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Emmanuel Macron has been declared the President of France after early vote counts:
France has a new president. Emmanuel Macron – an independent centrist who has never held elected office – has won a resounding victory over far-right, nationalist Marine Le Pen in the most important French presidential race in decades, according to early vote counts by the French Interior Ministry.
In early returns, Macron had won an estimated 65 percent of the vote to Le Pen's nearly 35 percent, according to the French Interior Ministry. Le Pen has already called to congratulate Macron and conceded defeat to a gathering of her supporters in Paris.
Also at The Guardian (live), Washington Post, NYT, Reuters, and The Local.
From CNBC: Euro hits six-month high on Macron victory
CNN editorial: Why Macron's victory is reassuring ... and yet not
BBC has an article about Macron's potential choice of Prime Minister.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday May 08 2017, @06:04PM (1 child)
They're substantially different from someone who doesn't identify at all with those religions, though.
If I'm sitting through a Catholic service, I only vaguely know what's going on, and can't fully participate in it because I've never done the things required to take Communion. Whereas my non-practicing Catholic friends can and do know exactly what's going on and can fully participate if they so choose, and certainly are familiar with the culture and in-jokes and such.
Religious belief and behavior is analog, not digital, and trying to treat it as a binary is not a worthwhile activity. There are always varying degrees of strictness in every faith tradition, and regardless of the official rules written down somewhere, in practice nobody expects strict religiosity from most of the people who say they're in a particular faith tradition.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 08 2017, @06:36PM
Whereas my non-practicing Catholic friends can and do know exactly what's going on and can fully participate if they so choose, and certainly are familiar with the culture and in-jokes and such.
Yes, I'm the same way, because I was raised Catholic. If you insist on calling me a "non-practicing Catholic", however, I'm going to be extremely offended and probably rudely insult you to your face. I've explicitly rejected that religion and just because I happen to know all the rites doesn't mean I want be forever stuck with that label. Anyone who chooses to read about it can learn all the same things, probably even better than me since they have more interest in knowing it now, unlike me who only knows it from childhood.
Religious belief and behavior is analog, not digital, and trying to treat it as a binary is not a worthwhile activity.
It *is* binary: either you believe or you don't believe. If you think it's bullshit, then you're not a believer, and it's wrong to conflate you with the other believers of that faith. Moreover, it gives undue power to that group, because it allows them to unfairly inflate their numbers with people who aren't actually members and don't participate. It's no different than allowing Microsoft to count most Linux users as "Windows users" just because their PC happened to have Windows pre-installed when they bought it, even though they wiped the HD and installed an OS of their choosing afterwards.
in practice nobody expects strict religiosity from most of the people who say they're in a particular faith tradition.
Oh please. There's a big difference between expecting an adherent to strictly live by every rule, and know all the ins and outs of a religion, and actually believing in the fundamental tenets of that religion. It's entirely normal for adherents to not know all the minutiae; that's the job of their clergy. But it is entirely reasonable to expect them all to actually believe in the fundamental dogma that is central to that religion (i.e., that Jesus is a deity if you're a Christian, that there's an actual God if you're a believer in any Abrahamic religion, etc.). It's also entirely reasonable to expect them to continue to participate to some extent, even if it's not extremely regular. Someone who hasn't been involved in a church in any way in decades cannot be rightfully considered a member of some organized religion; that's just lunacy. It is possible to observe a faith on your own without being part of a particular organization (I've known Christians who've decided they hate going to church because of all the other people there), but that's different because people like that still believe in the fundamental dogmas, even if they don't participate locally with others. Participating without believing even the most fundamental dogmas means you're just a fraud, taking advantage of it for social purposes, perhaps to use it as a social club, or because it helps you get brownie points in your community or something (like politicians who go to a church regularly so they can look like "upstanding community members" even though they don't believe any of it and act completely contrary to the teachings).