... and by the rulers as useful.

You would have thought that politicians in the country would know to steer well clear of religion by now wouldn't you; I might not have liked the last incumbents of No. 10 but they were at least wise enough to "not do God". But nope, here comes Dishface at the weekend banging on about Christianity and "[calling] for a revival of traditional Christian values to counter Britain's "moral collapse"."

I cannot helped be reminded of the words of Seneca:

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

 as yet again one of our leaders who by his own admission is ""full of doubts" about big theological issues" (read "Of course I don't believe in this twaddle") tells all the little people what's good for them; in this case they have to believe in the big fairy in the sky who, if you riot and steal TV's from Comet, will put you on the naughty step when you die. I mean it truly is pathetic isn't it that he could even attempt such a pitch. And what's equally annoying is that maybe he really does think you can't be "good without god" - failing to realize that what we call "good", compassion, altruism and so on, come about because we are social animals and we get this kind of thing from our evolution. Sure we are still savage little monkeys not very well equipped to live in together in the huge numbers we do since Civilization* kicked off 6000 odd years ago so we need policemen and jails but even in the most religious countries you'll find those institutions. 

But with that said he is right in that we do for better or worse, and even as an atheist I am prepared to say generally "better', have a rich heritage of Christian tradition in this country. It has given us art, music, architecture, jurisprudence and the poetry of the King James Bible. I would hate to see this country turn into a place where I have to start wishing people the anodyne "Happy Holidays" rather than a hearty "Merry Christmas". We do "do God" here, but Britons tend in the main to regard overt displays of religiosity rather suspiciously. As an example there American Football player who is famous for doing a full kneel down hands together prayer whenever he scores a touchdown; a display like that from a rugby or football player here would be quite rightly regarded as crass. That's why all Cameron pontificating about "what the proles need is a good dose of the Fear of the Almighty, fire and brimstone style" is going to cost him, despite how well it plays to the blue rinse brigades in his ranks.



* i.e. "Living in cities"