Why the Separation of Church and State is Impossible
Although the bill of right explicitly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” this does not mean of that the church and state are separate, nor should they be. Only that laws should not be passed based on their religious founding. The reason for this is because it is impossible to separate church and state. Because enforcing moral laws is a major pillar of the purpose of the state.
The Two Pillars of the State
Goods and Services
The State only has two purposes. One is to provide public goods and services to the tax payers. This would be things like roads and military protection. These services are necessary for a functioning modern society. All based around the theory of public choice. Where the government enforcing taxes to provide these public goods and services fixes the common free-rider problem.
The free-rider problem is a type of market failure where people benefit from common pool resources that they did not contribute to. So if you didn’t pay taxes you would still benefit from the roads built and the protection from the military. So enforcing paying taxes with the punishment of jail for not doing so is to reduce as much of the free-rider market failure as possible.
Enforce Laws
The second purpose of the government is to enforce laws. Laws which are indirectly passed by the people through voting for the people in the state. These laws are everything from murder to drinking alcohol to what age you can start driving. Regardless of the law, each is founded in morals. Or ‘what should be’.
We as people all (well at least the vast majority) agree that it is morally wrong to murder someone. Based on this moral stance we passed a law the makes murder illegal and have this law be enforced by the state. It is a social agreement with one another that limits the amount of bloodshed between disagreeing parties.
We did the same thing with alcohol, which is how prohibition started, because of the morality of alcohol. Some might not think that drinking alcohol is not morally right nor wrong, so how can that law be based on morals? Well the act of drinking has consequences and some are quite negative. Some of these consequences can effect your local community. So if you think it is morally right to create a better local community then legalization of alcohol is a morality question. All laws lead back to morality in way or another.
Where do morality come from?
The government enforces morality through the form of laws. This morality comes from the people. The morality of the people is mimicked by the law makers through use of voting. Now the degree to which law makers accurately mimic the morality of the people is another discussion. The current political climate suggests that regardless of the morality of the people every law has a 30% of passing. But regardless, laws are based in morality which is based on the collective morality. But this is more a lobbying issue than anything else.
Religious Morality
The morality of the collective comes from the aggregate of the morality of the individuals in said collective. There is only one place that people get their morality from, that is religion, or the church. That’s all religion is, it is to guide people to living a morally proper life. All religions, in that sense, are exactly the same, and also why many have the same fundamental principles too.
Many religions say stealing is wrong. That is a moral law that the religion encourages you to follow. There is nothing inherently wrong with stealing. You owned nothing before you were born and will own nothing after you die. No one owns anything. So stealing is not possible, on a technicality. But while people do temporarily own goods, we enforce this moral law that stealing should be illegal for the greater good of the individual and community. Theft is a religious law, enforced by the state.
Removing a Pillar of Government
To say you want separation of church and state is to say you want anarchical society in which the government just provides public goods and services at most. All laws are based on morals which are based on religion. So without religion there are no morals, without morals there are no laws, no laws is anarchy. You would be advocating for the removal of a pillar of the state.
Even if someone who is atheist or agnostic still have religious morals. They just don’t follow conventional religion. Many will still believe that murder or theft is wrong. Largely because they have created their own set of morals to follow. Essentially creating their own religion. Their morals are influenced from other religions and the beliefs of the people who raised them. So even the non-religious are religious to the degree of still having a moral compass.
Separation of church and state is impossible. Everyone has morals which are all founded in religion. Either a conventional religion or own person beliefs. These individual morals are aggregated to create the collective morals. These collective morals are what influence the people we vote for to run the state. Those elected, pass laws that support the collectives morals. Therefore the state is influenced by the moral laws of the church. They are one in the same, whether you like it or not.