the Right to Vote

Ha-ha! That was actually funny!!!

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Now... How about addressing Lightgigantic's question that you've tried to dodge? (You don't even have the skills to accomplish THAT!)

 

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I made it through your blog without the discomfort I anticipated from the introduction. My take is that it's well-written, clear and logical.

As for the OP: I think your clarification that religion is like a mental illness, and mental health should be a requisite to voting, has merit. On this I agree.

Your proposal is not practical simply because the world is too far behind to wake up to this reality. Religious people, especially the politically entrenched Right Wing fundamentalists, are deeply immersed in denial. Their mental impairment makes your proposal problematic. That doesn't mean it won't eventually come true. I suspect that what is really happening is that so many people are waking up to the absurdity of religion that the number of religion-impaired people is going into deep decline, so that they will be relegated to a marginalized sub-population of perhaps 10% within a couple of generations.

Politics is an echo chamber in which religious absurdity resonates. Consider the glaring displays of hatred we've seen the Right Wing wallowing in, just in the past few weeks alone. Politics amplifies that absurdity, and absurdity amplifies dishonesty. In this election I think more people were voting against dishonesty than ever in recent memory. In all likelihood this is a trend that will gain momentum in the long term.

Ideally, yes, only rational and informed people are competent to vote. But practically, it's a tough nut to crack. Most likely more and more people are sensing this idea themselves, as a kind of an ideal, and hopefully they are reacting to their instincts by shedding their superstitions day by day, by waking up a little more to the world around them, by becoming a little more interested in public policy matters, and by becoming increasingly capable to do fact-checking and to separate truth from lies. Future historians and sociologists will probably call this a phenomenon, in which the pandering, the patronizing and the insults to voters by candidates produced an almost unprecedented reaction at the polls - most of all, the willingness to vote early or to wait for hours if necessary, as a sort of call to duty, rather than a casual exercise of that right in the normal course of a day's chores.

In short, people are getting smarter, so eventually the issue will probably become moot. I like your idea, your rationale, and your connection of the facts. I happen to agree adamantly with you. I have long wondered if there could be a way to assure people that they would lose certain rights if they departed from responsible choices. The Right Wing Fundamentalist is quick to enact laws that wreak cruel and unusual punishments on people for violating religious norms, so now is time for them to take a dose of their own medicine. What goes around comes around, and the pendulum has definitely demonstrated a return swing.

I would subscribe to a program of extensive mental health examination and treatment from an early age, as part of the same budgets that fund education and health. I would not impose any restrictions on the public until first imposing it in government. I would require a special version of the Civil Service Exam for all jobs that convey an official capacity. Candidacy for such jobs should have to be earned by demonstrating a requisite knowledge of the field, and a minimum standard for mental health. For the latter I would apply the Hare Psychopathy Checklist or some suitable equivalent.

I think about 10 years of this rule would need to pass before the public would be willing to impose it on themselves. But let's face it: at some point in time civilizations will have to address the question of placing power in the hands of psychopaths--whether candidates or their followers. So while your idea is a good one, I think you are simply ahead of your time.

 

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You mean you don't acknowledge the potential damage done to him by his early life experience? I would equate this to the tale of a hero, who just returned from battling demons at the gates of hell, to warn others of the peril. Throughout history we have typically given tribute to such people.

 

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Indeed, which means, according to his own "logic", he should not be eligible to vote.

 

You make it obvious that you just jumped in here cold without reading the whole thread - because I most certainly DID clearly acknowledge what he went through! But that alone does NOT make him "special." Thousands of kids have gone through that and it didn't turn their minds to mush.

If his crazy idea were to take hold, all it would accomplish is setting civilization back 200 years. We would eventually wind up back where only land-holding males could vote, partially because about half of the women wind up appearing a little less than rational for a few days out of each month. And that's NOT the way to go!

I'm a FIRM believer in EQUALITY - despite your and his craziness!!

 

Exactly!

 

I understand that this is your answer. You made it perfectly clear: no crazies allowed at the polls. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

 

You need to actually present a case, before anyone can intelligently respond to it. So far, all you've done is make some rather trollish assertions.

Perhaps the first thing that you need to do is to define what you mean by 'religious people'. What do you imagine that the word 'religion' means? Who is and isn't religious in your view? Do you imagine that all religious people believe in theism's 'God' character? Must religion always involve belief in something defined as supernatural? How would you distinguish between philosophy and religion? What are we to make of figures like Freud and Marx? What label should we apply to UFO believers or to philosophical idealists?

That's going to require a great deal of argument. 'Impaired' compared to what standard? The actual statistically normal human population? Or some idealized vision of what humanity should be that perhaps only exists inside your own imagination?

You seem to be pretty much condemning the entire human race with your assertion, since a majority of people in just about every culture known to history seem to possess some kind of religiosity. In fact, one could even make the argument that religiosity is a universal among human cultures.

So my initial response to your assertions is to think that perhaps you are trying to condemn a basic part of what it means to be human.

 

You are incorrectly assuming that I don't use blocking. I just don't block you because I haven't figured you out.

That takes me back to hearing what he is saying through his personal experience which contradicts your statement above.

If you actually believe what you just said, then women should be given the option of voting at the onset of estrus, regardless of what he advocates.

That's fine as an ideal, but it has practical considerations. Already the voting system favors landed (or settled), unemployed people, nightshift workers people without families, loved ones in hospital, or oterh serious conflicts, by requiring precinct registration and by holding regular elections during the normal hours people work. Already you've come to the conclusion that menstruating women won't vote as fairly as women at onset of estrus. And so on. So now you need to define equality.

If you think taking Hare's psychopathy checklist, as a prerequisite to being declared competent to vote (or competent to enjoy any other limited privilege) is "craziness", then maybe we need to differentiate between craziness and psychopathy. The context in which Edward was referencing religiosity was in the way it is referenced in Hare's checklist which is why I "jumped in".

 

My take on this was that he was connecting with religious psychopaths, beginning with pedophile priests, and drawing a thin line from the mental illness therein to the kind of thinking errors associated with superstition. He was connecting this to the ambiguous term "of sound mind" in the law and demonstrating a kind of logic that associates them like this.

Your point adds an interesting dimension to this. I'm not sure if I can phrase it without it coming out too cynical, but is all of humanity to be condemned to various stages of psychopathy, depending on certain objective measures, one of which is religiosity? I would go further to include superstition, and then we could limit religiosity to "excessive display of (usu. pretentious) piety."

I think there is a common thread which you and Read-Only share with Edward, and to which I agree: that innocent errors in thinking should not be punished. But I think it becomes very problematic deciding what privileges mental impairment should and should not disqualify. As a first step, it seems to me that there needs to be an objective test for mental impairment, and as a first barrier we should be scrutinizing psychopathy.

 

So everyone with any sort of mental disorder should not be allowed to vote? That would include disorders of:

Eating
Impulse-control
Mood
Factitious
Anxiety

This would mean that gamblers, addicts, the obese or anorexic, depressives, bi-polars, hypochondriacs, etc. would also be denied the right to vote. Are you sure you do not suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or any of the above?

 

I've no interest in ANY of that ranting and raving. And evidently you are completely oblivious to absentee ballots - they are quite easy to come by in every state in the union. So all those people you just claimed cannot vote is a ridiculous statement.

By the way, have you noticed that you are the ONLY one who's agreed with the nutter?? Hopefully, that gives you some small idea of just how far this proposed craziness could ever go - nowhere!

 

Right.

A system in which some elite predefines the parameters of acceptable opinion isn't really a democratic system at all. That's going to be true whether the definitive elite is Christian, Muslim, Marxist or... atheist. What we're left with is no longer a bottom-up system of popular soverignty, but rather a top-down system in which the public only retains as much freedom as the self-appointed superior ones allow them to keep.

I think that it's fascinating how some militant atheists mirror all the worst characteristics of the religious fundies that they hate so passionately. There's a similar unfounded belief in their own superiority, a similar evangelistic need to preach, and a similar moralistic urge to condemn anyone who holds different views. We even find many atheists interpreting their Bibles exactly as fundamentalists do, insisting on literalistic readings and condemning allegorical alternatives, denouncing what both the atheists and the fundies call 'picking-and-choosing', and a marked tendency on both sides towards legalistic interpretations.

 

Well said on ALL points!

 

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If you mean every person in every state who is qualified to vote is qualified to mail in an absentee ballot, then you are incorrect. If you're referring to early voting, then it's a move towards equality except that it has been obstructed in some districts, i.e., it's subject to discretion of the party that holds the office of Secretary of State in the states in question. Ask the people in those lines, or who were turned away, or the ones whose notices in Spanish were telling them to come on Thursday, or the ones who were warned against possible prosecution, how they might define equality.

I didn't say all of them couldn't vote. I said they are not equally able to vote during normal voting. This was a reference to Election Day voting. Absentee voting helps some folks and early voting helps others. But it's hard to imagine a system that would give every person equal opportunity to vote, without allowing free use of mail-in ballots, online voting, or some other way to schedule an appointment with a voting machine.

Again, the issue was equality.

I didn't agree with him in the way you seem to require that I agree with him. I agree that religion is a safe haven for psychopaths. I agree that psychopathy, and particularly in its manifestations as religiosity (an indicator on the Hare checklist), has played a large role in public policy making, for example, esp. since the days Billy Graham formed his alliance with Nixon, and again with the alliances Reagan formed with them. I agree that wherever the law requires that a person be "of a sound mind" Edward has raised a meritorious question. I further stated that I think the requirement to be tested for psychopathy and to be treated when indicated ought to be already implemented under educational and health funding. I further said that public servants should undergo specialized Civil Service Exams, requiring knowledge of their field, and at the same time they show be vetted by the Hare's Checklist, or suitable equivalent. I went on to say that after that were implemented, the public would need at least 10 years to decide whether they themselves should be subjected to psychological testing. Notice, I never suggested this should be imposed without the will of the people.

Finally, I said that Edward's proposal was not practical, but as society tends to recognize psychopathic religiosity it will shrink to a small margin of the electorate, therefore, making the issue moot. This is what I meant by saying he was ahead of his time.

If that sounds like ranting, raving craziness then maybe you'd care to define those terms, too, since I obviously don't speak your language as well as I understand Edward's clear statement of what he wishes for and why.

 

Firstly, I want to thank you for the effort to actually read my blog, I feel honored by your comments. Most other "sciforums" members do form their opinion based only on the title and bring up irrelevant and senseless arguments, just for the sake of arguing.

I have no intention to discriminate against anyone, not even religious people, but we need to find a better way to run our countries, Israel and Palestine are not good examples.

Richard Dawkins and myself, we did read the bible and we believe we are entitled to an opinion. Everyone else is also entitled to an opinion, but may I suggest a little protocol:

1) If you read the bible and you believe it is the truth and live in accordance with the moral values taught in the bible, then you are not of "sound mind" and you should not have the right to vote. We do not want a country where it is a requirement to stone an adulteress to death and kill all gay people, or kill your child if it curses you.

2) If you did not read the bible then you are not entitled to comment on it.

3) If you read the bible and you find that it is a "naive fairy tale" (Albert Einstein's description of the bible) then I do encourage you to also read my blog and there is a good chance that you will agree with it.

My gratitude goes to "sciforums" for attracting members like Aqueous Id, members that put some thought in it before they waffle nonsense.

 

with this logic we can assume people that didn't let blacks vote also had "no intention to discriminate against anyone". That makes so much sense in backwards world at least.

ok, so just for fun, I am going to assume the role of a person who (like you) doesn't understand legal matters at all, JUST for the sake of argument mind you, and say an atheist that can't see that God obviously exists because my book says so, or whatever, is crazy and incapable of voting. Please explain why your stance is more valid, based on your interpretation of my book... that you hate. And "everyone else is also entitled to an opinion", as long as it is YOUR opinion. Are you incapable of logical processing? Really.

So let's test the person who makes the following statementEveryone is entitled to their opinion on the bible, and if they disagree with me they are crazy, and should be kept from voting. This very statement fits at least three of the hare checklist points -
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Callousness; lack of empathy
Lack of realistic long-term goals


I would suggest that, if we are talking about useful, unrealistic, illegal and wrong possibilities such as the one the OP suggests, and if there are 5% militant atheists and 5% militant theists in my country, that all 10% could be removed from voting because they are not philosophically advanced enough, or logical enough, to see that they are actually the crazy ones. So all the fanatics are out. Cool. Have fun not voting dude.

Also aqueous - please show where religiosity is "an indicator on the Hare checklist"

 

I do not "hate", that is the privilege of the religious, and I am puzzled where you get the idea from that I don't respect the opinion of others.

 

Freudian slip much? I didn't say "hate". * I didn't say you hated people. I said you hated the book. I don't know what you call wanting to destroy something so badly that people who accept it will be labeled "crazy", that is hate * You said you had no "intention to discriminate", but desire only to disallow the religious their right as citizens to vote. Don't you see that disallowing someone's voting right is discrimination??!!? Perhaps you are just saying that you don't discriminate because you don't wish them not to vote, you merely wish them to change their ideology to be like yours, so they will be allowed to vote???? ???? ???

Do you see nothing weird about the following self-contradicting idea? "i respect your opinion, but, because you are stupid/crazy enough to have that opinion, i think you are crazy, and you shouldn't be allowed to vote." Do you even read what you write, or do you just fire it off as stream-of-consciousness? If you do that i understand why you haven't analyzed what you are saying yet. As illogical and ridiculous as i think your oxymoronic statements are here, i still wouldn't deny you the right to vote.

 

Sorry, yes you said "hate"