Religous zealots should not be eligible to vote

With many thanks to my opponent for taking up this debate. At first glance, my proposal may seem extreme, but I believe that by the end of this debate you will be convinced of the righteousness of my contention. I broadly accept my opponent's definition of "religious zealot" but I was specifically referring to those people who are so indoctrinated or unable to grasp reality that they accept the teachings of a work of fiction as truth and reject the evidence presented in textbooks and academic journals that proves otherwise. In practice that means people of Abrahamic faiths who believe in creationism. With this in mind, I would like to respond to the issues my opponent raised as follows: 1 - Believers, unlike convicted criminals, respect the law. This is only true to a point. For example many Christians vote Republican on the basis of their faith rather than policies. Stem cell research, abortion and same-sex unions are legal in most democracies but are opposed by Republicans on the basis that they are contrary to the teachings of the Bible. Furthermore many Christians and Jews vote Republican because of their political, financial and military support for Israel. That's not because Israel's is acting legally, they aren't – the UN described the Israeli Defense Force's murder of innocent civilians and wanton destruction of their homes, schools and hospitals as "atrocities" and "war crimes". Indeed their occupation of Palestinian land in both Gaza and the West Bank is totally illegal under international law. Nevertheless the Republican administration was alone in failing to condemn Israel's crimes on the UN Security Council. Why was this? The answer is that Israel's ultimate goal is to fulfil the Old Testament prophesy of occupying all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates and expelling all non-Jews from the region. "Possess the land and settle it, for I have given you the land in order that you take possession of it" (Numbers 33:53) "Do not allow them to reside in your land" (Exodus 23:33) "Do not give them any consideration" (Deuteronomy 7:2) Although it is written in the scriptures doesn't make it legal. In order to achieve their goal they will have to either forcibly remove or kill millions of Arabs, not on the grounds that they have the legal right to occupy and forcibly de-populate Palestine, part of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and part of Iraq, because they most certainly don't have that right, but rather because it says they have a religious duty to do so in the Old Testament. For someone to base their vote on a collection of documents written many hundreds of years ago by people living a completely different world to the one we now live in, and which means supporting actions that are contrary to international law, demonstrates a criminal lack of judgement that should disqualify them from voting. 2 - Believers, unlike the mentally ill, have a proper grip on essential reality. This is also untrue. Many mentally ill people can be very gifted and intelligent in certain ways, but just like people who reject scientific evidence in favour of religious doctrines, they do not have a proper grip on reality. For example, the process of how we came to be living on this planet now from when the universe was a singularity can be explained using Newton's Laws of Physics, Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity, Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and other scientific models and can be observed in such things as background radiation, the red shift of stars, the geology of rocks and in fossil remains amongst many other things. Agreed, some people may lack the intelligence to comprehend even Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time, let alone academic papers relating to the nature of space-time or quantum gravity, and that lack of intelligence should not debar them from voting. However, if someone turns round and rejects the evidence presented by the scientific community just because it conflicts with what is written in the scriptures demonstrates a level of mental incompetence that should disqualify them from voting. 3 - Believers, unlike children, have developed the same reasoning faculties as non-believers. My opponent claims that unlike children, believers have the same capability to reason as non-believers. For the reasons I outlined in the previous paragraphs, if people were able to reason properly, they wouldn't be true believers, at least not in the sense of creationism. Religion has a history of rejecting science. In 1633 the Catholic Church put Galileo Galilei on trial for advancing the Copernican theory that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than the sun revolving round the earth as the Bible teaches. Most priests now accept that science was right and the Bible is wrong and many now also accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that proves creationism is plain, flat wrong. In view of this, to continue to believe that God created the earth and all the creatures great and small about six thousand years ago shows an alarmingly childlike inability to reason and, therefore, people that persist in believing in creationism should be prevented from voting. 4 - Religious zeal is too subjective to determine voter eligibility. My opponent makes a fair point when he refers to the difficulty in identifying religious zealots. I would suggest the criteria would be adhering to a blatantly irrational religious belief, specifically that of creationism. Enforcing the ban on religious zealots voting would, admittedly, be problematic. Certainly, if someone self-identifies themselves as an evangelical Christian, an orthodox Jew or a devout Muslim at the poling station and declines to sign a document stating they reject creationist teachings, they will be denied a voting slip. However, if they lie and sign the form in order to obtain a vote under false pretences, then that would be electoral fraud and a matter for the police. 5 – Suppressing religious votes is oppressive. Denying people a vote on the basis that they would waste it by voting on religious, rather than political grounds, seems eminently fair to the majority of the electorate that cast their votes on the basis of the economic and social policies of the parties and candidates standing. Furthermore, it certainly wouldn't lead to a one party state. In the United Sates, the Republican Party may lose support from bible-bashing members of evangelical Christian churches in the deep South, but they would still receive the votes of wealthy people, who would vote for lower taxes and cuts in public services to maximise their own personal gain at the expense of society in general. In conclusion, I fully support the right of people of faith to vote, provided they are not so indoctrinated, misguided, wilfully deluded or otherwise mentally incapable of accepting the conclusive scientific evidence that proves that Old Testament is wrong and the universe doesn't revolve around the earth and it wasn't created by some deity six thousand years ago. Thank you.