It seems the only way to live and let live is between separate independent countries with strong rights to bar others from their doorstep, and also with strong rights NOT to be invaded by another country trying to 'liberate' the people.

Existing countries with mis-matched secular/religious cultures will simply have to split.

Also, secularism doesn't necessarily mean 'freedom of religion'- it simply means denying religion into professional (mainly political, sometimes social) practice- the Kemalists in Turkey are staunch secularists and they take great liberties to prevent any religious conduct in government and official public facilities.

It's a fact of life that most religious and non-religious persons have a specific form of social functioning that they need- and these ideas class on a political level of how society is to be governed.
That is, at the point one person refuses to tolerate a secular society's ethics is the point they are simply incompatible with that society.

live and let live...

analysis:
briefly went trough topic discussion. The saying "Live and Let Live" Do you ppl even get it? because from what i can see no one does. Humans have the right to choose their religion. Yes, they have the right to come knocking on your door.. whether or not you like it. It is their right and their beliefs. It is an entitlement we are born with. To choose how we want to life our lives, the way we want to live our lives. Without having c**p form an outside influence.

Unfortunately, i would say.. it is quite a challenge to adapt now.. just for now. Not easy but possible. Once we can learn that we HAVE to accept humans as they are, no matter what they practice and believe...

Understand this, and you will understand the passage: "Live and let live"

note to self: yu zai lang fei ser xiean.. bodoh

Yes, jinny. People do have a right to come knocking at my door, or anyone else's for that matter. But they also have a responsibility to leave immediately when I ask them to. No 'I'll only take a minute of your time', no 'but I am trying to save you', nothing. A smile, a 'thanks for your time', a 'have a nice day' and a respectful departure without further missionary antics. That's living and letting live. Offer your services (live) and accept rejection (let live).

A discussion of this type is an exercise in uselessness. That's because we are biologically programmed to fight. There ALWAYS comes a point where people fight to defend themselves or fight to impose something. We are "biologically" destined to do this; there is NO choice in the matter. All the discussion in the world will not change our biology, and will not provide insight into solutions to how we can "live and let live".

Humans can't live and let live. They have no choice in the matter. They are biologically programmed to disagree and fight

Otokonoko, you said.

"Perhaps as a product of better education, perhaps as a result of the 'information age', people are able to develop their own worldviews"

I couldn't disagree more. In our current cycle of society, the information technology revolution has lead to one of the worst cases of systematic misleading of the general population we have seen. It has destroyed most independent thinking in the community at large and help perpetuate and create the false and misleading views of events that see us marching off to wars in counties like Iraq. This war was totally illegal, had no UN suppoet making it an act of aggression. Bush, Blair and Howard are war criminals but you don't see the wonderful media pushing for justice for the innocent Iraqi's that died.

Man has always fought, it is cyclic. Look at the last 70 years as a good sample of how it goes. WW2 was followed by a period of relative cultural independence, then as the fifties unfolded the US started to assert itself. By the sixties the dominate political and economic powers were fighting each other mostly politically but still had their side wars going. The general population could at this time travel with relative safety around most of the world giving a sense of security. The late seventies bought relative calm as the opposition were getting in money trouble and could not afford to fight to hard, by the late eighties the imperial US dominance was more or less set and the wars of arrogance began. The gulf war mark one was the trophy war. This left the disaffected no choice but to use underhanded methods to fight their war and we now have our current mess.

It is not much different to the middle east during the time of Jesus and the Roman empire, so no i don't see humans being at all ready to 'Live and let Live.'

The problem with the right to knock on my door to advertise a religion is that it violates my right NOT to be harassed by these people- in short, they're not really letting ME live.
And that's only the top of why some people just are not fit to share a society, unless they are willing to conform to the standards of one or the other (and I don't believe in loosening my rights in order to meet some bible-thumper half-way in a compromise of interests either).