Julian Baggini on secularism

Julian Baggini in the Guardian makes a valid point that secularism shouldn't ultimately be about stamping out religion, it's about moving it from the public, political sphere into the private. However since this  often requires the displacement of one particular religion from a priviledged position then this can make those of the related sect feel persecuted (with no sense of irony in the case of the catholic church, but then I guess no one expects the Spanish Inquisition :-). But preventing the views of one section of society from dominating the whole is not persecution, it is democratic tolerance, especially when most of the people labelled as belonging to that section don't seem to actually fully agree or take seriously the official beliefs ascribed to them. Which is why as he says "in theory, if not in practice, the United States is both culturally the most religious country in the developed west and constitutionally the most secular."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/is-religion-really-under-threat

In addition Baggini makes the importance case (originally fromJohn Rawls) that preventing religious beliefs from being grounds for action in modern democratic societies does not mean that they can't be acknowledged as motivations. People should be allowed believe what they want, but as in all areas, when it comes to the interaction with others (e.g. via the laws of that society) then other justifications are needed "If we're debating the ethics of abortion, for example, we'd get nowhere if some insisted their views rested on their Catholic faith whereas others took theirs to flow inexorably from their atheism. What we all need to do is provide reasons that have some purchase for other people in their capacity as fellow citizens, whatever their world-views. That doesn't mean denying or even covering up the fact that we have religious or other motivations for believing what we do. It is simply to acknowledge that we can't expect these to carry any weight with others."

(update 2012-02-19)
Related to this is the letter exchanged between Richard Dawkins and Will Hutton in this weeks Observer, sparked by the survey conducted by Dawkins' foundation which showed most people who would have registered themselves as 'Christian' in the latest UK senses, do so only on a very loose basis, and hence that it is unfair to use the census figure of 72% self-identified Christians to support the notion that the UK is an 'actively' Christian country.