PROPER RELATIONSHIP OF CHURCH AND STATE
The people should be well educated and informed and they should make the
decisions for how their representatives shall run the state.
The state must stop protecting the notions of marriage and free will for they
are basically religious propositions though they are sometimes dressed up as
secularised. The laws of human beings cannot oblige you to keep your wedding
promises – they can’t bind you to your spouse so only a God can so marriage is
intrinsically religious. Only a miracle could tell us that we have free will for
dogs feel free and that is why they are happy but they don’t have free will so
free will presupposes a miracle working God that enables us to have free will.
Religion must not seek to impose its eccentric, surplus and begrudging ethics an
example of which is that sex before marriage is wrong even when no harm will
ensue on the state. Religion may talk to those who make the laws but it has no
right to seek a privileged influence over the law of the land. The law can and
should act as if there is no God and no religion is true. That is as near as it
can get to pleasing everybody. The feelings of the rational have to come before
the feelings of the irrational when only one faction can be pleased.
Religion should be a private affair. People like us who believe that religion is
offensive and harmful should not be harassed by seeing religious statues in
public places, by prayer in schools and by public displays of faith.
People should not be persecuted for not believing what we believe for error is a
disorder that needs help not censure and angry responses. Every religion has
doctrines that offend others so blasphemy laws should be abolished and the
division and condemnation of harmless things that religion is behind proves that
the state should take no notice of religious eccentricities. Instead when a
person mocks God before religionists with intent to spark off mayhem that person
should be charged with disturbing the peace but not with blasphemy. Otherwise if
people are offended when God is mocked that is their problem and it is up to
them to prove that he should not be. Reason is more important than God even if
there is a God and they do not mind it being mocked and insulted and maligned.
Religion should not be tax-exempt. Religion is not a charity for it is not
needed. Only what can prove that its message is the truth could have the right
but religion cannot manage that. Do not give the Church any money to pay its
clergy, maintain its Churches and publish its ideas. Pay charity instead. The
Church is not a charity and should not be taking money that charity should get.
We have to let religion be free because people cannot help what they believe and
it is up to us to cure them if they are wrong and if they want to be cured and
you cannot make people learn who don't want to learn.
Church and state must be separated for the state should be run without the
unnecessary rules that religion has. However, in a case of conflict the state
comes first for it represents all the people and runs the nation and has to have
an unprejudiced view of right and wrong that is not influenced by religious
superstition and its job is to guard the people not religion. The state has the
right to ask religion to drop evil doctrines or at least to stop spreading them.
Information and good example and the promise of happiness and inner peace
without God and religion are better antidotes to religion than persecution and
history bears witness to that.
Does religion have the right to discriminate against people? For example, should
the law force the Catholic Church to ordain women? Some say that private
organisations do have this right. But if people are equal then you cannot say
that because the whole point of saying it is to get people treated equally. It
would be unfair to let the Catholic Church discriminate and the law should be
about protecting equality and not religion for equality has to do with
individual persons and religion is about something that people set up. If people
come first then religion does not. The state comes before the Church for it
cannot be done without. Then the civil law should dominate Church affairs. This
amounts to dominating a few leaders for most of their own followers resent the
power they claim and seek.
Religion should have complete freedom in the press but warnings and refutations
should be attached to its books or at least where to get the warnings and
refutations for it is provably wrong and strangles much goodness and all books
that claim to be fact should make it possible for one to check them out. People
who have been deceived and damaged by their religion should sue their gurus.
The state must let people say and print what they want no matter how nasty it is
but just make sure that access to warnings and other healthier perspectives is
easy. That way nobody will be tricked if what is being said is very wrong and
nobody will have any business blaming what was said if they start a riot.
