" The words "secular" and "secularism" appear nowhere in the United States Constitution." That was the thing I pointed out that set off one of the atheists I was brawling with the last few days. Secularism, the actual ideology that the atheists were claiming as the basis of our government could not have as the word apparently didn't exist until 1851. Secularism is an ideology that adopted a much older word that didn't mean what secularists mean when they use it.
Trying to get to a deep understanding of the ideas they hold should lead someone into realizing the superficiality of their thinking before they did that. It's been my experience that thinking hard about the downfall of egalitarian justice as the goal of not only the American left but America as a general project has been extremely humbling to me. If you don't think when I come to heretical statements about things I formerly supported such as the superficial notions of free-speech absolutism, a romanticized and lying version of leftist history, Darwinism, piously regarded secularism such as it exists in a majority of my fellow college-credentialed Americans that that was preceded by realizing how superficial my thinking had been and, in many instances feeling deep shame, well, I just told you differently. An old man learning new ways of thinking is neither gratifying nor easy, it's necessary to stop being dishonest and to try to find out a way to stop repeating the ever recurring, repeating history of the failed, secular, American left.
That said, once thought out, I don't feel any need to hold back in vehemently asserting what I've concluded. I certainly didn't hold back when asserting things I held on the basis of far less research and reflection, back when I thought Darwinism was as anodyne and while stupidly and irresponsibly upholding "freedom of the press" and the rights of "even Nazis" because "the First Amendment." Whining that I'm aggressive in refutation is no defense of your position. It wasn't pleasant to overturn my own follies when I subjected them to criticism and fact checking. If you don't do that you never get anywhere. You have to stop believing you have the undying, unquestionable truth. Ironic that a Christian would have to point that out to some "free thinkers."
The word "secularism" like so many other terms, slogans and buzz words that comprise the superficial construct that is that common received wisdom is, in fact, far more than the mere requirements of the commonly shared government being non-sectarian and not exclusive of participation by those of any religious character, it is an actual ideological program of excluding religious thought and behavior from not only political life but civic, public life as well. It is an actual ideological position and campaign that aims to deligitimize religion. In the English speaking Peoples the target of that in the post WWII period is Christianity in all its forms. That is partly due to the profession of Christianity by a large majority of people in the West, partly due to the taboo of targeting Judaism, a taboo which has certainly been diminishing as the post-WWII period has worn on and as attacks on the Jewish religion have become more fashionable among the college credentialed.
When I first came to the conclusion that secularism, with its elevation of the blasted trinity of scientism, atheism and materialism (especially the vulgar, most easily adopted forms of those) into fashionable and imaginary transgressions, was a serious danger to egalitarian, just government with their inevitable demotion of human beings into material objects and, in that credo of the now tarnished high priest of the SAM religion, Richard Dawkins, "We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes," I also realized that the word was hardly as neutral as it is generally presented as being. And that such a view of human beings could not but be fatal to egalitarian justice and even the idea that majority rule was better than strong-man dictatorship. Which explains the entire history of governments in the control of a faction of atheists from the Reign of Terror to today's North Korea.
I have looked a little into the real definition of "secularism" and think that Webster's Dictionary has the most accurate definition of it,
"indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations."
Far from being the mere efficient exclusion of religious considerations in official governmental affairs, which is a requirement of egalitarian justice in a pluralistic society, the practice and the attitude of secularism aims at the exclusion of religion from human life and affairs entirely. That is the actual goal of secularism which is actually an ideological project. The National Secular Society in the UK frames their ideological-political goals in dishonest terms, claiming that something they present as an actual entity "religion" is privileged and that something called "secularism" is the underdog that actually deserves to be privileged as some kind of default. Which has been explicitly claimed as being its privileged status under the US Constitution by some atheists I've brawled with. What they really mean is that atheism and atheists should hold the position of privilege they gin up resentment against religion for illegitimately holding.
The principles of secularism which protect and underpin many of the freedoms we enjoy are:
Separation of religious institutions from state institutions and a public sphere where religion may participate, but not dominate.
Freedom to practice one's faith or belief without harming others, or to change it or not have one, according to one's own conscience.
Equality so that our religious beliefs or lack of them doesn't put any of us at an advantage or a disadvantage.
I would point out that the first claim that secularism protects and underpins our freedoms is ahistorical garbage when you look at the history of official atheist governance which is most strongly associated with some of the most violent and oppressive, even murderous suppression of freedom in the modern period. As could be seen in yesterdays' exchange, atheists given the chance (yet again) could not come up with an articulation of rights that was not dependent on the whims and desires of "people and governments" not even to explain how atheists whose rights are denied by "people and governments" could be said to not be deluded when they claimed that such had deprived them of rights that the atheist framing of those said exists only when they are granted.
I would also point out that modern dictators of all sorts have actively sought to either subject religion to secular power or to destroy religion because they fear them as rivals in their struggle for absolute power. There is no countervailing force in the secular order that could mount a comparable campaign of resistance to such a despot. The Trump regime has shown how easy it is for corrupted religious figures to go along with a neo-Nero, Las Vegas-Hollywood strong man. Imagine if they didn't claim to believe in the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes.
The three points after that are such generally accepted principles that I would challenge these atheists to demonstrate that the large majority of people who hold those beliefs today and in the past were not professed believers in religion, most of those in the West Christians and Jews.
As the argument developed I'd certainly make recourse to passages in Scripture that support most if not all of them. Especially in the Gospels and in the Epistles. It has been when religion lost its focus on morality and concentrated on worldly power that it has acted oppressively, enforcing a rigid orthodoxy and violently suppressing dissent from that, something which is totally at odds with the very Gospel they claimed to promote. Atheism with worldly power has been even less restrained in oppression and murder than all but the most evil and power hungry of professed Christian governments.
In thinking hard about the problem of equality and justice as the foundation of government and society it comes down to the problem of how you get an effective majority of People to give up things they want, to stop doing things they want to do to benefit everyone on an equal basis when they don't really want to do that. In looking and thinking hard about history and the present I have come to the conclusion that there is no force that will effectively get people to do that except the belief that God wants that and that there are bad consequences that are guaranteed to come to us unless we do that. The Jewish scriptures, the Law, the Prophets, the entirety of what can be considered Salvation History is a story of what happens when people don't act unselfishly in individual cases and when entire cities, societies, nations and even the entire population of the Earth are selfish and indifferent and hateful. And the history of secularism, so-called "secular governments" proves that it's no less prone to the same things. The entire modern period has given support for the claim that officially non-sectarian governments are as susceptible to the evils of the worst of the Pharaohs and the kings of Judah and Israel and the results of that. Secularism to be better than that is as dependent on an effective majority of People and their leaders following the same rules that comprise the heart of The Law, the Prophets and the Gospel, whether or not those scriptures are referenced. And atheism has far less of a chance of doing that than those who are open to the idea that those are necessary because God says so.
When The Reverend Martin Luther King jr. expressed his prophetic hope that the arc of history bends toward justice he was expressing a belief that God has arranged Creation in that direction. His prophecy could have been seen as being as true of the material universe as the spiritual. It is one of the things that scientistic materialist atheists don't seem to be capable of understanding that someone who believes in the Jewish conception of Creation believes God created the physical universe in ongoing creation into its culmination, whatever that is. While I think the modern theological desire to stress the description of our ultimate fate as living beings in bodily terms in line with our present bodies is wrong, there is no separation of the material and what one of the atheists I'm arguing with derides as the "supernatural" as if that were a definitive discrediting of my points about their inability to support a durable idea of rights. It isn't. The Creation of God encompasses far more than we can conceive of, observe and experience, it doesn't consist of less than we can fathom. When you cut out anything but what materialists claim to be the totality of existence, Carl Sagan's corseted view of "the Cosmos" you can't even account for the full reality of human experience and knowledge. You can't find out why government and society should be governed on the basis of equality and justice. You can't even say why atheists should be able to run for and hold public office as you whine about impotent, ineffective laws that claim that in seven states in the United States. All you can do is come up with claims that support what you're whining about.
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