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MissileMan said:Yeah, I get it...only someone who acts and believes exactly as you can be a "real" Christian...you're pathetic.
ScreamingEagle said:No, the liberal Democrats who "identify" as Christian, but follow a slack life that pretty much ignores the Ten Commandments and Biblical teachings, are really the pathetic ones.
Hobbit said:That 85% stat is bullcrap, if for no other reason than the fact that many on that list support gay clergy, a clear violation of Christian doctrine. The poll probably just asks if the person has been to church within the past year.
And all this time, I thought a Christian was someone who believed in salvation through Christ. What about "Whosoever believeth in me" and all that?
I'd say that you're fortunate that there is no God...if there were, he'd come down and slap a knot in that pointy little head of yours.
It's not my stat...but one of your compadre's. One that gets thrown around alot on this board by the extreme righties!
MissileMan said:And all this time, I thought a Christian was someone who believed in salvation through Christ. What about "Whosoever believeth in me" and all that?
I'd say that you're fortunate that there is no God...if there were, he'd come down and slap a knot in that pointy little head of yours.
Hobbit said:It was crap then and it's crap now. There's a significant portion of those labeled as 'Christians' that I don't count as allies because they're trying to bring down the church from within by endorsing homosexuality, abortion, and other things clearly against Christian doctrine.
Pale Rider said:And number 10 on the list is number 1 for the liberal poster group peta, who now are handing out comic books to kids depicting daddy as a murderer for taking the kids fishing. The comics feature pictures of a enraged psycho with a knife slitting the belly of a fish as the bloody guts come pouring out.
Nice... hurry up and clean the fish. I'm hungry.
MissileMan said:Yeah, I get it...only someone who acts and believes exactly as you can be a "real" Christian...you're pathetic.
MissileMan said:And all this time, I thought a Christian was someone who believed in salvation through Christ. What about "Whosoever believeth in me" and all that?
I'd say that you're fortunate that there is no God...if there were, he'd come down and slap a knot in that pointy little head of yours.
GunnyL said:If you're right, I won't know it. If I'm right, you WILL.
MissileMan said:You have no problem throwing an "85% majority" figure around to bolster an argument for school prayer, or religious symbols in public places. What percentage of Americans do you figure are "real" Christians?
fuzzykitten99 said:i cleaned my own fish as soon as i decided to keep ones i caught that were big enough(which was about age 11 or 12). my step-dad taught me his skills in cleaning fish. I suppose killing anything that can't effectively defend itself is murder...but fresh caught & fried walleye from Mille Lacs Lake or Leech Lake is SO damn good, WHO CARES??!!! Sucks I can't have any local fish until after little bean is born...i so want some popcorn crappie snacks my mom makes-like popcorn chicken except with crappie chunks instead....tartar sauce with lemon...dammit Pale, you had to bring up fish to a homegrown minnesotan whose pregnant and can't have any! you suck!
sorry...hormonal preggo-brain took over. I am back to normal...well, what could be seen as normal anyway
The ClayTaurus said:Please tell me you don't seriously believe that those who are fighting against Christmas are doing so because it celebrates a birth instead of abortion. That list was humorous, and perhaps a few of them had some truth to them, but they certainly are not all true. Do you really think they are?
The Rise Of The Non-Christian Coalition
by Chris Bowers
The very interesting comments in the previous post on generational demographics planted an idea in my brain: how long will it be before the pro-Democratic non-Christian coalition is larger than the pro-Republican Christian coalition? In my estimation, one or two cycles at the most.
Demographics :: Tue Apr 12th, 2005 at 12:28:45 PM EDT
Five weeks before the election, I wrote the following:
With Muslim voters now overwhelming opposing Bush (a sharp contrast from 2000), with "Secular Warriors" also swinging heavily against Bush, and with Jewish voters overwhelming opposed to Bush, two equally sized religious blocks have formed in this country. On the one hand, representing just under 20% of the voting public, are white, evangelical and born again Protestants that support Bush roughly three to one. On the other hand, there is a diverse group of the religious and the irreligious, connected only by the common thread that they do not consider themselves Christian. This group also makes up just under 20% of the voting population, but opposes Bush roughly three to one.
What happened was slightly different. White Evangelical / Born-Again Protestants ended up being 23% of the electorate, while the non-Christian percentage of the electorate was slightly smaller at 20%. Further, Bush won the larger group 78-21, while Kerry won the smaller group by a 71-27 count. Overall, this meant that instead of these two bases canceling each other out, Bush won by just over five million votes within this 43% of the electorate (53 million voters), a margin Kerry was unable to make up in the remaining 57% of the electorate.
That the two coalitions did not end up canceling each other out is why Bush won the election. As I have argued in the past, along with droves of other pundits, Bush won in 2004 with huge base turnout, especially among evangelicals concerned with "moral values." However, considering demographic trends that will soon cause the white born again / evangelical vote to be swamped by the non-Christian coalition, the success of such a strategy is fleeting and possibly specific to 2004.
In the 2000 election, 18% of the electorate self-identified as some form of non-Christian (Jewish 4%, other 5%, none 9%). Gore won this 18% of the electorate by a margin of 61-30, with Nader mopping up a surprisingly large 7% of this vote. In 2004, Kerry won this group 71-27, with the group as a whole now forming 20% of the electorate (Jewish 3%, Other 7%, none 10%). Overall, in 2000 this group represented 22.9% of Gore's total vote, while in 2004 it made up 29.4% of Kerry's total vote. In terms of total votes, 11.7 million voted for Gore in 2000, while 17.3 million voted for Kerry in 2004. For Bush, 5.7 million voted for him in 2000, while 6.6 million voted for him in 2004. Kerry won 86% of the new voters in this category. The total Democratic margin among this group of voters increased by a whopping 4.7 million in 2004, in an election where the overall Democratic margin dropped by 3.6 million. Overall, roughly 70% of new Democratic voters fit into this group.
Non-Christians, as a group, are growing much faster than Latinos. Hell, this demographic is growing at a rate that would put most third-world countries to shame. According to the American Religious Identification Survey study by CUNY, in 1990, 24.215 million adult Americans were estimated to be in the "non-Christian" group. In 2001, 48.467 million adult Americans were estimated to be in this group. Not only did this group double in size over that eleven-year period, it actually represented 75% of the total increase in the adult population over those eleven years. And I repeat: Kerry won 86% of the new voters in this demographic in 2004.
Further, this group isn't going away. In the comments of the previous post, discussing the already linked CUNY survey, fwiffo wrote this summary of the situation (emphasis mine):
One significant finding is switching of individuals between religious groups. The most common sorts of switches are between various Christian groups (e.g. people who change from one protestant denomination to another, or most commonly, from a specific denomination to non-denominational and/or evangelical), or people dropping out of religion altogether. People switching into religion from being non-religious (e.g. atheist) is relatively rare. The survey might even over-count that group, since it probably includes quite a few "born-agains". I've met a fair share that claim that they used to be "godless" but "found Jesus" in their couch one day. In reality, most of them identified with one Christian group or another prior to becoming hyper-religious, but they just became much more vigorous about it.
So, we are becoming less religious as a whole, and the secular folks, as a demographic, is growing and doesn't easily lose members. A subset of people who remain religious are becoming somewhat more fanatical and outspoken. The Republicans have allied themselves with the larger, shrinking, and increasingly noisy ultra-religious group, and the secular have aligned themselves with the Democrats (not the other way around - Democrats haven't aligned themselves with anything or anyone in particular).
I think is exactly right. After the election, even I told Democrats repeatedly that we needed to do a better job of expressing their faith, because the values voters had delivered the election to Bush. However, a closer look at demographic figures in the country might reveal the folly, even the rank insanity, of such a strategy. For two consecutive elections, Democrats have won a huge majority of the rapidly rising non-Christian vote, and we are supposed to try and appeal to Christian fundamentalists who, as a demographic, are comparatively static, even shrinking? This strategy gets even worse when you consider this comment from thirdestate:
Speaking as a political scientist....
Generally speaking, the "you get more conservative as you get older" myth really is a myth. People's ideological/partisan identification don't change much after the age of 30. If someone votes for the same party three times in a row, they're hooked for life. It takes some earth-shattering to change after that.
People don't get more conservative as they get older, but they do get more rigid. What happens is that ideology acts as an informational screen - people shield out stuff that is inconsistent with their predispositions (which is why FOX News works). So as we get older, our attitudes get reinforced.
So liberals should NOT get happy if people who are under 30 are on the left, because the young are very volatile. But after thirty, it's smooth sailing.
Considering their fondness for Nader, I have little doubt that non-Christians went huge for Perot both in 1992 and 1996. Thus, considering Democratic success among non-Christians in 2000 and 2004, we are on the brink of winning this group for life. Republicans are not going to try for them in 2008, they simply do not have the option considering the current power of the evangelicals within the Republican party. However, if Democrats were to choose a candidate based on his or her perceived electability, related to his or her ability to talk to evangelicals, it would probably be the dumbest, most myopic, bandwagon jumping, self-eviscerating maneuver we have made as a party in decades. We are on the brink of winning the long-term support of easily the fastest growing demographic in America, and the best strategic advice we can think of is to alienate them? No pun intended, but Mother of God is that a bad idea.
We need to embrace the non-Christian coalition with open arms, and even try to press our advantage among them. At the latest, they will have easily surpassed the "values voters" in size and voting power by 2012, the time of the next great Congressional realignment. If we blow this one, we won't even sniff the reigns of power for another generation. If we win this segment of the electorate, the future will be ours.
Pale Rider said:So you think that list isn't serious? YOU are the one that can't be serious. Here's a little word from your godless lefty partners mr. liberal....
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/4/12/122845/743
The ClayTaurus said:Pale, I don't think that liberals sit around thinking "man, I really hate Christmas because it's about a birth and not an abortion." Do you?
That seems rediculous to me.
Some items on that list are serious, some are not. Most are exaggerations to a humorous end. The daycare one is my favorite, humor-wise.
Pale Rider said:If you take the line, "man, I really hate Christmas because it's about a birth and not an abortion", and read out of it what is intended, which is liberals are "pro abortion", and Christian Republicans are not, then I'd say yes, that's exactly what liberals sit around saying.
It's satire, but oh so true.
MissileMan said:And all this time, I thought a Christian was someone who believed in salvation through Christ. What about "Whosoever believeth in me" and all that?
I'd say that you're fortunate that there is no God...if there were, he'd come down and slap a knot in that pointy little head of yours.
Pale Rider said:Damn... I apologize fuzzy. Aren't the lakes up there frozen over enough to go ice fishing yet?
I'll tell ya, my Dad was a fishing machine. I'd go out in the bottoms of the Wisconsin River with him in our canoe. We'd both use a fly rod with a popper. We'd catch a couple five gallon buckets full of Crappies, Blue Gills and Sun Fish, along with a few other assorted things... Bull Heads, Large/Small Mouth Bass, Turtle, and then there'd be those times when something would hit the line and nearly jerk the pole right out of your hands, bust your line, and leave you sitting there wondering what kind of a whale that was, possibly a Muskie. But I'd have to stand there right along side my Dad and scale, gut and trim every darn one of those fish. All I could think about was just getting done, because I knew they were going straight into the frying pan. Makes my mouth water to think about it to fuzzy. Now I hate myself... :tng:
Point is, those times "fishing" with my Dad were some of funnest times I ever had. These peta morons got no idea what the fuck they're talking about.
