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The 2024 US presidential election.

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The Ham

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Her stance on so-called 'abortion rights' is one example.

It's remarkable how those in favour of widespread abortion have all been born, but they conveniently forget there's a third person, the baby in the womb who is destroyed. Nor do they ever accept the existence of God. The far preferable alternative is to give woman what they need to survive and prosper physically, emotionally and socially. But that's put into the 'too hard' basket by bureaucrats. There are many examples of women who've sadly had abortions who subsequently grieve for their lost child.

Abortion isn't a black and white issue (unfortunately that's how many in the States view it).

Whilst many would prefer that abortion didn't happen as much as it does, there's also plenty of times when an outright ban would be bad.

As such it's much more nuanced than it appears that many in the Republican Party would like to think.
 
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RailUK Forums

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This statement assumes that god exists, I'm going to require you to back that assumption up with empirical evidence.
It would be remarkable if the question of whether God exists was finally resolved on the RailUKforums. Believing in God is essentially an act of faith, it seems to me. Those who believe are unlikely to be able to persuade others to share their belief by means of rational arguments. They may however find aspects of this world, or of the universe, which seem to them to support strongly the belief they already hold.

But stating firmly "I do not believe in God" is also, it seems to me, an act of faith. The universe is about 93 billion light years across, and most of us have have visited only a small part of it. We cannot know confidently that nowhere in it is there any entity that might fit a definition of God.

I shall be interested to see how this matter develops in either direction.
 

GRALISTAIR

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Abortion isn't a black and white issue (unfortunately that's how many in the States view it).

Whilst many would prefer that abortion didn't happen as much as it does, there's also plenty of times when an outright ban would be bad.

As such it's much more nuanced than it appears that many in the Republican Party would like to think.
A big +1 from me. Agreed.


By the way, don't shoot the messenger -this is what the guys in our plant have put up today. The president of the company saw it, laughed out loud and fully supported it being there. I know the majority in the UK will not understand it but it is the way it is.
 

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zero

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Trump would have recovered by now, be it down to God's will or bleach! :|
If I was religious and a Trump supporter I would definitely believe it was God's will that the shooter missed.
 

DynamicSpirit

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If I was religious and a Trump supporter I would definitely believe it was God's will that the shooter missed.

And that it was God's will that the shooter wasn't stopped before shooting, and God's will that a bystander was killed? (Not getting at you as I'm sure you don't believe that)
 

Busaholic

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If I was religious and a Trump supporter I would definitely believe it was God's will that the shooter missed.
Until you realised come November 6th, or shortly afterwards, that God's will meant Trump lost once again. :smile:
 

nw1

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A US Christian explained it to me like this (in 2016)

1. Hillary has the opposite views to most Christians on social issues and holds those views strongly
2. Trump doesn't care about Christianity or those social issues

Therefore, Trump is a better choice for Christians

Personally, as a UK-based Christian, I would struggle to vote for Trump but it was an interesting perspective

Of course, as a non-Christian (but someone who was brought up a Christian, so has some idea about it) I would argue that the central moral plank of Christianity is looking after your fellow human beings.

It's not about homophobia or transphobia, and it's not about fanatically extreme positions on abortion, such as jailing someone for aborting a one-day-old fertilised egg or someone who aborts after being the victim of rape.

So given that the Democrats seem to care much more about the poorer and less fortunate than the Republicans, I would argue that of the two, the Dems are the ones who are a closer match to my understanding of Christian values.

Do these Trump supporting Republican evangelicals seriously believe they think it's acceptable that people end up with huge medical bills under the US's primitive, stone-age health care system - perhaps the worst in the Western world - designed not to make people well, but to make people rich? Do they seriously think that allowing the rich to make huge amounts of money at the expense of everyone else is a Christian value?

"Jesus He Knows Me", indeed.
 
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birchesgreen

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Personally i struggle to class those American evangelical right-wing "Christians" as followers of Christ, certainly not the same Christ i worship.
 

edwin_m

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There's enough in the Bible that you can pick and choose text to support pretty much any course of action.
 

The Ham

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There's enough in the Bible that you can pick and choose text to support pretty much any course of action.

Perhaps, however there some clear things which are repeated quite a bit, for example care for others. Especially those less fortunate then yourself.

Actually the concept of earning your redemption is alien to the teaching of the New Testament, and the main reason it's in the Old Testament is to highlight that it's impossible to achieve (and often those who God chose in the Old Testament often didn't do all that much to earn themselves being chosen). Therefore, arguably, the concept of "I've paid for my healthcare so those who aren't able to shouldn't get healthcare" isn't something which Christians should be thinking.

That's before you consider the law in the Old Testament set up rules like gleaning, where during the harvest the workers were to go through the field once and only once and anything left behind was allowed to be collected by those who needed it (Widows, Orphans and those from other countries).

Likewise the law of Jubilee, where land always had to return to the family of those who were allocated it as well as all debts cancelled, so you couldn't end up with one family with all the land and people with none.

Even some of the more bizarre laws, like a women marrying her husband's brother, had elements of protection in it. As the ideal was that the women would ultimately end up with a son and so he could care for her, or at the very least a son-in-law to care for her. (Obviously there's always the risk that the ideal isn't achieved, but it's worth remembering that much in the bible is written, initially, to a culture closer to the Taliban than it is to anything we'd experience in the west - and when viewed from that perspective is actually very liberal, even though some things appear very at odds to a Western viewpoint).

That's before you consider the rules about fair measures (fraud), forcing yourself on women and the like.
 

bahnause

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Abortion isn't a black and white issue (unfortunately that's how many in the States view it).
But do these different opinions matter? Only the person concerned can make the decision. I somone doesn't want to have a abortion, fine. I would never in my life force an abortion on someone because, for example, my faith only allows births to happen in August.

To get things back on topic, here is an exchange betwee Kamala Harris and the then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh:

abc News
“Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?” she asked.

Kavanaugh froze for several seconds before responding, “I'm happy to answer a more specific question.”

“Male versus female,” Harris replied.

After a back and forth, Kavanaugh told Harris, “I'm not thinking of any right now, senator.”
 

jon0844

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Personally i struggle to class those American evangelical right-wing "Christians" as followers of Christ, certainly not the same Christ i worship.

Maybe they think the Jesus of today would be a Silicon Valley tech bro, or the CEO of Exxon Mobil.

There's enough in the Bible that you can pick and choose text to support pretty much any course of action.

I'm an atheist but still follow the basic rules from the Bible (and likely every other religion). As a society, you need to look out for others and have some level of empathy towards people that is sorely lacking in modern day interpretations by supposedly religious people like the MAGA/Christian Nationalist movements.

Obama has endorsed Harris, eventually.

I think it was very carefully managed, just as insiders are suggesting Joe Biden waited until after the RNC to 'step down' so they wouldn't have the opportunity to switch their attacks to Kamala Harris.

So far it seems they're playing a very long game and while I said a while back that I wasn't sure Kamala was up to the job (much of that was down to my own personal ignorance), having seen how she's acted so far, spoken to audiences and managed social media, I feel a LOT more confident that she's the right person for the job.

It's good that the Democrats appear to be fully backing her as even one person saying something negative would be handing the Republicans a massive opportunity to attack her, saying even her own party doesn't believe in her.
 
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JonasB

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It's funny how the So-Called-Christian Right are completely against State control when it comes to taxes and regulation of the market, but are fully behind State control when it comes to things like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. In the latter cases they are of course completely in favour of the State sticking its beak into people's personal affairs and choices.
And they tend to ignore the fact that sex education and easy access to contraception are great ways to stop abortions…
 

nw1

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And they tend to ignore the fact that sex education and easy access to contraception are great ways to stop abortions…

Mind you some of the religious right think even contraception is the work of the devil.

"Every sperm is sacred, Every sperm is great, if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate".

(with apologies to Monty Python).
 

AlterEgo

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Mind you some of the religious right think even contraception is the work of the devil.

"Every sperm is sacred, Every sperm is great, if a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate".

(with apologies to Monty Python).
Mostly Catholic.

Vance's conversion to Catholicism is quite interesting. There's a very online "tradcath to fascist" pipeline which revolves around the removal of female autonomy and places emphasis on societal aesthetics rather than anything more substantial.
 

birchesgreen

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Mostly Catholic.

Vance's conversion to Catholicism is quite interesting. There's a very online "tradcath to fascist" pipeline which revolves around the removal of female autonomy and places emphasis on societal aesthetics rather than anything more substantial.
No Evangelicals are against contraception too, that is what they are coming after next in areas where they have basically stopped abortion.

As for Vance, he is a believer that people with children should have more votes than people without. Basically every child should have a vote with the parent (which will mean the father i suspect he believes) will make for them.
 

nw1

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No Evangelicals are against contraception too, that is what they are coming after next in areas where they have basically stopped abortion.

As for Vance, he is a believer that people with children should have more votes than people without. Basically every child should have a vote with the parent (which will mean the father i suspect he believes) will make for them.

The precise words (from 2021) are here (source: https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/jd-vance-parents-more-votes-childless-rcna163670)

Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power — you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic — than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality: If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.

Good grief. Parents getting more votes than non-parents, and especially casting them in the name of their children, when their children might have other ideas, especially if they are around the 15-17 age range and thus likely to have their own opinions.

What next from Vance, heterosexuals getting an extra vote because they are more likely to make their own children?

JD Vance really is a first-class anachronism. He might be younger than your average person on the presidential ticket but he acts as if he was born in 1884, not 1984.

Still hopefully it makes things easier for the Democrats: the entire Trump-Vance ticket is clearly unhinged. Whoever Harris' running-mate ends up being, I doubt it would be anyone who comes out with this sort of nonsense and the Harris ticket will clearly be the voice of reason and modernity.

Sadly a lot of the rich people in tech aren't very left-leaning!
I think many are quite socially liberal though, which will endear Harris to them and put them off Trump/Vance.
 
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jon0844

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I think many are quite socially liberal though, which will endear Harris to them and put them off Trump/Vance.

I think it depends where you are in the company structure. At the lower end, where the high cost of living will play a huge role, it's probably more liberal than when you move up to management, CEOs, VCs etc. The latter likely hate Trump and think Vance is a tool, but they're looking beyond that as most of the damage they do won't hurt them.

Right now with so many tech bubbles bursting, and the latest one forming as every investor wants to throw money at AI, it's a very dodgy sector to be in.

Fortunately (for the companies), it's not like the Democrats are really going to tax anyone too heavily, any more than I can see Labour here doing anything radical. Joe Biden certainly didn't rock the boat too much.
 

Purple Train

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A US Christian explained it to me like this (in 2016)

1. Hillary has the opposite views to most Christians on social issues and holds those views strongly
2. Trump doesn't care about Christianity or those social issues

Therefore, Trump is a better choice for Christians

Personally, as a UK-based Christian, I would struggle to vote for Trump but it was an interesting perspective
Nicely ignoring the fact that Clinton is (if I remember correctly) a practising Methodist and Biden (ditto) a practising Catholic. But then I have noticed that certain branches of evangelicalism do get a little sniffy about other denominations.
It would be remarkable if the question of whether God exists was finally resolved on the RailUKforums. Believing in God is essentially an act of faith, it seems to me. Those who believe are unlikely to be able to persuade others to share their belief by means of rational arguments. They may however find aspects of this world, or of the universe, which seem to them to support strongly the belief they already hold.

But stating firmly "I do not believe in God" is also, it seems to me, an act of faith. The universe is about 93 billion light years across, and most of us have have visited only a small part of it. We cannot know confidently that nowhere in it is there any entity that might fit a definition of God.

I shall be interested to see how this matter develops in either direction.
Well said.
Personally i struggle to class those American evangelical right-wing "Christians" as followers of Christ, certainly not the same Christ i worship.
One wonders how well they would have got on with the Pharisees! And yes, I would class myself as an evangelical, just without the political spider-webs!
JD Vance really is a first-class anachronism. He might be younger than your average person on the presidential ticket but he acts as if he was born in 1884, not 1984.
Personally I think he acts more like he was born in 1984, but we are of course in that same post-truth world...
Still hopefully it makes things easier for the Democrats: the entire Trump-Vance ticket is clearly unhinged. Whoever Harris' running-mate ends up being, I doubt it would be anyone who comes out with this sort of nonsense and the Harris ticket will clearly be the voice of reason and modernity.
In liberal UK thinking perhaps. But that just isn't how many Americans (at least in my experience) think. Taxes, abortion, guns - not necessarily in that order - seem to be the three biggest priorities. I find it interesting how American politics seems to be very much a quadrant under a two-party system, whereas most of the debate in Britain, under a system with stronger minor parties, is along the left-right fiscal axis.
 

brad465

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Social media has been awash with jokes about a false story regarding JD Vance and a "certain activity" with a couch. While the story appears to be made up, it has produced some hilarious material, although at the same time it is essentially another example of misinformation that has gone viral.
 

jon0844

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Social media has been awash with jokes about a false story regarding JD Vance and a "certain activity" with a couch. While the story appears to be made up, it has produced some hilarious material, although at the same time it is essentially another example of misinformation that has gone viral.

It would have gone away, but then I think the Associated Press did a story to confirm it was fake (which then got it into the mainstream) and shortly after that, removed the article - prompting people to think that means the story is true (I think it was removed as it wasn't a story that the publishers thought appropriate to cover).

It's a story that will just keep on running it seems!
 
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