Why are we stuck in a religious time warp?
BRITAIN prides itself on being a ‘secular’ multicultural state. Our government speaks greatly about the political and religious ‘freedom’ for us all here in the UK, as if we are a global model, when we are far from it, democratically speaking...
NO elected head of state, NO written constitution nor ‘republic’ to replace the monarchy, NO elected Upper House (of Lords), NO proportionality of seats to votes in the crucial House of Commons, NO bill of rights, NO state funding of democracy, NO ‘pass grade’ for voters on the electoral register, NO enforcement of registration law, NO tight control on electoral expenditure, especially on national advertising (print material or internet social media), NO excess power and patronage to the prime minister, NO unregulated moneybased parliamentary lobbying, NO bishops in the Upper House, NO primary schools run as ‘church’ schools (still over 50% ), NO private schools and religious foundations exempt from tax, NO regular BBC broadcasting time given to Anglican church, etc. Despite what all this says, religious freedom does not mean special privileges for religious people, nor provision of legal positive discrimination for them. In fact, it should mean that no one is treated differently because of their religious beliefs, or lack of them, as with humanists and atheists.
Also, the separation of religion and government should be a cornerstone of this freedom, yet the Queen remains ‘defender of the faith’ and the church is not yet ‘disestablished’.
Last month my Humanist movement celebrated ‘religious freedom day’ and last Saturday, Darwin Day, in the fight against extreme ‘evangelical’ Christian nationalism, often witnessed in America, and extreme Muslim fundamentalism, often practised in much of the Islamic world.
In the light of modern science and education refuting nearly all of it, why are we stuck in a hundredsof-years-old time warp regarding ancient scriptural, ‘faith’-based religions? Why is this obvious question rarely debated?
Homo sapiens means ‘wise man’, but with such big numbers of the world’s population still upholding irrational religious ‘faiths’, perhaps Homo religious would fit better.
Could our hard refusal to leave these beliefs, in human supremacy and God-like everlasting life, be the delusionary mental state which stops us from surviving the current ‘sixth extinction’ from pandemic, climate and environmental emergencies?
Alan Debenham Taunton, Somerset