Blog Against Theocracy

[Nick Arnett]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 5:22 AM, Andrew Crystall <dawnfalcon at upliftwar.com>
wrote:

>
>
> All an explicit Church-State divide does is mean that politicians
> cannot explicitly be called on their overtly religious policies,
> because there is this "divide" in place so they couldn't *possibly*
> be religious.


I don't see how that can be.  It means that churches can't interfere in
elections.  It means that government cannot do anything that would make a
particular religion official or in any way coerce people to choose a
particular religion.  Those are big deals to me, especially when there are
some very wealthy churches around and some very aggressively religious
elected officials.

I do see a problem with religion that intentionally leads people away from
critical thinking (about voting or anything else), but if government is a
solution to that problem, it is through education.  Religion goes too far
when it urges people to refrain from thinking critically about matters that
are not matters of faith.  I tend to interpret that as an unwillingness to
live with doubt, a sure sign of trouble.

It seems to me that maintaining separation of church and state demands that
we educate people to discern such matters so that they don't vote for people
who are unable or unwilling to see a clear difference between matters of
faith and matters of fact and science.

Nick

-- 
Nick Arnett
narnett at mccmedia.com
Messages: 408-904-7198