The Separation of Church and State

I have a debate on this coming up and I want to see your guys opinion on this issue. I'm on the side on separation but my opinion lies between it. I want to see arguments from both sides.

Whats positive about not separating state and religon? Morals?

That's a reason why. One other is that Jefferson didn't mean for it to be a wall between church and state.

I have thought long and hard about this I am for the separation of church and state but I can not come up with my own evidence, because I am dumb, religion has become a wholy political movement bent by corrupted polititions, separate church and sate to help religion become what it was originally ment to be.

I believe completely in freedom of religion, but I believe a government should always be secular.
I do believe that religion has become a political tool, and I am quite opposed to religious extremism/fundementalism. But to stereotype all religious peoples as one is wrong.

I agree, freedom of religion is a must, but the government should be separate of religion to hopefully be more likely to preserve religious freedom.

Religion has always been a political tool. From tribal to the largest most organized religions, religion has been both a tool and an entity in the governing of the human race. I think religions can be portrayed as a large special interest group, like that of any corporation, union (they are), animal rights group, 1% nonsense, etc.

Good for you, you've broken the mold.

Eh, this is a subject that is hard for me to form an opinion on. I am very devoted to my religion so I guess i would want it to play a large role in my life, but the problem is so many politicans exploit it.

But as a Socialist do you not oppose religion?

So, you're discussing secularisation in the US, not secularisation in general?
And why would morals be a reason? If you need religion to have morals and be a decent person, it says more about you than the government. In a country that advocates freedom of religion (which ideally would be every country in the world), there must be secularisation, as in such a system there is no place for a single religion to receive special treatment.

Yes, in the US. Yes, I know about subjective morals, but there is an article explaining a reason for it.

Is it an online article? If so, do you have a link to it? Now I'm interested in it.

Might be an idea to look at Britain, seeing as we haven't seperated church and state yet, as we do things 'organically' here, not like you mad foreigners with your crazy republics and written constitutions. I suppose the Church of England wouldn't be the Church of England if it wasn't the official church of England; at least that's the best defence I can think of for them.
As for the Church of England being state religion of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, I imagine the only solution put forward has been something like the name 'Church of Great Britain'. Probably.

Does Britain have a constitution?

We call it 'unwritten' (or uncodified), which means that there's no one document that defines it (the Magna Carta and the Human Rights Act being the most significant). Supposedly we've built up our freedoms in a peaceful 'organic' way, which is much more democratic than say, actually defining the rights of the nation's citizens.

The problem with religion getting involved with government is that it alwsys goes bad at some point because it only takes a couple of crazy dudes with fuck up views to get people to follow them and shit goes downhill from there. They will have religion on there side so meny people will not question them. Plus can anybody name all the countries that dont seperate church and state and did not fuck it up.

here is an example from america of the type of person you can get if there is no seperation

Does the idea of separation of church and state come from the Age of Enlightenment?

Most socialists I've ran into believe in freedom of religion. The folks who believe in banning it are somewhat of a minority now. In fact, one of the fastest growing socialist movements out there is the 'Christian-socialist' or 'Christian-communist' movement.

Plus, one could easily argue that marx didn't want to ban religion entirely. To quote him - "False religion is the opiate of the masses'. False religion could be translated as religion used as a political tool, or religious extremism. All that aside though, the manifesto isn't a holy book. We don't have to follow it in it's entirety.

Thank you for clearing that up.

Secular, politicians exploit it too much and one religion should not be held up above the others. i think we all pretty much agree on a secular government.

I have been investigating about separation of church and state and I discovered that countries of the Western World - Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Greece, Iceland, Cost Rica and Argentina, there is no separation of church and state! And until the 1990´s in Argentina, to be a candidate to the presidency of that country, you had to be a Roman Catholic! WTF? I have no problem that there is no secularism in Islamic countries (something normal and apparently, I´m force to respect), but in the Western World, it is shamefull.

And here in Portugal, the property of the Roman Catholic Church has tax exemption. Of course, I´m against taxes, but if the general population is forced to pay them, why can´t they pay? It´s an injustice! It gives me more reasons to be an atheist.