The Biological Value of Religion

[Michael]

I'm sure I don't need to point out that the democracies that you like so much are based on Judeo-Christian values.

This trope ignores the well documented struggle of Western Civilization extirpating religious influence from its politics. Those that push this canard are simply attempting to defend the desire to legislate their morality without having to provide secular justification.

Nonsense. You're trying to rewrite history outside of its religious setting, and that is a gross anachronism that has no historical merit. It collapses as soon as we look at the actual history of modern democracy. I'm sorry to be harsh, but you're just indulging in blatant revisionism; reading into the past your preferred philosophy of today. To understand modern democracy we must enter the world and thoughts of very deeply religious men; men willing to die and kill for their understanding of God's Kingdom. The very notion of 'one man one vote' came out of the Putney Debates in 1647, and those were debates held by Puritans who were looking to debate how Christian values should be lived out in society. They were offering a counter-argument to the 'Divine right of Kings' held to firmly by James I and his successor Charles I. The cauldron of modern democracy was, at its heart, a theological debate, with the bible as fuel. These were not, in any sense whatsoever, people fighting against religion. These were people whose very inspiration was their Puritan religion, based on their understanding of a bible recently translated into a language even the plough boy could understand (to echo Tyndale's desire). They, led by Cromwell, would implement parliamentary democracy through the violence of the civil wars of England, Scotland and Ireland. You can't understand Western democracy without understanding Puritanism, the New Model Army, and the huge religious debates and conflicts of the 17th century; conflicts that would drastically reshape ideas of government and leave a world forever changed.