Faith, involving a belief in something, is about a personal system devised by individuals to explain that which we are both awestruck by, and find inexplicable and incomprehensible. Religion, through the use of a monolithic set of dogmas and creeds, enforced by social strictures and the imposition of guilt, is about crowd control. They are not the same thing. The former can exist without and apart from the latter; the reverse, however, is not true.
The question now is, can the latter, which really is a social construct (no more and no less) that has attached itself to and interwoven, and thereby hidden, itself within the fabric of a faith; and which also seems to be in decline around the world, be replaced adequately through the inconsistent imposition of locally defined secular laws which are combined with some degree of fear of legal penalty, to control the very real evil which is entirely natural to the human animal and its struggle to survive and thrive in a generally inhospitable universe?
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