'history teaches us that civilisation has advanced further and quicker when religion's power has been curtailed and limited,'says Steffan John.Forgive me Steffan but I'm not aware that in Stalin's Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia (or even Hitler's Germany) where in each case religion's power was clearly 'limited' civilisation actually 'advanced further and quicker.'

Amnesia or rose-colored nostalgia for an imaginary past? Whatever obvious positive benefits Christianity may have generated in the long ago past, it is now well and truly past its useful use by date. What is commonly recognized and sometimes defended as religion in our Age is only the most superficial and factional and often dim-minded and perverse expression of ancient national and tribal cultism. In this time the rug has been pulled out from the mystifications of traditional religion. Anyone who seriously considers the modern Western intellectual, philosophical, and Spiritually informed critique of conventional religion will discover (if they are at all honest) that there simply is no basis in Reality for conventional religious presumptions and ideas. At last, and inevitably, the ancient power wielding exoteric rulerships have failed, and "official" exoteric Christianity (along with all the other "great world-religions" of merely exoteric religion-power) is now reduced to all the impenetrable illusions and decadent exercises that everywhere characterize previously privileged aristocracies in their decline from worldly power. Now, except a Spiritual revolution renews the forever esoteric Spirit of Living Truth, exoteric Christianity (et al) is reduced to a chaos of power seeking corporate cults and Barnumesque propagandists that rule nothing more than their market share of the chaotic herds of self-deluded consumerist religionists who want nothing more than consolation from their religious association. Therefore, the myth of the cultural superiority of "official" Christianity (et al) has now come full circle. The religious mythologies of the "great" world religions are not only now waging global wars with one another - like so many psychotic inmates of asylums for the mad, each confronting the other with exclusive claims of personal absoluteness - but the public masses of religion-bound people, who, all over the world, for even thousands of years, have been controlled in body and mind by ancient institutions of religiously propagandized worldly power, are now in a globalized state of religious delusion and social psychosis. The USA Tea Party is of course a leading edge example of this social psychosis, and religious delusion.

It's clear that we are a culturally christian country, and children should have a working knowledge of the Bible's myths and legends. However, the story of Britain - and indeed of Western Civilisation - from the pre-christian secularism of Athens, through to the Renaissance, to the establishment of Anglican church, to the foundational secularism of the United States, to the trimumph of the democratic House of Commons over the aristocratic and theocratic House of Lords, has been the gradual limitation and containment of religion outside of the political sphere has been essential to the perserverance and growth of civilisation. Western Civilisation was never more of a contradiction in terms than between the fifth century and the tenth - when christianity's power was at its highest. Freedom of religion is unquestionably vital, but so too is freedom from religion - and history teaches us that civilisation has advanced further and quicker when religion's power has been curtailed and limited. To teach that knowlegde, civilisation and science advanced by submitting to the established wisdom of christianity, rather than ignoring it or challenging it would be nothing but distorted, ideological propaganda. If anyone doubts this, let them come up with a list of intellectual achievements reached by religious jews, and we'll compare it with a list of achievements reached by secular and atheist jews. There's simply no comparison.

"So many of the precious freedoms that we value today, the fair treatment of workers and the care of those in need, arise from values given to us by the Judaeo-Christian tradition. These values, however, are grounded in the moral and spiritual vision of this tradition. It cannot by any means be taken for granted that these values will survive for long if the tradition itself is jettisoned." As a Christian who is concerned at the grave disappearance of British values of freedom, it is very welcome to hear such a comment from one whose wisdom and knowledge surpass mine. But my fear, tempered though it is by a knowledge of God's love, is that we are fast approaching the point of no return when it comes to the preservation of Christian liberty in the socio-political arena.