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Can secularism be oppressive to any religious believer?

I believe it's the experiential norm. People grow up seeing how things work. Secularism is a sort of default.

Secularism is a modern Western invention, it is certainly no default.

The default human experience is interpreting reality according to some kind of mythos. Secular western society is no different in this regard.

Humans have a need to make meaning of their existence and this is not an exercise in the objective and detached mediation of experience.

I
It's interpreting reality according to a particular mythology, trying to organize society around that mythology, even imposing laws based on the myth that's the ideology.

The primacy of the individual, human rights, lionisation of 'Science and Reason' are all grounded in a cultural mythos - this is how we define what is good/bad, desirable/undesirable, admirable/contemptible, etc.

We all have ideologies. The term is neither positive or negative, just a description of a fact of human cognition: we need ideologies to create ought from is.
 
I said "ideology or doctrine". And no, I'm not seeing that.

You replied to my description of it as an ideological preference though.

So you accept it is an ideological preference? i.e. something that one prefers based on their ideology.

Instead, it's more about how laws and regulations should be motivated (or not).
It is an acknowledgement of how citizens of a society can and do believe different things in terms of religions and how to make sure every one of them can freely hold to those beliefs without one group imposing their religion on others.

People, fundamentalist theists in particular, like to say / think that secularism is "anti religious".
I consider it to be the exact opposite. Secularism is PRO religion as it is the way we have come up with to make sure that everyone gets to follow the religion of their choosing, without having any authorities telling them which religion they can and can't follow.

If it helps

How laws should be motivated = ideological
How citizens should relate to each other = ideological
What counts as being pro/anti-religion = ideological

In that sense, "secularism" to me is pretty much the same as anti-racism.
It tries to make sure that people of all faiths are treated equally, just like anti-racism tries to make sure people of all skin colors are treated equally.

To me, as I understand it, a religious person who opposes secularism is like a racist who opposes humanism.

Most religions historically haven't even had a concept of the secular, it is a culturally contingent concept that is largely a product of Christianity and European history (although Humanists are loathe to acknowledge any influence of Christianity on their thought so find it hard to understand this). Previously I quoted Indian historian S. N. Balagangadhar who noted: “Christianity spreads in two ways, through conversion and through secularisation.”

When he criticises the Western assumption that their values, experiences and concept of religion are universal and normative, do you see this as "racist"?
 

Colt

Well-Known Member
Good thing too.

Abiogenesis is separate to evolution.

And why do you think Abiogenesis need be Godless? I don't see it as being different to evolution.

If you can believe God guided random gene mutation or that God controls other random events such as the roll of a dice I see no reason you can't believe Abiogenesis was controlled by God.

God beliefs simply can't be taught in science class because you have to sort out which version of God you are going to teach, and none of them are falsifiable, hence not science.

In my opinion.
Life inventing itself isn't a proven fact and shouldn't be taught as such in a so called science class.
 

Colt

Well-Known Member

Rawshak

Member
Life inventing itself isn't a proven fact and shouldn't be taught as such in a so called science class.

Its implied. Here is a critique of textbooks in general. The money quote "Despite the abundant use of leading questions and tentative terminology in their origins of life discussions, the majority of textbooks exude confidence that confirmation of a naturalistic model of life's origins is inevitable."

So your original statement should read,

Life inventing itself isn't as a proven fact and is not taught as such in a so called science class.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
You replied to my description of it as an ideological preference though.

So you accept it is an ideological preference? i.e. something that one prefers based on their ideology.

No. It's instead just a sound basis for building up a society where the people can practice various religions, or none, if they wish to do so.

Non-secular societies aren't so eager to accommodate rivaling religions, or religions at all.

If it helps

How laws should be motivated = ideological
How citizens should relate to each other = ideological
What counts as being pro/anti-religion = ideological

Communism is an ideology.
Democracy is an ideology.
Christianity is an ideology.

Secularism is none of those things.
It's more of a philosophy in a way. A basis for building up a society.

Secularism isn't a form of government. It's not an ideology.
It's just the idea of keeping religious beliefs in the private sphere and having the fundamental right to hold such beliefs (or not).

Most religions historically haven't even had a concept of the secular, it is a culturally contingent concept that is largely a product of Christianity and European history (although Humanists are loathe to acknowledge any influence of Christianity on their thought so find it hard to understand this). Previously I quoted Indian historian S. N. Balagangadhar who noted: “Christianity spreads in two ways, through conversion and through secularisation.”

When he criticises the Western assumption that their values, experiences and concept of religion are universal and normative, do you see this as "racist"?

This just confirms to me further that what you understand by "secularism" differs from what I understand from it.

Imo, secularism protects religious beliefs of the individual, while also protecting the individual from having other religious beliefs being imposed upon him/her. Whatever those religious beliefs may be - or the lack thereof.

Obviously most, if not all, religions didn't have a concept of the secular historically. Why would they? They tend to be rather mutually exclusive, after all, and "competition" of each other.
 
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TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Life inventing itself isn't a proven fact and shouldn't be taught as such in a so called science class.

Fortunately, science classes don't tend to teach bs like what you just claimed.

"life inventing itself"... lol. Your silly attempt at ridicule is noted.

When you talk about water freezing, do you then also say that "ice invented itself"?

What about when 2 hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom bond to form H2O. Do you then also say that "water invented itself"?

Or is it rather more a case of you being able to be reasonable and sensible when it doesn't touch subjects that are sensitive in your a priori religious beliefs? :rolleyes:
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Its implied.

Only in your ignorant mind, it seems.

Here is a critique of textbooks in general. The money quote "Despite the abundant use of leading questions and tentative terminology in their origins of life discussions, the majority of textbooks exude confidence that confirmation of a naturalistic model of life's origins is inevitable."

So?

How is that in any way similar to the bs you said?
 
No. It's instead just a sound basis for building up a society where the people can practice various religions, or none, if they wish to do so.

Non-secular societies aren't so eager to accommodate rivaling religions.

Fundamentalists and 'Rationalists' tend to be the only groups who have trouble recognising their ideological preferences as being culturally conditioned, subjective judgements rather than reflecting the divine order of the cosmos

Communism is an ideology.
Democracy is an ideology.
Christianity is an ideology.

Secularism is none of those things.
It's more of a philosophy in a way. A basis for building up a society.

Secularism isn't a form of government. It's not an ideology.
It's just the idea of keeping religious beliefs in the private sphere and having the fundamental right to hold such beliefs (or not).

3rd time lucky.... :D

I did not say it was an 'ideology', but an 'ideological preference' i.e. a thing one prefers due to their belief system rather than exists as an objective fact.

Secular Humanism is an ideology, secularism is one component of this ideology. To believe secularism is desirable is an ideological preference that results from this ideology. It is not an an objective fact.

This just confirms to me further that what you understand by "secularism" differs from what I understand from it.

Imo, secularism protects religious beliefs of the individual, while also protecting the individual from having other religious beliefs being imposed upon him/her. Whatever those religious beliefs may be - or the lack thereof.

My usage is the standard one, and the one I assume you are using: the idea that the religious and secular spheres can and should be distinct and that religion should play no role in governance.

I assume you agree?

Imo, secularism protects religious beliefs of the individual, while also protecting the individual from having other religious beliefs being imposed upon him/her. Whatever those religious beliefs may be - or the lack thereof.

That is largely irrelevant. I'm fully in favour of secularism, but the question is whether or not this reflects my ideological preference or not.

Obviously most, if not all, religions didn't have a concept of the secular historically. Why would they? They tend to be rather mutually exclusive, after all, and "competition" of each other.

They are only in 'competition' if both exist in the first place. They can only exist separately if you see religion as a matter of private belief a la Protestantism and Western Christianity.

Most 'religions' have not even been about belief, but cultural praxis.

This is what the historian was getting at. Modern secular humanistic types are really just the latest iteration of Christian preaching what they assume is a universalist message and assuming those that resist 'enlightenment' only do so out of ignorance and moral degeneracy.
 

ecco

Veteran Member
Thanks for explaining that. I was in that comment replying to another user who had just finished blaming the bible as the sole main cause of slavery in the US, and that is why I presumed your post to be in the same context when you pointed out "All theists cherry pick." Its easy in a meandering conversation to misunderstand.
No Prob. Been there, done that.
 

ecco

Veteran Member
How is atheistic carpentry ... different from theistic carpentry?
Probably not much difference.
1461628-vector-cartoon-guy-hitting-his-thumb-with-a-hammer.jpg
cartoon-guy-holding-his-throbbing-thumb-after-hitting-it-with-a-hammer-by-toonaday-2066.jpg


I don't see much difference. Maybe the theistic carpenter follows "GodDamnIt" with "Forgive me father, I have sinned". Whereas the atheistic carpenter follows "GodDamnIt" with "****".
 

F1fan

Veteran Member
Secularism is a modern Western invention, it is certainly no default.
It came out of the Enlightenment which was in part a response to rather brutal and immoral theocratic leaderships. Theocrats claimed an authority from gods to do anything they damn well please.

[quite]The default human experience is interpreting reality according to some kind of mythos. Secular western society is no different in this regard.[/quote]
If you mean modern people can believe obsolete ideas, like creationism, because it was the best human could do before the age of reason and science and this tradition is easier than being well informed, yes.

Humans have a need to make meaning of their existence and this is not an exercise in the objective and detached mediation of experience.
I social/tribal/community meaning is something many folks rely on to feel meaning. But I suggest there are better ways to feel purpose and meaning and that is setting goals capable of the self.



The primacy of the individual, human rights, lionisation of 'Science and Reason' are all grounded in a cultural mythos - this is how we define what is good/bad, desirable/undesirable, admirable/contemptible, etc.
The contempt for science and reason is something more prevalent the more religious a person is. In fact this was the subject of my study in the experimental psychology class. I asked a series of questions about science, which were mixed in with a bunch or other unrelated questions so the subjects wouldn't know exactly what I was asking, which was the subject's attitude towards science. I also had them fill out the standard religiosity assessment. The I compared the data points those with the highest degree of religiosity had the worst attitudes towards science. The end result was 99.99% accuracy. There was one outlier.

We all have ideologies. The term is neither positive or negative, just a description of a fact of human cognition: we need ideologies to create ought from is.
Right, ideology can be good or bad, rational or irrational, functional or dysfunctional, etc. We assess any given ideology for what it contributes to the whole of a community, state, nation, the planet, etc.
 
It came out of the Enlightenment which was in part a response to rather brutal and immoral theocratic leaderships. Theocrats claimed an authority from gods to do anything they damn well please.

Yes and no. The modern secular state came out of "The Enlightenment", but was the end of a much longer process. Basically nothing that happened during "The Enlightenment" was particularly new, just a further evolution of trends that had started in the Medieval period. The separation of church and state was a process that began nearly a millennium earlier.

Where were the 'theocracies' though? Who were the 'theocrats'? If you mean Divine Right, that is not theocracy, almost the opposite as it related to the King's 'Divine Right' to rule over the secular sphere in contrast to the Church's mandate to rule over the spiritual. It was a direct opposition to theocracy.

And while religion has been used to justify violence, in other situations, it also acted to limit it. The defining "Enlightenment" value was not humanism but "Progress" and this often took very violent and illiberal forms.

It's also not like the powerful needed an 'authority from god' to exploit the weak, they did that the world over no matter their belief system. Divine Right or Might Makes Right make little difference.

If you mean modern people can believe obsolete ideas, like creationism, because it was the best human could do before the age of reason and science and this tradition is easier than being well informed, yes.

No I mean that secular humanist types create their own mythos. They don't 'see the world as it is'.

One obvious example would be the stock myth of the "sceptical rationalist" idea that the Greeks were good secular rationalists but then came the "Christian Dark Ages" where the evil Church sought to keep people in darkness and destroyed classical scholarship as they hated knowledge and learning then there was a Renaissance where people rediscovered the forbidden Greek knowledge which paved the way for The Enlightenment which was the source of all good and freed science from the oppressive clutches of Religion and created modernity and as prosperity and education grows all the world will reject superstition and become secular rationalists and everything will be wonderful.

It doesn't have to be such an obviously false myth as that though. The philosopher John Gray:

Humanists today, who claim to take a wholly secular view of things, scoff at mysticism and religion. But the unique status of humans is hard to defend, and even to understand, when it is cut off from any idea of transcendence. In a strictly naturalistic view – one in which the world is taken on its own terms, without reference to a creator or any spiritual realm – there is no hierarchy of value with humans at the top. There are simply multifarious animals, each with their own needs. Human uniqueness is a myth inherited from religion, which humanists have recycled into science...

When contemporary humanists invoke the idea of progress they are mixing together two different myths: a Socratic myth of reason and a Christian myth of salvation. If the resulting body of ideas is incoherent, that is the source of its appeal. Humanists believe that humanity improves along with the growth of knowledge, but the belief that the increase of knowledge goes with advances in civilization is an act of faith. They see the realization of human potential as the goal of history, when rational inquiry shows history to have no goal. They exalt nature, while insisting that humankind – an accident of nature – can overcome the natural limits that shape the lives of other animals. Plainly absurd, this nonsense gives meaning to the lives of people who believe they have left all myths behind. To expect humanists to give up their myths would be unreasonable. Like cheap music, the myth of progress lifts the spirits as it numbs the brain. The fact that rational humanity shows no sign of ever arriving only makes humanists cling more fervently to the conviction that humankind will someday be redeemed from unreason. Like believers in flying saucers, they interpret the non-event as confirming their faith...

Science is a solvent of illusion, and among the illusions it dissolves are those of humanism. Human knowledge increases, while human irrationality stays the same. Scientific inquiry may be an embodiment of reason, but what such inquiry demonstrates is that humans are not rational animals...

Modern myths are myths of salvation stated in secular terms. What both kinds of myths have in common is that they answer to a need for meaning that cannot be denied. In order to survive, humans have invented science. Pursued consistently, scientific inquiry acts to undermine myth. But life without myth is impossible, so science has become a channel for myths – chief among them, a myth of salvation through science. When truth is at odds with meaning, it is meaning that wins. Why this should be so is a delicate question. Why is meaning so important? Why do humans need a reason to live? Is it because they could not endure life if they did not believe it contained hidden significance?
The silence of animals: On progress and other modern myths



There is nothing wrong with this, we all need a guiding mythos to give purpose to the world and the need for narrative is one of the defining human conditions.


I social/tribal/community meaning is something many folks rely on to feel meaning. But I suggest there are better ways to feel purpose and meaning and that is setting goals capable of the self.

Humans have a need to feel part of something larger than the self. Community meaning is essential.

Right, ideology can be good or bad, rational or irrational, functional or dysfunctional, etc. We assess any given ideology for what it contributes to the whole of a community, state, nation, the planet, etc.

I agree, it is about what it contributes to society. It has nothing to do with how 'Rational' a belief is or some objective truth value though.
 

ecco

Veteran Member
Life inventing itself isn't a proven fact and shouldn't be taught as such in a so called science class.
You are absolutely right!

That Creationist strawman definitely should not be taught in a science class, or anywhere else.

I wonder where things like this have their origins? Life inventing itself. How silly.





ETA: I just saw @TagliatelliMonster's post. Honest, I wasn't plagiarizing.
 
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Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Secularism is a modern Western invention, it is certainly no default.
The default human experience is interpreting reality according to some kind of mythos. Secular western society is no different in this regard.
Humans have a need to make meaning of their existence and this is not an exercise in the objective and detached mediation of experience.
I agree that, for most of human history, people organized their lives around myths and folklore. It reïnforced social values and gave people the purpose and significance they crave.
But with the advent of the 'secular' scientific method we had a new investigative modality, that dismissed unevidenced mythology. This has been extraordinarily fruitful, however, many feel the stark reality revealed renders them insignificant and without purpose.
The primacy of the individual, human rights, lionisation of 'Science and Reason' are all grounded in a cultural mythos - this is how we define what is good/bad, desirable/undesirable, admirable/contemptible, etc.
Again, good points, but knowledge and technology are utilitarian, they don't claim to give you meaning and purpose, nor is a divine necessary for eusocial values.
 
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Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Life inventing itself isn't a proven fact and shouldn't be taught as such in a so called science class.
"Life inventing itself?" I don't think that's quite accurate -- very poetic, though.

"Proven fact?" What science class would make this claim?
Life did occur. I think we can all agree on that. So, why would proposed mechanisms for this development not be appropriate for science class?
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Its implied. Here is a critique of textbooks in general. The money quote "Despite the abundant use of leading questions and tentative terminology in their origins of life discussions, the majority of textbooks exude confidence that confirmation of a naturalistic model of life's origins is inevitable."

Origin of Life & Evolution in Biology Textbooks: A Critique on JSTOR
What alternative to a naturalistic model would anyone reasonably propose? The only alternative to a natural mechanism must be magic.
 
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