Should religion be kept private?

Though most of the religions exist to point the way to God, there are significant differences between these religions. For example, one could argue that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all professes about the same God; yet there are so many irreconcilable differences between the three. Not only that, both Christianity and Islam are sharply criticized over the centuries about their aggressive style of expansion. Though not much in the last few centuries, Christianity had been blamed for annihilating many cultures, their traditions, and their literary and art work in the name of religious conversion. In today's society, it seems like Muslims are often associated with violence and intolerance, promoting terrorism as a means to establish their presence. And Israel, a tiny nation in the Middle east, gives us the notion that it is the epicenter of civil unrest in that entire region. And this is only the tip of the iceberg if you factor in the Hindu-Muslim conflicts, and also the friction that exist within fractions of these religions. 

It is a widely held belief that religion is the single most obstacle to world peace. Since every religion aims to lead its followers to God by claiming to know the way, it also promotes separation within societies, intentionally or not. In response to this claim that religion promotes intolerance, violence and oppression, many of the governments are going through the painstaking process of separating religion from state. More and more people believe that religion should be a private matter, and should not be allowed to influence any legislative decisions and public policies. They claim that actions based on religion lack rationality. They also fear that such decisions tend to overlook certain groups in a society in favor of other groups solely due to the difference in religious beliefs. So is this the answer to all the civil unrest - a totally secular system of government policies where everybody leave their religious convictions at home?

In the beginning I said that religion is a form of belief in God. But are they just that? In reality, religions are much more than belief in God; it is a way of life for its followers, it is a quest to find who they are, why are they here, and what are they here for. Every "ought" and "should" associated with religion and their teachings are there to provide its followers with a certain identity, to promote a sense of belonging, and to define purpose. Majority of our convictions about how one should live are based on these recommendations and teachings of religions. 

Imagine humanity without religion where science and rationality are the kings. The rational and scientific base behind any policies undertaken in such a society would have to  be "survival of the fittest". In a world devoid of any gray - just black and white, the only significant natural law would be "someone or something has to die for someone or something else to live". Such societies would only support people and things that could directly support the well being of that society. The weak, the poor, and the disabled are nothing more than burden on these societies. It would be a culture that promote killing the poor to eliminate poverty. It would only be a natural thing to kill my neighbor to inherit the property and the many wives he had amassed. The morality and ethics of nature are brutal, so would be a society devoid of supernatural moral and ethical guidelines.

Dignity and equality are not ideologies of this world, rather they are recommendations to live according to the likes of a bigger authority - the Supreme Being. Ethics and morality have strong religious implications, there is no denying that. When societies leave their faith at home and draft laws according to secular views, value of life takes a back seat to make room for values that individually gratifying.  Take marriage and pregnancy for example. If you believe marriage is for sustaining and nourishing life, then you would make laws to protect marriage as the union of man and woman, and would consider abortion as murder. But if you believe marriage is for satisfying physical and mental desires of the parties involved, then it can be between any two or more people. In this case, pregnancy is nothing more than a nuisance - something that needs to get rid of in order to enjoy life more fully. The first belief is religious in nature because it involves restraints and sacrifices - things you wouldn't find in the natural order.

Religious ideas and beliefs cannot be kept private because they are the very essence of every society's existence. It gives value to human lives by adding a supernatural dimension to the way we live and operate by introducing terms such as respect, care, and love. Take those things out of the equation and what do we have left in this life? Next we will look at a few instances where humans tried to take religious ideologies out of the public square, before moving onto the problem of too many religions.