>There is ample, fairly distasteful history to be reviewed. Suffice to say it was not a simple transfer and "business as usual". Legions of churchmen went to meet their maker early and the temporal power of the church was drastically altered forever.

So he did have to fight the church, and give it some leeway on the other hand - IOW, it was a social power per se. It's been a long time since I had seen the TV series :). We may discuss how much did the society and church actually overlap.

>Absolutely. You have denied the church your support. You have not been struck by lightning. If all society agreed with you, that would be the end of religion, or at least of the power it apparently exerts.

Wouldn't ask for more.

>Religion exists through communal faith, it is not a malign external influence.

Unless it takes too much power and the society has an identity crisis when it tries to look for its secular self. Take the countries with sharia law for example, or the times of inquisition. But then, the latter didn't last, which actually proves your point in the long run.

>>>I start objecting, however, when it becomes a public matter, and someone somewhere in the dispute says something like "those unbelieving people have no [soul | spirituality | morality |...] ADDITIVE". Then the spirit of community just takes me in, to partake in the merry dispute.
>
>Can you please provide the post where somebody said that?

You didn't, except by implication. I was rather referring to why am I in this thread at all. This particular sub-sub-sub-thread began, for me, with message #963361:

"recently I was privileged to see a highly respected lawyer give his retirement speech. He stated that being remembered for brilliance in law now seems an empty shell; he wished he could change his life to be remembered for morality, selflessness and decency instead. This from a confirmed athiest."

At that time I understood this as special mention of his atheism, contrary to the normal attitude expected from an atheist. As if morality, selflessness and decency were somehow incongruous with not believing. But then, even if you didn't mean it that way, I read it that way, and we've had nice chat for ten days in a row, as a byproduct of my misreading :).