John Denham, the communities secretary, has said that the values of Christians, Muslims and other religions were essential in building a “progressive society” and has revealed that a new panel of religious experts has been set up to advise the Government on public policy.

First of all there is nothing progressive about religion; it is fundamentally dogmatic. It seems evident that the more religious a society then the less progressive the politics and the society is, so for someone to say that religions are essential in building a progressive society is, frankly, bollocks.

Mr Denham said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph that “Faith is a strong and powerful source of honesty, solidarity, generosity – the very values which are essential to politics, to our economy and our society.”

Oh really! Faith as a source of honesty, like the honesty the Catholic Church has shown to the victims of child abuse? Solidarity? Like the solidarity the church shows homosexuals, or women who want to be bishops? Generosity? I’m not so sure that religious people are any more generous than atheists but even if they were generosity is hardly a trait I we should be basing public policy on.

“I don’t like the strand of secularism that says that faith is inherently a bad thing to have and should be kept out of public life,” Mr Denham said.

This completely misses the point. That secularists consider faith an inherently bad thing is not the reason it should be kept out of public life (policy), it is that faith is inherently bias. It is based on a set of scriptures which according to their institution, translation and interpretation tell you how to live your life and so inform its disciple’s opinions. I dread to think of some unelected ill-informed priest informing government policy about stem cell research or abortion laws.  

In the shadow of the undermining of an objective scientific panel this story spits in the face of evidence based policy making and secularism.