Mr Obeyme believes he can change that, although it is questionable how much of his life has been under "freedom of religion".

To your last question; Leaders who wish to openly follow their religious beliefs cannot do so without imposing their religious beliefs.

Interesting point but can men like Carson really handle the dichotomy that well? In the private sector you are "forced" to handle it, as necessary, for your own best interest. IE, handle it wrong, you pay for it. In politics, there is no such restriction/incentive. Can he really keep his religion separate from his politics? He's already waffled on the Kim Davis thing. His religion is becoming a bigger and bigger part of his campaign. When he's called to the mat on some social issue of the day, can he stand up and say "It's none of the government's damn business"? Would he do anything to end the war on drugs? Would he do anything to so slow down the rapidly advancing social programs? Would he de-fund planned parenthood because it is immoral for the government to fund such things or would it be all about the abortion issue? And would that money be returned to it's rightful owners or merely diverted to some other pet social project?

What is to stop Carson from advancing a theocracy? IE; "faith based initiatives" popular with Reagan and the Bushes. How goes the saying? "When you have faith, anything is possible."

Judging from a lot of the comments on here, it would seem that a lot of people would Like their objectivism to be based on faith. That doesn't make it so. Or, rather, that doesn't make it Objectivism.

I believe that's all that needs to be said.

Your middle quote is spot on by JA and I couldn't agree more. However, Ben Franklin was a member of the Hellfire club of London. Don't tell me this guy was a Christian. Hellfire club? Really? https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/f...

Read it for yourself & decide if he's really a true Christian. It is a deep and interesting read.

And now for the founding father: http://washingtonsheadquarters.org/wp... and http://transplantedtatar.com/2013/01/...

Because this awesome site is primarily dedicated to Objectivism, I will not fully engage in any debate that centers in on religion. I stand by my original charge: masonry isn't Christianity because if you're going to worship GOD, you're NOT going to refer to Him as (so stupid) as "The Great Architect Of The Universe". Give me a break. Anyone who's a Christian knows that God created everything: including the very things that 'architects' use to build their stuff. Worshipping the "architect" versus the Creator means they choose to worship 2nd place. 2nd place is: First loser. (I borrowed phrase that from the awesome U.S. Navy Seals)

seriously, THOUSANDS so that-they just do not get a bully pulpit

As one of those conservative theists, I will tell you why I not only "hang out" here, but have been a paid member for more than two years. Because with the exception of posts like this one of db's and a few others, the vast majority of people here actually use the gray matter between their ears. I don't expect to agree 100% with anyone I meet. But for the most part, the people here are intellectually advanced enough to reasonably contemplate both sides of any particular issue and come to a reasonable conclusion while avoiding the trite ad hominem attacks (name-calling) and other logical fallacies. Most people on this site are more concerned with what is right than they are who is right. I find that not only refreshing, but well worth my patronage.

The other thing I would add is that if you are only looking for people who agree with you 100%, you're looking for an incredibly boring and non-existent world. One of the great things about life is the vast variety of people! We couldn't laugh at the idiots if there weren't any. We couldn't pan the stupid political decisions if there were no progressives, communists, fascists, etc.

If being a world-renowned neuro-surgeon and the first to ever successfully separate conjoined twins doesn't get him invited to a place among the Producers, I don't know what would. To top that he was the youngest ever to achieve Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the prestigious Johns Hopkins medical center.

Methinks you're so busy complaining about the man's faith that you are allowing it to completely override any logic or reason you claim to operate on. He didn't perform surgery based on faith, but by application of sound medical principles, some of which he pioneered!

Have you read his story about growing up and how he went from having terrible grades to being tops in his class because his mother forced him to spend time reading instead of watching television? And how he bucked the overwhelming trend of black incarceration (Carson's father left at age 8) and instead became an enormously productive citizen?

Good grief, man. Bury your hatchet! It's as if you simply refuse to acknowledge anything good about someone of faith out of nothing more than spite. That's pure bigotry and hatred - hardly the hallmarks of an Objectivist.

?????

There are some people I have found are more interested in spouting off (slang for pontificating) than in an actual discussion. This, in my view is due to the "compartmentalization" described by Shermer or the cognitive dissonance reactions discovered by Festinger. Either way, such people waste the one truly irreplaceable resource: time. My time. The subject here has been rehashed so many times and the evidence is so clear, the most polite I can be is to say good night. It is 9:00 pm here in Chile and time to end this.

Achievement in what area that is related to being president? Prayer meetings?

From someone who has been pushing a religious theocracy. Very convincing.

He has not platform, no ideas, the only reason to vote for him is that you want a religious theocracy, instead of a socialist theocracy. The difference is less than zip shit over infinity.

Right and Obama did not want to establish a Socialist paradise either

Reason - Intellectual Honesty

Totally satanic: Masons cannot serve two masters. Masons worship "The Great Architect Of The Universe". What do architects do? Build crap from existing things/material.

Notice they WON'T worship the CREATOR of all things & material. That's the difference.

...and if it IS, where did IT come from?
Reminds me of an old Shelley Berman routine:
This is a glass of water,
Or is it a glass of water?
Why is this a glass of water
Where did it come from?
Why is it here? ... ad nauseum, until the questioner dies of thirst.

I don't think it was the fact that he spoke at a prayer breakfast that impressed people; rather, the fact that he had the righteous audacity to confront the president on his own turf and articulate his disagreement regarding Obamacare.

If one's "strings" lead back to him/her, then that person is pulling his own strings. So I think you're saying that to act in one's own (rational) self interest, one must pull a string that leads to him or her. Is that not the essence of objectivism? Who pulled John Galt's strings? Or is there some new string theory I don't know about?

db also rejects the Scottish Enlightenment and its philosophers (Locke, Hume, Mill, Adam Smith). Most of the Founders, particularly Jefferson and Paine, believed in their ideas, too. As do I (minus the religion). (Indeed, all the grievances in the Declaration of Independence were an attempt to prove that the conditions of the "right of revolution" spelt out in Locke's Two Treatises of Government had been satisfied.)

I have no belief in the existence of a god, i.e., I am an atheist. I have met with that "... people who don't believe in anything... " type of statement many times. That statement by a believer in god seems to imply that "belief" is just something that a theist does. People have all kinds of beliefs about reality. Some are rational with facts to back them up and some have nothing but faith based on nothing but "I have faith, to hell with facts of reality."
Reasoning with false propositions and then believing the results of such reason is faith. It is easy for a person to get into such a trance state by suspending one's critical faculty and thinking selectively. Your " Can you wrap your mind around that fact?" is an example of such a mental state.
What I do not get is why so many conservatives and other theists are hanging out at a site dealing with Ayn Rand and Objectivism which by its nature has no supernatural aspects to it and thus nowhere to place a god which would create existence, i.e., the natural world.

All of Carson's comments, writing and expressions are populist, pandering, Rah-Rah, evangelical, conservative, I'm a better Black Man, with no meaningful content for liberty.

He promotes adding a second health insurance program to citizens to cover costs up to a few thousand with Obamacare converted to a single payer for catastrophic care.

He never talks about our losses of rights by Bush or Obama. He doesn't seem to care about our loss of privacy from government.

I decided to read this posting thinking it might reveal some interesting concepts - Instead I found a disgusting dogfight between small over heated minds in banal quarrel - Not something worthy of an organization representing Ayn Rand - more like a common street brawl- I am disappointed and depressed that the Gulch has degenerated to this.

I should have said "Christian Apologist" instead of "Bible Thumper." Sorry, The history of Endowed by their Creator was a compromise wording. Note in the Constitution the only oath set forth is that of president and any reference to a god is not there. And, only a few years after the Constitution was ratified, the Treaty of Tripoli specifically gets rid of the notion of Christianity. And, even if the creator reference did refer to some sort of god, it is not relevant to the Constitution.