Secular Government

Before I begin I would like to state my thankfulness for your acceptance of my debate. I would also like to wish you the best of luck. I. Concept of Secularism The very idea of secular government is beneficial to a society in its own virtue, a federal separation of church and state eliminates the found of abhorrent laws that were founded on the religious laws of a leader or majority of people within the designated area said leader or people are. Secularism is not necessarily established to abolish religion nor to prohibit the free practice of religion, in the fact the sole purpose of government secularism is to respect the religious and non-religious beliefs of all citizens. An appropriate country to use for the impact of secularism would be the United States. As time passes, the United States' populace seems to conform to progressive and religiously unaffiliated ideologies, as the number of religiously unaffiliated persons in the country has tripled since 2007, and the number of progressives has rocketed by about 10%. As of 2014, the Christian faith lost 8% of its population to the unaffiliated spectrum. And since then, to corroborate the two as opposed to senselessly letting the two ideas remain afloat, the country has collectively become more progressive as this passes, and laws such the Kansas and Indiana law which permit business owners to deny services to individuals based on religious values have grown to become more frowned upon. As people understand more and more that in owning a business you are selling a product or service to the public in exchange for money, which would inherently make your business public - regardless of exactly how 'private' you, the business owner, feel it is - many Conservatives argue that this is the government infringing on the rights of religious individuals who hold their religious customs strong to themselves, but yet they fail to realize the detriment of allowing service cuts to minorities, and how much worse off the country would be if businesses could hypothetically deny services. And they also seem to realize that owning a store in which customers enter for services, is strictly business, and like bosses will tell their employees, keep the private life and beliefs out of the work place - it is unprofessional and controversial to spill your personal views and life story into the working environment, and it commonly disrupts the work of the work place, which can influence other workers to set a pause to their work in order to converse, or in some situations, to argue. II. Theocratic Oppression It isn't hard to understand that in more religiously conservative governments, regimes, and nations in general, religious oppression, racial profiling, and marginalization based upon the religious laws of one person or another, that oppression and lack of public opinion, as well as effectiveness, is lacking. For example, the state of Texas in the United States. Texas is a very conservative [both politically and religiously] state, and the population of Texas is often faced with profiling, discrimination and denomination of their most basic rights to freedom of opinion, expression and religion [or lack thereof] as hence forth granted to them in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Most working class citizens in Texas are Central Americans, but a large variety of them receive demonizing pay from the local law enforcement, as well as the American system as a whole. In Texas, a local bar had refused to give access to services to an Islamic woman on the basis that her beliefs contradicted that of their own, and that they were also a terrorist because of their religion. In an ideal secular nation, that would not be allowed because being professional and owning a business where you are obligated to provide for the public based on your occupation, you are not allowed to mix business and religion, nor class, race, sex, sexuality or anything of the sort. In your eyes as the owner of a business, you are to uphold the belief that all customers that enter your store are in fact customers regardless of the aforementioned factors.And to reiterate, a big misconception many hold about secular government is that it installs atheism and agnosticism into the system. Yet the point is to disregard religion [or lack thereof] as a component of politics and government and just completely disconsolate it, unless of course bringing up a situation where religious rights are actually brazenly being infringed upon [e.g business owner kicks out Muslim because they're Muslim, justice system steps in and penalizes business owner]. Another example of theocratic oppression would be the Middle East in a present setting. The political tension between Israel and Palestine is very heavily involved with the religious and cultural differences between the two countries. Many think of Israel as more of a Zionist country, while others think of Palestine as a victimized Islamic/Christian country holding more peaceful values. But the profiling in Israel [whether it is agreed with that Israel is Zionist or not] is caused by religious and racial difference. Israel weaves its way into the motif of religiously fundamentalist countries/theocratic governments being strict on their beliefs and very strongly demonizing its religious opposition. As Israel heavily condemns the faith of Islam and many of its followers are arrested, killed or deported in fear that simply holding the Islamic values is a threat to the security of the country.Another prime example of theocratic government would be Nazi Germany. Though it also appears the most common example, a driving force of the NSDAP was to enforce the religious supremacy of Christianity upon religious minorities in Europe [included Jews, Muslims, etc.], it should be acknowledged in this conversation that Hitler's repressive Fascist regime for the most part [within its High Command especially] held sincere religious beliefs. Hitler giving benefits to the Christian populace and revoking the benefits when the person in question was of a different religion only goes to show what theocratic countries truly behave like.III. Empowering of Religious CorruptionIn the 1500s in Europe, the Catholic Church was the backseat government in its own way. For the monarchs of Europe passed all of their laws and actions through the church hierarchy before actually putting them into practice, as apparently it was culturally required that monarchs did such. The church was also given the power to accept money in exchange for the repetence of sins. Meaning someone could run around raping and murdering, and as soon as they slip the local priest some money their sins are "forgiven".With governments that run solely on religion [in this case theocratic regimes], religious corruption tends to be more of a problem.IV. Lack of Effective RuleThe thesis being made is that theocratic government is not *effective*, which shall be proved in this section of the argument.To begin with, all theocratic governments in the past were faced with irrefutable loss in war, had suffered serious opposition from the inside, and were consumed by absolute atrocities that were allowed in the streets. The Third Reich collapsed after a mere six years of war, the rebellion against the church, formally titled the 'Protestant Reformation' lead by Martin Luther also dismantled the political [absolute] power of the church in Europe, within a hundred years or less of American's existence, the government became significantly less religiously-involved. While Middle Eastern powers still hold strongly conservative religious values and still maintain religious influence in their countries, they are constantly faced with war.