The word ‘secularism’ brings to mind different things in different people. For many, it brings atheism to mind, in particular the outspoken atheism of the likes of Richard Dawkins. For others it conjures up thoughts of Stalinism, thanks to the policies of Stalin, Mao and other communist dictators who saw religion as a threat to their own dogma.

But what is secularism? As I have learned over the course of my life, far too many people simply don’t know – unfortunate, but not altogether surprising. What is surprising is the number of people who think they know, but clearly don’t.

I’ve had people tell me they oppose secularism because they think it means communism, or the establishment of atheism as the state “religion”, or that secular schools means teaching children that God doesn’t exist. I’ve been told that Hitler was a secularist, that secularism was the justification that Stalin and Mao used for the murder of tens of millions of their own citizens, that secularism is the reason paedophile priests exist, and I’ve been told repeatedly that secularism is causing the moral degeneration of our society.

This is intellectual effluent that has been deliberately spread by people who want their religion to either remain in power or to acquire it, because nobody who hasn’t already made up their mind could believe any of the above once the term has been properly explained.

Firstly, ‘secular’ does not equal ‘atheist’. While it is true almost all non-religious people are secularist, not all secularists are atheists. Secularism doesn’t necessarily promote atheism, nor does it logically lead to atheism. Secularism, simply put, is the notion that politics and religion should remain separate.

This certainly does not mean that the state should be atheist or promote it, but rather that it shouldn’t take a stance on religion at all. In schools, it doesn’t mean teaching atheism; it means accepting all students from every background and educating them all equally, without teaching them that one particular religion is truthful. All non-secular education systems are discriminatory and sectarian, and only a secular public school system can be fair to everybody. Nor does secularism strip parents of their right to educate their children in a religious setting: privately-funded schools could have whatever ethos they like, and voluntary religion classes could be taught in public schools after hours.

Some fear that a secular state, intentions aside, will ultimately lead to an irreligious society like France. The evidence doesn’t support this assumption, as the US – the original modern secular democracy – is the most religious country in the western world.

Conversely, Britain and Norway are both very irreligious places, but they are not secular countries; in both cases, the head of state is also the head of the official church, uniting the church and state in a single indivisible icon. The implication is that every citizen of those countries is also a professor of the state faith, a deeply disingenuous notion.

Secularism does not offer justification for murder or crime. Contrary to the claims of many religious fundamentalists, Hitler (who was a Catholic) was not a secularist; indeed, he attempted to establish Nazism as a state religion. Stalin was an atheist, but this is incidental; he didn’t do the things he did because he wasn’t religious, he did them because he was a paranoid totalitarian.

Secularism does not lead to the moral degeneration of society or to paedophile priests; indeed, it enhances societal ethics. More than twice I’ve heard grown adults link the rise of secularism to the Catholic abuse scandal, apparently seeming unable to connect the fact that the abuse in question took place largely before 1993, and before Ireland underwent the recent liberalisation.

A state which is bound to a religion looks only to the dogma of that religion for its ethics; a state which is required to look to no religion for its law is also required to actually think about the matters at hand, to use reason and logic to decide how to proceed – not the dictats of a book from the dark ages, or from a Church which rapes children, lies about it, protects those who committed the offenses, and then when exposed is more worried about its reputation than about its victims. A secular government is accountable for its actions; its decisions are its own, and it cannot blame mistakes on the adoption of “infallible” truths, or hide behind religion.

So what is secularism? It is the only way forward. If we want to live in a society which respects the rights of everyone, not just the majority, in a society which respects freedom of religion; a society where the state doesn’t discriminate against people based on religion; a society where religious tests aren’t required to be a judge or the president; a society where civilisation can flourish; then we need to live in a country which has legal separation of Church and state.

Ireland, whose constitution declares the Catholic God to have the right to be worshipped by the Irish people and whose laws of the land give public schools the right to discriminate against tiny, innocent children based on the religion of their parents, has a long way to go.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond educated, informed scientific doubt; it is a fact beyond doubt. With more evidence than there is for the Holocaust, evolution is at least as robust as the Atomic Theory or Germ Theory.

Evolution holds that all life evolved from simpler life, in a series of non-random steps which took place over millions of generations. Intelligent Design, also known as Creationism, is the claim that life is too complex to have arisen naturally, and therefore must have had an intelligent (and presumably more complex) designer, i.e. God.

Despite the evidence, many people don’t accept evolution to be true, and quite a number reject it outright. The reasons for this are twofold: one is a total lack of understanding of the concepts involved, and the other is the deliberate ignorance of science because it clashes with religion. Those who reject it outright are sure that it is false because their religion requires it to be so, and they see the teaching of evolution as an assault on their religion (it is noteworthy that educated religious leaders accept evolution, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope).

But why are Creationists dangerous? Surely scientists can just get on and do science, and ignore those who don’t understand it and choose to disregard it? Sadly not. Creationists are highly influential, conspicuously well-funded, and growing in number. These are people who are hostile to science by their nature; they believe that everything they need to know was given to them by God in their holy books. They have powerful elected officials (even Prime Ministers and Presidents such as Tony Blair and George Bush) fighting for their cause.

To make things worse, the leaders of the ID movement are also prolific liars – people who deliberately misrepresent evolution to make it seem less plausible than it is, and who have ultimately manufactured the myth that there is actually a serious debate raging. They are dangerous because they are trying and succeeding to legislate for religion against science, using tax money. In some US states, biology textbooks must have stickers saying that evolution is “only a theory”, or that it is an unproven hypothesis – both misrepresentations so severe that they are essentially lies. In Britain, the government gives support to religious schools which teach that science is wrong if it contradicts the bible.

Being fundamentally opposed to science, Creationism perpetuates itself by teaching people to fear and mistrust science, to avoid exposing themselves to the writings of scientists, and to value their own personal opinions and beliefs over conclusions arrived at by diligent research and supported by empirical evidence. Academic freedom and scientific integrity are at risk in the face of Creationism. Science holds authority because it is the proven way of discovering how the world works, but this authority is being undermined by people who claim they already know how the world works, whose way is sacred and God-given. Anything opposing their view is wrong and even dangerous to their faith.

This view is spreading, and Turkey is no longer the only democracy in the world to have a majority reject the grand unifying principle of biology. Some polls show that 47 per cent of Americans reject evolution. It is also no longer a mainly American phenomenon: in Britain, a majority now feel Creationism and evolution should be given equal time, and over a quarter believe Creationism to be the literal truth. Among the Muslim world, acceptance of evolution is very low.

In fact in most educated countries, Creationism is gaining ground. This is not because it has merit. It is simply two things: fear on the part of people in authority of offending religious sensibilities; and ignorance about science, because admittedly, science can be hard to grasp, or even to believe, because it is so magical.

Now more than ever, human civilisation is dependent on understanding science and technology. Issues like climate change and alternative energy, genetic manipulation and cloning, stem cell and other medical research, environmental destruction and species extinction are all complex matters, and we as a people cannot hope to make the right decisions if we do not possess an understanding of the science involved. Without such an understanding, there is no way to separate facts from hype, spin, and fiction.

What is to be done? Simple: every person should pick up a book and learn about evolution, and the scientific community must unite and confront this mortal enemy. Evolution is true, and it must be taught that it is true, why it is true, and why Creationism isn’t. The alternative is to watch as more and more people know less and less about science, until eventually, in the words of Carl Sagan, this combustible mixture of ignorance and power blows up in our faces. In this modern world science is power: power over nature, power over ourselves and our destinies, power over the fate of our entire species, and even over life and death. We must not allow it to be overcome by this threat.

I believe that Christmas is a shambolic celebration that should be scrapped – and here’s why.

Firstly, the very premise – the birth of Jesus – is flawed. As best as we can tell, Jesus (if he existed) was born in summer, not winter. The reason his birth was moved to December was to Christianise an ancient and very well established pagan celebration, the winter solstice.

What this means is that if you want to celebrate the birth of Christ, you’re doing it six months too late – or six months too early, depending on which way you look at it. If celebrating the birth of Christ has meaning, isn’t it meaningless to do it at the wrong time?

Of course most of us don’t celebrate Christmas to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Modern Christmas is about love, kindness, family, and getting (or rather, giving) presents. So why should that end, you rightly ask?

To me, the idea that there should be a certain time of year when you’re nicer and more loving than you normally are is anathema. If you are capable of being very kind at Christmas, you are capable of being so any time, and to cease being this kind just because a religious holiday – even when it’s held at the wrong time of year – ends shows a lack of thoughtfulness; a sheep-like reaction to an established norm. I don’t treat Christmas any differently from the summer – I am this dour all year round – and when I see people being extra nice in December, I can only wonder why they can’t do that all the time.

Secondly, Christmas isn’t all about love and happiness; it has been hijacked by profiteers, who encourage indiscriminate spending on useless and meaningless junk like Garden Santas and fake snow. In 2006, the National Consumer Agency reported that we would spend €1,300 per household on Christmas that year. If Christmas was really about love and caring, we would be giving this money to those who need it, like those in the third world, instead of to multi-nationals. That would be an expense with real meaning.

Thirdly, Christmas excludes very large sections of both the world and our own society. It has only been celebrated in the west for around 100 years, and is not celebrated elsewhere. Despite the fact that it is a de facto secular holiday, it nonetheless has religious roots, which means that people from other faiths cannot in good conscience celebrate it. It also excludes people who live alone and have no relatives nearby, being a very family-based holiday.

I’m not suggesting we should abandon winter celebrations; far from it. We should revive the celebration of winter solstice. After all, isn’t the beginning of the end of winter and the start of the new harvest something to celebrate? That it is a naturally occurring holiday means all could celebrate it equally. We should take time off and feast and have festivals, just not under the phoney guise of either a fake religious date we don’t celebrate or mindless spending which encourages us to value junk over substance.

Finally, we shouldn’t have a specific time of year when we are more empathetic to our fellow humans; we should always value time spent with our friends and family, we should always be as kind to strangers and acquaintances alike as we are during Christmas, and we should always keep in mind those people who are less fortunate.

David Osborn is the founder and auditor of the UCD Humanist Society.