Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Religious leaders often criticise secular societies as being anti-religious or irreligious, not showing religions enough respect and deference, often for the speaker’s religion, of course. The same speakers conveniently forget about the government funding for religious-based schools plus tax-free incentives. In fact secular societies are truly their best friends, offering equal tolerance for all religions. Last year a Pew report showed what happens when religious faith dominates the public space - religious intolerance survey around the world. I have listed the worst offenders, in alphabetical order, below followed by some well-known countries as a comparison. The Pew survey considered government restrictions and social hostilities of the dominant or state-sponsored religion over lesser religions. ‘Very high’ represents the worst 5% with ‘high’ – the next 15% of countries surveyed. I took the dominant religion figures from the World Factbook with most numbers estimated since 2000.

Do religious leaders in secular countries really want faith-dominant societies when they may represent a minority religion?

Alex McCullie