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UK politician claims that secularisation is like a totalitarian regime!

Just appalling.

"Britain is under threat from a rising tide of "militant secularisation", a cabinet minister has warned.

Religion is being "sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere", Conservative co-chairwoman Baroness Warsi wrote in an article for the Daily Telegraph...

She wrote that examples of a "militant secularisation" taking hold of society could be seen in a number of things - "when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won't fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere".

She also compared the intolerance of religion with totalitarian regimes, which she said were "denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17021831

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Permalink Reply by Jessica on February 14, 2012 at 10:37am

Appalling is right. When has secularization been a threat to anything but radical religious conservatives. If we look at the track record for religion there are billions of human deaths and oppression over centuries of human history. The best thing we could do for humanity is to take the power from the religious institutions. There time is over (I Hope).

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Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on February 14, 2012 at 10:42am

These people condemn secularists and atheists mostly for one reason: They Don't Know Any!!! It is past time that we became more public with our stance, and deprive them of their lame and baseless excuses for making such claims.

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Permalink Reply by Gecko, Seth...brother of Richie! on February 14, 2012 at 11:25am

I think its worse then that Loren. As all of us have talked about before in one way or other, many of the theists are so deeply drowned in their dellusions that getting to know us will not make a difference. In this particular case...it looks like the "dominionists" are having success in teaching their conservative breathren across the pond how to take the fight to the streets..so to say.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism

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Permalink Reply by David Raphael on February 14, 2012 at 11:11am

As someone pointed out in the BBC comments, this woman probably wouldn't have even been allowed to have the position she does unless it was for a secularism.

I'm embarrassed that this kind of thing can be said in modern day England. It's so strange that religion has been rearing its ugly head there recently (in the past 10 -15 years).

When I was a kid - 30 + years ago - religion was moribund in the UK. I never met anyone religious, it wasn't on the TV, no one ever mentioned it. As Jonathan Miller said 'religion/god was seen as a slightly embarrassing senile, incontinent old relative'

We all took it as read that Nietzsche was right and that god had died some time at the end of the 19th Century