Religious rapport

In that epic Technicolor film “Spartacus,” Julius Caesar sneers at a comment politician Marcus Licinius Crassus makes about God putting Rome on a pedestal. Caesar says, “I’d no idea you’d grown so religious.” \nCrassus responds with laughter, “It doesn’t matter. If there were no gods at all, I’d still revere them.”\nUsing the appearance of piety as a control mechanism is one of government’s oldest tricks. Yet people still elect visible public leaders on the not only incorrect but also dangerous belief that a politician’s theism makes him more trustworthy. \nThe Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the results this week of a telephone-interview poll they conducted last month about what religious beliefs a presidential candidate might hold that would make voters more or less likely to vote for that politician. \nThe poll found that 61 percent of Americans would be less likely to vote for an atheist, 45 percent would be less likely to vote for a Muslim and 25 percent would be less likely to vote for a Mormon, while only 16 percent said they would be less likely to vote for an evangelical. \nThe logic I usually hear from non-religious people on the inanity of the preference by most Americans for a theistic leader over an atheistic one is that people can be moral without being religious. \nThey are right, but this should not even be an issue. Yes, politicians often use religion as a public-relations ploy. And yes, belief in God and the claimed adherence to that belief is not a good gauge of morality. \nBut more importantly, when politicians let any moral desires – any that are extraneous to the desire to keep their electors alive and safe – influence their decisions, they perpetuate the hazardous myth that “legal” equals “moral” and “illegal” equals “immoral.” \nMany people inevitably realize when a crime is made illegal because of its “immorality” that the government has exaggerated the danger. Although these crimes often have at least a somewhat logical basis for being made illegal, officials demean that logic by resorting to talking about the crimes’ “immorality.” And because not everyone has those morals, they then see not getting caught as the only logical reason for not committing them. \nAt the same time, plenty of legal activity goes on that, by the same alleged logic, seems just as or more immoral. It is legal to gamble on a river boat, for instance, but not on the Internet, and it is legal to be intoxicated but not high. These laws of course do not prevent illegal gambling or drugs and sidestep the shaky reasoning for their illegality by being “immoral.” \nReligion plays the role of an easy way to control politics, and the best policies would be made in a world where public leaders did not feel like their electors need to know their religious beliefs at all. Although they don’t need to keep their religion a secret, it should never play a part in their policy.