How are these people allowed to vote?

most of the Founding Fathers believed in the same being. we have to accept people as they are. i believe that if only "smart" people were allowed to vote, our problems would still be at much the same level of awfulness.

I don't believe in voting restrictions, but I find their double standards funny. I think 16 years old would be a better voting age. 16 is a nice, round number since an election occurs every 4 years and 16-year-olds have been around for 4 elections. In my state, 16-year-olds can have their income taxed if they make enough and they need to pay for things like a fishing license. If you go fishing as a 16-year-old without a license, you can get fined for it, but you also can't vote against it.

It doesn't make sense to me.

i'd vote for a reduction in the voting age, but it probably won't happen soon.

It will make sense to you when you're older and you realize that all these people who voted for Trump or W Bush or Clinton or Reagan, etc, weren't really just pretending to be on the somewhat 'limited capacity' side. Who knows what kind of cartoon character they would have voted for when they were younger than 18.

I myself am damn glad I was too young to vote in 1980.

First I was for Ted Kennedy, then it was, "Wait, Chappaquiwho?"
Now I can't stomach any of the Kennedys, including and especially Saint JFK.

Then I was for Reagan. Yes, Ronald Reagan. When he was talking about trimming government waste, I thought he meant trimming the waste government wasted on itself with high salaries and $40,000 toilet seats.

Then I was for John Anderson.

In retrospect, I wish I could have voted for Carter. And this was decades later, well after I was 18.

Thing is, I'm the only individual I've ever encountered in the entirety of my life who thought of themself as an imbecile, even when I was a kid. Everybody else thinks they're smart, even those with the IQ of a pickled walnut - them more so than others, in fact.

Ok, not everybody's that mentally incapacitated when they're young, but even the more intelligent ones are constricted by their own experience and naivete.

People who believe the end of the world will be a good thing because they will go to heaven and those unlike them will go to hell shouldn't be allowed to hold government office. There, I said it.

because it's only the 19th and you live in a free country, it's your right to say it.

And yet the alternative is that nothing created the universe. Tough choice eh?

How exactly is that like religion. I dont think the problem is that complicated. There is life in the universe, and life can only exist if there is other life before it.

Simply, we don't know.

Just because we don't know yet doesn't mean god is automatically the correct answer.

2000 years ago we thought the sun orbited the earth. Science is all about figuring things out.

Indeed. There is a great debate to be had over this topic.

"and life can only exist if there is other life before it."

No, because that would not only require an eternity, that would require an eternity that runs backwards. You can't have a beginning if the beginning already began. And began. And began.

Thats why the only explanation is that god has existed forever.

That is not an explanation, only or otherwise.
It is an assertion that those that feel the need to belong to something larger than themselves utilize, but without much of any actual belief of their own.

And what do you mean by that?

Religion has been reduced by most people to nothing but a club to belong to, one whose rules are usually reserved to condemn others, not themselves.
Most believers do not believe. They just like to pretend that they do.

Christianity supports theocratic socialism which many Christians seem to be very much against.

There are so many things that Christians say and do that conflict with their beliefs.

Such as?

Here are a few hundred: https://philb61.github.io/

Aye, but that itself is an incomplete picture.
While Conservative Republican Christian types often take stances against government social welfare programs (including the very ones mainly individuals themselves are recipients of), volunteer and charity participation within their Churches exceed that of all other demographics. Throughout the world.

Some may argue, sure, they do it because they're compelled to by the church. The bottom line is, however, they're still doing it at greater rates than anybody else is.

Prior to the Great Depression, in fact, welfare programs were provided by Churches, not the government. Unfortunately, between funding shortages courtesy of the economic crisis and disparities in distribution to certain communities and whatnot, the federal government ended up stepping in.

And it's not just Christians who don't follow their own beliefs. Just look at the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. It literally began with Buddhist Monks during a procession. Not fire & brimstone Protestant Preachers, not Jihadist Imans, but pious nonviolent ultra mellow Buddhist Monks during a religious procession. The procession turned into a march turned into an attack turned into a riot turned into a continuing genocide.

I wouldn't say most, but more and more certainly.

Certainly the potential for life and consciousness is inbuilt into matter and the "quantum foam" from which it is believed the universe came. On some level consciousness "has always existed" (I use quotes because we're probably not talking about time and cause and effect as we understand it).

Yeah, the problem is exceedingly complicated in currently existing language.

Where did the "quantum foam" come from? Because if it has always existed, then that is no less wild then the claim that god has always existed.

Who says the universe was created?

So the universe has existed forever?