(July 18, 2010 at 5:56 pm)Purple Rabbit Wrote: Should we not protect children from these rather unsecular ideas.It's not an "unsecular" idea though. Secularism is about the separation of church and state. As far as I am aware, that covers both religion interfering in government, and government interfering with religion. What religions decide to teach their children is up to religion, not to government.
On a personal level, I'm far more inclined to let parents raise their children the way they want, as long as they don't break the child's civil rights. In a secular society, Christians would bring up their children as Christians, Muslims would bring up their children as Muslims, and atheists would probably leave the whole "religion" thing out of it. Far too many people these days try to pollute secularism by thinking it is somehow anti-religious or "atheistic". It's not.
As for minarets, I'm find with people putting them on buildings, and certainly during the day I don't see why they can't have a call to prayer, as long as it doesn't start annoying residents by being too loud or going on for too long. We have church bells in my country, but I don't complain when I hear them. As a matter of fact, I quite like the sound of church bells, and the songs that are sung out of minarets can be nice too. I don't have to be a member of the religion to enjoy certain parts of it.
Finally, onto smoking bans. There shouldn't be any enforced by government; they should be the responsibility of whoever is running the establishment. Hospitals don't need laws written by government when they can simply put up signs and enforce the rules themselves; same with anyone who owns a pub.
