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g_pepper comments on Stupid Questions March 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Looking at people around me (EDIT: Central Europe), there are not so many hardcore believers (although I have already met a few of those, too), but there are many... I would call them "half-believers". People who believe they believe, and who follow the commands of the religious leaders when doing it is cheap. For example, despite what religion says about sex, they have as much sex as the atheists, only they later ask God to forgive them. They visit church once in a long time, for example only for Christmas, weddings, and funerals. Etc.
But in my opinion, even those half-believers can do a lot of damage. For example, they obey their religious leaders when the cost is paid by someone else. Does my pastor tell me to avoid premarital sex? Uhm, I will pretend I want to avoid it... then I will do it... and then I will confess my sins and ask forgiveness, just like all my friends do. Does my pastor tell me that homosexual marriage offends God? Well, since I am not a homosexual, I will follow God's will at this point.
Church tries to infuence politics, to get money from state, and to teach religion at schools. -- It is especially the last part which makes me extremely angry (as a former teacher): If we don't teach imaginary animals, or imaginary continents at school, why the fuck do we teach imaginary fairy-tale creatures? If I knew I had a colleague who teaches children that 2+2=5, I would consider it my ethical duty to get them fired, but when I have a colleague who teaches the same children about gods and angels, I am supposed to shut up a pretend that nothing weird is happening? Fuck no.
Just because our problems are not as big as in the Bible Belt, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
Do you really think that this is currently an issue in the US public schools? If so, what sort of examples have you encountered? My kids are in public schools in a bible-belt state, and I have not seen anything of a religious nature in their schoolwork or materials. If churches are trying to get religion into the classroom, they don't seem to be very successful, as far as I can tell.
Edit: as soon as I submitted, I thought of an example, thankfully not from the school district that my kids go to - some school districts require disclaimers in the biology textbooks stating that the theory of evolution is only a theory (or something like that). Is this the sort of thing that you mean? Are there examples other than this?
Sorry, I was speaking about Central Europe, or more specifically Slovakia. Edited the comment. We do not have the bible-belt situation here, but on the other hand, we also never had the official state and church separation. So the boundaries are flexible, and recently the church is gaining power.
Interesting. I think that a lot of people assume that religion is more likely to encroach on public life in the US than in Europe. However, based on your experience, it sounds like that may not be universally true. Even in the bible-belt, US schools are quite free of religious dogma (with the relatively uncommon exception of an evolution disclaimer).
In USA there is a long history of "fight" between religion and state, so the situation seems stable, both sides protect their trenches.
In Europe, it totally depends on country. In post-Communist countries, during communism the religion was kinda illegal (unfortunately, atheism doesn't automatically imply rationality), so now people don't have the "antibodies"; but the degree of religiousness varies a lot. For example, Slovakia and Poland are highly religious, while Czech Republic is mostly atheistic.
It probably also depends on the political system. When there are multiple political parties, there is usually a larger coalition necessary to win the election. And there is usually one religious political party, which sometimes gets to the parliament, which allows them to make laws favouring the church.
(To give you a realistic example, imagine that the political powers at some moment are something like: 40% Communists, 9% Nazis, 5% Catholics, and the remaining 46% are a few small "sane and civilized" political parties together. Communists and Nazis are natural allies. Catholics can go either way, but for the sake of long-term image they would rather associate with the civilized side. However, their price for joining is that the winning coalition must sign a treaty with Vatican, giving various advantages to the church, financial and in education. In situations like this, keeping church and state separate is impossible.)