I used to think that we should simply ignore a political candidate’s views on religion when assessing his or her qualifications.  After all, I grew up in an era when, at least for most politicians, their faith was a private matter. I well remember John Kennedy saying that about his Catholicism (but of course people were dubious about a Catholic President), and also saying that his faith would have no influence on his actions as President. In my youth, religion was not much discussed at election time. Can anybody remember what religion Eisenhower or Truman professed? And, it seemed, religious beliefs didn’t condition many political stands, although of course the Reverend Billy Graham advised nearly every President.

Now, of course, things have changed. Candidates, particularly Republican ones, try to outdo each other in osculating the rump of faith, fervently professing their belief and how it’s changed their lives. This is both unseemly and unwholesome. How could you not have been embarrassed when Fox News correspondent Megyn Kelly, moderating the recent GOP debate, asked the candidates “if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first”? Both the question and the answers were cringe-worthy.

Over time I’ve decided that yes, we do need to take a candidate’s religious beliefs seriously when evaluating their leadership potential. If they’re at all publicly religious, especially in an extreme way, that’s a bad sign. For religion is largely a delusion based on wish-thinking, and do we want Presidents and senators who fall prey to that? Now you might answer that public profession of faith is simply a ploy to get votes, but even that tactic is mendacious.

And then there are those like Ben Carson who really are delusional, for he’s a diehard creationist who says it takes more faith to accept evolution than to embrace God.  If such ignoramuses reject evolution and embrace Genesis, how can we trust them to accept any science? Their critical faculties have been warped by faith.

Now Jeff Tayler, who’s resumed his production of Sunday antitheistic columns in Salon, weighs in on the GOP debate and Kelly’s inane question. At the end, he warns of the dangers of electing rabid religionists. His piece pulls no punches, even in its title: “These religious clowns should scare you: GOP candidates’ gullible, lunatic faith is a massive character flaw.” Now Jeff, tell us how you really feel!

Here are a few excerpts. First, on Kelly’s question, which you can see, along with the candidates’ responses, in the video below:

Now let’s pause and consider the situation. Kelly is a political science graduate from a major Northeastern university, an attorney by trade with some 10 years of practice behind her, and a citizen of one the planet’s most developed countries. Speaking on satellite television (a technological wonder, whether we still recognize it or not, and no matter what we think of Fox News) in the twenty-first century, this sharp, degree-bearing professional American has just asked, with a straight face, a senator (who happens himself to be a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law) if he is receiving messages from a supernatural being. Yet no one in the audience broke into guffaws or even chuckled. And, of course, no one cried out with irate incredulity at the ludicrousness of the supposition implicit in the question (that an imaginary heavenly ogre could possibly be beaming instructions down to one of his earthling subjects). But since the supernatural being in question goes by the name of “God,” in the clown show that was the Republican debate, everyone – audience, MC, and the clowns themselves – simultaneously took leave of their senses and judged the matter at hand legit.

Tayler goes on to dissect the candidates’ answers in true Mencken-esque style, and of course mentions the odious Ben Carson, who appears at present to be the GOP’s second-choice candidate—after Donald Trump! What a clown car that party is! Carson at least gets a bit of approbation, but only because he didn’t osculate God’s nether dorsal parts:

Kelly last turned to Dr. Ben Carson. Perhaps the most disturbing example of how high intelligence and belief in balderdash myths can jointly inhabit a single mind, Carson, so faith-deranged that he denies evolution and has had himself baptized twice, dodged God entirely and offered a reasonable look into how a neurosurgeon sees the issue of race relations. We can only surmise he felt he had elsewhere spoken enough about God. He gained nothing with his audience by leaving the Lord out, but by doing so he at least offered rationalists a tiny respite from the evening’s madness.

Finally, and this is the best part, Tayler eloquently tells us why we must take religion into account when evaluating candidates. As usual, he ends with a call for action, for he’s a true antitheist:

Presidential candidates have the constitutionally protected right to profess the religion of their choice and speak freely about it, just as atheists have the right – and, I would say, the obligation – to hold religion up to the ridicule and derision it so richly deserves. In that regard, nonbelieving journalists in particular should give openly devout candidates no passes on their faith. Religion directly influences public policy and politics itself, befouls the atmosphere of comity needed to hold reasoned discussions and arrive at consensus-based solutions, sows confusion about the origins of mankind and the cosmos, and may yet spark a nuclear war that could bring on a nuclear winter and end life as we know it. I could go on (and on), but the point is, we need to talk more about religion, and far more frankly, and now, before it’s too late.

Discussing religion freely and critically will desacralize it, with the result that the public professions of faith of which our politicians are so enamored will eventually occasion only pity, disgust and cries of shame! or, at best, serve as fodder for comedians. Faith should, in fact, become a “character issue.”

The advances of science have rendered all vestigial belief in the supernatural more than just obsolete. They have shown it to indicate grave character flaws (among them, gullibility, a penchant for wish-thinking and an inability to process information), or, at the very least, an intellectual recklessness we should eschew, especially in men and women being vetted for public office. One who will believe outlandish propositions about reality on the basis of no evidence will believe anything, and is, simply put, not to be trusted.

Come on, rationalist journos, be brave and do your job. Even if Megyn Kelly won’t do hers.

The video I posted earlier has been taken down, so here’s a newer one. Kelly’s question and the candidates’ answers begin at 1:34:26.

Note: Both Tayler and his friend Inna Shevchenko, head of the feminist and antireligious group FEMEN, will be lecturing at the Atheist Alliance of America conference in Atlanta this October. It hasn’t been announced yet, but I’m doing so here. I’m excited to meet both of them for the first time, and eager to hear their talks.