No Religious Test
2012-07-07 at 09:00 am
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“The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is found in Article VI, paragraph 3, and states that:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Source.
Nonetheless, several states have had and some still have it as a matter of state law that one is not eligible to run for public office if they have no belief in any gods…in other words, atheists are not citizens and need not apply. Obviously, this is unconstitutional. Of all the boneheaded miscreants running about yelling about “Obamacare” being supposedly unconstitutional (it is not, acording to the Supreme Court), how many do you suppose would publicly complain that denying atheists the right to run (never mind be elected) for public office is unconstitutional? I’d be astounded if you could find one.
The thing is that it is now some 236 years since that Constitution was approved. It is now time to get away from the notion of there being no religious test for public office. By the time that meme were to become feasible (if it ever would), perhaps the technology would be such that the contents of one’s thoughts could be empirically tested and verified. It should then be unconstitutional for any person actually possessing beliefs in supernatural beings and other things which are logically impossible and for which there is no evidence whatever, to be eligible to hold public office.
The notion of one’s personal beliefs and “conscience”, per se, being somehow sacred, or beyond objective scrutiny and testing is pure bullshit. The brain can and does malfunction and fail to function at least as much as any other organ in the body. Who thinks it would be perfectly acceptable if a person professing a passionate belief that the earth is a flat disk, should run NASA? I assure you, there are plenty of people who will assert that such a state of affairs would be just fine.
Several other tests should apply as well, including some minimum standard of empathy, of respect for truth in general, of a genuine desire to work for the general benefit of the populace, not merely a small fraction of them. Regardless of intellect, sociopaths and psychopaths should never be eligible to hold office either in a political sense or a corporate sense. Although I have no doubt at all that the technology to accurately discern the content of a given person’s thoughts will eventually “come online” so to speak, I also have no illusions at all that the people who control such technology will magically be transformed into kind, caring people.
TRB
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11 Responses to “No Religious Test”
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I know of a country where they do have a religious test for office. In this country homosexuality is illegal, they have the Death Penalty, and use it frequently. The government there has a flat tax system, and almost no social services or Health Care at all. Women have no rights.
I’m sure that our Tea Party Fundamentalists would love the place, and fit in really well. The country is Iran…
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D_LEMUR Reply:
July 7th, 2012 at 4:07 pm
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temysplace Reply:
July 8th, 2012 at 4:32 am
Thanks, Love. I would dearly love to see the faces on many Tea Party-ers, if they found themselves truly stranded in Iraq, Iran, etc.
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I am sorry Temy. I got lost somewhere.
Are you for or agin testing?
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Roscoe Reply:
July 7th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
I am against Religious testing.
But I do think it is absolutely OK for anyone to vote for or against anyone based on Religion or any other issue they like.
I think it is perfectly OK for someone not to vote for Romney because he is a Mormon or Barrack Obama because he is a Baptist or Moslem. (which, love for the Earth makes a compelling argument, are pretty much the same thing)
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Roscoe Reply:
July 7th, 2012 at 12:23 pm
The Idea Testing someone’s brain is particularly abhorrent.
As I am against DNA and drug testing of any kind and for any reason.
The whole idea (which originated in the 80s) that personal privacy ends at the work place is ludicrous.
We should have drug in to the street… any involved in that.
The teens that grew up in the 50s who were adults in the 80s have a lot of explaining to do to future and present Americans.
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Love_for_the_Earth Reply:
July 7th, 2012 at 3:20 pm
We could require that Candidates pass a Turing Test…
um… Would that make Republicans ineligible?
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temysplace Reply:
July 8th, 2012 at 4:35 am
Thanks, Roscoe. I’m not gung-ho on testing NOW, only because there is no way to actually do it…we don’t have the ability to determine the content of thoughts yet. But when we do, I would want it to be an absolute mandate for all candidates to undergo such testing. It would be intersting to do a poll to see how many Republicans know who Turing was and what a Turing Test is.
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I think that the framers of the US Constitution out-foxed themselves when they authored this clause, in that their intention was to prohibit oaths and affirmations to the Church Of England (or any other religion for that matter), and ended up mistakenly creating a loop-hole for the several States when they penned the last four words “under the United States” (Article VI, paragraph 3). A reasonable interpretation of those last 4 words is that the religion test only applies to the federal level law-makers and asundry federal office holders.
Moreover, they kind of reinforced paragraph 3 when they went on to pen the Bill Of Rights and authored the Establishment and Free Exercise of religion clauses that to this day is argued to the exact interpretation because of it’s seemingly conflicting language about who can and can’t establish or practice religion.
But that is not really what the overarching thrust of your blog. I agree with your question here. How would we ever really know for sure what is in a man or woman’s mind. People lie all the time to get what they want, and, until you hook a polygraph machine to a candidate in waiting and accept the results as true, the religion test is just an oath or affirmation to whatever the specific “religion” is for whatever geographical area— Baptists in the bible belt, LGBT in San Francisco and Greenwich Village, rednecks in Texas & Arizona or the wealthy class hiding in the shadows everywhere. It’s less about religious belief and loyalty these days. It’s more loyalty to a lifestyle and the political party associated with it.
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temysplace Reply:
July 8th, 2012 at 4:37 am
Thanks, Michael. I justs ee no real difference between having a “Free Exercise” clause about religion in there, and having such clause about schizophrenia.
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micheal_saavedra Reply:
July 8th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Agreed.
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