Is over-secularization a possibility? Part Two

Well I can safely say I did not quite come across clearly in Is over-secularization a possibility? Part One - so much so that I have to follow it up and clarify myself.  I'm not going to lie - it's a bit embarrassing, a bit like having to explain a joke after telling it for five minutes, except having a whacky sense of humour is no excuse here.

First off, I am in no way saying that there is no point to reasoning when it comes to ethics.  I have said time and time again just how banal that is.  What I am saying is that some personal opinion must exist, otherwise the reasoning is all for nothing. Reasoning is a map showing the way, but without any personal belief there is nowhere to go.

Secondly, what did/do I mean exactly by over-secularization? We can all agree that secularization is the separation of Church and State.  Now previously I said that it is the shift of legislation from a religious foundation to a logical and scientific one, which perhaps is not strictly true although I believe it must follow from the separation of Church and State the only other option being public opinion which would inevitably lead to legislatures correcting and re-correcting laws due to good arguments led against them, eventually resulting in a logical foundation anyway.  Whatever, it's not that vital, I'll retract that definition and replace with the more popular one.

But why exactly should a country secularize, and have its state separated from its religion?  The anti-theist outcry of "Religion is evil," is uneducated and quite frankly useless. The Nazis didn't think Hitler was evil, and the Church will never be evil to Catholic counties, so this accusation will inevitably fall on deaf ears.  The only reason - or at least the main reason- why a country would secularize is the acceptance that belief is a personal thing which anyone can choose for themselves.  Therefore, not everyone in the country will have the same religion and so the country must secularize to be accepting to all its citizens.

In doing so, the country takes a stance that what is universal to all people should be endorsed in a public space in favour of what is subjective to some - a stance I very much support, as I always have.  So far that is all secularization and it is fine and dandy.

Multiculturalism from a snail's point of view...
(as they slowly torture it with salt)

Here is where over-secularization might come into play - the placing of all universal value over all subjective value.  As I said in Part One, money has a value recognizable to all, so it is given more importance than personal values.  Same with fame and land and fashion and a hundred other things.  A country which takes secularization to this level effectively robs its citizens of individuality.
Now someone trying to show how I am full of bullshit might say that such a thing could never happen due to secularization unless people actually pushed for it.  But how true is that?  A necessary side-effect of secularization is that all beliefs and value-systems exist side by side in a country, forming a mass of sub-cultures.  In itself that is a brilliant thing, but how will value be communicated from one sub-culture to another?  Everyday we are bombarded by the media and new ways to stay connected with one another, not to mention advertisements which exist solely to display something's value.  In such an environment, value will be communicated by referring to something which holds a "universal" value, and that is where the over-secularization begins; just as we separated our laws from our beliefs we separate all aspects of our behaviour.

Is any of this grounds for halting secularization?  Of course not.  Does it mean that no objective ethics can/should exist?  Definitely not, the very thought abhors me!  What it means is that in a world where we are constantly told that science and logic must come before our personal beliefs, we mustn't completely abandon our personal beliefs in favour of things with a more widely accepted value.

So the question remains, where do we draw the line?  I deliberately left the question unanswered previously, and I learnt the hard way that where you don't give your own conclusions, people will make them on your behalf.

So here it is: The line should be drawn where secularization stops helping people get along with others and starts turning people into identical clones.  There is no reason why we can't have objective laws and ethics and not have subjective beliefs and values.  In fact, with no subjective beliefs and values the whole concept of objective laws and ethics becomes completely undermined, for they are there to enrich our lives, and in the absence of individuality we lose any claim of ownership to our own lives.

I hope I was clearer this time round.