What's wrong with religion is that it has always enabled people like...

[GliderGuider]

49. Your guess is wrong, but you had no way of knowing that.

You quote the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it's really no surprise that he would say something like that. The Archbishop isn't in politics, though. (Edited to add: all kinds of interest groups try to influence the political process from the sidelines, but what counts is if their issues make it into the dialogue between candidates and voters.) My point is that the USA is the only Western nation in which religion plays a significant role in national politics. Even in Italy, that most Catholic of all nations, religion isn't a significant political force. They elected a porn star, after all.

Politicians are nothing if not pragmatic. They are in the business of getting elected after all, and in order to do that they use arguments that appeal to voters. If religion appeals to them, that's what gets used. If nationalism appeals, that gets used. If economic issues are uppermost on their minds, politicians use those. Voters simply reflect the zeitgeist, and any politician who is serious about getting elected uses arguments, rhetoric and propaganda that resonates with the culture.

The fact that America is the only Western nation in which religion plays an important political role - despite the fact that most countries show similar levels of religious self-identification as the USA - indicates to me that the issue is more about how Americans think about religion than the intrinsic nature of religion itself.

Let me give you a bit of perspective on what has formed my outlook. I'm a Canadian who comes from a solid line of politically active socialist atheists, going back to my grandparents and continuing two generations past me. I grew up immersed in Canadian left-wing politics - my grandparents helped found the CCF in Manitoba and my mother ran as an NDP candidate in Ontario several times. I'm in the third of five family generations of explicit atheists. I have a scientific university education. I've spent three years of my life living in Europe, with a lot of additional travel time in Eurasia, Africa, Central and South America. I have paid very close attention to the politics of every country I've visited, and most of the ones I haven't.

You may not agree with my conclusions, but I assure you they are critically thought out.