Religous Beliefs and the State

There is a current line of reasoning that is quite popular which demands total separation of the church and the state. To be frank, regardless of the character of society, this makes a mockery of the principle of freedom of thought and speech especially when this same principle is used to force upon the populace people with thoughts and actions much more harmful to our civilization than religion could be.
In the past it certainly can be said that certain nations have been influenced harmfully by overpowering religious beliefs, religions who have taken possession of a nation and used it for harm.
But when we are honest with ourselves, could that really happen today? In such a free society as we have, if enough of the population felt that certain religious beliefs were domineering our nation to the detriment of our it, at the next election we would merely not elect the party that was giving them such influence! That is how it has been run for quite some time and should remain that way, certain minority groups should stop foisting their opinions on the majority who likely do not care either way.
It is one thing to have your personal beliefs, to campaign for them and to voice them; it is an entirely different matter to foist those opinions on other people, forcing other people to forgo their beliefs when their beliefs are not harming society or other people.

This of course, brings up the question of who gets to judge what does and what does not harm other people and society. Our precedent of course has been the Judeo-Christian God Whose laws and principles governed our nation, - and our mother nation- for hundreds of years, and Whose laws are fair, just and which have proven to work very well if adhered to.
Under them our societies grew and prospered, the work ethic that they instilled gave us an edge over other societies which were less hard working. Our countries flourished and grew.

In contrast, let us briefly look at two examples of creeds and systems of belief who both wish to supplant, or have already supplanted, the Judeo-Christian value system.

Islam:
Islam has grown quite large to be sure but Islam has also been the proponents of some very violent aggression, in the Middle East back in the early Middle Ages when they advanced in many directions annihilating their foes before them quite cruelly and taking the Holy Lands (Prompting the Crusades which were really a reaction to Muslim aggression.)
In general the average Muslim person in an strict Islamic country is poor; Islam does not encourage industrious people, leaving their countries economically and technologically behind. To be sure, the oil in some of the countries changed this, but that is more because of fortuitous circumstances than any effort or design of the people, but even in these countries it leaves the average citizen poor. This is illustrated well by our experience in Afghanistan.

Atheism:
There has not been many states built on fundamentally Atheist principles, but the one predominant nation that experimented with it serves to illustrate the point well enough. Revolutionary France.
While the monarchy of France did, in a way, bring it upon itself, the ghastly results cannot be frittered away as mere reaction, the blame falls squarely with the revolutionaries for their overreaction to the situation.
It was a gruesome period in French - and world - history because of the tenets of their new State, with no higher being to be accountable to. Because of this it quickly degenerated into a bloodbath, people being executed at every turn, honest and upright society disappearing under the onslaught of humanist oppression. It was clearly not a success, unlike the American Revolutionary War which just decades before had been built upon entirely different premises. The Judeo-Christian God was still Supreme and not neglected in the minds of the Founding Fathers, the rights they fought for were a result of their beliefs that they and their people were beings created in the image of God and deserved certain rights under British law, not because they 'felt' that they wanted these rights or that they deserved them.

This same principle, of campaigning for the personal rights of individual people because of their preciousness in the eyes of God is the predominate reason that many of the great people of the past stood up for what they saw as God given rights, risking ridicule and giving up a comfortable and easy life. The greatest causes were won by those with that in mind, not by those who believed we are merely a product of chance (as an atheist must believe when we strip everything down to the bone) and as a result worth nothing.


In conclusion, I really cannot agree that, when compared, these two systems can even come close to being as fair and as proven historically as the Jude0-Christian system. Even if in the Judeo-Christian system there is less personal liberties, compared to the secular, everyone-has-a-right-to-do-what-they-want, is this not the right thing? People can do what they want as long as it does not harm others, the government should not be telling people how to protect themselves (In all circumstances.) But even with that said, people in this era do not realize how much their actions do hurt other people even when they think it does not. Merely intoning that 'This won't hurt anyone" does not mean it will not affect anybody. This is for the government to judge, and as the Judeo-Christian standards have proven through history to be the best system in this manner, I am a firm advocate of society using it as a standard.