nosreme

If no seperation (sic) of church and state in the US:
- scientific literacy would would become a thing of the past
- medical and scientific research would stagnate and regress. American medicine would become third rate. Diseases presently under control with immunizations would see exponential, society-threatening resurgences.
- society would become increasingly dumbed down as critical thinking is forced out of education
- non-religious parents would be driven to home-school their children in order to keep them away from religious-centric indoctrination in public schools
- there would be religious tests for public office and public and private employment and fierce inter-religious battles, some violent in the tradition of religions throughout the ages, for predominance
- laws would be enacted to fulfill religious agendas...same inter-religion battles as described above
- "free speech" would not extend to criticism of religions, religious practices, or the religious. Censorship would be rampant.
- non-religious people would be shunned, persecuted, and prosecuted
- the internet, which has undoubtedly caused the rapid awakening and long-overdue expansion and visibility of the non-religious, would come under state control
- the government would fund religions
- society would be irreparably fractured
- the US would become more of the laughingstock and butt of jokes of the civilized world more than is now the case
- etc, etc...benefits to US society of having a theistic state: None whatever

"Separation of church and state" is simply a plain-language description of the Constitution's Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. What "establishment" means, under our constitutional and legal system, is what the courts--particularly the Supreme Court--say it means. What they say it means is essentially "separation."