> I can’t wait till we talk about Jesus and God in the same way we talk about Hades and Zeus.

> When societies cling too tightly to the faith traditions they’ve inherited—by accident of birth—they often impede critical thinking, open inquiry, and evidence-based governance.

It's pretty clear he's talking about atheism.

And a secular state is definitionally a state without a state religion. Sweden and Norway both had state churches until very recently. A closely related country, Denmark, still has an official state church.

You can also look to Belarus, a secular state with a high rate of non-religiosity.

I'm talking about secularism. True separation of church and state at any level of government.

This enables us to talk freely about religious belief and to educate our kids on how they have been exploited by many factions over the years.

It doesn't limit your own spirituality. It also doesn't hand the keys to the country to one specific group of people.

> Countries with strong secular foundations regularly top global indexes of well-being, prosperity, and social progress.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...

Only 1 of the top 5 countries in this list have neither blasphemy laws or a state church. 2 of them have both.

If your point is that they're doing good because they still pay some ceremonial tribute to their religious past, or that they're doing good because they had a strong religious foundation at some point, how do you square that with the correlation between these countries doing better and the decrease in the influence of religion?

> Sweden and Norway both had state churches until very recently

and they claimed that secularism led to better social outcomes.

The Church of Norway became independent of the State in 2017. The Church of Sweden in 2000.