The best way to protect the rights of citizens in any nation is for their respective governments and institutions to be solidly secular
And if a politician should begin to speak and act more in regard to their personal faith or only on behalf of members of their faith rather than all members of society then it is matter for voters, political peers, the judiciary, or (as in Turkey)even the military to have them removed from office immediately.
All this stuff is so sophomoric.
The reason it causes me to wince so is that it reminds me of things I once said and believed in. For example, it seems like many centuries ago, I used to be consider myself an atheist.
Like so many things, a lot of these ideas are just old clothes I outgrew. I put away that juvenalia, that academic disdain of religion, that feeble air of vanity that makes people pretend to find what they claim to be "errors in logic."
Who believes man is a logical creature or would say such vain things?
Angry young teenage fools.
I grew up. I became a man. I developed perspective. All these things fell away from me as the vain delusions of when I was a young boy.
Secular systems of thought revolve around the notions of man's better angels. The truth is that man has no better angels and any idiot who puts his trust in such things is bound to come to a bad end. It could be in a market in the village of Turin. Or you could kneel in the desert like Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Or you could waste away in some nihilist sump of purposelessness, dying the worst death of all which is ennui.
Secular people come to a bad end, no matter what happens. Even if God didn't exist, I suspect they would still come to a bad end. Ultimately, their lives always seem to be the cosmic joke pulled on them.
Nietszche is only one of thousands of examples I could come up with. The entire French Revolution.
It would appear the universe is hardwired to backfire on such people. It sometimes only becomes obvious when the whole spectrum of their lives is available for review.
Of course, most "Christians" come to a bad end as well. Sometimes a very bad end, like smoothie guzzlers Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard. One could say that the closet secularist comes to the worst end of all- which is exactly what Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard were, certainly. Closeted atheists.
Their lives and words are in vain.