This is a short post I made in response to a Christian at some message board who stated that it was okay to bring religious arguments into any discussion; he used free speech as the reason why religious arguments could be allowed in debates. I disagreed, and I posted a reply about it. The reason I put up my reply here on my rants page is because I think what I said shows just why religion(s) and state should not intermix. In fact, I added a bit more to this reply later, mostly about that very issue. Read on if you like. ;>

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Free speech is a good thing, yes. However, religious arguments are not valid. Arguments are only valid when their premises are believable, and religion has some of the most off-base premises that humans have ever come up with.

Example: If I told you the reason why sunflowers always turn their faces to the sun was because the first sunflower was in actuality a nymph named Clytie who pined with love for the sun god Apollo and watched his sun chariot travel across the sky everyday, would you believe me? Would my argument as to why sunflowers turn their faces to the sun be a VALID argument? No. It's a somewhat logical argument, but it's based on the false premise of a fictional story (or is it? :p) and is therefore not a valid one.

However, if I told you that the reason why sunflowers turn their faces to the sun is so that perhaps they can collect sunlight better because it's been proven through countless controlled experiments that plants die without sunlight because sunlight provides them the energy with which to make the sugars a plant stores as food by starting an electron transport chain with chlorophyll, that WOULD be a valid argument, becuase it has been tested and repeatedly proven. Can you test and repeatedly prove the Clytie myth?

Therefore, when you or anyone else brings up the B-I-B-L-E or religion to defend an issue, whether that might be about homosexuality or why Leviticus says pregnant women can't enter places of worship, you lose all your credibility to anyone who does not believe in that religion. It might be surprising to people in the U.S., but Christians make up only a little over 25% of the world, and as an agnostic gay man myself, I can tell you that if you can't swallow the Clytie story explaining why plants grow in the direction of sunlight, you had better not think for one second that ANY Bible-based argument on ANY issue is somehow more valid than that, just because that's the untestable, un-"repeatedly provable" (I love my jargon :p) story that YOU happen to believe in. After all, that's the reason church and state are (allegedly) separate in this country - laws should be made, reinforced, executed, and (most importantly) be based on and defended by the most objective, logical, impartial, and provable grounds possible. Religion is none of those things.