(October 30, 2010 at 6:22 pm)Ace Wrote: It's quite secular over here. England is a great place to go to get away from religious madness, and Sweden is even better.

Careful now...don't confuse "atheist" with "secular".

You only have to study British law for 5 minutes to realise that we are in no way a secular nation. The US and the UK are polar opposites, I agree, but for this reason:

The US has a secular constitution (1st Amendment, etc), but a very religious population. The UK has a very religious "constitution" (we don't have a constitution, but government is intertwined with religion so much it hurts), but has a very non-religious population.

(October 31, 2010 at 3:22 pm)Tiberius Wrote:

(October 30, 2010 at 6:22 pm)Ace Wrote: It's quite secular over here. England is a great place to go to get away from religious madness, and Sweden is even better.

Careful now...don't confuse "atheist" with "secular".

You only have to study British law for 5 minutes to realise that we are in no way a secular nation. The US and the UK are polar opposites, I agree, but for this reason:

The US has a secular constitution (1st Amendment, etc), but a very religious population. The UK has a very religious "constitution" (we don't have a constitution, but government is intertwined with religion so much it hurts), but has a very non-religious population.

I know. I was speaking more along the lines of society as a whole and not the gov. We do have a rather religious government, but we have a rather large non-religious population. The U.S has a very secular government, but has a rather large religious population. Funny really isn't it?

It's scary that the US seems to be almost an theocracy in places. And if the Tea Party were to get in power, God help (figuratively) anyone who's gay, atheist, wants an abortion, or just likes freedom generally.

Hooray to good old Blighty, with its typical stiff-upper-lipped indifference to religious mumbo-jumbo!

One of these days, a Tea Party-er or some similar group of fucknuts probably will convince me to wash my hands of everything and retreat to England in some small rose-covered cottage.

Or maybe I'm just finding a scapegoat in this country to hide my enjoyment of British accents.

Jonah, I have a friend who used to be sent to mass during the week by his parents and he would grab a flyer from the church and skip out. I'll ask what sort of trouble he used to get into. Granted, this would have been in the 80's, but he's a clever and hilarious bastard with some great stories and he might have some suggestions about how to deal with religious parents and friends. I was lucky - my sunday school and synagogue had some awesome, prank playing people in it (including the girl who took me to get my first tattoo, which is a huge no-no for Jews, so that shows how much WE behaved) so I never lacked for entertainment to help me ignore the "woo" and focus on socializing instead.