Mitt Romney's Atheism

Of all the Republicans now running for the presidency, the one whose character impresses me the most is Mitt Romney, the former Governer of Massachusetts. McCain is a tragic figure, slouching his way to Gomorrah, forever a skeletal bridesmaid in the grim Bush-Iraq nuptials. Gulliani has no demonstrable understanding of world affairs other than to promise that his plan will be the Bush plan on steroids. On Fox, he promised to do to Pakistan what we have done to Iraq and Afghanistan. By contrast, Romney's political and business skills give him the star quality that could take him to the convention. His personal life is beyond reproach, the only leading Republican candidate to have married once. In an interview on CNN yesterday, I thought he was skilled in framing his religious background in more palatable terms for Catholic and Protestant watchers. Romney spoke of "spirituality" and "shared American values" rather than the religion of his great great grandfather Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt.

Time will tell whether or not this will work. A residual bigotry still lingers for those outside of the religious American mainstream. However, I'm not sure if claims to "spirituality"or "values" differs from that to which an atheist would profess. And perhaps that's a good thing.

Rabbi Marc Gellman, in Newsweek, discusses the question of whether God is real, and defines this question as a mystery in distinction to a problem. "Mysteries are not problems that have not yet been answered. "What is the cure for cancer?" is an unanswered problem,not a mystery, but the question of whether God is real or whethergoodness is rewarded or whether there is a purpose to human existence orwhy do fools fall in love or who put the bop in the bop sh-bopsh-bop-these are all mysteries and they will not go away and they will always be important and they will always define us by the way we answerthem with our lives and our hopes." The question of God's existence is at the bottom a mystery that cannot be proved with evidence that is outside of us. Rather, it "is resolved by the answer we give to it withour life. If a person believes that all human beings are made in theimage of God and thus deserve respect, then God is real for that personas the source of his or her transcendent duty to treat all people with love and respect. If, on the other atheist hand, people are just one of many species ruled by the survival of the fittest, then God does not exist for that person and neither does any transcendent duty to treat others with dignity."

Of course, Gellman's conclusions are nonsense. There are people who believe that God is real and that we are made in the image of God while cheerfully treating humans as the most expendable of objects. And, on the other hand, there are those who reject any belief in God while their values compel them to treat others with transcendent dignity. It is for this reason, speaking for myself, religious or non-religious self-definitions and creedal affirmations are not nearly as important as how people live their lives and the everyday ethical choices that they make.