In America, the churches, with their tax exemption, can pretty much levy any financial strain on the government treasury they wish. In England the government has put limits on what the church gets, and what the church does.

I say, call their bluff- demand a government church, and fair representation in the leaders of the church. We all get to vote on what’s right and wrong, and if the majority think God favors abortion or drinking, that’s the way things are. And a good stiff tax on non-conformers.

After all, that was the Pilgrim ideal.

I think that France has the same sort of legal restrictions (in fact, stronger) as there are in the US.

And, don’t forget, the issue of Church-state seperation in the constitution, and the supporting documents such as Jefferson’s Letter to the Danbury Baptists, aren’t uncontentious in themselves. Constitutional protection for what we might nowadays consider to be church/state seperation isn’t a done deal, I don’t think. And the Establishment Clause itself isn’t designed (according to some, at least) to prevent religion and government mixing so much as it is to stop the government giving primacy to one denomination. The debate over exactly how limited government and religion are, in terms of their interpenetration, isn’t dead.

What I specifically find useful in the US is the stability the constituional rights give you. Of course there are enlightened places with progressive governments, and then your rights are safe, but if you live in Dover PA and Bush is the president, that is far from being the case. Being able to protect yourself despite being an unpopular political minority is really incredible.

Religious Education classes in the UK in the school that I went to as a kid were basically studies of the beliefs of various religions. We didn’t sit down and read the bible and have it explained to us. Additionally, they were often discussions about general ethics and other philosophical topics. Not to mention that we got to watch Cool Hand Luke. I personally don’t see it as a bad thing at all to learn about religious beliefs. The problem would be if it’s taught (heh) as gospel, which was more the case at the catholic school at which I taught (although, again there were studies of other denominations and religions even there, there was certainly a fair amount of ‘bible interpretation according to the Catholic Church’. If it’s any consolation, most of the kids didn’t give a toss about any of it).

I see your point, if you are really in the unfortunate position to be forced into religion classes, it is good for them to be separated from science classes. In fact this is exactly what my education was like: interesting and useful science classes, I learned both calculus and special relativity in high school, but then the social sciences which are harder to separate from the predominant political viewpoint usually degenerated into “great stories about the great leaders” etc.

In the US the starting point is superior, you are already protected from having your kids taught religion, and the current fight seems to be about keeping this right- which only exists in the US. In this context the fact that religion is masked as science and not something else is not all that important, in fact that is the essence of the argument presented against teaching ID.

Of course, now that I think about it, I probably couldn’t make this coordinate choice everywhere, only locally. But that’s not necessarily a problem either, is it?

Nope. The worldline of the sun is [to a good enough approximation] a geodesic. The worldline of the Earth is a geodesic of a different shape. There is no isometry that allows you to bend one of those shapes into the other. [In special relativity there are always enough isometries to map any timelike geodesic to another of the same length. This trivial and not very interesting fact has, for historical reasons, given its name to the theory. In GR generally, and in the earth-sun spacetime in particular, things are different. As somebody once said, “there’s no relativity in GR — it’s that general!”] A good rule of thumb in these situations is that if you find yourself arguing that you can do something with frames of reference in GR that you can’t do in SR, then you are probably misunderstanding something basic.

Regarding

I think what these statistics really show is the ornery reluctance of many Americans to take on faith what people in positions of authority (e.g. school teachers, scientists, government officials, …) who don’t reflect their values tell them. I know that many religious people are in positions of power now, but that’s pretty recent.

the entire point here is that there are huge chunks of nonsense taken on faith, so I don’t agree. Religious people have been in positions of power throughout the entire history of this country, so I don’t agree with that statement either. However, the particularly backward, science denying versions that have a lot of political power today are relatively recent in their influence.

Is there a difference between AP and ID? ID just seems to designate the Christian creator as *the* one that made the universe suitable for human life.

Or did I not listen carefully enough in my philosophy course “Does God Exist?”

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