Tuesday, January 14, 2020

 

Are People who believe in a god or gods unfit to hold public office?


"Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are Atheists?
Bush (Senr): No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Yes. Well, IMHO anyhow.

ABSTRACT
It’s my contention that anyone who believes or professes belief in a god or gods, to any significant degree, is unfit to hold public office. Here’s why I think that:

  1. Let’s say that a person professes and genuinely does actually believe in supernatural entities. If that person is absolutely CERTAIN of that, that’s really idiotic -  100% certainty doesn’t exist. Anyone who says so is saying something idiotic. And is therefore unfit for office.
  2. Again, let’s say a person really does believe in a god, and they are certain of its existence – then that person’s religion will, by definition, control what they do as public representatives – if a religion says that a person can go to hell because they “support same sex marriages”, then it would be unsound for that person to support any such provision. In other words, a convinced believer in god cannot represent their constituents, without, in some part, risking eternal damnation, if, as they say, they are convinced of god’s (and hell’s) existence. And they are therefore unfit for public office because by definition they cannot be expected to behave rationally for the benefit of their constituents. You could argue that at least their behavior and attitudes would be predictable, so you would know exactly what you get when you vote for them - that's something I suppose.
  3. A person who says they have absolute religious conviction or belief in god might just be lying because they think it will get them votes – who knows what actual beliefs they hold, if any at all. That makes them completely unfit for public office.
  4. Let’s say there is a person standing for public office who “believes” but is at least smart enough to admit that there is always uncertainty and they might be right or wrong but they certainly “feel like” there is “something” more than just the material world and they ascribe that to a “god”. Now you can’t be at all certain what this person stands for or means when they say anything – their religious convictions may, or may not influence their decisions when acting or legislating – because they have nothing but a hazy sense of “something maybe out there up on the clouds with a beard”, you will never know at what point they will want to take whatever that religion is seriously. Will it be when legislation about abortion or contraception kicks in? Or maybe only around divorce, or on the wearing of hijabs? Who knows? Such a person who cannot present a consistent view of the world will behave completely unpredictably when it comes to legislating on any number of issues – and is therefore unfit to hold office.
  5. Let’s say a person takes an agnostic stance i.e. no one can know for certain if a god exists, or if a god doesn’t exist – so it’s best to just say we can never know. That is intellectually indefensible – if you are making claims about evidence, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that any type of god or gods exist. That person is unfit for office because their wishy washy nonsense position belies a complete ignorance of scientific or even basic logical reasoning. That makes them unfit for public office, where they are required to weigh up evidence based policy decisions – an agnostic position on something as basic as religion means they preclude themselves from ever making any evidence based decision! Again, there is always the chance that the agnostic is striking this position specifically because they think it will garner votes from “believers” and “non-believers” alike – such a person is unfit to hold office too.
If a person openly says they don’t believe in god or gods, or superstitious nonsense; but instead takes a scientific view of the world and weighs issues on their merits and reason, and the science of the situation, then that’s a person who is potentially fit for office.

(As an aside: maybe you can say: maybe that person is saying they are an atheist, but they are actually a devout believer, who is trying to garner votes by pretending to be an atheist. That person actually in reality believes they risk eternal damnation by denying their religion publicly, so it’s unlikely they would do that; in addition, religious belief often requires ostensible outward shows of devotion – attending mass, prayers and so on, certain behaviors etc, so it’s unlikely a genuinely religious person could hide such things, and in particular, it would be a crazy story so you can bet there would be incentive to winkle something like that out. It’s even somewhat doubtful that a person of modest religious faith would pretend to be an atheist to garner votes, for similar reasons. 

By definition an agnostic standing for public office at BEST is trying garner votes from both believers and no-believers, so pretending to be an atheist would potentially halve the votes garnered, so would defeat the purpose of lying to get votes. An agnostic might be genuinely telling the truth that they believe it’s not possible to weigh up evidence and on balance make statements about the existence or not of supernatural entities (leprechauns, fairies, goblins etc), but that’s a hallmark of a brain functioning so poorly that it’s unfit for office).

So, really, the only people you can trust to elect to public office are people who openly and freely tell you “I don’t think there is any good evidence for the existence of supernatural entities; and I don’t choose to live my life as if there were; of course you can never be 100% certain, and you can’t prove absence, but you can certainly weigh up all the other evidence and say it’s utterly unconvincing and not compelling  - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence – and there is absolutely no extraordinary evidence knocking around for the existence of any god or gods that I can find. However, if you want to go off an believe something go ahead and do it - I don't care, and I don't care what it is - it just has no place in rational discourse that needs to happen to manage this state.”

If only someone would publish a full list of general election candidates by constituency, with a little note telling you whether they believe in a god or gods or not, it'd all be a lot easier.



# posted by Flann O'Brien @ 1:05 PM




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