Toni Lavis, hmmm, i will try to explain again slowly in plain simple English that you might have some hope of understanding. i do now realise that a university "anti-humanities" education is what your problem is.
1, "separation of church & state" was invented by enlightened, conservative, protesting Christians for enlightened, conservative, protesting Christians. They did not want the Catholic church colluding with government or bringing back the divine right of kings like you do.
2, as a matter of fact i have studied "scientific common sense realism"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Common_Sense_Realism
3, so you don't believe in the administrative, legislative, judicial or any system of government at all.
4, actually i am a deist, pantheist Christian too, just like you said you are.

Thanks for your comments, Yuyutsu. I must have misunderstood. I was of course prompted by what I took to be your rhetorical question envisaging the atheist failing to recognise that she was religious (the homo religiosus thesis), and I was observing that even if that cognitive state reflected an evolutionarily inherited predisposition it would tell us nothing about the truth or falsity of particular beliefs. I took the the true/false binary to be implicit in your image, since a considerable proportion of religious believers are theists, and that theists and atheists seem unlikely both to be right. Yes, of course, I acknowledge adding to what you wrote, but without, I hope, misquoting you.

I am all the same dubious about the view that ‘the truth or falsity of religious beliefs is a separate topic that has nothing to do with the freedom to use those beliefs’. The 'use’ of beliefs includes their instantiation in public acts, and such acts may occasion good or harm. In the latter case there may be well-placed public concern about the criteria for truth of a belief that motivates a harmful act (however the adherents of that belief may wish to debate such criteria), and the state may well need to exercise coercion to restrict the freedom to perform it. Am I wrong, do you think, to suggest that 'social benefit criteria' have a role to play here?

I have to say I found it difficult to see why ‘conditioning freedoms on public discourse’ should be seen as objectionable. Surely public discourse is at least to a substantial degree the process through which the concept of freedoms arose in the first place and continues to be debated. It stands in contrast to command theories invoking divine authority.

Hi Joe

You wrote: '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 ... 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’.

Thanks for that interesting reference. Stephen Jay Gould’s well known thesis of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ runs along similar lines. I’m quite open to the idea that there is a metaphysical substrate to atheist and humanist worldviews as there is to religious ones, if only because it’s not possible for us to access and elucidate other than imperfectly the unconscious motivators of our thinking. It’s certainly difficult, I agree, to eliminate the a priori.

This is no doubt why atheists are sometimes said, as the religious are, to have faith. Fortunately, though, ambiguity about ‘faith’ doesn’t preclude exploration of its evolutionary origins. Many of the cognitive biases which were successful adaptations for our ancestors of the Pleistocene might not serve us quite so well now, but plausible explanations of their evolutionary function can help to identify their role in the psychology of 21st century humans and may help to compensate for them to an extent. I’m an optimist!

"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."

'Out of context'... no. There are three pages of relevant Commentaries on the Constitution under ¶ 462. “Any Religion or . . . any Religious Observance.” Supplying the annotation quote of the arguments of Convention Delegate Mr. H.B. Higgins whose amended wording of the equivalent section from the Draft Bill of 1891 prevailed and were adopted as the provisions in sec. 116 does prove my point and disprove yours.

Unless you can demonstrate how the phrases "religion of which we have no conception" and "religion in every shape and form" are limited to Christianity.

Now, as much as I'm expecting you to yet again fail to substantiate your claim - what with dodging the burden of proof whilst shifting the goalposts - you'll find it impossible because as you can see on p. 1028 the Delegates were capable of referring to the Christian religion when that is specifically what they were addressing. The absence of such a reference in sec. 116 shows that 'religion' is not limited to Christianity or to Christian Churches.

I think you will find [2.] the "UN-knowable nature of God" is consistent with all theistic religions and most deistic beliefs.

Is, "3, name one other religion that supports the Judeo/Christian God?" meant to be the same question as "1, it is impossible to believe in God unless you are Christian or Jewish." or are you hoping no-one would notice the sleight-of-mouth after you removed your foot?

Weird claim: "4, i see nothing from you denying the separation of powers." Why should you?

Whilst I have the utmost admiration of Toni's noodly appendages, I know he was not being literal with - "scribbling some random political conjecture in the margins of a nation's constitution constitutes a scientific proof" - since he knows, as do I, we do not have an annotated Constitution and that the Commentaries on the Constitution form no part of it and have zero legal import.

ima,etc. you must be heartened that Neil El-Kadomi, the chairman of the Parramatta mosque, expresses similar beliefs to you: "If you don't like Australia, leave".

Toni: "I'm a pantheist." That is such a limited point of view! Panentheism is better because it is all-inclusive.

Dear Pirate,

There is much confusion around regarding freedom, which is often confused with "rights".

Freedom is inherent - we are born with it, one could say that it comes from God or from nature, but in any case it is not man-made. Rights are man-made.

This is why I oppose a bill-of-rights: First, its scope would be finite, limited to the printed words but even more importantly, the one who gives can also take back what they gave.

By "religion" I do not refer to this or that belief nor to any group-of-reference, but to the actual progress towards God (or call it towards Truth, Love or Ultimate Reality, etc. as you prefer), be it conscious or otherwise. As such, religion is more important than breathing, certainly more important than socialising, so how can one subject it to some arbitrary public discourse or to social benefits?

This is not in conflict with the fact that other people also have their freedom to defend themselves and one method of doing so is by forming states. It is OK to defend oneself against harm, but it is not OK to rob others of their freedoms in order to obtain benefits, including "social benefits".

Whether or not the beliefs on which another's actions are based are true, can make an interesting topic by itself, but it's irrelevant to this discussion: all that matters here is whether those actions harm us - and if they do, then we are justified in defending ourselves.

Now various beliefs are incorporated as religious methods or techniques, so what's important about beliefs is not their truth or falsity, but rather their usefulness, whether they work, and that of course varies from one person to the next. If someone's belief that "God is an old man sitting on a cloud" or "God does not exist" or "God should be killed" or "God is a three-headed monkey" helps them to come closer to God, then I'm all for it.