Then the problem is, why does a couple of hundred years old text still treated as meaningful source with these concepts beyond any historical value. Because there is basically nothing defined and written down. Well, yeah...you don't get the tell people that secularism requires a godless state at that century, you modify whatever is available. And if that's not defined later, updated regularly, it becomes this political toy while this has nothing to do with real politics.
Linguistics seems to be very important in this subject. Secularism is not the seperation of religion and state, and civic affairs. Secularism is the transformation of a given culture and human affairs into a 'worldly' existence. I keep looking but can't find the word for that specific 'wordly' concept in English. The result gives the term 'profanation' which has a derog, negative meaning. That's a red flag to begin with. It's all loaded in one word and as it is a huge concept related to many variables, it becomes vague and that of course made it very easy for politicians to play with. The word I'm looking for means something like 'make the people, the culture...of this world'.Yeah you bet they hate it. There must be a word in English.
Institutions cannot be secular. States and governments cannot be secular. Law cannot be secular; the modern law is law but nothing else; it is above everything. The concept of religious law has already been abolished long time ago. They can only be laicist. People; culture and human affairs can be secular as a result of a laicist constitution/law. There is a reason why the French system produced these two concepts which are inseperable from each other. You can't jump to the effect without the cause.
Related to this, something else is happening with these concepts I think. According to my observation, most people and sources in American culture also in others -even the secular ones- seem to perceive/treat the state and the religion as two different sides of one coin belonging to one category. So it creates this misundestanding which is wide open to manipulation that they are interchangable and that's the main conflict. They are not.
The State and the religion don't have any common theoretical or practical traits, functions. The separation has already happened when modern state was founded and started to administrate the society; when the law became functional. The laicist state is not in the same leauge to begin with. Religions cannot administrate societies for a day.
OK in an ideal laicist state, anyone can believe whatever they want and start any kind of religion, found institutions but these are treated like private clubs; mandated to pay taxes, subjected to every kind of law. Actually, the suggestion is that two things in society must be regulated firmly; brothels and religious institutions. Becuse these are the two places most suitable for any kind of abuse. So only adults. So no religion in publics schools which is an utopia, right?
You know what, then the interesting point is, it seems we don't even need to go that far. Because besides the 'morality' propaganda pushed for the average religious person on religious education in public schools, one million morons and all... the brain team of religious groups; evangelists and their counterparts in other religions are perfectly aware that the amount of people in STEM fields with religious background is just a tiny little bit of slice. That's their real conflict if you ask me. They are so irrelevant considering the age, probably the last 5oo years- that looks like the main battle for them.
