Originally posted by TrashMan
Again..it's irrelvenat.
I specificly said I didn't mean a country run by religios fanatics or run by blindly sticking to the Holy book...
What, you mean like a secular country? If you remove the discriminatory bits of religion, that's what you get; the 'essential' laws for society (like not stealing, killing, etc) aren't defined by religion but by societal or instinctive behavioural necessity, after all.... that's why they got written into holy books, to help enforce them.
I mean....say you remove the bits of religion that discriminate;
- you'd have to remove any restriction on religion of leader, for one thing. And it'd need to be democratic and thus representative.
- you'd also need to remove any bias or preferential treatment of a particular religion for sake of fairness.
- and it'd be unfair to discriminate against social groups on the basis of religion, too.
- couldn't have religious laws, except where the societal common good overlaps with religious edict. Otherwise you'd be forcing belief constraints onto people.
- not have any form of enforcement of religion; forcing people to go to church would be out if you wanted freedom of belief
- in fact, interpreting the Holy Book would be kind of out of the question too, because it leaves too much room for personal bias. Plus if you're not discriminating against religion of leaders/officials, you wouldn't be guaranteed a fair interpretation by those people.
I wouldn't say that sort of society could be defined as religious-led; in fact, I can't think of a single way in which a society could be run by religion without being unfair to someone. Can you define what a (for example) 'Christian' country would do different to, say, France or the UK?
Maybe before we had immigration and literacy, when populations were homogenous in belief and race, you could have a viable religious state that wasn't actively discriminating against it's inhabitants; but not now, when the democratic world is a melting pot by nature.
