Dear Nathan,

Religion exists everywhere, within society and without society - no one can stop it. Every flower and every rock strives to re-unite with God.

I think that many atheists were hurt in their past by what-they-take-to-be-religion, so I cannot blame them for not wanting to hear about religion. The irony is that they could even be religious themselves without knowing it. It is unfortunate that some people in robes who claimed to be religious have given God such a bad reputation.

How could it help religion if people were talking about religion while not understanding what it is that they refer to? Suppose they actually came across religion, what if they failed to recognise it and therefore banned it on some other grounds?

It is better that people show basic respect to all individual values, views and attitudes, then religion will be automatically included without extra efforts.

Let us use your last example: "some people's religious beliefs, do stand out from the crowd by what they wear":

- If we truly had the freedom what to wear, or not to wear, then automatically there would also be no religious oppression around clothing. Take the example of the Hindu Nagas: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=hindu+nagas+kumbh+mela&tbm=isch&biw=1014&bih=646

In Australia, unfortunately, this religion would be repressed on the ridiculous assumption that it's "not a religion but a sexual cult" - how furthest from the truth, but that's what it would seem to most Australians who never learned about the Nagas' religious background.

Yuyutsu posted:

'I think that many atheists were hurt in their past by what-they-take-to-be-religion, so I cannot blame them for not wanting to hear about religion. The irony is that they could even be religious themselves without knowing it.'

This rhetorical manoeuvre could be seen from one point of view as 'conversion by definition', but even if it should be the case that all humans, including atheists,do have a genetically inherited cognitive predisposition for religious and magical thinking, there is no single incontestable conclusion one could draw from this about the truth or falsity of any belief or the desirability of any its associated practices.

A veritable mountain of literature exploring religion through anthropology, experimental and evolutionary psychology, philosophy, theology, neuroscience, cognitive science and other avenues of enquiry has not yielded a fully consensual definition. Hence the wisdom of Meg's argument as I understand it: pin 'freedom of religion', however imperfectly understood and without any privileged status, to the panoply of other freedoms in which it plays a part, and evaluate their interrelationship according to extrinsic social benefit criteria through public discourse.

Hi lasxpirate,

Karl Popper says that we all have faith, or belief, in something, even if it is just luck, or reason, or the goodness of humanity - that we all have a streak of irrationality, and that it probably couldn't be otherwise. But we also have a fair dose of rationality, an expectation for example, that the sun will (appear to) come up each morning. Most of us, anyway.

And we can hold those two streams of belief - one rational, one irrational - in our heads at the same time. Popper says that they are incommensurate, that it is pointless to try to debunk one from the viewpoint of the other - one is based on empirical principles, more or less, and the other on metaphysics - each is built on different foundations. We might give priority of one over the other, but they don't really combat each other on the same ground.

So, I'm still wondering, why did the West throw up a plethora of more secular bodies of thought and reason, while the monolithic Eastern States derive and elaborate on unquestioned bodies of religious dogma ? Is the relatively chaotic variety of European geography and climate, that there has never been (and seems likely never to be) a single, monolithic State of Europe, a major reason for the hiving off of all manner of crack-pot theories, (even, earlier in the process, of religious schools and heresies), something that may have been impossible (or at the most, very stunted) in the monolithic empires of China or India or the Muslim World ?

Why a variety of secular ideologies in one part of the world, that we take for granted - and lives dominated by religious observance in most of the other ? Ah, you may say, Taoism and Confucianism are not religions, they don't have gods - no, but they developed in conditions of absolutism, and their writings and precepts are treated dogmatically as if they were books of religious instruction.

Still wondering :)

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Dear Pirate,

You seem to have added on what both myself and the author wrote: I mentioned neither magical thinking nor a genetic disposition for religion while the author mentioned neither social-benefit criteria nor public discourse.

The truth or falsity of religious beliefs is a separate topic that has nothing to do with the freedom to use those beliefs. As for the desirability of religious practices, whether or not they are of value to society, they are obviously of great value for the religious individual. It seems that you care not for the individual but rather wish to condition both those freedoms on social-benefit criteria and public discourse, but this is not the author's view.

At the bottom line, both myself and the author agree, albeit perhaps for different reasons, on universal freedoms without a special case for religion.

WmTrevor, 1, supplying the selectively quoted opinion of just one founding father out of context from the rest of the speech or the speeches of any others at the Constitutional conventions does not prove your point or disprove mine. The first quote sounds like a discussion about the UN-knowable nature of God which is consistent with Judeo/Christian theology on God.
2, i repeat section 116 was designed by Christians to stop the government from favouring one church over another.
3, name one other religion that supports the Judeo/Christian God?
4, i see nothing from you denying the separation of powers.

Toni Lavis, I said i support the separation of church & state, how does that = supporting theocracy?. What did I just say about making assumptions? You seem to enjoy making a dick of yourself.

Australia is not a theocracy. As far as I know, the Vatican is a theocracy. You can try as hard as you like to lie about me, but I confidently predict that your labours will be less productive than those of Sisyphus.

//i supplied scientific proof about our constitution BTW// correct.

ROFLMAO it is called an annotated constitution, fool.

BTW, if you are not atheist then what religion do you subscribe to?

Loudmouth, are you seriously suggesting that NON-catholics work or live in Vatican City?

david f, if you don't want to live in a Christian nation, leave.

//Toni Lavis, I said i support the separation of church & state//

But you clearly don't, because you keep banging on about how Australia is a Christian nation and that public policies should be based on Christian theology. Saying you support the separation of church and state and actually supporting the separation of church and state are not the same thing. I could say that I have three heads, but it won't be the case unless I actually grow two more.

//ROFLMAO it is called an annotated constitution//

I'm not sure what you find so amusing. I've studied a lot of philosophy of science, and I have yet to come across any school of thought which holds the view that scribbling some random political conjecture in the margins of a nation's constitution constitutes a scientific proof.

Popper would argue that scientific proofs are a logical impossibility anyway, and he does make quite a good case. I tend to agree that only mathematics and logic can produce watertight proofs; the closest science can hope for is to make predictions that accord with empirical data.

Have you studied much science? Have you studied much philosophy of science? What do you think the distinction between science and other systems of thought is? Do you agree with Popper's falsificationist methodology, or do you think that science can conclusively prove things? Do you think the Constitution is a scientific paper? If it is a political and legal document rather than a scientific document, what does scribbling in its margins have to do with science?

//if you are not atheist then what religion do you subscribe to//

I'm a pastafarian. I have been touched by the noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He boiled for your sins.

Nah, just yanking your chain. I'm a pantheist.