What role does religion have in Australia? What does God mean to you?

I agree, it is getting to the point where you can't do anything unless you are a minority.

I'm also not religious but what is happening out there is starting to really annoy me.

America, Australia etc...were founded by white people that happen to celebrate Christmas. We are now very diverse countries and there are a lot of different religions, traditions, customs etc...out there. We need to respect other peoples decision to celebrate or not celebrate all the different religious days.

Take for example a Hindu, Muslim or Buddist that goes to a shop around Christmas time. If a sign in the door says Merry Christmas, how does this possibly offend them? Surely if they don't celebrate Christmas due to their religion they just ignore the sign and get whatever they were there for. Most of the other religions don't really celebrate their days by putting up signs or banners and making a big deal out of it. But if they did, do you think there would be the same rules applied to them? "Sorry, my good Hindu friend, but you cannot have a picture of your god up for this religious event, but we will allow a sign that says Happy October."

The school issue is a bit different. Non-religious public schools are supposed to be just that. I guess the problem is that for a lot of people Christmas isn't a religious holiday. So you might have 25 kids in a class whos parents don't want them to learn religious stuff, but do celebrate Christmas. So in the past it has been appropriate to sing Christmas carols, decorate the class, make cards for each other etc...all without much recognition of what Christmas is really about. But now that it is a much more diverse society it is most likely that to go with those 25 kids there are also 1 or 2 kids that are maybe Muslim, Buddist etc....they would most likely see Christmas for it's religious purpose and therefore they would not want their kids to do anything related to Christmas. You could say, Ok your son/daughter doesn't have to sing the songs, but now you have 1 kid that is singled out and that isn't acceptable either.

God means NOTHIN 2 me

The tolerate idea is OK - embrace, support, etc

Its whether religious practices break a countries laws where it becomes an issue

1) Wearing certain clothes so faces cannot be seen and hence is that security risk
2) multiple wives
3) No blood products or medicines allowed
4) Special prayer rooms and other places (eg extra facilities)

Also we have prayers before each parliament - which esentially catholic.
Why?

Well, Australia wasn't founded by White People. There were black people here.

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This is a line of 200 dots. Each dot represents 200 years. White persons have been here for one of these dots compared, at a conservative estimate the aboriginals have been here for the time period represented by the 200 dots.

My own faith is fairly run of the mill christian. However I don't think there should ever be any state backed religious preference (including secular or atheist).

As to the individual part of the question. God is at the core of who we are. Meeting others at the depths of what matters to us is sacred (whether the person is atheist or the follower of a religious tradition).

My guess is that the real importance of belief in god is the way that it contributes to the individual and social set of ethics in society.

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