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15th August 2008

“It makes no sense in a pluralistic society to give one church special status. Nor does it make sense, in a largely secular country, to give special status to all faiths. The point of democracies is that the public arena is open to all groups—religious, humanist or football fans. The quality of the argument, not the quality of the access to power, is what matters.”

The Economist

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 1:00 and is filed under QOTD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “15th August 2008”

  1. Terence Meaden Says:
    August 15th, 2008 at 8:45

    Some rewording might be constructive:

    It is not fair in a pluralistic society to give one church special status. Nor does it make sense, in a largely secular country, to give special status to all faiths. The point of democracies is fairness, impartiality, which in the presence of religious groups can only be obtained by curbing them all—equally—and so guaranteeing a properly secular state. Religion is a private matter that is better confined to the private sphere, so lessening chances of their harmful influence on the external innocent majority.

  2. John Sutton Says:
    August 15th, 2008 at 19:49

    Terence is right as usual. In a democracy we all get one vote and it defeats the democratic principle for self serving group to get special access and privilege to government.