Graeme Innes wrote this in a recent The Punch post:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Are-we-really-the-secular-nation-we-think-we-are/desc/
It was a rambling piece but I think the point was this: Australians think that their country is becoming increasingly secular. The rest of the world, however, is not becoming increasingly secular but rather more fragmented along sectarian/religious divisions. Thus, with increasing migration of increasingly religiously divided people, Australia will have to confront it's notions of secularism, and indeed come up with a way to deal with these increasing, and opposing, religious views. And of course it suggests the typical path of "respecting diversity", "respecting... the role that faith plays in the lives of many people, "freedom of religion..." etc. There was also this odd statement:
"If we are to have a peaceful, respectful future, then all of us must learn to make a leap of faith and trust."
This was my response:
I think we have to question this notion of ‘tolerance to different beliefs’. Where two beliefs are contradictory then at least one is wrong. It may be that both are wrong. Either way, to pretend that they are equally valid is nonsense.
The way forward for humanity in terms of peace and progress is for each of us to recognize that we are in fact not free to believe anything we want (for example, 2 + 2 = 5) and that the things we do believe are not sacred but open to discussion and dispute.
We must be prepared to abandon happily beliefs which are clearly wrong, and take less offence when someone challenges one of our cherished beliefs. This does not happen in religion because religious beliefs are out-dated, tribal, dogmatic, & easily offended by nature.
The way to peace and happiness on earth is to abandon all types of religious thinking rather than being more tolerant of it.
BTW when I say we shouldn’t be ‘tolerant’ of religious thinking I don’t mean we should go out and perpetrate violence against those with religious beliefs.
