james - for nearly a year I have had the following posted at the bottom of the Outrage Scoreboard:

"As far as I know there is no reliable record of a group of atheists all encouraging each other to commit violence, intolerance or foolishness, or claiming that their group values take precedence over individual decisions based on conscience, instinct and training. But if anyone can provide me with a reliable recent report of violence or stupidity committed by one or more atheists, then I will add it to this list."

I'm still waiting. Meanwhile the list of violence and folly committed in the name of religion has reached 188 items in just over ten months. And these are only the items that make it into the national or international media.

How many atheists have let their children die because they thought they knew better than doctors? How many atheists have killed other people's children because they believed the wrong things? Don't quote me psychopaths from sixty years ago -- these things are happening NOW, and religion is behind them. One Finnish atheist - fair enough, I'll add it to the list. But the balance is still way down.

Separation of church and state is the first step towards educating people out of their bloodthirsty superstitions. How can you make anyone listen to reason if they think their Invisible Friend is the ruler of the Universe?

monarchies have established churches, because monarchs rule by the will of god. no established church, no mandate of heaven. that's why qe2 is head of the anglican church, to make sure god gets it right in issuing his mandate.

democracies have no government, but have clerks to carry out the will of the electorate. no need for any church at all, much less established.

poor old oz is neither one nor the other. parliament rules in reality, although kerr showed what the actual law was. since then, the pollies have demanded submission as a condition of office from the stooges in the gg mansion.

this is a very important question which ozzians are quite unprepared to deal with, having a forelock tugging character from britain, but so distant that the local gentry have been able to supplant the brits as master of the nation. the only good bet about where oz is heading is that ordinary ozzies won't get much of a say.

Max is quite right to raise his points and it really does matter about some form of separation between Church and State.

Here in Qld, where everyone believes that our public school system is secular, as it is in every other state and territory, the truth is...it is not.

Our public schools are being rapidly taken over by evangelical Pentecostals, with the full support of Bligh, the premier, and Welford, the 'education' minister.

There are no bars to teaching ID in science. There are no bars on teaching the Bible in English as a great literary work, or in history (SOSE) as a true story of the world.

Why?

Because in 1910 we had a referendum to introduce religious instruction (RI) and...wait for it... Bible reading, into our once secular schools.

In order to do this, the word 'secular' was expunged from the 1875 Education Act and 100 years later we still suffer the consequences.

See this web page and download the pdf of the 1875 and 1910 Ed Act here:http://www.thefourthr.info/

Odd isn't it, that Julie Bishop told us how state schools were moral vacuums because they were secular bastions of 'devil worship'.

Well, maybe in NSW but not here.

In fact, the only schools that are required to be secular in Qld are the nine schools registered under the Qld Grammar Schools Act, of 1860.

Again, how odd that people panic over 'secular' public schools and rush their 'kiddies' to these haughty establishments... when they are the secular schools, and Qld state ones are riddled with low grade religion.

Qld... the smart state.

Jon J there's no correlation between what people say on their census and how they view state funding of religious activity. I read many letters to the editor during WYD from believers not a little embarrassed at the largesse of the government towards the planet's richest organisation.

A separation clause gives dominance to precisely no-one, atheist or otherwise; there is no basis for saying it promotes abstention from religion. The state believes faith is a personal matter and such a clause reinforces this. Anything otherwise engenders a perception of favouritism. There are many thousands - six billion if you count the non-organised - religions and there's no way to give them all equal treatment.

Given progress made by religious loonies in other countries, both advanced and not, it might be a good idea to nip state-funded proselytising in the bud.

Would like to comment, but as only happily attended a little bush school, might offend with some rude remarks.

Cheers, BB, WA.