If I took an oath, it would be on a copy of the constition or Detective Comics 27 (First Batman), maybe both.
I mean if Christian Nationalists had their way, nobody would be swearing on anything because democracy would be abolished got a Christian theocracy.
The list of things that Christian Nationalist can’t handle is damn nigh infinite.
Permanently clutching their pearls and wailing.
Bible is def on that list
IMO, we all should really be sworn in on a copy of the State and/or Federal constitution.
The idea is that the document you swear on has meaning to you. Politicians don’t give a flying fuck about the constitution so long as it lines their wallets and keeps them fat and happy. Swearing on a document is inane and meaningless and it’s 100% for show. It’s meant to keep the people happy for whom the document they are swearing on, holds meaning to in the first place. Make them swear on a signed contract that states, not upholding the written law would mean forfeiting their lives and then maybe it might mean something, as long as there were some enforcement behind that sort of thing.
You can take the oath on a fuggin’ Harry Potter book if you want to.
My .02, everyone taking a oath of office should use the Constitution.
Thanks for sharing your 2 centimetres
Oxygen? Yes, we need it to breathe.
Invoking religion is a ridiculous thing to have for a public office anyway, regardless of which one it is. If public officials in the US need to swear on anything, make it the US Constitution or whatever equivalent state/city charter they have.
Most of the people who’ve sworn an oath to defend the constitution from domestic enemies — literally tens of millions of Americans — have completely ignored their oath.
They’re a meaningless virtue signal at this point.
Exactly. Complete separation of church and state is the need
Nah, I love that the chuds will get immensely mad at this. It’s incredibly amusing!
I wish my life were so easy that my biggest worry was some random politician, in a place I don’t even live in, swearing their oath on a book I don’t like.
Goddamnit I hate this world and fucking social media, turning everyone into a mini politician.
This shit has no material effect on your life, and you should be angry about the stuff that does. (like wages.)
To be fair, they actually kinda live in the US?
NYC’s Mayor does not affect White Trash Dave & Karen in BFE, WY.
It is the same country.
Barely there’s basically no government overlap for NYC and Wyoming outside of the feds. Hell I’m pretty sure Gibraltar is closer to London than NYC is to anywhere in the great plains.
Well, duh, he has to swear on a book that means something to him, preferably a (to him) holy book. How weird would it be if he swore on a Christian bible. not being Christian himself?
The book is not there for our cultural values. It’s there to ensure the person swears an oath on something meaningful to them. We just forgot about that because we are used to all sorts of public figures swearing oaths that mean nothing to them.
It truly is amazingly gratifying to see such genuine people as Mamdani & “The Squad” successfully stepping up to make a difference, and enough people actually voting for them to win. It’s honestly the only hope I have left in this shithole.
Fully with you there. A lot of people on the left are rapping on Schumer and Jeffries for being too moderate, and rightfully so. But I think there is a part of their extreme caution (or fecklessness) that comes from having seen more leftist candidates go down in flames in the past.
Having people like Mamdani, AOC, and others win elections decisively makes a huge difference. They are not perfect, but they move the needle in the right (left) direction.
It’s like the progression from Bush to Trump in reverse.
my god, you’ll make up any number of excuses to avoid the fact that democrat politicians are not on your side. they are on the side of the ruling class. wake up.
Are we feeling bad about not voting effectively against trump and lashing out defensively again?
i don’t know what you’re doing, but I didn’t vote for any genocidal or fascist candidates in any election, and I never will
democrats make fascism inevitable
Aha! I was bang on.
Enjoy the speed run to fascism you helped cause.
i’m not american, but ok, glad you care more about winning than about people fucking dying.
Hate to burst your bubble, but some ‘progressive’ posters are playing the Both Sides Are The Same Card because Mamdani and AOC haven’t called for the US to nuke Israel
That’s nice. Every group has their extremists that lack a grounded perspective on achieving their goals & thus want to go too far, too fast (or who go out on their own and actually do so, which only serves to drag down the entire group in the end).
While I agree we need to at the very least force a regime change in Israel, the reality is there’s little point in calling for “nuking” them now when there’s simply no way it’s going to happen. It would only serve to put off more people from Progressives than keeping their current stance of opposition to Israel’s actions clear, yet not actually calling them “enemies” worthy of nuking will. When Progressives actually have a prayer of accomplishing something and/or see that even the more “center” constituents have finally had enough of Israel - that’s the time to stick their neck out & risk turning off some of their “moderate” supporters on the edge.
At least that’s my best guess as to their thinking, as I’m not even vaguely the type to be good at playing politics.
If he swore in on a bible, or any other book, they would say he’s avoiding a quran on purpose because he doesn’t actually want to swear an oath on it
No matter what he did, they were prepared to complain
So, you are saying, technically, I could swear on the script to the Office?
Does he though? When we were sworn in at MEPS, we didn’t swear “on” anything. We held our hands up as a group and swore “to” protect The Constitution. Clearly that oath didn’t mean as much to many veterans as it did to my friends and me.
Same for GS employees, just a mass in processing formality
If he doesn’t believe in the Bible, what keeps him from being a murdering rapist?
He wasn’t born on the USA
Believing in the bible.
I guess that makes me a raping murderer. Good to know. I’ll warn my family, they don’t believe in it either.
It’s common knowledge that if you believe in the bible you are a murdering rapist, duh. Hope your family is safe!
Like, if I cared about the reasoning for the bible swearing I wouldn’t want a Muslim swearing on one instead of a Quran. Isn’t this one of the arguments Christians use as to why they don’t want to elect an atheist?
The quiet part they’re not saying is that in their minds the fact he doesn’t “believe” in their precious book (not that they follow it much themselves) invalidates him both as a politician and a person. It’s just a more “politically acceptable” excuse for their irrational fear/hatred of someone different from them - they’re afraid all the bullshit they’ve been programmed to believe all their lives about outsiders being out to get them is now going to come to fruition, and they’ll pick at the most absurd things to claim it’s true rather than admit they might be wrong.
as an atheist, I’d have to think long and hard about what I took an oath on.
Ultimately, I just don’t believe there’s anything which I believe would smite me for taking an oath on it and breaking it.
Like my word holds more meaning than books.
Constitution (or whatever local equivalent) since that’s essentially what you’re sweating to uphold anyway, makes way more sense than any holy book
Sure. But there way less interesting than. Calvin and Hobbes. (From another reply,)
I’d take an oath on DVDs of TNG season 5.
12” version of tom waits’ rain dogs for me
I don’t think many politicians think they will face any divine reprisal either. They swear an oath on a bible, then do all the heinous things they do
Kissinger swore an oath on a bible, then signed off on the deaths of tens of thousands
Trump swore an oath on a bible, then spent his first year protecting pedophiles
Rick Scott swore an oath on a bible, shortly after stealing hundreds of millions from tax payers
I mean, the Christian god is cool with genocide, commands it numerous times, tolerates all sorts of heinous things, and is at least as likely to protect pedos as Trump. (May also be one. Depending on how it worked with Marry. Lots to unpack there.)
My undergrad physics textbook
There you go blurring the line between knowledge & beliefs again!
Given the critical mind that led you to your current atheistic beliefs (what I did there? :P), you have to have developed a mature moral code. I’d argue that taking an oath on something at the core of your being would be more binding than taking one based on any external books or faith system. (Muslim here btw but I love philosophy)
Most people of faith don’t realise how most atheists develop strong intrinsic morality by necessity during their journey. And I’m not saying that all atheists are morally superior! (Humans be humans)
This is just an observation based on my experiences and discussions with most of the open-minded ones I’ve come across thus far.
Education beats indoctrination any day. And the well-informed believer has to go through an atheism phase (to varying degrees, so YMMV) to be honest with themselves. Doubt is a perquisite of developing independent morality that confirms faith. At least that’s what I believe.
Edit: also to anyone reading this, don’t ask me about religious stuff, I’m not an Imam or anything. Just someone who went through some heavy shit and had to think outside the framework to make their life work.
I agree with pretty much everything you said up until you implied they ultimately return to some form of customized religious belief (still gave the thumbs up, tho). If they do that, it’s most likely because it’s of comfort to them on some level to have that rather than completely obliterate the foundation of their childhood. There’s certainly no logic to deciding something religious is responsible for reality when it’s obviously one of the many things we are unlikely to ever know the true reason for - mainly because it’s recursive: e.g. if “God” created all this, then how did God come to be? Then how did that come to be? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Morality is most certainly possible without any kind of religious foundation. Ask me how I know.
They don’t have to. That’s the beauty of it. Some never do. I don’t fault them for it and never will.
Agency implies choice. So any religion stating that god gave us agency is bound to respect that. It follows that anyone going against this fact or arguing that said agency precludes certain choices does not really understand what free will is, nor the true message being conveyed by their own faith. :)
Fair enough - well said.
All right, now let me to respond to the other stuff without that misunderstanding looming in the way. :P
If they do that, it’s most likely because it’s of comfort to them on some level to have that rather than _completely_ obliterate the foundation of their childhood. There’s certainly no logic to deciding something religious is responsible for reality when it’s obviously one of the many things we are unlikely to **_ever_** know the true reason for - mainly because it’s recursive: e.g. if “God” created all this, then how did God come to be? Then how did _that_ come to be? Etc. Etc. Etc.
Are you speaking of Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem? Sorry if that’s not the correct name. I call it the N+1 problem personally (long story), but the gist is that we can’t observe our universe in its entirety without looking from a higher dimension with at least one more axis.
I think that’s essentially the recursiveness you’re speaking of: we cannot study our reality because it requires a perspective/view point that’s located outside of it. Correct?
Poetry used to provide an ‘external’ answer to Gödel, in that regard. Now I am not sure what, we’re stuck with memes I guess.
It’s all about perspective. If we can’t truly see from without, why not nudge the viewport from within a bit? :P
Creative work and literature (memes also count!) are a great medium for exploration in this regard. Like… look at that Robert J. Sawyer’s book “Calculating God” (he’s one of my absolute favourite authors because of that book and others) and the fire it lit under so many butts in some “intellectual” circles, just by exploring the unconventional and discussing something both sides of the argument aren’t comfortable with.
I love things like that. Things that require your brain to do some squats and warm up before reading the next chapter.
You might find the teachings of Bhuddism or The Baha’i faith to be enlightening. Their philosophies are remarkably similar.
I did brush up on Buddhism amongst others during my youth, although not very deeply because I couldn’t do that for all religions without dedicating my entire life to that pursuit. Some things made sense, some are more contextual and require a certain lingual/cultural background/upbringing that I lacked, as is the case with most religions (mine included). A lot of nuance is lost in the translation. Not to mention that this was the early Internet and before machine translation was a thing. Most of that knowledge came from forum discussions, irc, and through books.
As for the Baha’i faith: I’ll admit I’m not very familiar. I might look it up when I have some free time though!
confirms faith
Yeah I’m gonna have to stop you there
No you won’t, because that’d be a knee-jerk reaction resulting from the lack of consideration/understanding of the other, so not so dissimilar to religious zealousness, which you disapprove of judging by that knee-jerk reaction.
Ok then, please explain how “faith,” something that defies logic/explanation, by definition, can be “confirmed”.
How would it still be “faith” in that case, and not just “reality”?
I don’t “owe” you an explanation, nor do I have to justify my worldview to you. Your excessive use of “quotes” and general tone imply you’re already assuming a condescending stance which would not be conducive to a constructive discussion.
So I’ll pass on that one. Thank you though.
Tap for spoiler
And I hope this won’t follow the typical pattern I’m usually confronted with in this situation: the “you’re just evading because you know I’ll prove you wrong/roast you” comeback/argument. Because this isn’t a zero sum game, and if that’s the conclusion then I’m not interested.
Personally, I might go for the Bill of Human Rights, or similar (I’m honestly not studious enough to have read it myself to know if it’s lacking in some way, but whatever similar document best serves as what such a document should be would be the one I’d go for).
I’ve settled on either the constitution (for federal office) or a sword, as in- if oath is broken, use this.
Maybe they should swear in on a guillotine.
I’d pick a Calvin and Hobbes book
Maybe Carl Sagan’s A Demon-Haunted World
Can I be sworn in on the Calvin and Hobbs anthology.
Or maybe a cdrom of Encarta 95?
Can someone be sworn in on Carl Sagan’s Cosmos?
Makenzie Lystrup (NASA director) swore in on Pale Blue Dot.
Thanks for confirming!
Yes
I’m pretty sure that you could use “Java for dummies” as a book for swearing if you wanted to. It’s the swearing that matter, not the hand rest.
I’m going to pledge my oath on a box of pizza :)
