... well, I wouldn't go quite as far as Voltaire in any quest to wean the populace of its addiction to beliefs of various denominations, but he's got the basic idea right.
Interestingly, his modern countrymen seem agreed that at least some public expressions of religious convictions deserve to be curbed, particularly in State schools. It remains to be seen whether the two French journalists will be released complete with their heads - on the tacit understanding that the ban on religious symbols and headwear will not be rigorously enforced...
The French edict is, however, a sensible first step on the path to outlawing all and any public expression of religious beliefs, as I've advocated elsewhere (see my archives). As an agnostic, I have no brief with people praying in private to any entity of their choice, real or imagined. But any sensible person cannot but agree that public displays of religious fervour are directly responsible for major crimes against humanity throughout the ages. By quarantining personal beliefs to the private sphere we may yet improve the public welfare of current and future billions.
This is not to say that religious ceremonies among consenting adults, such as marriages and similar unions, baptisms and funeral rites, should be outlawed: these, like prayer, could be practiced in private, without recourse to the public thorougfare or special edifices. Proscribe processions - they have no place in the Third Millennium - unless they are patently staged as historical pageants for the benefits of tourists...
Arse about...
I was re-drawn to Voltaire's injunction today when four of Australia's archbishops blatantly interfered in the nation's political process with a joint statement about some Labor opposition policy they disapproved of. Their argument, needless to say, was specious in the extreme (future schools funding according to need would cause infighting among the confessions). But the arsebishops (sorry, was that a typo?) should attend to their own problems, and those of their deacons and emerging governors-general!
For me as a father of four unbaptised bairn it is frightening to see how Australia is pulled into the religious wash of the 'dominant culture': like in the United States, a throwback conservative Prime Minister has so aligned public perception on his kind of 'values' that even our supposedly 'neutral' Australian Broadcasting Corporation is pushing religious pap up to six times a week, much of it in prime time. There's The Religion Report, Rachel Cohn's The Spirit of Things and Encounter (there may be more but I'm not listening religiously :-) - and all these are repeated at various times during the week.
To the professionally paranoid listener, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaiden's Tale begins to look strangely prescient...
Just don't say you hadn't been warned!
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