Trying to cover almost all the things your mother told you not to talk about here. In the context of Palin’s selection as VP candidate, David Friedman does a good job of dismissing a common fear among people being governed by other people of different religions/world views. See his post, Worrying About Religion.
It is one of the most amazing features of the human psyche that we often “believe” conflicting ideas. For example, everything is in God’s hands and everything is in our hands. Theologians may cleverly write how both can be true at the same time but that reads more like poetry than logic. It is clearer to me that we use the God’s hands idea (or meme) as a thought that comforts us when we have no (other) control over something. Even the most pure believer must necessarily believe in his own hands most of the time, just like the rest of us. It seems our minds were created or evolved rather spectacularly to live comfortably with, and even utilize, blatant contradictions.
