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Separation of Church and State |
The separation of church and state is an important issue for maintaining religious freedom in any nation state. When one religion takes control, other religions are no longer welcome. In most cases, other religions are actively oppressed. There are many religions that think they are right. We, as Realists, are no exception. The Church of Reality is our attempt to create a reality-based religion, and it will be up to history to judge if we have succeeded or not. But for now we are just one of many religions who think they have a better handle on reality than anyone else. We are not the only reality-based religion.
When a government takes control of religion or religion takes control of a government, bad things happen. Religious opinion becomes the law of the land. Islamic nations are quite comfortable executing people for any number of religious crimes that they deem to be against the word of God. Women are put to death for being raped. They allow people to be stoned to death. Christian-controlled nations were responsible for the Dark Ages, Crusades, and many other atrocities. Sometimes the King was a puppet of the Pope; sometimes the Pope was a puppet of the King. Either way there wasn't a lot of free thinking allowed. The Jews control Israel--they believe that God gave them that land and they don't hesitate to kill anyone who gets in the way of that claim. Under Communism, atheism was required and religious people were executed by the state.
The real test of religious freedom (from our unbiased point of view) is how Realists are treated in society. A member of the Church of Reality has more freedom based on church doctrine than any other religion. One of our sacred principles is the Principle of Freedom. If Realists are allowed to be free then probably everyone else is as well. Our religion demands more freedom for the individual than any theist-based religion.
Some religions are against the separation of church and state because they either have control of the government or hope to have control of the government someday. This is very shortsighted because, for example, Christianity is not one religion, it's thousands of religions. Many Christian religions openly hate each other and would be extremely oppressive to other Christians if their group took over. Since Christians can't agree on what a "True Christian" is, what would happen if the government made that decision? When you think this through you can quickly see that a Christian nation would be a disaster - especially for Christians.
The separation of church and state protects the state from the church and the church from the state. It isn't anti-religion, it's pro religion. When government remains religiously neutral it allows an individual the freedom to choose, or to not choose, what religion they want to be. The Church of Reality strongly supports religious freedom and believes that religions should evolve on their own, without government intervention.
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