Re: "as long as you can be smug, why would you care?"

"Many people are unhappy with the efforts of the religious to interfere with the areas of human endeavour in which science and education can benefit us; this sort of wilful interference despite hundreds of years of effort to separate church and state are bound to generate a little bad blood, wouldn't you say?"

Notice that in my original post, I said that "the issues which agitate human society and civilization are moral and existential, and have little to do with science, and in which science is powerless". And further notice that the word "religion" is *not* in that statement. Even if every aspect and trace of religion were to completely vanish today, a conflicting array of morals, ideologies, sentiments, emotions, etc would still all exist, and exert a powerful influence on society. And you can trust that some of those sentiments will be sentiments of which *you* do not approve. "Science" is *not* going to make everyone see the world the way you see it. That seems to be an unstated premise of people who worship Science: if everyone believed in Science, the world would see substantial unanimity on all questions.

"Many people are unhappy with the efforts of the religious to interfere with the areas of human endeavor in which science and education can benefit us; this sort of wilful interference despite hundreds of years of effort to separate church and state are bound to generate a little bad blood, wouldn't you say?"

"Education" by the way, is not "science". Don't confuse the two.

Incidentally, the idea that society will somehow improve if religion were to disappear, is itself an unquestionable dogma - the chief dogma of, naturally, atheists.