Political Deal Breakers

    Barring  highly unlikely unforeseen circumstances, I will be voting for Barack Obama again for president. I strongly oppose allegiance to any political party, and would classify myself as an independent. As one of my favorite philosophers, Richard Carrier has pointed out in detail, the moderate is the only rational political animal. Which is precisely why no person genuinely concerned about being represented to the world by a rational human being could vote for one of the republican candidates.

      Thankfully, Rick Santorum has abandoned his campaign. To the dismay of comedy writers everywhere, we will no longer be blessed with hilarious and disturbing exclamations of satanic contraception foiling up our demon filled universe. Instead, we are left with Newt Gingrich, who basically is an asshole, and has no chance, and Mitt Romney, who was a somewhat moderate republican in his early political years and is now trying to be Mr. Conservative in a political party that has gone off the deep end. But even if Mitt were a more moderate politician, it wouldn't be rational to vote for him. Because his ideological worldview is bat-shit crazy.

     The POTUS is perhaps the most serious position of power to ever exist in the history of the world. Human beings are fallible, the hardware we run on is faulty, and our best efforts at rationality and truth seeking do not come easy. Obviously, we want an individual representing us who recognizes this, and is highly skilled at evaluating incoming information.  We would want someone who understands that evidence trumps ideology, and an individual who can direct actions towards goals which we share. No one is all of these things. But we have good reason to believe Mitt Romney is  practically none of these things. His epistemology is unacceptably broken.

     Now if anyone is wondering if I am about to make a negatively generalized claim about the LDS worldview, wonder no longer. I certainly am. To adhere to a belief system as incongruent with the evidence we have of reality as the Mormon religion is, is to deny  concern for rational thought and genuine interest in the truth. It is also to commit oneself to a claim as arrogant as humanly possible. That you have inside information on the one and only meaning of life, as do so many religions. Mitt Romney claims, as his worldview, that a man named Joseph Smith, who today would be arrested for statutory rape, was visited by the angel Moroni who told Smith about some gold plates that he had to wait 4 years to read. Later, using a  pebble in a hat, which provided visions, Smith translated the plates, and the Book of Mormon was born. I don't think I need to lay out the reasoning why this is beyond silly. Add to that, a belief in:  Native Americans being descendants of a lost tribe of Israel, some guy named Jesus visiting the Americas after he died,  that multiple super powerful cosmic disembodied minds each have their own universe, sacred underwear, and a host of other highly implausible truth claims and bizarre stuff.  Their book is also horribly mistaken regarding creation, the age of the Earth, and evolution. But like most organized religions of today, they have to adjust their official stance to try and harmonize with science on some things, and now cherry pick which parts of their holy book are open to interpretation, or are metaphorical. Oh yeah, and they are ignorant and cruel when it comes to homosexuality.

    If shit did ever hit the fan, what sort of heuristics could we expect out of a person who buys into this nonsense? How could we allow someone who claims to believe all this patently wrong stuff,  to be our primary representative to the world? How could we expect the world to take us seriously? Do you really think Mitt Romney values truth over dogma?
    I am well aware that President Obama, and any one else who has ever seriously been considered for president has held their own set of absurd beliefs. To nearly all people the act of voting for president is choosing the lesser of two evils. Overall I feel that Obama has been a fairly moderate president. Conservatives will say otherwise, but this is simply because, juxtaposed against their increasingly extremist stances, moderates are now liberal.
     Religion is a worldview, worldviews dictate perceptions, and perceptions drive actions. There is nothing wrong with the offensively incorrect thinking that Mitt Romney adheres to,  being a political deal breaker to a rational person.  But hey, all this crazy shit could be true, and we've got a lot of pebbles in Montana, so people, bust out your hats.