Would the existence or non-existence of deities be irrelevant to political discussion if...?

[Htom Sirveaux]

there weren't claims of direct divine revelation?

It seems to me that that's the part where people start to argue about politics: whether a deity or deities has said anything, if we should follow it, and if we should, how best to follow it. If that's right, then the difference between atheist and theist shouldn't be as large a point of contention as discussion over particular revelations, should it?

[LostOne4Ever]

1. But that will never happen

Sooner or later someone is going to try and claim god talked to him and that we should all subscribe to his newspaper.

[The Magistrate]

2. Claims Of Revelation Are Not The Only Avenue Into Politics, Sir

There is also the question of whether the deity looks favorably or otherwise on the community. It was long common to interpret things like droughts or floods to losing favor of a deity, or plentiful times to being in a deity's favor. Arguments of Pagan thinkers in the latter days of Rome, that its calamities owed to the old gods having been abandoned for the new one, and so the old gods had turned their faces away, is one illustration. The beliefs of many Chinese peasants in 1900 that drought owed to the influence of Christians making it impossible for the deities in charge of rain to do their jobs, leading to the boxer episode, is another.