Ammonite,
I think you know I'm against all those things. My post above wasn't defending religious institutionalism, it was criticising another and even more dangerous ideology.
I believe in the separation of church and state, but that doesn't make the State disinterested or above reproach. Achieving a rigorous separation of church and state is small potatoes compared with the much larger ills that ail us.

Squeers

Of course I knew I was 'preaching to the choir', however, unlike you I believe the Atheist Convention is a significant event - people who are finding religion completely at odds with the reality of living on this planet, but not sure can listen to some very erudite, entertaining and intelligent speakers. I do not agree with everything Dawkins, Hitchens et al say, but they are much needed tonic compared to the grandstanding of the Pells and Niles.

And I do think that the current involvement of church in state is very serious indeed, leading as it has to the demonisation of refugees (they might be muslims, shock horror), tainting the minds of children with supernatural nonsense which has lead to a nadir of understanding of science. Religion is the ultimate creator of mushroom minds and eagerly used by conservatives to maintain the do-nothing approach we currently see in our political system.

If just one child starts to raise questions of whatever adults instruct (whether it be religion or other ideology) that is worthwhile. I have spent my life questioning the status quo and am far better off for so doing.

Squeers,

“My post above wasn't defending religious institutionalism, it was criticising another and even more dangerous ideology.”

What ideology is that? How is it manifest in society today? What are the dangers this ‘more dangerous ideology poses? What are the signs that there is a danger to society by present activity of this ‘ideology? How will this ‘ideology’, whatever it is to which you refer, become ‘even more dangerous’?

“Achieving a rigorous separation of church and state is small potatoes compared with the much larger ills that ail us.”

I agree that separation of church and state is necessary for a large part of the planet as well as in Australia. What are the ‘much larger ills that ail us’ that prevent looking at all problems facing humanity?

David

Separation of church and state won't help if people simply invest the state with the same irrational reverence with which the religious invest the church - and that's what's happening, including by Dawkins, whom I otherwise respect very much.

Today we have in statism the same characteristics of old-style religion:
- an irrational belief without any basis in science, grounded in metaphysics and mysticism, in an all-knowing, all-good, all capable superbeing - the state
- a belief that the problem of economic scarcity can be suspended by giving the problem of production to the state
- a belief that anything the state does automatically establishes that it satisfies human wants more urgent or important than whatever usage was sacrificed to state usage
- a belief that in the state we have found a way to create wealth out of nothing, by printing pieces of paper
- a belief that in the state we have a found a way to create wealth out of nothing, by passing laws
- a belief that moral problems are automatically solved by having the state make the decisions; got a problem with families? Pass a law. With agriculture? Pass a law? Baby-sitting? Pass a law. Rivers? Pass a law.

If children were compelled at a tender age to attend "education", being whatever a church wanted to teach them all through their formative years, and their parents threatened with fines or prison to force them to submit to the church having custody of their children and teaching whatever it wants, we would rightly suspect that of being biased in favour of that church. But the state does the same, and if we were being rational, we would rightly suspect such an arrangement of involving indoctrination biased in favour of the State.

The recent pious moral panic about global warming is just so much of a re-run in the mediaeval church that it’s not funny.

- There’s the belief in an ideal economic stasis in which all problems of scarcity are permanently solved, and resources are perfectly allocated to satisfy human wants (Paradise/sustainability);
- the belief that something is horribly wrong with the whole world and it’s all man’s moral fault (sin/consumerism);
- the belief that the end is nigh and there’s the time-frame – not close enough to be accurately predicted, but close enough to worry about
- there’s the reverencing of a corporation (church/state) as being morally superior to everyone else, and charged with showing us all the way to rightful conduct
- there’s the belief in a superbeing, all-good (selfless and cares about us all), omniscient (knows the ecological, climatic and economic quantities, benefits and costs of all human action for the whole world now and in the future) and all-capable (can manipulate these quantities at will to produce better outcomes)
- and now to cap it all off we have the selling of indulgences again – the carbon tax!

David,
I'm surprised that with your intimidating handle,"Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc" (sorry, it doesn't impress me. In fact it sounds Orwellian.) you didn't get my references: "Ditchkins", "liberal rationalism"... ?
Gawd isn't it about time you grew out of your binary thinking? As if once we all become secular it'll be a land of milk and honey!

<What ideology is that? How is it manifest in society today? What are the dangers this ‘more dangerous ideology poses? What are the signs that there is a danger to society by present activity of this ‘ideology? How will this ‘ideology’, whatever it is to which you refer, become ‘even more dangerous’>

Oh very posh! Speaking of Orwell, you ought to read his "Politics and the English language".

Your further questions are already signposted in my post: the danger of complacency and witch-hunting, "manifest" in Dawkin's drawlins. What did the witch-hunts of old accomplish beyond taking attention off the real villains, the hunters?
The philosophical <dangers this ‘more dangerous ideology poses> include the supposition that the universe and all its unknown dimensions (the ones we don't know we don't know as well as the ones we know we don't) accord with the naive intellectualisation Ditchkins has of it.
The practical dangers of this ideology accrue from its spin-off rationalisations: who are we to interfere with evolutionary processes? We can die-off with equanimity..
"What are the signs that there is a danger to society by present activity of this ‘ideology?"
"Society", as it stands, is properly not the raison d'etre of liberal rationalism, though curiously its objectivity proceeds from that singularity..
Why are you preoccupied with preserving "society"? And what is that? Is Western secularism its consummatum est? Is the taint of religion society's most pressing concern?
Hunting religion, the scapegoat, once a scapegrace, does condone Ditchkins of addressing the much greater ills that ail us. If you don't know what those greater ills are, then you validate my argument..