I suspect if we had today’s scientific knowledge two hundred years after the Hebrew Bible was first written, we could make similar statements, although it is true that the Jewish sacred texts are based on much older oral tradition while the Mormon sacred texts are not.
Nevertheless, it is a mistake to expect religion to be scientific. That’s not what it’s for. It’s perfectly possible for religion to explain the world poetically and metaphorically while contravening scientific knowledge. As long as you’re not fool enough to confuse the two, non-scientific religion can still enrich your life.
Of course, a lot of people are fools enough, and do take their religion literally. And a lot of atheists don’t understand how religion works and keep expecting it to be logical. Sigh.
There’s a continuum between “explain[ing] the world poetically and metaphorically” and believing that one needs to commit suicide in order to reach a spacecraft that is following a comet. To me, Mormonism seems closer to the latter than to the former.
I agree with both of those statements. The problem I find on this board is that an awful lot of posters think that all religion is very far towards the comet side of your continuum. And not all Mormons accept the entirety of Mormon doctrine.
Egads, is it common for a poll to be that scatter-shot? Acceptability of presidential candidates, cell phones while driving, and American Idol all in the same poll? Who’s commissioning this, that cares about all those different things?
I don’t see the difference between the two questions, and it’s not ambiguous. Either somebody is willing to vote for somebody of the Mormon faith for President or he’s not. It’s not “Would you vote for Mitt Romney for President.” It’s “Would you vote for a Mormon”…any Mormon. Would their Mormonism disqualify them from getting your vote? That’s the question.
Even if being a mormon (or any religion) disqualified someone from someone’s vote, that doesn’t make that person a bigot for doing so, but it’s a nice attempt at accusing progressives of what conservatives are actually guilty of.
The difference is religion is a BELIEF, and a CHOICE, and you are voting for someone ostensibly based on their BELIEFS, and a religion’s beliefs can be contrary to a voter’s belief system. Personally since I belive Mormonism is a white supremacist religion, I wouldn’t vote for a mormon since I think anyone who remains a member of that church at least, is not so turned off by their recent past racialism that they would remain. Unless they come out and say “My church is flat out wrong about blackness being the mark of Cain’s sin and it was WRONG for black people to not be allowed to be clergy until the embarrassingly late date of 1978”, they either are sympathetic to those stances or too pathetically weak to stand against something so disgusting. I have a low tolerance for racists and those who don’t oppose racism, sorry.
“Religious bigotry” makes it sound like something inherently wrong, like racist or homophobic biggotry. But is it? If someone sincerely believed that murder should be legal, would you be a bigot against the murder legalization movement by not voting for him? Sure, but is “bigot” the right term here?
There’s a difference between discriminating someone’s belief and actions and discriminating against them for some inherent, irrelevant property. If a person’s religion informs their judgement on issues that may affect how they govern, how in the world could it not be relevant?
If they decide to be the old aztec religion and promise they’re going to bring back ritualistic sacrifice and cannibalism, and you discard them because of that religion, you’re being a religious bigot, but if they just decide hey cannibalism is awesome with no religious reasons, then it’s okay to hold it against them?
To me, a “Mormon candidate for president” suggests a candidate who primarily identifies him or her self as a Mormon who happens to be running for political office.
OTOH, a “candidate for president who is Mormon” suggests someone who is running for political office who happens to be Mormon.
I would vote for the latter over the former, but I have no idea whether anyone else would think that way,
I wouldn’t vote for ANY candidate for ANY office that was generally identified asbeing the (Religion X, Y or Z) candidate for office. If I had a choice, I would vote for an atheist over any of them, unless the atheist was delusional in some other manner.
First of all, if you want to be a bigot, that’s perfectly “ok”…you can vote for somebody or not vote for them for whatever reason whatsoever. Secondly, you’re conflating their religion with their position on issues. Rick Santorum is Catholic. Ted Kennedy was Catholic. Rick Santorum and Ted Kennedy had drastically different positions on most issues. Somebody who says, “I won’t vote for a Catholic” wouldn’t vote for either of them. Obviously don’t vote for somebody whose policy positions are different than yours, but that’s different than not voting for somebody because of their personal beliefs or what church they belong to.
“Personal beliefs” are a perfectly relevant way to judge whether or not someone is suitable to govern you. Would you be okay with a president who was a genuine flat earther?
The idea that we can judge everyone’s worldview, and their beliefs, in order to make an informed decision about whether we want them to govern us - with the exception of religion - is just one more example of the special unquestionable status that religion gets in our society. The very idea that you can’t use someone’s core world view - the very fundamental way in which they view the world - as a way of evaluating their ability to govern is actually pretty ridiculous. The idea that it’s equivelant to being a racial biggot in order to do so is worse.
No. I’m not voting for a mormon simply because I don’t like mormons (in fact I have a very good friend who is one), I’m not voting for one for office because what they BELIEVE contradicts my world view. The label “mormon” is not what I dislike it is their core beliefs, and that is what voting for someone is about. I’m not sure why I am allowed to not vote for someone whose fiscal policy disagrees with my views is above board, but the minute I disagree with someone’s basic view that black people such as MYSELF are less than equal to whites, I am the bigot? That’s some sweet conservo-logic.
Voting for someone for public office, I don’t get to “vet” Romney for his beliefs, and without a resounding, no butts about it refutation of the disgusting racial history of Mormonism (I won’t hold my breath) I wouldn’t vote for him simply on that issue. Change my answer to “Yes I would vote for a mormon” if he admitted his religion was founded on white supremacy but he was born into it and doesn’t believe in the curse of Cain etc etc etc. He would basically have to refute mormonism and also be a progressive before I would consider voting for him…since the chances of a politician doing that are near zero I abbreviated my answer as “no”.
In other words as another poster said, for me to vote for a Mormon, he would have to be not a very good one.
I’m seeing a lot of weaseling in this thread. The issue boils down to this: would you be less likely to vote for a candidate only because he or she is a Mormon? Would you prefer a candidate who is non-Mormon and agrees with you on most issues to a Mormon who agrees with you on a greater number of issues? (I’ll skip the “if they’re identical” version of the question because that makes Mormonism into the tiebreaker.) If you would prefer not to vote for a Mormon candidate because of their religion, just say so instead of trying to fit Mormonism into a separate category from other religions. It’s true that Mormonism was openly racist until the late '70s, that it’s conservative, and the story of its founding is absurd - more obviously so than with other religions because it was more recent - judging those views for what they are is not a problem because you’d also have a low opinion of someone who held those kinds of views regardless of his religion. On the other hand, if you have a lower opinion of Mormons than of someone else with similar views based just on the Mormon factor, the yes, the religion is the issue.
