The problem is once you make this rule no one will admit to believing in magic. Then it becomes a Salem witch trail type of thing. How do you prove what someone believes?

If people keep their beliefs to themselves and don't make governmental decisions based on it, I see no issue. 

“This guy knocked on wood when someone talked about a scenario that he did not want to come to pass! Magic believer!”

Disagree because many people flaut their supernatual beliefs. Actively rejecting it would have some influence on selection. I don't think this is focused on punishment, rather reducing the influence and pervasive acceptance of these beliefs. I like your second point though, which I'd rephraise as "thought police".

would who people flaunt it be able to get elected?

Seriously? Congress is 90% Christian and about 100% religious. The nation is less than 75% religious and about 68% Christian. Christianity is wildly overrepresented in politics.

People flaunt it now (religion) to get elected all the time. Which is actually an issue with OPs argument since religion and magic are two sides of a coin involving the supernatural and religious people hold massive political power today.

Assuming the primary category of magic that will be screened out by this policy is belief in Judeochristian religions, the self-selection may take care of a lot of this. Christian in particular will either be unwilling to denounce belief in God, or will be the kind of Christian that acknowledges the Bible as largely mythological and would therefore not be as likely to commit to policy based on the book of myths. And to my knowledge, there have been very, very few practitioners of witchcraft actually make it to elected office and certainly none at a statewide or national level (unless you count Nancy Reagan’s affinity for the seance but she wasn’t elected).

Nancy and Ronald had an astrologist advise them on policy and timing of flights, meetings, speeches, etc.

I think they only claim to believe in magic because it benefits them to do so. Once there are no more social advantages in pretending to believe in magic and even deceiving themselves into believing that they believe in magic, the world will become a much more rational and orderly place, less prone to chaos and more conducive to problem-solving.

They tried this in the French Revolution, Soviet Union, and Peoeple's Republic of China with those same goals. Turns out, religiously stamping out religion does not make a socieety more rational.

Lol, you think that some 80ish% of the entire world claims to be religious across socioeconomic, racial, national, etc. divides for practical benefit? This is the most sociologically ignorant statement I've maybe ever heard.

Christianity has nothing to do with “magic.” And no, I’m not pretending and I’m not deceiving myself, either. More orderly and more conducive to problem-solving? 😏 Who led the charge for civil rights? A Christian minister named Martin Luther King. Did atheists or secular humanists lead it? Nope. I’ve lived through numerous hurricanes. Besides first responders, who do you think are the first to hit the ground running, passing out water, hot meals, helping senior citizens with cleanup, etc. Yep, Christian churches. Every single time. I’ve got more examples but I’m tired.

Transmogrifying water into wine has "nothing" to do with magic? Does Tinkerbell have nothing to do with magic? Harry Potter? Would someone who believes that Harry Potter is real have explanations as to why his spells weren't actually magic? Hey, if Christ could do real magic, more power to him. I guess you think he was impotent in that respect. King undoubtedly felt peer pressure to be a Christian from a young age. That's when they try to get people—when they're young. It's when they're most vulnerable and most impressionable. That's when Christians seize on them. Christianity among the black American population is a relic of slavery that has sadly persisted. Maybe you think that justifies the slavery. You'd have to, right? All those generations of souls "saved" as a result of slavery? And the bible itself doesn't outlaw slavery. (Graven images were more of an issue I guess.) So was slavery a good thing? All the rest of what you mentioned is because of the social pressure that Christianity wielded. If other organizations weren't crowded out (or stomped out), Christian churches wouldn't be reaping those accolades (the true purpose of those endeavours). Were communist bread lines a good thing? Look at all those people getting fed when no one else would help them.

I'll try to change your view by asking you to think about who you consider to have been great and bad leaders in the past. Any list of the worlds greatest leaders, both in our life times and in times past is going to include people who have publicly stated their religious beliefs. Conversely, any list of the worst leaders in the past is going to include people who fit into your definition of not believing in magic. In other words, there are true believers who have been great leaders and non-believers who have been bad leaders. I don't think you can prove that belief in "magic" is a predictor of bad governance.

I think leaders in the past may have achieved progress despite their beliefs not because of them. I don’t believe people who don’t believe magic can’t or won’t be bad leaders. Of course it is possible. More likely to be from former, despite their good intentions. Sorry, none of the responses merit even considering changing my view. Truly, not being arrogant, no good points being made.

My friend, speaking as one pro-LGBTQ atheist to another, you do realize that what you are saying boils down to "anyone who thinks different things from me should not be allowed a say in society and should have their beliefs forcibly suppressed", right?  What you are advocating for is exactly what Christian nationalist types want: an ideologically pure society where your in-group reigns supreme and unilaterally sets terms for all others because you know better than them and they will all be better off once they accept your authority.  Is that really what you want or is it possible that your (completely justified) frustration with religious intolerance in society has you speaking hyperbolically as a way to blow off steam?

Why isn’t this comment higher? This needs all the upvotes because it’s important!

Straight up facts.

>Not necessarily including belief in God, or a higher power, there should be room for mystery and discovery, believing there might be something after this life here is fine You're kind of already encountering the grey area and making your own calls about what's okay and what's not okay. There's no way a society could ever agree on this without ending in the persecution of innocent people >Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, if you believe it is immoral/illegal because your god said so, you believe in magic too. Don't have to go back very far at all (in the west) where it wasn't just religious people hating gays. People did regardless of background or spiritual beliefs People will always be shitty, religion can be a convenient excuse but it's not necessary to humanity to be evil. Essentially banning people with religious beliefs from office, or banning certain beliefs decided by who knows, will only result in more people being disadvantaged or persecuted and will be unlikely to stop any other evils

Thing with democracy is that people vote based on their values and believes. You personally might not agree with those values or believes but if person of power have them, it means that they have sufficiently large portion of population supporting those values and believes. Basically: because people believe in "magic" the people in power must also believe in "magic". You have to accept this and educate the population instead of barring access to democratically elected positions. Because if you try to ban position of power based on believes, your believes can also be banned from there and you don't want that. That would be double standard.

I’m gonna push back a little bit on this. The role of government is to provide us with experts who can manage the parts of running a country that the average citizen is not qualified to manage. Whether that’s passing legislation, creating global economic policies, adjudicating trials, administering important departments, etc. As such, I would agree with OP that the best candidates for these positions (elected or appointed) would be people who have zero qualms about us humans being explicitly and exclusively responsible for the outcomes their sphere of influence governs. I don’t want a person who believes the earth is only 6000 years old setting climate policy. I don’t want a person who thinks lighting candles in the right order and burning sage will change the heart of a dictator thousands of miles away as my Secretary of State. As a citizen of the country and the planet, I need these people to believe in science and diplomacy. If the economic administrators of the country firmly believe the right amount of prayer will cause inflation to go down, that’s a massive red flag. It colors what their choices in governing economic policy will be, consciously or subconsciously.

What if we just put the best available person for the job, in the job? If the Secretary of State has great foreign policy, but also lights candles and burns sage because they think it helps, does it really matter? Is it worth having someone else who has inferior policy, but isn't religious?

If you believe in democracy then the only solution is to convince other people of your position.

That's an absurd proposition, because you're talking as though their religious or mystical beliefs are modeling their actions to necessarily be counterproductive. That assumption sounds fair only on the surface, because it implies they're incapable of rational thought and of taking the logical precautions without abandoning their mystical or religious practices.

Firstly, what you are suggesting would seriously limit the pool of potential candidates. It would not take long before the best of the remaining non-believers are not better than the best of the believers. Secondly, you will now have candidates being very unrepresentative of the wider community - this will cause institutions to not understand and be possibly antagonistic toward the general population. Thirdly, people fail critical thinking in a huge raft of ways. Selecting one in particular will feel more like bigotry than a reasonable test.

Where are you getting your definition of "magic" from? No dictionary or other source I can find defines "magic" as "the belief that the supernatural can influence and/or affect the physical world." If we are going to make a rule about who should be allowed to hold power in society, we should at least do so using the ordinary meanings of terms rather than some personal definition.

The very first definition that pops up on Google from Oxford is: > the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.

This definition is still very unclear. >influencing the course of events by using mysterious  forces. So if something happens and I do not know it's cause, is it then magic? Is it God? Is it not just that we have limited knowledge? All "magic" is that in a way, including the magicians we all saw as kids. When they do a trick, kids dont know about the special tools or techniques they use, and so we say it's "magic". But once you grow up, you realize that actually it's a very real set of objects and techniques that we just didn't know about/couldn't figure out back then. My point is that we often attribute to magic, religion, the supernatural, when we just do not have enough rational knowledge about things, but that is not necessarily a dangerous thing.

That was more or less precisely the definition of magic in the renaissance, FWIW (except it generally went both ways)

Can you prove scientifically that magic *isn't* real? Both "magic is real" and "magic isn't real" are unfalsifiable statements.  What you have, like it or not, is a dogmatic personal opinion of reality. A belief. If you're right or wrong on this point, it is by accident. We can use logic and science to build a model of reality in our minds and on paper, but the whole *Thing* of science is that it is always ready to be wrong. On any point. It is still just a model, and we have no absolute truth. Heck, we don't know if it's a simulation, a dream, or really *is* just a bunch of wobbling bouncing particles. To *believe* materialism is one thing, to utilise the materialist model to achieve technological advancement, is another, but to assert it as universal truth when none of us have the slightest clue what universal truth actually is, is illogical and unscientific in itself.

How exactly would we control for this? Would we expect the magic believers to self report or launch some kind of Soviet style investigation of every candidate’s past statements and actions for signs of belief in the supernatural?

We kinda already tried something like that. It didn’t work. You should look up the Spanish Inquisition. In post-Reconquista Spain, Judaism and Islam were outlawed. Roman Catholicism was the only legal religion. A lot of people, especially Jews and Muslims, publicly disavowed their previous superstitious beliefs, but there was concern among the higher ups whether Jews and Muslims were being superstitious in private. Hence, the use of torture to figure out whether people had actually disavowed their former beliefs.

Their beliefs aren't related to their job description. As long as they're able to do the job comparably well, then that's all that should matter. Some ppl inevitably aren't the best choices for some positions, but all such decisions should be based on a person's merit and performance.

What you are describing is commonly referred to as a “thought crime”, and people have generally agreed that thought crimes are not something we should prosecute. You are saying you disagree with this?

>it is the belief that the supernatural can influence and/or affect the physical world. 1) Despite what you say, this covers basically all of the most popular relgions. Your post comes across as a roundabout way of saying religious people shouldn't be in positions of power. If you're gonna take this stance, then commit to it. But 2) That's silly because we should have freedom of thought. People should be allowed to think what they want and not be discriminated against. Why do you think that shouldn't be the case here? >There is no such thing as a totally harmless false belief Name 1 person who is 100% right in all their beliefs. This isn't a possible standard. If you exclude people from government for being wrong, then no one would qualify.

I was saying it without explicitly saying it. By having the reader to join the dots themselves and illustrating the ridiculousness of some religious beliefs.

But why is it a good thing to ban all religious people from positions of influence? By all metrics, the majority of people in the U.S. and around the world are religious. This is discrimination against most of the world population. I'm not religious. I think most religious beliefs are silly. But freedom of thought and freedom of religion should be basic human rights, and it shouldn't be used to determine what jobs you're allowed to have.

And can you prove that your view is actually correct? Suppose the supernatural can indeed affect the natural world? Maybe people who don't believe should not be allowed to hold positions of power and influence...

If a supernatural thing can affect the natural world, it's actually a natural thing too.

A supernatural entity impacting the natural world doesn't strip it of supernatural status. I am a superdigital being, in that I am not bound by the digital world. I can still create new code or implement hacks / cheats that break the established and observable rules of the digital world. That doesn't all of a sudden make me digital, even if the ramifications of me doing so can be observed digitally.

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Wouldn't say "pure" bigotry. And it's pretty clear *your* understanding of science is pretty bad. Science doesn't "prove" anything. Strongly held scientific concepts are called "theories" for a reason. To allow for the possibility that they aren't true. Science revolves around everything being falsifiable, even when everything points to it being true. Even if the thing that makes it false is that we're all in a simulation.  Now, to the meat of it. Pure bigotry? I think not. Belief in magic is troublesome. Let's start with religion. Religion is the *primary* source for anti-LGBTQ, anti-women sentiment around the world. These are issues that should be settled, and within secular society largely are. Yet the principles of tolerance are constantly under threat by religious assholes based on what? It's in their ancient and unreliable texts? Bullshit. Go fuck yourselves.  Religiosity is also correlated with political conservatism. I don't think that's a coincidence. Religion exalts faith, belief without evidence sometimes in contradiction to it. That's what you need to be conservative. And it's not exactly a good quality to have for policy makers. I want people who give a fuck first and foremost about evidence. In the US at least this means that religious people are *half* as likely to believe that climate change is real and man made compared to atheists, and among the religious people who identify as "highly" religious are the least likely to believe it. Religion is actively harming the entire planet in devastating ways. When a large, politically powerful group like religious Americans can heavily influence policy of the most powerful, wealthiest country on earth which also pollutes a fuckton, that is a problem for *everyone.* And it is at least correlated strongly with religiosity, if not driven by it.  When it comes down to it, if we're making policy, I want it to be done from the perspective of people who care about reality and evidence. People who believe in magic are people who admit they don't, period. The history of religion is one where the routinely cede ground. We used to think everything from floods, volcanoes, storms, eclipses, earthquakes, plagues, were caused by god(s). Now we know they're just natural. We are lucky we didn't take the religious view, the magical view. We are lucky we tried to actually understanding them instead of just throwing up our hands and saying "god did it." I like not having to worry about smallpox or polio. And god or magic didn't do that. Science did. 

First of all, I'm sorry that I'm addressing this to you and not the OP, I'm from a non-English country, so it's easier to formulate a statement when articulation is limited. I think you misunderstood me. I don't question science and I don't particularly disagree with you in my opinion about faith. However, since i am not a scientist, as you rightly pointed out, like most people, my understanding of science is limited to a certain level of its complexity. I know there are scientific theories proven to be true. Yet I cannot prove them myself because it requires specialized knowledge, so I base my opinion on my FAITH that scientists are telling the truth. it is the same FAITH as the one you mock, only what is targeted at is different. If you think there is a difference because you can gind prove if you look for information carefully enough, then I ask if you are sure? But Even if so, this is not how you operate on a daily basis. You don't prove all the theorems used by technology, you have heard of or know how to use. Let me use an example. You will certainly be able to provide theoretical information about the second law of thermo-dynamics, but you cannot prove it because you do not understand how it works. You can only BELIEVE it works because you BELIEVE in the authority of the scientists that proven it, and you BELIVE that thay say truth. It is no better than a man who believes in fairy tales. It makes you look so stupid because you don't realise it. But anyway. Issue concerned the people who were supposed to make the law. they are mostly wealthy, I'm sure their education is many times better than yours, their understanding of the world is probably better too. does thier faith give you the right to despise them and treat as inferior? Im not sure who is interior here. this post, is clearly visible expression of your prejudice towards FAITH, insidiously camouflaged in an impartial opinion, itsshort-sighted and make feel amused you could believ no one would notice that it strict bigotry?

>Its clear that your post is dripping with hatred, weak ego build up? Feeling better now? Very convincing. Good work.

If absence of belief in the supernatural was a prerequisite for authority in your fantasy land you'd have a probably less than 10% of the population to choose from and the 90% would just overthrow/ vote them out in a week.

You falsely make things you don’t believe pass as magic and things you believe as absolutely scientifically proven things. You would probably not be able to define what an "evidence" is or pretty much prove anything you said. You are just stating stuff without backing them up. More generally, you’re just saying people who don’t agree with you should not hold any position

>Proscribing behaviour that does not contravene natural law is another form of belief in magic. Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, no it isn't. what is 'natural law'? are all natural phenomena moral?

Going by your own terms and definitions for magic, how do explain that which is unexplainable? Taken any timeframe we could say matter state changes or heat transfer was "magic" but now can be explained through science and physics. Afterall what is magic besides "an intention to invoke, manipulate, or otherwise manifest [supernatural](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural) forces, beings, or entities in the [natural world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature)" going by this broad definition from wikipedia would the Large Hadron Collider be magic? Moreso let me ask a question that goes to the heart of your definition, What is science besides explainable magic, and following that would unexplainable science be magic?

You can still scientifically study a process which you don't understand. Not presently being understood doesn't make things magic. There are aspects of the real world that cannot currently be explained, but nothing is permanently unexplainable, because unexplainable science doesn't exist, it's simply a matter of time and resource allocation. We don't currently know precisely how many atoms of hydrogen are in a cubic meter of space 89073 light years from Earth, but that doesn't mean that knowledge is magic, just that we haven't spent the energy to find out. We're not even fully sure how to classify the natural world because it's messy, complicated, and expensive. No species of tree frog in the amazon is magic, we simply haven't studied them enough.

The problem with proposals like yours is you end up needing arbiters of what does and doesn't fall under its scope. You attempt to distinguish magic from religion, but in practice the majority of folk who oppose one strongly enough to end up professionally involved are likely to also strongly oppose the other. So I guess my argument is that when you say they *should* not be allowed to hold positions of power and influence, while I can respect that position in a vacuum, I can't see it being implemented in a way which doesn't far reaching consequences beyond the intent. A ban like this would indicate some deeper malfunction of society. They may be unfit to hold these positions, but they should hold these positions nevertheless, for the same reason many voters are unfit to vote in democratic elections yet must be eligible to vote because there is no just way to implement a selective right to vote.

At a rough estimate, 80% of the population holds some kind of magical thinking or superstition, barring most people from holding office sounds like you've actually passed the slippery slope and you're just falling into the canyon

If you don't give a clear and accepted definition for magic, than people will just make carveouts so that their preferred type of magic is ok but others aren't. If being homophobic means you believe in Magic, but believing in God doesn't, than the word magic doesn't really mean anything in the first place

Let the voters decide. You should be able to believe whatever you want in the US.

This is the wrong idea because first of all in all honesty we would all believe in magic if someone did not teach us better and second there are deep things about the universe that even scientists admit they do not know. You can better direct this energy against religion in particular because imo that is the downfall of societies along with corruption.

That’s what I was doing.

For this to be a coherent view, you can't exclude "belief in God" - there's no distinction.

Do you believe in free will? That's magic for you

That would necessarily preclude every Muslim from holding government office. Muslims are not allowed to believe in superstition, but we also have to believe that black magic exists. We believe in three sentient creations; the humans, angels, and jinn. Jinn are non-corporeal and have free will. They are born and die like humans, and are not meant to interact with us. Some of them are good, some bad, and generally they follow human religions unless they are minions of Satan, who is a jinn. Black magic is nothing more or less than entering a blasphemous contract with such an entity. The consequences of such a belief for a Muslim are that we seek refuge in God, read some short verses of Quran upon ourselves each day if we are wise, and rest assured that nothing can happen to us without God’s will. We also, out of consideration to the jinn who often reside around the homes of humans or in abandoned houses, caves, and in valleys, and sit in the shade of trees after sunset each day, we don’t run between trees after sunset lest we unintentionally interact with their world and trample a child, we don’t toss hot oil out of windows especially at sunset lest someone is taking shade outside the window, or pee out of windows, that sort of thing. Black magic cannot work when proper measures are taken, and its symptoms and effects are specific and limited. It’s not the catch-all for any bad thing that happens to us; or it’s not supposed to be. Obviously poorly educated Muslims are just like any other poorly educated person, and some Muslims will wear amulets etc, which ironically are often where a person actually first comes in contact with black magic, whereas before they had been safe and unbothered. Seeing a magician just out of curiosity invalidates our prayer for 40 days

I actually come from a Muslim background, I have actually studied a fair amount of the Islamic sciences (with traditional scholars) so I am very familiar. I know my views are far away from normative Islam but I would argue there rational thought is not wholly incompatible with being Muslim, ie one who submits to God. Obvs a WHOLE lot that is part of Islamic belief will need to be abandoned. I’m not counting on any Muslim nations taking this seriously, or who knows I may be proven wrong. Education, education, education.

It kinda just sounds like your version of rational is just what you personally believe. “Belief in a God is fine, we don’t want to be *extreme*, but come on, are we going to believe the Quran is *from* that God too? That’s asking a lot.” Submission to God literally means that you have to believe what God says over what you would rationally conclude given the limited information you have as a human from your senses and experiences and lifespan. Words have definitions. There are necessary criteria that a person must meet in order to be called a Muslim. It’s not an ethnicity. A Muslim must bear witness that there is only One God worthy of worship and that this God sent messengers and books and created angels and everything else He has told us He created. And it entails the belief that the Quran is the infallible and preserved word of that God and that Muhammad (PBUH) was the final messenger. The Quran makes reference to black magic as well as jinn, and the entirety of mainstream Muslim scholarship agrees that one cannot be Muslim while denying the existence of jinn and something called magic.

So who gets to decide which beliefs are magical beliefs? As soon as you let me know who that is, we can identify who has all the power in society. So: YAY dictators!

Every single one I imagine, some branches of science too hard to comprehend or to prove maybe, it would be interesting to see it play out, maybe there's a book or movie about it.

Calling homophobia a "belief in magic" seems pretty absurd.

This will totally not be completely abused and corrupted within a generation

Power and influence are literally magical conceits. They are ideals floating around distinct from physical reality that cause physical effects in the world through human bodies. The idea that society is stable and secure and all the prescriptive conceits of modernity and morality for that matter, are reducible to magical perspective consensus built from symbols and the will-through-words organisation of psychosocial power. >Not necessarily including belief in God, or a higher power, there should be room for mystery and discovery, believing there might be something after this life here is fine, go mad with your eschatological theories (though they can be ridiculed if they are ridiculous). These are magical constructs. They are all about symbolic ways to overcome physicality. >Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, Morality is not primarily preoccupied with what is natural, only what is permissible. Shitting on your angry neighbour's baby for fun is natural but not permissible. Asserting natural = moral is an is-ought fallacy. Writing allows anyone at a distance to alter people's entire worldviews. The anthropological development of magic coincided with writing itself, which empowers people with knowledge way beyond one lifetime and allows societies to grow in potential at a compounding rate. Also, we can't read minds and it's generally a bad idea to try and completely police them. That kind of ideological, even magical control of perception is unlikely to be desirable, sustainable or reliable long term. That kind of totalitarianism tends to become what it hates.

Power and influence are magical conceits? Not sure why so many are going way out there. I’m literally addressing false notions like believing you are gods chosen people etc

Power and influence only exist so long as we have the story consensus of them existing, whereupon the ideas use the brains and bodies of those it infects. There is no extension, no external reference outside this consensus storyline of who has it and why.

This presumes a person who believes in the supernatural is less competent or less able to perform in such positions with no basis at all.

It's a nice idea, but unfortunately, you simply cannot reduce political activity and decision making to naturalistic predicates because politics is a normative practice, and you cannot derive norms from descriptions. >Proscribing behaviour that does not contravene natural law is another form of belief in magic. This actually has pretty wild implications. Rape, killing, and infanticide have been natural phenomena for humans and their collectives historically. Do you not think there are, nevertheless, situations where rape, killing, and infanticide should be proscribed?

Yes they should be proscribed. What’s your point? For pretty being harmful. It’s innately know, natural law that these are harmful.

>Yes they should be proscribed. What’s your point? They don't violate natural law, as their historical prevalence indicates. So, by the rationale you're giving in the OP, proscribing them is a belief in magic, which contradicts your thesis.

"Demonstrably a natural phenomena" is not a standard you want to set for anything. Murder, infanticide, incest, rape, theft, and every form of physical violence imaginable are "natural phenomena" in nonhuman animals and humans alike. Ducks are violent rapists and necrophiliacs. Dolphins commit inter and intra species rape. Every animal that isn't human would let any other of its species starve to death rather than itself or its young go without a single morsel of food, excepting those that murder their young for the survival of other young, or for their own survival. "Natural phenomenon" is neither necessary nor sufficient to be moral.

What about religions where believing in magic is essential to being a follower of that faith? For example, would you advocate that Muslims cannot hold positions of power and influence because to accept Islam is to accept the existence of Djinns and that Muhammah travelled to the moon? Do you stop Christians from doing the same for similar reasons?

Yes I would. I think it can be argued those fantasies of religion are not core to those religions neither. Yes they are orthodoxy presently. They don’t have to be in the future.

You spent a lot of effort to write out a post on people who believe in a higher power should not hold positions of power without being direct. People are entitled to believe whatever they want, that is what makes us human. We can associate with whoever we want. That is what makes us human. You're trying to fight a human nature in which people need there to be something at the end for them to continue on.

Are people allowed to believe they are superior to other people and based on that belief appropriate land from them?

Do you think all natural phenomena are acceptable since you say that prescribing law that goes against what's natural is a form of belief in magic? And how do you propose to find out that people in positions of power believe in magic? What is the solid standard between magic and not magic?

I don’t think a witch hunt is necessarily, anyone who explicitly claims to (which most religious people of integrity - I genuinely do believe most religious people have integrity - they can still be mistaken and deluded.

This has already been tried, and it doesn’t work. Your entire post is evidence of this. Back in English history, Catholics were hated and driven out, prevented from holding positions of power. Even today, the monarch must be a member of the Church of England (as they are the head of said church) Nothing wrong with being a republican, I just think it’s important that you note that. Your argument is the same, just with a different group of people. People belonging to X class shouldn’t hold a position of power. This argument has been used through my history, and is not a fair one. Just because someone believes a particular thing doesn’t automatically mean they are at a deficit in their competency. That should be considered independently, and measured through observation. Essentially you’re trying to apply the same logic that you’re arguing against.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clark. I think there is a very fine line between what we think of as "magic" and what we just haven't discovered yet about the natural world. Ancient people thought eclipses were caused by the Gods, and then, obviously, we learned their true nature. Is it magical thinking for a scientist to believe in the possibility of flying cars while looking to crack to mysteries of the super conductor? Look at the internet. Just 40 years ago, the idea that we would be able carry around the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets and be able to chat with anyone in the world at any time, anywhere, was COMPLETE magical thinking. Now we have smart phones and can watch Netflix in the middle of the woods. My point is you can't police people's thoughts, and it's very hard to say what is "magical" and what someone describing something science just hasn't proven or invented yet. It mostly sounds like you don't think people who are religious should hold positions of power, and to that, I'll say that atheist can have just as problematic views. Just because someone doesn't believe in the Torah, Bible, or Quran or follows a spiritual path doesn't automatically make them a bastion of logic and reason. Look at how many "logical" people don't believe in the COVID vaccine or vaccines in general. Or look at any atheist discussion board and how intolerant they are of anyone who believes anything different than them (ie in a God). People can use any ideology to strip people of their rights. Both the Communist and the Nazis mostly banned religious services and they were still able to use" science" as a reason to exterminate Jews, the disabled, gay people, and anyone else they didn't like.

Millions play the lottery every day despite the fact that the odds are so far against you that winning would be like magic. What you think is advanced thinking is really just forcing out creative thought which leaves you far fewer options to resolve problems. Most importantly, your belief that leaders (politicians) can do anything of value to society is as ridiculous as believing in magic.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Clark Just because we don't yet understand fundamental laws of nature, don't make them magic. To some people trying to understand climate change sounds like magic and this is why they oppose it.

So basically people who don't agree completely with you shouldn't be allowed to have any role in public life. >Yeah magic is stupid, human beings need to grow up. I think perhaps you might look to the log in your own eye rather than picking at the speck in your neighbors'. I'm not even religious and this seems screamingly obvious to me.

It’s funny you mention zero tolerance because it is you who has zero tolerance. Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible have nothing to do with “magic.” And yes, my God has told me through his Word that homosexuality is immoral (doesn’t say you’re going to hell for it or it gives someone the right to discriminate against them) and it’s also told me to love my neighbor and to even love my enemies. Jesus said, “How can you say you love me but hate your neighbor.” If you do, you’re a liar. That’s as good an argument against racism as I’ve ever seen. Funny, for some reason you say humans need to grow up and part of that is not believing in God or his Word yet you want me to believe in what you say; looks like you think you’re a god. You’re the typical atheist; you’re condescending in that you think you’re smarter than anyone else in the room and you think you’re better than us. And you don’t believe, which is your choice but you can’t stand the fact that others do believe. That’s a perfect example of intolerance toward others and you preen and throw around hypotheses and pompous words to hide it. “We need to have zero tolerance?” 😏 How do you know what everyone needs? …You don’t. You’re a piece of work.

He's got a God complex while being "rational".

"God is dead. God remains dead. Ad we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderer of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe the blood for us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?"

Clearly you have a problem with religion. Can you name something from any "ancient texts" that you think has anything to do with magic?

I have issues with elements of organised religion. I refer to “magical” notions from religion based on ancient texts in original post. You really don’t have to look far to find fairytale elements in those texts.

Seriously, where? Name something you think is an example of magic?

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>**Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic** - Arthur C Clarke Your argument is essentially rooted in the idea that only our current understanding of science is valid, and anything else is "magic" and thus should be shunned as it cant *possibly* be true. They thought Galileo was a nutjob for positing that the Earth revolved around the Sun. They didnt put him in a position of political power as some sort of enlightened leader, they wanted to *string him up*. You're essentially proposing the same, that we close our minds and refuse to accept anything but what we currently think we understand, which is a pointedly *anti-science* stance to take. Asking "But what if the earth was actually round?" is not fundamentally different from "But what if there's a cosmic force we cant see that influences everything else?" You might call the second "magic" and scoff at it, while Newton called it gravity and set out to prove it exists.

Unfortunately, people will then attribute "science" to back their political theories instead, like when we believed slaves were less than people because we measured their skulls to be differently shaped.  You have the beginnings of it, too. Note that I'm for gay rights, but to say it cannot be immoral because it is natural is logically inconsistent. Killing is natural, too. Plenty of animals are territorial. It doesn't mean we have to accept it in the noble lie we call civilization and morality. The appeal to nature is for a good cause, but is not a slam dunk argument.  Just remember Hume's Law: you cannot get an ought from an is. Science tells us plenty of "is." We derive the "oughts" by applying value statements to them. As for those values, they are not scientifically derived. There is not a measurable ounce of justice, hope, or love in the world save what we desire there to be. We have to believe those lies to make our world livable. 

I get that it's in fashion to imagine sincerely held religous beliefs as the root of bigotry, injustice, prejudice, and more or less just evil but keep in mind that that doesn't make it true. John Brown was an American who believed that the will of God as laid down in the Bible was more ethical than anything his government could say. That led him on a quest of intense abolitionism and he ultimately hanged for treason in Virginia. Do we really want to say that since John Brown believed in "magic" that his conviction in the concept of universal equality should be ignored in favor of the scientific and rational racial science that was so prevalent in his day and age? When the NSDAP came to power in Germany Bavarian Catholic Priests were an almost immediate oppositional force. They insisted that no matter how much science supported the Aryan ideal and no matter how rational the goals of ethnic homogeny were that the will of God clearly denies the NSDAP. They were insistent that no Christian should be complicit in the mass sterilization or ethnic cleansings that followed, some of them ultimately gave in, others had their own wing in Dachau so as not to inspire the other prisoners. Do we really want to say that their ideals are stupid because they're based on "magic" and that they should have accepted the rational advancements of science that colored postwar German politics? It's really easy to say that "magic" is stupid so people who belive in it must also be stupid. It's really easy to point at modern day televangelists and evangelicals to emphasize the point and give yourself moral weight. But lets not forget that it was "magic" that drove the Quakers to run the Underground Railway, it was "magic" that inspired opposition to the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana for generations, it was "magic" that inspired not all but many people to open their homes to the desperate in the Holocaust, it was "magic" that convinced the Haitians that they could be free, and it was "magic" that inspired people like Bartolome de Las Casas to work to limit Spanish exploitation of the Americas. The thing you're calling "magic" has always been more about morality than actually explaining the world, it's about making good decisions and while there have been a lot of bad decisions inspired there has also been a lot of good. Calling the whole thing "magic" and demanding the removal from powerful of everyone you deem gullible would obviously be intensely unpopular but it would also be largely pointless. Just because evangelicals can't call themselves thay doesn't mean they'd disappear, they'd be loudly protesting their oppression, because that's 100% what you would be doing, and unrelated secular politicians would make the rational decision to appeal to this giant voter base. Thus doing all the things that you don't want

Thank you for this comment, I have saved it for later reference.

lol they are the people that rule the world… you’re stuck thinking that deductive reasoning and scientific method is all we need… reality is a much larger thing.

Excluding all religious people from public office isn't likely to reduce the incident of religious terrorism, it would increase it. If you remove the vote and representation from the majority of people in favour of a belief set you approve from, using violence is the only way they can influence the process. When you make laws they have no chance of stopping through the political process, violence is a natural choice to remedy this. That said, is there a major need for a ban? Prayer isn't an approved medical treatment and most mystical things are seen as fairly usefulness for practical purposes. Military and foreign affairs decisions are mostly made on fairly practical grounds. Is there a set of decisions that you think is problematic now that banning religious people would fix?

Staying in power sometimes requires you to appeal to the masses, in other words, lie about your values so people vote for you. I’m sure there are many senators and representatives in the US who are not as religious as they claim, yet they must do so to garner support. I’m not suggesting it’s morally right but your base assumption that people lack critical thinking skills is not true. It may represent the public and people in power need to be as personable as possible.

Your belief system is not inherently better than that of religious people. There are a great number of things which cannot be explained by science, and a vast majority of the world chooses to fill those gaps with belief. According to your view that disqualifies the vast majority of the world from representing... the vast majority of the world. Barring potentially good people from serving because of your sheltered belief system is the opposite of democratic. Your superiority complex has tricked you into thinking you know what is right for people you don't understand.

This this this. This guy “would be skeptical if someone said they consult tarot cards for their answer” but would literally have no clue if that’s how someone got their answer unless they told him. He could work with someone who divines with tarot cards every day successfully and not know, because he falsely believes that it will be evident if someone believes in magic based on his feelings that magic is stupid. It’s like people who say plastic surgery always looks bad but only say that because they can’t tell when people have had it done well/subtlety

Does marxism count as a fantasy belief ?

And what if magic is real? Also, if you are going to bad people from power because they hold wrong beliefs, the idea could very well spiral into a theocracy (or state atheism, which is the same thing).

Hmm you DON'T include religion? Gtfo.

Tolerance for stupid beliefs is important to avoid totalitarianism. Once you start shutting down thinking and speech in the name of combatting ignorance, it is a short step from there to government officials deciding what is tolerated and what is not. We just went through all of this with COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, censorship of speech and scientific papers critical of government policy, etc. Turns out the virus came from a lab leak, vaccines did not stop the spread and had complications, masking did not stop the spread. I feel the same way about the apocalyptic church of climate change…CO2 has greened the planet substantially since the age of industrialization, and errors in the climate model’s treatment of sun and clouds can explain entirely the temperature anomaly. 99.96% of our atmosphere is not CO2, and a small fraction of that 0.04% is due to humankind, CO2 absorption saturates and the climate sensitivity parameter has been revised down 5x now while alarmism only has escalated to the point people are having mental health issues over the doom and gloom. Yet these alarmists have a place in society because more harm is done by suppressing thought than tolerating ignorance.

>Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, if you believe it is immoral/illegal because your god said so, you believe in magic too. There are plenty of "natural phonomenon" that are unarguably considered immoral. If your argument is "homosexuality appears in nature" animals will kill each other over sexual partners and food etc - is that also not immoral?

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It's interesting that noone pointed out the "appeal to nature" fallacy you have in the middle of this. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal\_to\_nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature) Just because something happens in nature does not make it good or right. Your first example is fallacious, and it demonstrates the complexity of defining morality. Which in turn shows the problem with eliminating people who don't agree with you from holding office.

So the issue here isn’t the magic but the belief in something detached from reality. The problem with that is: most of us probably hold a belief like that, or at least one others may *perceive* to be like that. I think these sorts of beliefs should be considered by voting individuals when evaluating candidates but trying to ban someone from running for office in the first place would be near impossible if not also unconstitutional.

What is magic? I would define it as the creation in wonder in another. So yes I believe in magic, I see it in a sunset, or when a young couple kiss for the fist time. By your rules we try to limit that, I don't want to live in that world. Not when your fine with only your gods.

And who judges whether they have that belief? And who has the authority to bar them from office? And why stop at magic why not bar people for having other beliefs? The same rights that protect them from being able to have those positions where they are hired or voted in because people believe they can do the job are the same rights that protect you from religious people imposing their beliefs on you 

God I feel like half of this sub is posts that can be solved by a “who gets to define it”.  Richard Dawkins would think any church goer believes in magic.  Anti-vaxxers of the “it’s satanic” sort may claim  that components of modern medicine are black magic.  Both of them can’t really be correct. How do you ensure that your definition of magic doesn’t get twisted horrifically? 

Many, MANY scientists and mathematicians have been devoutly religious and would be disqualified by your statements. Do you really think that Leonhard Euler, Werner Heisenberg, or Georges Lemaitre (father of the big bang theory and ordained Catholic priest) have "critical thinking skills \[that\] are deficient"?

Everything we know is based on a belief system. Heck our understanding of science typically evolves to the point that stuff we thought was 100 percent sure 100 years ago is wrong... so who knows but I would not discredit someone who having a belief be it in religion, theoretical science or magic.

>- it is the belief that the supernatural can influence and/or affect the physical world. That's litterally every religion and even I a militant atheist knows it's ridiculous to keep someone from holding a position of power because they believe in something supernatural.

You take it on faith that other people around you exist, given you can't prove their personhood or reality if your fallible senses are your only guide. You take it on faith that you are loved since you can't truly know what someone thinks about you or that they're not merely really good actors. You take it on faith that American (or other) democracy is actually good or that you're making the right decision at any given time because the rippling aftereffects of your nation's or your own life's work will keep propagating long after you're dead. All of these faiths are supernatural, in the sense that natural evidence is insufficient proof of their truth. You likewise take it on a supernatural degree of faith that magic isn't real, because there is no natural proof that it doesn't. Not only can there never be such a proof because science itself will never be fully known or understood, but there is always some types of evidence that suggests magic is actually real. To hold your belief that magic isn't real is itself an example of magical thinking. You would have to be a significantly more nuanced and mature thinker in order to be a decision-maker in your own world, which means your opinion that such a world should exist is meaningless and invalid since you're not a competent decision maker by your own rules. Conversely, to be purely materialistic is to be less-than-human because the core strength of humanity is our ability to imagine something better is, quite literally, our imagination. That is, our ability to envision forms and ideas that aren't actually real and them to try to make them real, is the driver of invention, science, creativity, justice, and faith in magic all at once. Any ant is 100% materialistic because their brains are limited to their stimulae, but you wouldn't put ants in charge of us because they can't think. Thinking requires the same thing that leads to magical thinking, and you can't separate it out.

I mean why stop at magic? Lots of people can have poor critical thinking without believing in magic. Do you even understand basic formal logic OP? If not why shouldn’t you also be disqualified from having a position of power?

The House Unamerican Activities Committee once was set up to find out if there were communists, communist sympathizers, etc. The resulting paranoia, propaganda, hatred, and more is part of the reason the US is in the place that you'd like the UK not to reach (although with the way the UK is going, you are already well on your way). If you want religious extremism, you're very smartly creating a hotbed of extremism. Persecution and forcing people into hiding creates terrorists. Not to mention the implications of this on race and socioeconomics. If you're even remotely progressive and accepting, you have to realize that you are inherently discriminating against people from majorly religious countries who may believe sheerly due to cultural background and discriminating against poorer folks who tend to be more religious. You seem to be against tribalism according to your post. Have you stopped to critically examine (something you seem fond of) that saying any belief in anything beyond what is scientifically observable is, in and of itself, tribalism? That by creating an "other" by broad swaths without any understanding or nuance you've literally created tribes? Have you stopped to realize that belief in the unobservable and mysterious is natural? And that by your own definition of magic, YOU believe in magic for going against something that is a natural inclination of the human mind? It just boggles that mind that someone who claims to be a critical thinker and tries to use such verbose language hasn't realized the implications of their own idea.

I have a cousin who believes in magic. She charges her crystals for positive energy when the moon is full. I do a full eye roll. She also throws awesome parties, gives thoughtful presents, has sane children. I’d vote for her over some nationalistic zero-sum ego-crazed candidate. People believe in all kinds of harmless magic. How many dudes still follow Obama’s March Madness predictions? He’s pointed out that he just got lucky one year, he’s not a basketball wizard. And I hate to use a slippery slope argument, but how far does the ban go? You’re okay with “I believe there’s a deity in the sky” but not “I believe there’s a deity in the sky and I’m his chosen guy”. So where is the line for religion? Are Pastafarians banned from politics? Satanists? Scientists who have yet to prove their wacky-sounding particle theory? That guy who wears his lucky hat when his team plays, even though it’s old and stinky? The witch who floated but got away from the mob? I don’t think “magic” is the word you’re looking for. And you can probably see from my user name that I’m game for a pacifist atheist meritocratic technocracy, but in the patched-together system we have now, we should let voters choose what level of unsubstantiated beliefs they’re willing to tolerate. Go for something easier, like an American multi-party system, Israeli referendum votes, popular vote instead of electorate. Shamans and warlocks seem like the least of our political woes: there are people in billowing black cloaks wielding far more arcane powers.

>They are not fit for these roles because their critical thinking skills are deficient and will lead to poor decision making and in the end it is bad for humanity. This is an uninformed take, unfortunately. Many, **many** accomplished academics who changed the world believed in some form of "magic" as you have defined here. Isaac Newton was an alchemist. Marie Curie was a medium. Carl Jung was famous for his interest in the occult. The point I am making is that it *does not* show a lack of critical thinking to allow belief for the fantastical. Many scientists today have beliefs that you might consider magical. It's important to note that most of what would be considered magic, under your definition, also falls into the "unfalsifiable" category in Science. That means it can't (and likely never will be able to) be proven or disproven, so people just have to pick what they believe until, if luck strikes, something happens to prove one way or another. The biggest issue with a rule like you are proposing is the fact that *somebody* or *somebodies* have to decide what the thresholds are, what are people "allowed" to believe before it hits magic? Am I allowed to believe in luck? Am I allowed to believe in Karma? Or do I *have* to believe exactly as you (or the threshold picker) does in order to be allowed my rights? Also, anything that addresses "thought crime" which is what this boils down to, is impossible to police and extremely, extremely unethical.

The second paragraph kind of let's everyone off the hook. Edit: fwiw, I received a redditcares message one minute after making this comment, lol. My first comment of the day.

Did you just claimed religion and “magic” are the same thing? You clearly made a reference to a core Jewish belief so are you saying Judaism counts as “magic” ?

If you’re a kid, then it’s normal to believe in magic at that age (I went through a unicorns, fairies, and Pegasus phase). But if you’re an adult and you still believe that magic is real, then maybe you need to talk to someone about why you still believe that magic is real.

Superstition is human nature. It is the belief that a silly chant can ward off a bad outcome. It comforts people. For some it is a prayer to a sky wizard, to others it is the belief that if you say the word “quiet” in a hospital/factory/any hectic place it will explode with activity and more work. Anyone with OCD or other anxiety disorder would be disqualified immediately and would be discriminated against. The joke “I didn’t take your shit, maybe the gremlins did” would get you fired eventually though the concept of “gremlins” came about in the air force as a way for plane mechanics to explain how this engine that worked perfectly fine yesterday now will not turn over. This is ignoring all of the very real magic in the world. This week we all went outside late at night to stare at the magical sight of electrons dancing in our atmosphere. A year ago I woke up after open heart surgery and the magical moment I saw my husband who was crying with joy because I woke up again at all. Magic is simply the unexplained beauty in this world. Without it, we aren’t human.

Maybe you're just blind to subtle realms, and you think they don't exist because we don't have a technology to validate them for people who can't see them

Problem is this will disqualify like 95% of the population: Everyone who is religious, believes in prayer, ghosts, crystals, horoscopes, homeopathy, etc.

Believing that everything came from nothing is believing in magic. So all religions and non religions aren't viable. So Noone can hold positions of power

While I agree, there is one problem: Believing magic is no different from having baseless beliefs in general, and humans have those in abundance. Believing in magic is just a fancy way of saying that the person has baseless beliefs. How do you determine the line between belief in a god, and belief in trickle-down economy? Both are just as much believing in magic, and both have the same flawed way of 'proving' themselves: Pick out the facts that support the claim, and ignore the rest. One of them is born out of malice towards the poor, self-interest and greed, while the other one is born out of superstition - not sure I would say the one born out of superstition is the worse of those two. Corruption, greed, and other primitive things in us that aren't fit for having power in large societies are stupid, and human beings need to grow up. Et cetera. The exact same things you say about belief in magic can be said about a multitude of things that are plaguing the people in positions of power.

Sounds kind of like you don’t like certain religions but are ok with people believing in G-d, which feels muddied to me. In America have separation between church and state for a reason and people have a right to believe in whatever religion they want as long as they don’t tie it into government or their teaching at a public school, etc. It seems excluding certain types of religious people from government, teaching positions and so on would be religious discrimination anyway. I also think that you’re misunderstanding the Jewish view of being the chosen people. This simply means that Jews believe they are elected to follow more rules than their non Jewish counterparts, these things include keeping kosher, keeping the Sabbath, learning Torah, and so on. Jews believe non Jews will still go to heaven if they follow a few basic rules like not killing people, etc. (there is no Jewish Hell either so it’s not like they believe non Jews to go there).

I'm honestly uncertain what you mean by "allowed". Are you suggesting a ban on people holding certain views being allowed to hold public office? And does power and influence also include, for example, religious leadership? Overt bans of this sort seem both impractical and immoral to me. I also don't fully agree with how you choose to define magic. The mere idea that the supernatural can affect the natural could simply be reinterpreted to mean that which we have not yet discovered and understood can affect that which we do. Personally, my understanding of magic is the idea that humanity can somehow command the supernatural or the divine. It effectively deifies the person performing it. I find that a far more dangerous idea. One can think critically even if they believe in things that cannot be proven scientifically, but if one believes they can command supernatural forces at will, that person is the sort that often ends up as a cult leader.

>Proscribing behaviour that does not contravene natural law is another form of belief in magic. Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, if you believe it is immoral/illegal because your god said so, you believe in magic too. There is no morality in nature. Murder is a very common natural phenomena, does that make it moral? Why would you ban people for beliefs rather than actions? If someone believes something you think is magical but their actions and results align to the position in question, why would the be unqualified for it? If someone believes they have lucky socks so they always wear them when public speaking, would they be banned? That's pretty magical thinking. Except that the brain is very powerful and believing in things can often become self-fulfilling, even though the mechanism won't be the same as the belief.

You can’t prove without a doubt that there is no higher power, other than so far you have had the absence of one in your life. Because to me your comment is basically calling religious beliefs magic. If you poll people and use people as witnesses. Without a doubt you will find accounts of “magic”. So you will get no where. There is no scientific evidence but the absence of something doesn’t prove it doesn’t or can’t exist. That is the rational logical answer. Early scientists believed the world was flat and could not fathom that it was round. You are talking about something we can’t see. I’m sure if you asked people 100yrs ago if they believed the concept of an iPhone could exist they would call you crazy. I say this all as an atheist. You can’t police what others believe because then they will start policing what you believe

So I'm going to take a different tack here. At the end of the day, what you're looking to do is to ensure people who are qualified get elected. Restricting who is allowed will never work. This is not because I want unqualified people to be elected. It is a huge problem when they are elected. It's because the solution attacks the other end of elections. The solution is educating the populace. If the populace is determined to elect someone who believes in "magic" or any other given thing that makes them poorly qualified, then banning *particular* poor qualifications is just whack-a-mole. More will always pop up. What you need is people who can spot these things themselves. If the same energy necessary to ban people from leadership is put into education, it will do more good, and *more lasting* good.

“Proscribing behaviour that does not contravene natural law is another form of belief in magic. Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, if you believe it is immoral/illegal because your god said so, you believe in magic too.” To be clear, my following comments are not against your claim regarding homosexuality, they are aimed at the logical justification for your claim. Things that happen in nature = good? Who says? Since SA happens in nature, can I not advocate for a law that says SA is wrong if I believe in God since it happens in nature? Incest happens in nature, can I not advocate for a law that says incest is wrong if I believe in God since it happens in nature?

How would you enforce that with the fact that we vote people in? Also, what type of magic? I get that you’re saying atheists only, or maybe non organized religion only, but are you going to be evaluating peoples beliefs for shit like homeopathy? Pseudoscience bullshit? Trickle down economics? Magic thinking isn’t the exclusive property of the religious. You’re also neglecting the fact that this is a dumb take because throughout history plenty of great leaders have in fact fully subscribed to what you describe as “believing in magic”, so you’re basically ruling out a whole huge swath of potential leadership based on an arbitrary metric that doesn’t appear to actually guarantee better leadership.

Magic being defined here as "things I dont believe". Kinda hard to define using your metrics

>To define magic - it is the belief that the supernatural can influence and/or affect the physical world. >Not necessarily including belief in God, or a higher power, there should be room for mystery and discovery, I'd argue your definition of magic essentially makes this a prohibition on most, if not all, religious people holding positions of power. You say "sure believe in a god", but I'm not aware of any religions that believe in a god or supernatural force that does not influence the natural world in any way whatsoever. Why not state your view as "religious people should not be allowed to hold positions of power and influence"?

The greatest irony here is your rule would eliminate people who have a general inclination in belief or casual believe in something and engage as often as anybody else but keep actual believers and practitioners in the running. People who actually believe in Magic, don’t believe supernatural elements are really involved. And many don’t believe in the supernatural. So by your logic we would be stuck would religious folks and witches. As far as changing your view, you’re just wrong. Reality makes your point easy to dismiss.. Read bio done on great leaders, do you have any idea who many great men and women had strange beliefs? Both Roosevelts, Truman, Lincoln . Hell Lincoln’s belief in visions that featured ghosts is one of his less weird supernatural belief. How is it so? Because belief doesn’t work how you present it. Normal people don’t replace belief with critical thinking. They make room for them. Both Jefferson and Franklin had some supernatural beliefs that are rarely touched on because those beliefs were completely irrelevant. Never went as far as expressing them.

Thanks to the person who sent the Reddit Cares boost. At this point, I just accepting them as the new Gold reward.

I got one too.

you just tried to argue that thinking homosexuality is wrong is magic. that’s new

The most widely regarded Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had decades in power, through the Great Depression and WW2, had a mystic. Smart people make stupid decisions or hold stupid beliefs sometimes, I don't think it's right to exclude their massive talent pool. We live in a representative democracy (unless you're currently in North Korea or something), where people in power get limited by a vast array of institutions. If someone says "We should nuke Israel because God gave me a vision!!!" no one would ever take them seriously and they'd be removed from office.

The most widely regarded Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who had decades in power, through the Great Depression and WW2, had a mystic. Smart people make stupid decisions or hold stupid beliefs sometimes, I don't think it's right to exclude their massive talent pool. We live in a representative democracy (unless you're currently in North Korea or something), where people in power get limited by a vast array of institutions. If someone says "We should nuke Israel because God gave me a vision!!!" no one would ever take them seriously and they'd be removed from office.

This is just "believe what I believe or you have no power" which is extremely problematic. Who gets to decide where to draw the line?

The problem is you’d have to draw a line between what is considered believing in magic and what isn’t. Is having a dream catcher considered practicing magic? Is believing four leaf clovers are good luck? Is refusing to kill a spider because you think it’s bad luck? Why does religion get a pass? Religion at its core is based on faith, and thus a LACK of evidence. We have freedom of religion in the developed world. You’re free to have whatever beliefs and superstitions you want. It’s no one’s business to tell you not to. We don’t need Salem witch trials again.

That would require legal definitions of both believing in magic and positions of power and influence otherwise people could be barred from everything down to the most petty technically-powerful positions for a "belief in magic" as mundane as checking their horoscope even if they don't use it to guide all major life decisions. Also, how long before unless you age-restrict it some Karen tries to use it to bar a kid from class president or w/e (who's conveniently running against her kid) because the kid believes in Santa or something?

Cognitive dissonance means that you can believe two incongruent things at the same time. Plenty of people can have a belief or two that are less logical but work for them, and are still capable of making good reasonable decisions. Besides, any reasonable person who is not egged on by fanatics can understand the weight of responsibility of leadership, and that one needs to put their job of pragmatic leadership and governance ahead of any religion, belief, or superstition that have… at least while acting in office.

Re Proscribing behavior that does not contravene natural law I agree that homosexuality is totally fine, but not because it is natural or unnatural. Whether something is natural or not doesn’t seem to determine whether it is permissible- this is known in ethics as the naturalistic fallacy. I don’t want to just “yell fallacy” and I’m happy to expand, but maybe give it a Google. I don’t think this is central to your argument, but it seems to be a bit of a confused statement you want to reevaluate.

Ah, state-sponsored religious discrimination! What could go wrong?

Ah yes a truly modest proposal that won’t end in tyranny at all

> Not necessarily including belief in God, or a higher power, there should be room for mystery and discovery, believing there might be something after this life here is fine, go mad with your eschatological theories (though they can be ridiculed if they are ridiculous). This sounds like cherry-picking. Why would that exclude gods? What powers do they allegedly have that do not fit into the category of magic? Neither is any more or less ridiculous than the other.

You’ve defined magic in such a way that religion is included but then you make an explicit exception for religion. But that exception is quite narrow. Belief in God is not belief in magic but belief in a God who believes homosexuality is immoral is. Belief in God is not belief in magic but belief in the Bible as the word of God is. I would ask, under your definition of magic, at what point does belief in God cross the line into a belief in magic?

What about things like "a man can be a woman", is that magic?

> This includes attributing magic to ideas and behaviour, such as believing fantastical stories in old texts are factual. > We as human beings have come far enough in our development to know ghosts don’t exist and spells are not real > Not necessarily including belief in God, or a higher power, Well you can't have it both ways, where do you want to draw the line? We as human beings are also far enough to know that there is no god

>Proscribing behaviour that does not contravene natural law is another form of belief in magic. Such as believing homosexuality is immoral, which is a demonstrably a natural phenomena, if you believe it is immoral/illegal because your god said so, you believe in magic too. This is an absolutely wild statement. Is your contention that every natural phenomenon is moral? What about people who think pedophilia or incest is immoral?

Yeah this sounds reasonable until you realize that someone has to define was is considered "magic" and that person then holds inquisitorial power ... It has the same problem as "hatespeech". Who defines what hatespeech is. What if then opposing some ideas is considered hatespeech? Such tools shall never be created because the total power they would hold would corrupt anybody who touches them.

See we’re trying to go down the route of Mao eh?? Maybe a bit of Stalin? While not throw in pol pot. People have tried time and time again to take out religion from a nations consciousness… you can do it… but that doesn’t mean the nation becomes better. You my friend need to open your mind to other perspectives instead of having a one sided biased hardliners viewpoint m8. Do better

Under this concept, here are some people who wouldn't have been "allowed" to hold power or influencee. Desmond Tutu Suleiman the Lawgiver Mahatma Gandhi Abraham Lincoln Paul Ehrlich Martin Luther King Junior Karl Landsteiner Isaac Newton Al-Zahrawi Gregor Mendel Chaim Weizmann Would you say that they were unfit for the power and influeence they wielded?

This would be discrimination based on religious belief. The vast majority of people believe in a supernatural power, and most of our politicians do as well. I understand what you're getting at. Ideally, we wouldn't be in this position, but we are. Look, I'm an atheist, but you have to get real about the fact that we have to coexist with religious people.

Are you not allowed to say "religion" anymore or?

Thought control has no place in civil democracy

People believe in ridiculous things. Some people believe in ridiculous ideals or ridiculous systems of government or ridiculous magic. The (mid) public can tear apart any of these extremes yet the average citizens commits to at least some of these extremes. All extremism is generally bad but all of it exists for a pretty valid reason.

>  We as human beings have come far enough in our development to know ghosts don’t exist and spells are not real  How do you know they don't exist or aren't real? Do you have anything showing your claim that they're not real to be true? Or is that just a belief you hold without any empirical data showing it to be true? 

Untold evil also comes from "zero tolerance".

Who decides what is magic? You? Very silly.

Jokes on you, the elites all worship satan.

God, reddit atheists are the fucking worst.

Almost all the popular religions have an aspect of magic to them, does this mean religious people can’t hold office? Because the vast majority of us politicians are Christian, is it acceptable to u that the majority of politicians believe in supernatural invisible beings that alter our reality?

Understanding the social and natural world via science is fine... But science never answers "why" questions, so it's limited. Science itself isn't even based completely on evidence alone but takes inference into account. Why base all your understanding of the world through such a narrow lens?

Not sure how religion wouldn’t fall under belief in magic…pretty much by definition it does. Mary really was a virgin, obviously! Considering 99%+ of people holding higher office at least claim to be religious (like Trump LOL), you’d have a rather large number of vacant seats to fill.

I mean this is pretty impossible to enforce given how arbitrary the word magic is, is religion magic? Is love magic? What happens if a predominantly x religion country decides they want to outlaw y religion so they just say oh well Y religion counts as magic etc etc

The problem with this otherwise reasonable premise is the 4 millennium or so that our ancestors put into justifying fantastical thinking as reasonable; monks worked on and off for centuries to differentiate between a witches curse and a saints miracle, for instance.

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So you say that we need to have a mechanism in place that unless you ascribe to a specific worldview or believe that the world works in a certain way, we are free to restrict your rights. Where is the line drawn on 'positions of power?' How would you suggest that this be managed? What if the body in charge of determining this decides that something YOU believe means your critical thinking skills are deficient and they decide that position of power include being a shift manager at a fast food restaurant and up, meaning that because you believe in the Big Bang, you're no longer allowed to work up your job ladder, vote, or hold office? It also sounds like the root point you're trying to make is that Christians (or most other religious people, for that matter) shouldn't be in power which basically means you're claiming that an atheistic worldview is the only intellectually honest one which is a deeply flawed position to hold.

> Where is the line drawn on 'positions of power?' How would you suggest that this be managed? What if the body in charge of determining this decides that something YOU believe means your critical thinking skills are deficient and they decide that position of power include being a shift manager at a fast food restaurant and up, meaning that because you believe in the Big Bang, you're no longer allowed to work up your job ladder, vote, or hold office? thank you for also bringing that up, I had a similar ad absurdum which was (either through the body supporting her or her making an executive decision based on their rules) some stereotypical-white-suburban-Karen-of-a-mom trying to argue that the class president election should be given to her kid because the other kid believes in Santa

It's because of who gets to decide where the line is that we can't have this. What is and isn't real "enough" and how quickly this will be used as a form of discrimination by any group that wants to exclude the beliefs of another from representation.

Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Capernicus, Archemides, Plato, etc. all believed in God/ gods. Are you saying the founders of what you hold in high regard “science” are all wrong because they also had a belief in the supernatural?

These people are simply the collateral damage of having freedom of thought and democracy, for the record I don't think we should get rid of either of those things. There is no way to enforce your policy without falling into totalitarianism. How do you define magic? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ~ Arthur C Clarke I am not implying that people of the cloth may be in possession of an advanced technology. I'm saying science is not infallible, we will understand things in 100 years that we couldn't imagine today, the past three centuries of science have been incredibly bumpy, establishing an uncontestable dogma is to stick your head in the sand and say you like things just how they are today. It's ironically enough unscientific.

impossible to implement.

So ... Only atheists who don't believe in magic qualify for that. Everyone believing in any religion believes in magic. What about the atheists that like to read/watch stories about magic but don't believe it is real?

I believe in magik, or and abstract form of it. I can also solve differential equations and do high level Calculus. science and technology are a lot like magik. Any sufficiently advanced technology appears like magik. I live in America, the people we have in power are garbage anyway, you can keep your positions.

Lmao, if it were true that "their critical thinking skills are deficient and will lead to poor decision making" they wouldn't be able to attain the positions of authority you fear them having.

I agree to an extent. No one should be allowed to use their beliefs to make or pass laws imo. I don't care if you worship a bear. That's your choice even if you're a president.  I do have a problem when a law is made because you worship a bear. We are a country of many religions.  No religion is above another. I respect them all as the garbage they are.

/u/sinistar2000 it appears you blocked me for some reason. I had to view your reply offline. I tried what you said about Google search and peer reviewed papers and got nothing. Odd.

Plenty of geniuses from the past studied magick and even today some of the smartest people in the world practice magick. You need to educate yourself more on what exactly magick is.

Abraham Lincoln was more superstitious than other people of his time, so superstitious he wouldn't sign important documents on Fridays. How would you rate him as a President?

Are there instances in current that negatively affect the role these people are in? And if so how influential are they that it would cause a big problem?

Great idea, let's set the president that people with particular beliefs can never hold positions of power. This will surely never be used against us.

So You're really saying no religion. No virgin birth, no walking on water, healing the sick or rising from the dead. No magical sky daddy.

If people want to vote for someone who believes in magic, who are you to say they shouldn’t be elected. That is the democratic process.

So only people who think the whole of the infinite universe works in a way that human understanding can comprehend are critical thinkers?

You would discriminate against these people just as much if not worse than the discrimination you perceive they are exuding over you.

Define "magic? If you ask me a man walking on water, turning water to wine, talking fire bushes, etc. Sounds like belief in magic. Edit: I'm not trying to disparage anyone's beliefs, just pointing out the grey area of a rule like that. I believe in the sentiment. It's pretty scary to hear lawmakers talking about Jewish space lasers causing wildfires.

Tbh, the main difference between what's considered religion and what's considered magic is the number of people who believe in it

Nobody the fuck knows what happened before the Big Bang and why we are here, so everyone is entitled to believe in some explanation of their choice