The idea behind the separation of church and state is that one should not be forced to believe what somebody else believes when it comes to mere opinion. I fully support this.
There is also a side effect. This idea of separating church and state can also lead to the idea that what we call spirituality and what we call rationality should also be separated, depending on how we interpret the word "church." It can lead to the idea that deep intuition and spirituality is one thing, and science, reason, and perception is another. At another level, the same separation is seen between awareness and action, and emotion and thought.
We can see the result of this all around us in the challenges we are facing as a global society. The result is that as a person enters adulthood, they begin to look for something called spirituality or philosophy to re-open within themself what had been closed down by apparently good ideas that were institutionalized in childhood, often in the name of education.
A better way is to simply see science and rationality deeply from the beginning, including and exploring the depths of subjectivity rather than marginalizing it as bias.
A new infusion of life is coming through on this planet as institutions that cannot fully represent who we are are crumbling.
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