I am not an auditor, but if a social auditor were to weigh up all the benefits and scourges that religion has brought the world, then the ledger would weigh heavily on the side of mayhem, bloody wars and destruction.

That would be a very difficult task, all the same, because though religious wars through the centuries and the accompanying death and destruction are easy to document, not so easy is the benefit that many individuals appear to gain from religion - because it gives them a safe anchorage in times of desperation of loneliness or uncertainty.

However, I doubt whether creating a new political party is the go. If anything that would give religion a hightened status in politics - much more than it deserves.

That said, the current hyped up debate about the Muslim faith ought to give society a much wider insight into the destructive aspect of religion per se (Christianaity has so much to answer for) and the degradation of politics that religion has so often brought about.

The time is ripe for such a broadened debate.

Religion is humanities cancer.

I suspect you will be faced with a number of challenges:

1. In the current Australian climate, you will be branded as a bunch of academics, an elite, lefy, chardonnay swillers etc. The usual abuse against people who put up a considered, alternative view.

2. Yet another political party! Australians are so apathetic that they can't think beyone one or two. Never mind 4 or 5 or 6.

3. The media will report your policies not based on what they are, but based on what the right wing elite tell them they are. You will not get a fair go in the media, and will find it hard to get through to the sport watching, reality TV, home renovation obsessed population.

4. You're up against some of the richest organisations in the world i.e the churches.

If you can overcome these challenges, you'll be doing well. Good luck.

I must agree that religion is a problem, perhaps the problem with which we all struggle. Any ideology that does not welcome criticism and discussion and relies on preset positions that are not open to debate are a threat to our well being. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Being religious in the above sense is not a option but something that we are freed from. In the light of such radical freedom the platform of a proposed secular party begins to look decidedly religious. For where did these “universal moral principles such as compassion, honesty, freedom and justice” come from? The secularists may think that they have escaped the binding and blinding snares of religion but they fall into the same old traps. The only way to avoid these snares is to be a follower of Jesus. The biggest mistake Christianity has made is to identify itself as one of the world’s religions when it is in fact the end of all religious thinking.

Our memory is certainly short. Do we expect from this new secularism what it has brought us in the past? Enlightenment thought gave us the French revolution and its excesses, Marx and the subsequent slaughter of millions, National Socialism which was based on pure reason. Alas, when we try to be free we find ourselves in chains.

Certainly there must be a separation between church and state as I have argued before. But that does not mean that the state should ignore the voice of a body of men and women who hold the secret of true freedom. This article argues that only the secularists are holders of the truth a position that, historically, has been found to be far from the truth.

If “30 per cent of people did not identify with any religion, and many of the remaining 70 per cent did not have a strong identification with religion”, it seems to follow that it is the religious beliefs of politicians – acting as ‘leaders’ and not the servants they are meant to be - that is the problem. Politicians are not concerned with offending religions; they are concerned with pushing their own barrows and personal standards. The current issue of the abortion pill is an example of this. It doesn’t matter what the electorate thinks, it’s what the politicians think.

John Perkins offers us The Secular Party. We now have over 30 registered political parties in Australia, plus independents, and most of us still vote either Coalition or Labor. Small parties can only run interference and support for them is in decline.

If we want politicians to truly represent us, the voters, then we have to get rid of the idea that democracy means merely having a vote every four years. Politicians need to be harried and made to listen to us between elections with letters, emails, telephone calls or whatever it takes to make them realise who’s the boss. If ordinary Australians are not prepared to do this, we have to put up with what we get.

The saying that we get the politicians we deserve is true. And the same old same old we get from the only two parties capable of forming government in Australia clearly shows we are not very deserving

This sounds like an interesting idea though its worth thinking through the means by which a society may experience liberalism given the uneven point from which we each start. Liberalism is both "freedom to" and "freedom from". The model that you propose (re: school) certainly fits the "freedom from" mould but not the "freedom to".

I fear - as a person of no religion - that those who feel threatened by different models of thought or who wish to have the whole word share their point of view (see posting 4 - Sells) will feel that the pursuit of the "freedom from" model is really just subterfuge for the attempt to impose a new model of universal thinking that challenges their own. This is perhaps because it denies the "freedom to" aspect of liberalism.

While France is not a good example given the cultural and historic dominance of Christianity, the dogmatic pursuit of students wearing Islamic apparel to school - in the name of secularism - is an easy example of "freedom from" causing another kind of oppression. True (or even approximate) liberalism was not achieved through this pursuit.

Never-the-less, the idea has great merit and is worth looking at - including secular schools. Australia has never been a secular state. Perhaps this is the way forward. On that note - the Liberal Party has not lost its liberalism, it simply never had that ethos. The party just borrowed a popular name that may have reflected a slight tendency toward liberal economic ideas in some areas (particularly taxation) though noteably not all (industry protection). There are some in the Liberal Party who are liberals as are there some in the Labor Party who are. But we have never yet had a party of liberal ethos in Australia. It would be an interesting party to see.