Possibly. Depends on how much better, how I expected both candidates’ policies to change and how electable I considered them both.
That’s perfectly reasonable, but see my comments below.
For this particular example, I can’t rule out the possibility of ending up getting sent to hell for this until I die. However, having heard what supporters of those policies say, I know that most Muslims who support this sort of idea of modest clothing claim that it causes women to be more respected...
Ok, so you’ve listed a bunch of empirically verifiable criteria, and evaluated them. This approach makes sense to me… but… it sounds to me like you’re making your political (“atheist politician vs. Christian politician”) and moral (“should I wear a burqa”) choices based primarily (or perhaps even entirely) on secular reasoning. You would support the politician who will implement the best policies (and who stands a chance of being elected at all), regardless of his religion; and you would oppose social polices that demonstrably make people unhappy—in this life, not the next. So, where does “godliness” come in ?
It’s not 100% out of the question that the universe has an evil god who orders people to do stupid things for his own amusement.
I agree, but then, I don’t have faith to inform me of any competing gods’ existence. I imagine that if I had faith in a non-evil Christian god, who is also the only god, I’d peg the probability of the evil god’s existence at exactly 0%. But it’s possible that I’m misunderstanding what faith feels like “from the inside”.
That’s perfectly reasonable, but see my comments below.
Ok, so you’ve listed a bunch of empirically verifiable criteria, and evaluated them. This approach makes sense to me… but… it sounds to me like you’re making your political (“atheist politician vs. Christian politician”) and moral (“should I wear a burqa”) choices based primarily (or perhaps even entirely) on secular reasoning. You would support the politician who will implement the best policies (and who stands a chance of being elected at all), regardless of his religion; and you would oppose social polices that demonstrably make people unhappy—in this life, not the next. So, where does “godliness” come in ?
I agree, but then, I don’t have faith to inform me of any competing gods’ existence. I imagine that if I had faith in a non-evil Christian god, who is also the only god, I’d peg the probability of the evil god’s existence at exactly 0%. But it’s possible that I’m misunderstanding what faith feels like “from the inside”.
Uh oh. :-)