As a candidate, I NEVER mention anything about prayers, god, or other religious bullshit. If you want to believe, that's OK with me, just don't do it on the taxpayer's dime. Tax ALL religious property and income, just like the government taxes me! Ever wonder why the religious leaders want your money? They never seem to help the homeless unless there is something for them.

Sadly, our nation is full of religious zealots... the fact is that we were founded that way as we were founded by people representing several different beliefs running from religious persecution. Thus, we started with christians, quakers, calvinists, catholics, protestants, lutherans, etc, all who had a slightly different view of their beliefs from the church of England and thus were not considered acceptable in England.

Fast forward and we STILL are a very religious land. If you want to survive in politics, you'd better profess to "believe" or you will lose the religious vote. If you are "christian" you are acceptable by many factions. If you are jewish you might lose the christian vote.

If, however, you are agnostic or atheist, you will lose ALL of the votes of the religious people as they will think (and their clergy will proselytize them to believe) that you are opposed to religion and thus will 'oppress' their views... ironically, most atheists and agnostics I know support others in believing however they want to (yes, there are some atheists who don't fit this mold but...) and thus a leader of such belief would be more likely to support said beliefs than one of a differing theist bent.

It's a mixed up muddled up world.

It's all lip service. It's what they all do. Trying to appease the people. I agree it is very annoying.

I don't believe that they are agnostic or atheist - because we tend to try not to lie to people. As a politician, you either lie or get voted out. As a society, we need to make sure the liars aren't elected, and we need to make sure they're rewarded for sticking to their principals, even if they feel they're staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. Unfortunately, as we saw with this last election, the entire planet seems to enjoy being lied to... Sad...

The worst thing about that, to me, is that it substitutes for actually taking action. They send prayers to the families who have lost children to gun violence, they send prayers to the American citizens in Peurto Rico. But their job is to actually address problems like that and INSTEAD they “send prayers” and DO NOTHING. It’s really a big F you.

Same here. ...I remain a fan of President Clinton (guess I’ll never know how we’d have distinguished between ‘the two’ ), and was thrilled to listen to a live address in Seattle during his initial run. There was even a question about state/ church separation that he answered ‘expertly.’ The crowd roared! Days later, somewhere in the SE US, he’s trotting to events with ‘his bible.’ He got my vote but lost my initial enthusiasm…

Unfortunately, they do what needs doing, or, they lose.. That crap of ‘thanking god’ and ‘blessing us’ has definitely increased over time - Reagan appeared the vector. Ironically, J.E. Carter, sincere in his ..convictions, had the dignity to keep his religion to himself… And though I expected more in the form of ‘less god blessing BS’ from Obama, it had become nearly mandatory for him to play into it..

You know ... if we survive trump - it may be time for an unabashed Atheist ~

In a lot of the states of the USA they have to play the game.

Agnostics don't know, atheists don't believe, for a modern politician their spin team balances the cost of alienating other religious groups and the non religious against a broadly christian population and come up with the same placating sound bites.

yes its everywhere

Very often, these politicians are not particularly religious, they are just playing to their base. Like Trump.

A sort of irritation fills when I hear a public person says these stuff.
it's like having open sex.

What's worse are the ones that really do believe and are just hypocrites.
Oh wait, that's all of them. Never mind.

Politicians equals liars and hypocrites

If I thought they were sincere it wouldnt bother me

I get very disappointed, I mean seriously, in the 21st century? Superstition rules. We are ruled by morons elected by morons.

Crowd appeal... to sheeple. Am hopeful with time, enlightenment, that folks eschewing belief in such nonsense will garner more votes.

I also get extremely angry when I here this drivel , because this indicates that they are completely ignoring any nonbelievers . I take this as an insult to my intelligence

Most big time preachers don't believe in God or religion. That's how they can control things. Their money too.

Yep, makes me wanna barf. Pray in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first. Thoughts and prayers and not preventing children from dying!

Here in India, people start every program after a prayer. It does annoy me too.