Entry 416, on 2006-10-28 at 14:10:13 (Rating 4, News)
Today I found a discussion on the BBC web site about whether Britain should be a secular society. What this really means is debatable, but assuming its about whether a country's government and laws should be free from significant religious influence, I think there is no real debate. To me its obvious that religion should keep out of areas which don't really concern it. I know that some religious people will counter this by saying that religion is concerned with everything, but I think this argument is fatally flawed.
First, the idea could be applied to any field. For example we could say politics should be involved in science, or science should be involved with religion. I know that this does happen to an extent, but I think the argument is more about significant influence from one field in another. Politics, science, and religion (and others fields I haven't listed) are all about totally different aspects of life. I personally think religion is irrelevant and has no place in today's society at all, but many people disagree so if it does have relevance it must stay where it belongs.
Religion has tried to influence science in the US, where the intelligent designers have tried to push their beliefs into science education. That attempt was totally destroyed by the Dover court case. But that's because the US has laws to prevent this sort of thing happening. Religion does have influence in politics, of course. George Bush has well known religious beliefs. Clearly he lets them influence his leadership, but this is (unfortunately) inevitable and quite different from having a government and society actually based on religion.
The second problem is that basing a country's politics on religion often produces a bad overall outcome. We do have some society's heavily based in religious belief, and they tend to be more restrictive, extreme, and inequitable. I don't want to pick on Islamic states in particular, but they are the best examples today.
Another problem is choosing which religious belief to use as your source. there are so many religions out there with contradictory beliefs. Often there are particular religions which are traditionally accepted as belonging to a particular state, but this is changing significantly as much greater religious diversity appears. instead of choosing one particular belief, the only fair solution is to not choose none of them.
Religion is divisive, counter-productive, and irrelevant. If it must exist at all let's make sure it doesn't have too much influence in areas that really matter and affect peoples' lives, like politics. I know most people don't have high regard for politics and politicians, but if religion was also involved in the mix it would be so much worse.
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