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The great Renaissance-era jurist Hugo Grotius looked out on a Europe in ruins from the conflagration that we nowadays call the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). It was a war that killed over eight million people through violence, disease, and famine. To put a stop to the killing, Grotius put his mind to the task of establishing something that had been imagined but never accomplished: international law.

How do you go about creating the conditions for peace treaties when the belligerents by definition don’t agree on the “will of God”? How could Protestant and Catholic nations create treaties? What about treaties with Muslims in the Ottoman Empire?

Grotius hit upon a concept: Etsi Deus non daretur — “as if God does not exist.” What about treaties, Grotius asked, and laws framed, developed, and agreed upon . . . as if God does not exist? Completely secular laws . . .

Grotius’s ideas helped create the Treaty of Westphalia, the first international treaty that actually worked.

In addition, Grotius’s idea is the precursor of the concept of secular government — that “wall of separation” between religion and government.

Ideally, this idea works both internationally and nationally. For example, how does a nation create laws concerning adultery? Do we use the Bible? Sharia law? The Upanishads?

Nope: Etsi Deus non daretur — frame national laws as if God does not exist.

(BTW, Grotius was himself a devoted theist.)

Adultery. Murder. Theft. Abortion. Things that hadn’t even been imagined yet, such as bio-ethics: frame ’em all up Etsi Deus non daretur — “as if God does not exist.”

With that frame, the point is to drop tradition and social conservatism; it’s all about thinking it through. That reason thing.

Etsi Deus non daretur. It’s a smooth move that respects all religions even as it puts them aside: “Hey, Christian, glad you think that. Cool, Muslim, that you see it that way. Hey, Hindu, what a view. But here’s how we’re going to play it: Etsi Deus non daretur — ‘as if God does not exist.’”

Grotius helped create secular thinking as the religion-neutral way of governing a pluralistic society.

Separation of church, temple, mosque, atheism, and everything else from the state and its governed population. As to religious views, thanks but no thanks: government will be secular and based in reason.

Try it! Insist upon it. When those sticky wickets of law come up, feeling intractable due to religion, just say “Etsi Deus non daretur, baby.”