Religious State vs Secular State – strange observations

In the UK, we have the unelected Queen as head of the Church of England, and also at the same time head of state. Then we have the house of Lords populated with unelected bishops. So while we might cringe at the thought of how backward and medieval it is to have clerics running things in Iran, we should remember that we have been apparently doing exactly the same for a lot longer than they have. Yet despite all this, the UK is now the most secular nation on the planet.

Johann Hari writes about the results of the latest ICM study on his blog:

This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division.

You can read his full blog entry here.

Meanwhile over in the US there is strict separation of church and state. It was founded as the very first secular republic on the planet, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a national religion by Congress or the preference of one religion over another, non-religion over religion, or religion over non-religion. In essence, its nailed in stone, its officially completely secular. Yet there we have some of the craziest weirdest most peculiar religious nuts in existence.

• A vast crowd of believers who dismiss evolution as a myth despite all the evidence
• Folks who feel that the babbling of bunch of middle-eastern goat herders over 2000 years ago takes priority over modern fact-based science, hence they truly believe the the world is only 6000 years old

So what the heck is going on here? We have a secular state populated with religious nuts on one side of the Atlantic, yet on the other side we have religious nutters running a state consisting of the most secular population the planet has even seen!!!

I find this very bizarre and have no idea what it should be like this. If you have any thoughts or suggestions as to why, then please do drop a comment, its a complete mystery to me.