It’s a subject of constant wonderment to me that America, said to be one of the greatest countries on Earth, elected a man who publicly claims to talk to God. Consider, for a second, the absurdity of the situation. He told us he talks to God everyday, and around half of his country respected him for it. If he told us he regularly talked to the all-powerful creator of the universe via a hair-drier, we’d think he’d gone insane. Does the hair-drier really make that much of a difference?

Religion has always been a power-hungry part of our culture, and so it’s no wonder that it has forever been intertwined with our politics. Many of our wars were fought on religious grounds. Much of our prejudice has historically been based around religion. There have been horrific periods of torture in the name of eternal salvation. Still today, people destroy themselves and others in acts of terror for their belief in a man in the sky. We have gone on crusades to spread the word, and to kill those who oppose it. And the word is God.

Today, for the most part, the religious campaign is far subtler. (After all, it’s not too hard to be subtler than chaining people to a rack and burning them alive.) In today’s world, religion sneaks into policy and law disguised as the defender of the morals, saviour of the people. It comes dressed as Political Correctness, and as Family Values. It comes pretending to be Moral Authority. But, under those clothes, it is the same beast. It seeks to change us, convince us of our sinful ways, and to bring us back to God.

Somehow, religion still holds sway in this country and others around the world. We still undemocratically afford Bishops political privilege, give tax exemption to the churches we recognise, and allow freedom of religion to be used as an excuse for almost anything.

Financially, the churches of our day and age help us to define the word “hypocrisy”. The Catholic church in the United States of America was reported by the Associated Press to have paid out over $2.3 billion in sex-abuse related costs since 1950, or around $40 million per year. How many Catholics do you think would be shocked to discover almost 1% of their collection money each week goes towards settlements so that their clerics can continue to sexually abuse children?

On a lighter note, the poor Church of England has over £5 billion in assets and yet recently demanded £350 million from the UK Government for the upkeep of churches. Didn’t Jesus supposedly tell us to give to the poor, sell our belongings, and seek a treasure in heaven rather than on Earth? It seems strange that the Church does not heed his wise words.

In education, a worldwide movement called Intelligent Design seeks to ram creationism into the science classroom under the guise of science. It demands that we “teach the controversy”, reminds us that evolution is “just a theory”. Yet somehow it fails to make any obviously falsifiable claims and avoids peer-review. This affront to science is widely supported by staunch Christians and young-earth creationists, and was actually taught in Kentucky for a brief period of time.

The response has been immense. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was established for the purpose of hassling the Kentucky school board to “teach the controversy” with the introduction of the Pastafarian theory. They theorize that a flying spaghetti monster sneezed the world into existence, and demand it to be taught alongside ID and evolution. Slightly more seriously, a number of scientists have been convinced to sign a petition stating that they doubt Darwinism. In a tongue-in-cheek riposte, Project Steve is a petition signed by scientists named Steve, Steven or Stephen who support the theory of evolution and its evidence. It recently had it’s 859th signature. Considering the small fraction of society named Steve, I think it’s pretty safe to say evolution has gained a consensus.

We let religion affect policy change because we feel that a man who claims to serve God cannot be wrong. We support religion financially because we feel like we need its ancient moral code and parables that were written millennia ago. We let religion into our schools because we worry we might be denying our children salvation if we do not. We feel like there must be something more out there, and we allow those who claim to know about it to walk all over us. We let them dodge tax, influence our policy, guide our moral compass, indoctrinate our children and tell us whether we’re going to heaven or hell.

It’s time to stamp out religious privilege and ignore the hallucinating megalomaniacs. If the church wants to carry on as it is, it should do so without support from the state and without an unfair hand in our politics. We don’t need religion: it needs us.

(I think secularism is an incredibly important movement for the progress of society. If you agree with me, even if you’re slightly less vehement, please visit the National Secular Society website.)

So yes - the forums are back up and functional.  Use ‘em!I’ve upgraded to phpBB3 which should protect us from spam for a little while.