Bill - I challenge you to find anyone who does not care for ANY religion. Everyone has a personal religion, although it may not fall into the formalized customs and notions associated with official or traditional church-based religions, and it may not even theorize the existence of any supreme being or any moral purpose in life. I know a born-again atheist, for example (a former born-again Christian), whose passion is to convert any and all "religious people" to his own new set of beliefs...which are just as dogmatic, arbitrary, and unreasonable as his old beliefs...or as those of some of the people he wastes his time trying to convert. Matter of fact, he is psychologically quite ill, which is plain to most people who are around him much. He's obsessed.

Everyone has a semi-rational set of ideas about life in which they place their deepest faith, and that IS their religion.

People are fighting about the cover of the book, as usual, and not bothering to read the damn book (the book of Life?) itself, when they fret about separation of "church and state", given the fact that the nation-state itself is the embodiment of a huge collective religious idea, complete with its own forms of exclusive faith and ritual, and its own holy wars in defence of what IT considers sacred! A nation state is an idea, with sacred connotations. So is a religion.

I have never seen a bigger cult in action than the present day cult of America/Uncle Sam, or whatever else you would wish to call it...except maybe for Maoism at its frenetic height. It's a religion, Bill, whether or not it claims to represent "God". "God", as most people use it, is just a word. A word which they have given not a whole lot of thought to, in most cases.

The reason people in the era of independent nation-states have been so concerned with separating "church" and state is this: they were reacting to a previous era when the Catholic Church oppressively dominated all of Christendom, and WAS the only effective government. That power had to be broken. What has happened since then is that a great many new religions have displaced the Church of Rome, and taken powers unto themselves. It began with the Protestant Reformation and rebellious kings like Henry of England, and it then progressed into more modern forms of secular religion like: "Rule Brittania", "the American Dream", "the Communist Revolution", and so on. All these new religions eyed each other with great suspicion (just like the old ones did before them), and frequently fought wars with each other, hoping through those wars to eliminate the competition...and "free" people (Ha! Their real business was mostly regimenting and controlling people to the benefit of the religion/system).

You don't have to worship God to have a religion. You can just as well worship money, sex, military supremacy, atheism, science, technology, male bloodlines, demonic entities, the free market, Marxist philosophy, race, or any other damn stupid idea you want to get fanatical about and kill people over. You can even worship violent death and human sacrifice and turn it into a religion. People have.

The whole thing frankly makes me sick, it's so idiotic. People are pissing around endlessly fighting about the trimmings and decorations while the Christmas tree and the rest of the house burn down around their ears.

- LH