obama seems like He who is without sin himself next to Trump. There’s no doubt he values the truth. But I also don’t doubt the very good chance he’s lying about this I wouldn’t consider it weaseling either (this isn’t a lie he’s just made up in interviews, it’s a planned and consistent one). And I don’t blame him. If he didn’t self identify as a Christian (and make it sound like he really meant it), he would never have been president. I don’t think it’d be very hard for him to pretend (I’ve done it myself with certain members of my family), not all atheists are militant about their beliefs. I think he probably just tries to appreciate the good will towards man and community aspect, and doesn’t think too much about the whole God part.

Could I be wrong? Sure. But I’m probably not.

Like I said, he’s probably more agnostic than he’d ever admit. It’s terrible that in the US, you have to lie about your religion if you’re anything other than Christian or a branch of it. But Trump is the exception, isn’t he? Perhaps if the ‘horrible because he’s an atheist’ thing doesn’t stick, future presidents will have an easier time of it.

Honestly, I think the people who value Christianity in a president and still voted for him have just deluded themselves into believing that lie (and all the others of course). I’m fairly certain that if Trump was an out atheist he wouldn’t have won.

I’m with you though on the effed up emphasis on religion voters place on candidates. I do think we’re moving in the right direction (hard to believe now that Kennedy was such a big deal) and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a Jewish president in the next couple decades (though anything past that might be a hard pill for some to swallow).

Author
Time

Religious people who voted for Trump did so because of the Supreme Court. Frankly, that was probably the most sensible reason anyone had.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

TV’s Frink said:

Religious people who voted for Trump did so because of the Supreme Court. Frankly, that was probably the most sensible reason anyone had.

That’s basically what my evangelical friends said. They don’t care about the p***y grabbing, fancy dinners with Romney & Priebus, gold toilet seats, excessive golf outings, his enemies list, crowd size obsession, or bragging about his best brains (quick quiz–where’d I get this list?). You overturn Roe and all is forgiven. And of course they don’t care that Obama reduced the number of abortions to pre-Roe levels via non-punitive means, nor do they even care if the number of abortions goes up in a post-Roe era. If it’s all happening illegally, they don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Compared to that, the speed-the-apocalypse-by-supporting-the-antichrist theory has only one logical leap.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

Author
Time

I think that many Christians voted for Trump because he made clear his support of their hot-button items, and because of his hard-line stance against other non-Christian religions. Also because of the perplexing fact that most Christians are republicans.

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

I think that many Christians voted for Trump because he made clear his support of their hot-button items, and because of his hard-line stance against other non-Christian religions. Also because of the perplexing fact that most Christians are republicans.

I forgot about hating the right people (Muslims, gays), there’s definitely an affinity based on that, at least within a sizeable subset.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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 (Edited)

I am a Christian–a Baptist, living in the Bible Belt. Granted, I am a Christian Democrat, but there we are. I think myself a moderate, as the position of where my views are on the conservative-liberal continuum depend on the issue.

Obama is a Christian. To say otherwise is to forget the time where he had to distance himself from his long-time Christian pastor (and, according to media coverage, mentor) in 2008 when said pastor was being inflammatory against Hillary (in a rather racist fashion). Obama waited a long time to disavow his association, but ultimately did so when the guy wouldn’t stop despite being asked to.

And Obama has given a rather fantastic speech specifically and at length about his faith at the Sojourners’ Call to Renewal conference in 2006.

In 2006. Before he ever decided to run for president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCZOyGIKp_E
https://sojo.net/articles/transcript-obamas-2006-sojournerscall-renewal-address-faith-and-politics

This speech about his faith was one of the reasons I liked him so much when he ran back then.

JEDIT: He talks about when he gave his life to Christ at 14:50 in that video. I’m watching this video as I write this and it really speaks to me, as a man of faith myself, as coming from a man whose faith is genuine and heartfelt.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

Author
Time

Jetrell Fo said:

CatBus, I saw this article and it made me think about your post about Trump, not you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pastor-rick-henderson/why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-good-atheist_b_4442287.html

While it is true that there is no definitive atheistic worldview, all atheists share the same fundamental beliefs as core to their personal worldviews. While some want to state that atheism is simply a disbelief in the existence of a god, there really is more to it. Every expression of atheism necessitates at least three additional affirmations:

Wrong. Disqualified.