Hell, I am an agnostic too. But what do you mean by "validating your world view"? There are good and bad people in any professed stripe of belief, aren't there?

It validates my world view that Rove (and probably many people at the top of the Republican machine) are not religious themselves, but like the Christian right because they see them as well-organized, easily-manipulated sheep.

I too would like to know what conclusions you're trying to draw about Karl Rove's faith.

I am an atheist, and I think Rove is an amoral, reprehensible man who has done far more harm than good to this country by exploiting the divisive nature of emotional, irrational beliefs of voters.

Finding out that he is 'agnostic' gives me more respect for his intelligence if anything.

Calling attention to his religious beliefs (or lack thereof) in the context of it making him a bad person is disgusting to me. I hope you are not trying to draw the corollary that one must have a religious belief in order to act ethically & morally in life.

Rag on Rove all you want, but rag on him for the right reasons. If this is, as I first read it, an attempt to pander to the religious right, hoping they might question their support of Bush because his adviser isn't evangelical... Seems like the same "ends justify the means" tactic that Rove would be proud of.

HA! You clarified yourself while I was typing my reply. Thank you!

Jonathan, that Rove is an atheist is not surprising. The German soldiers marched into battle with their 'Gott mit uns' belt buckles and while the supreme leaders all pumped up God, country and motherhood and hearth to the hoi polloi the German leadership were all not terribly big believers themselves.

The leadership of the Repulsicans mostly do the talk, not the walk. Rove is an absolute hypocrite when it comes to any code of morality. Every time he and his minions have played the religion card (which is every time they shuffle the deck) he is doing it to manipulate the rubes.

The thing to understand is that while many in the Republican core believe, those who are pushing the agenda don't. Rove would probably eat fetuses if he could get away with it.

EVERY political machine gots a Karl of sorts, Someone who can get out the VOTE. (That's how Truman made it to the office, the Kansas City Democratic political machine, they could deliver 20,000 votes from a ward of 15,000 voters)Karl's religion, who cares, Karl's alive, who cares, Karl's still on OUR payroll, I care.

How convenient, now that the bloom is off turd-blossom he's an agnostic? I guess that explains how he's such a soulless machiavelli.

Maybe there's a message here, eh? If the left (and I'm writing as an atheist myself) can get over its anti-religious bias, maybe it can deliver for once.

As much as I've tried and tried to find a logical way of becoming a Christian (mostly from growing up in a Irish-union-Catholic household), I can't. But I also recognize that the greatest American who ever lived-- Dr. King-- was a Christian. And his contributions to the American people amounted a whole lot more than Nietzche's.

I live by a quote of King's from the "Beyond Vietnam" speech Jon's linked to: "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars need restructuring."

Find me an atheist who's said or--and this is important-- done it better.

My vote for "comment of the year" goes to Sully. There's more to this issue than just finding better reasons to hate Karl Rove.

Huh.

Remembering the Good Book saying somesuch about judging a tree by its fruit, my guess would have been Satanist.

Many people have bigotries Sully, including the left. Don't let that fool you into thinking only the religious can be truly compassionate or care about humanity. Primo Levi comes to mind as one example of someone who has had very valuable, compassionate things to say about the human condition while being an atheist. Others exist I'm sure.

There are very few people such as Martin Luther King, that we can not think of an atheist of similar prominence should not surprise us. Atheists are a very small percent of the populace after all. Also, given how important religion is to most Americans I doubt an atheist version of King COULD have been effective.

That Karl Rove manipulates religous believers while being an atheist makes him cynical. It tells us little however, about atheists in general (I am one).

Actually, I would name one agnostic (or near-agnostic) of prominence equal to MLK - Eugene V. Debs. (caveat: I'm not completely confident of the degree of his atheism.)

Martin Luther King was certainly a Christian, but I think there is some question about whether he believed in God. I don't have a reference, but I think I got that impression from Taylor Branch's first book on King (or the first in the series, anyway - Parting the Waters, I think it was).