On 16-10-2011 15:30, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> This is simple. The logic is that a) they are going to hell, just look
>> at how much "worse" their economies are, b) just look at all these (
>> entirely made up) examples of bad laws, and evil things happening in
>> them, c) denial that anything good is happening in those places, and d)
>> an even **bigger** total, and complete, denial that Christians are not
>> the majority religion in the world, or that any place with a lot of
>> churches can "possibly" be non-religious.
>
>    The irony is that most European countries, including the nordic ones,
> are technically speaking theocracies.

To be a theocracy the church(es) should also control legislation and 
provide or choose the politicians. The vatican is in Europe the only 
country where that is the case. You could make a case for England, but I 
don't think you can win that argument.

> That's because their governments
> recognize and endorse an official state church which gets significant
> privileges over all other denominations and religions. Their constitutions
> do not forbid the governments from endorsing a particular religion (because
> they do).

In the Netherlands we have sort of a state religion, in the sense that 
our Queen is from a particular church. But all religions that were 
present in the beginning of the 20th centuries all are treated the same. 
Yes they have privileges, but giving a church tax breaks does not make 
the country a theocracy. Because of the connection between the RC church 
and the Vatican (or for some other reason, IANAH), the RC church was 
allowed to have it's own internal legislation that was respected by the 
Dutch authorities. That is of course a bit less acceptable these days 
because the RC church appears to be ethically rotten to the bone. I am 
not aware that the protestant churches had the same privileges even 
though our Queen is a protestant. Anyway the influence of the church is 
ATM almost completely limited to within the walls of the church.

>    In contrast, the US is technically speaking a secular government because
> its constitution forbids the government from endorsing a particular
> religion.
>
>    Yet something like 85% of people in the nordic countries are secular
> (and the governments are largely secular), while something like 95% of
> people in the US is Christian.

can you give a reference for those numbers?


>    Life is stranger than fiction.

but some life is more equal than others


-- 
Apparently you can afford your own dictator for less than 10 cents per 
citizen per day.

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