A Correlation between Secularism and Tyrany

[levinas12]

Sair,

A lot of Catholics are afraid of the government today. And, by governments, I’m not just talking about regimes in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. But also “democratic” governments - in Europe and the US.

For example, In the US, Catholic institutions and agencies are being threatened with heavy penalties if they refuse to cover artificial contraception, sterilizations and abortifacients in their health insurance policies. Catholic adoption agencies have already closed because the government was requiring them to serve same-sex couples as well as heterosexual couples. This situation will become increasingly exacerbated if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land.

Additionally, in the US, as government spending and debt spirals out of control, and the burden of taxes becomes oppressive, Catholic parents fear they will no longer be able to send their children to Catholic schools. And Catholic colleges, charities and other institutions fear that they will disappear as financing dries up.

So you have to appreciate the growing level of apprehension among Catholics.

I believe in dialogue. But, speaking simply sociologically, it’s a ticklish business right now.

There is a perception that religious persecution is coming (in spite of constitutional protections). Whether this perception is justified or not remains to be seen. But the situation is a tinder box.

 

[tonyrey]

All Catholics have a moral obligation to respect the beliefs of others because the Church teaches that our ultimate authority is our conscience.

An unsubstantiated blanket assertion.

In practice secularism does not tolerate the expression of religious beliefs which conflict with the beliefs of the majority and it often discriminates against minorities.

Human societies in general discriminate against minorities. Christianity did nothing to help this.

An obviously false assertion because Christians believe we are all children of the same Father.

Secularism is at least a step in the right direction - we don’t tend to burn people for heresy anymore, at least in the West.

Sweeping assertions which are yet further evidence of the **intolerant **mentality of at least one secularist.

That statement is further evidence that secularists believe their rejection of religion is superior to belief “in a supposedly perfect god”.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the belief that we might be wrong actually is superior, from a moral and social perspective, than dogged insistence that we are right, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The belief of secularists that they might be wrong is not always reflected in practice.

Indeed that belief has often motivated violence on the part of those who sought a better, safer way to live without the curse of “superstition”.

Such as? Can you name a nonreligious society that has persecuted people for belief in unprovable entities, as opposed to any unlawful actions committed in the name of said entities?

Every secular state that has practised brainwashing, closed churches and forbidden religious worship.

There is overwhelming evidence that any organised ideology - such as secularism - has done, is doing and will continue to do so.

If you consider the questioning of religious faith as abuse, then you are right.

There is overwhelming evidence that any organised ideology -** including **secularism - has done, is doing and will continue to do so.

Longevity is not an adequate reason for the attribution of moral superiority.

I think you’ll find that I agree here - of all the sociopolitical and/or religious notions mentioned in my post, secularism would be the youngest.

And I was not citing longevity as a measure of respect - only pointing out that the large amount of time between the establishment of Christianity and the wide recognition of Enlightentment values tends to speak against a strong connection between the two.

The principles of liberty, equality and** fraternity** were recognised for well over a thousand years before the so-called Enlightenment because they stem from the teaching of Christ that we are all children of the same Father. It is absurd to believe they are based on the belief that we are related solely as the result of an accident of birth.

 

[tonyrey]

That statement is further evidence for the intolerant mentality of secularists who have faith in subnatural entities.

Anyone who believes rational beings exist as the result of fortuitous, purposeless events has faith in subnatural entities. Nature devoid of life - and purpose - is clearly subnatural. The term also conveys the inadequacy of any explanation which purports to explain the highest aspects of existence in terms of the lowest…

Further evidence for the intolerant mentality of those secularists who believe secular regimes are beacons of moral integrity.

Actually, secularists are more likely to recognise and attempt to tackle the problems inherent in trying to build and maintain functional, cooperative societies - rather than consign the fate of all humanity to the poorly-articulated and undemonstrable whims of an unprovable deity. Only those who think they already know all there is to be known, or all that’s worth knowing, tend to rest on their haunches.

Such irrational invective merely reveals the dogmatic and aggressive intolerance of certain secularists.

The truth is not discerned from human defects. What people profess does not always correspond to their behaviour.

And there, right on cue, is the next unfalsifiable claim that attempts to absolve irrational beliefs of any responsibility for, or connection to, the actions they permit.

Further irrational invective and further evidence for the aggressive, intolerant mentality of secularists who make such assertions and evade the indisputable fact that the truth is not discerned from human defects and what people profess does not always correspond to their behaviour.

The fallacy of Post hoc ergo propter hoc - which also overlooks the fact that traditional religious beliefs have not been supplanted but have outlasted secular ideologies…

It seems a little unbalanced to claim that ancient beliefs and their corresponding sociopolitical regimes have “outlasted” modern ones. Most religious beliefs, in the here and now, have clung to a small measure of influence through some serious adaptation and reverse engineering. This doesn’t make them much - if any - more respectable than “new age” beliefs in things like astrology, palmistry and psychic mediums, all of which predate the major monotheisms.

The fact remains that the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity were recognised for well over a thousand years before the so-called Enlightenment because they stem from the teaching of Christ that we are all children of the same Father - and it is absurd to believe they are based on the belief that we are related solely as the result of an accident of birth.

To quote Hitchens again, and to the point of the thread:

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse. And if we chance to forget what that must have been like, we have only to look to those states and societies where the clergy still has the power to dictate its own terms. The pathetic vestiges of this can still be seen, in modern societies, in the efforts made by religion to secure control over education, or to exempt itself from tax, or to pass laws forbidding people to insult its omnipotent and omniscient deity, or even his prophet.

Precisely the same remarks can be applied to those, particularly apostates like the Roman emperor Julian, who have amply demonstrated their virulent hatred of Christianity and other religions, have persecuted believers and would willingly do so again if they were given the opportunity. Their belief that they are the authors of morality enables them to be entitled to use any means whatsoever to achieve their goals. Hitchens and his admirers have amply demonstrated to what extent they really believe in the principle of fraternity…

 

[aragonjohn1]

Sair, your version of history and mine are so far apart that it is difficult to have any meaningful dialogue.

Regarding Hitler and the Church:

leics.gov.uk/the_nazi_master_plan.pdf (from the Nuremburg trials).

ptwf.org/Projects/Education/Pope%20Pius%20XII.htm (from the Jewish researcher Gary Krupp).

Crusades - self defence after 2/3rds of Christendom was conquered and missionaries failed in the south (they succeeded in the Viking north).

Spanish Inquisition - the black legend. Initial requests by the secular rulers of Spain were turned down by the papacy. After threats from Spain the Vatican agreed to an inquisition with the proviso it was just for Christians and there was to be no torture. After the Spanish crown instigated torture, letters of protest were sent from the Pope. All in all from Spain to the New World an average of 1 execution per month was carried out. 99% of the accused went free and many of the rules of the inquisition were in favour of the defendant compared to civil cases.

When you talk about Christian inspired ‘this’ and Christian inspired ‘that’ we cannot properly come to an understanding. I believe this is so because of the purposeful misinformation in our universities of last century. Such thinking though I believe is on the way out in an age of more information where secular predjuces of the past are being challenged and cannot stand up to scrutiny.

Shalom : )

Thanks for conncuring

God bless

 

[PRmerger]

No. Christianity certainly has been used to justify burning and enslaving people.

Source, please?

The Bible itself specifically endorses slavery – a point that was used by many a Christian slave-owner in the South to justify the institution.

Which is why the Bible, quoted outside the lens of the Church, ought not be quoted.

That there were Christians who were opposed to slavery or burning people to death doesn’t indicate that “Christian values” are necessarily opposed to those things because we have examples of sincere Christians who thought that “Christian values” were perfectly in line with burning and enslaving people.

Sources, please.

I will evaluate all of the evidence that you provide, Non Serviam, and will use the same criteria that is demanded by atheists for your evidence.

 

[NonServiam]

Source, please?

History. Cf. witch burnings, the burning of Joan of Arc, and the history of slavery in the American South, among other places.

I will evaluate all of the evidence that you provide

Do whatever you want. You seem to be laboring under the delusion that I care one way or the other what you do.

 

[PRmerger]

History. Cf. witch burnings, the burning of Joan of Arc, and the history of slavery in the American South, among other places.

Right. Sources, please, that these people were motivated by a Christian principle.

I would like first-hand accounts, please. Eye witnesses.

With quotes from Magisterial documents.

 

[PRmerger]

Do whatever you want. You seem to be laboring under the delusion that I care one way or the other what you do.

Well, Non Serviam, that is the presumption that accompanies a dialogue, does it not?

If you post here in response to my post then that presupposes that you actually do care.

If you don’t, then don’t post.

That seems to be a reasonable way to perform in this type of context, do you not think?

 

[tonyrey]

History. Cf. witch burnings, the burning of Joan of Arc, and the history of slavery in the American South, among other places.

Do whatever you want. You seem to be laboring under the delusion that I care one way or the other what you do.

A superb example of the way in which many secularists observe the spirit of fraternity - an attitude carried to its logical extreme in the decimation of the serfs in the USSR by Stalin under the aegis of Marxism - dialectical materialism - and the infliction of such atrocities as the **massacre **in Tiananmen Square under the auspices of Maoism - another version of dialectical materialism.

Those who reject God believe **they alone **are the authors of morality, a diabolical assumption which enables them to employ any means whatsoever to achieve their goals in a supposedly **amoral **universe. In their scheme of things human beings are no more than naked apes that can be eliminated when they prove to be troublesome. Their motto of Non Serviam sums up their creed perfectly and is supplemented with “Ego Ipse Me Serviam”…

 

[tonyrey]

There is a distinct correlation because between secularism and any form of evil because most secularists believe evil is objective. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily evil. In fact many are better than believers but if you think evil is only a human convention it is obviously harder to keep on the straight and narrow!

 

[levinas12]

c

A question for all here - is it conceivable that any religion, given authority, would allow secularism?

I have occasionally wondered about this. It seems to me that secularism is at least a tacit acknowledgement that we really cannot know which religious claims, if any, are true - therefore no religion ought to be allowed to dictate - certainly not through force or coercion - the beliefs and practices of the members of any society.

The United States was founded on this principle, largely because its founders were themselves fleeing from religious persecution. Secularism seems much less to have been inspired by any willingness on the part of organised religions to step back and leave people to their own devices, recognising that we all are, after all, the flawed offspring of a supposedly perfect god; than on the experience of religiously-motivated violence on the part of those who sought a better, safer way to live, unmolested by those who assumed their beliefs were superior to all others.

The history of established religion seems to speak to the strong likelihood that any organised faith, given the opportunity, would seek to bring all people within its reach to conformity with its doctrines - if not through intellectual persuasion (and let’s face it - the advancement of science has made that extremely unlikely), then through coercion and violence.

Secularism has been a long time coming, relative to human history - even relative to the establishment of the three great monotheisms. It’s hard to credit the notion that it was really the work of Christian “brotherhood” to establish a society in which all religions - and indeed, lack of religious faith - are afforded equal acceptance.

Is secularization good for a society?

Emile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, had his doubts. Even though he was an atheist, and a democrat (small “d”), Durkheim argued that religion provides essential cohesiveness to a society. That’s why the Enlightenment was tricky because, though it was a good solvent, it lacked the glue necessary to hold a society together.

Specifically, as Tonnies, a German sociologist, pointed out, the Enlightenment destroyed gemeinschaft, the unconditional permanent binding of human beings (tribe, family, “my country 'tis of thee”, religion, etc) - the only linkage which can withstand the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. In place of gemeinschaft, the Enlightenment substituted gesellschaft, the limited liability corporation with its temporary, contractual, conditional, egocentric, purely rational calculus of cost and benefits.

Gesellschaft may be our undoing.

 

[Sair]

c

Is secularization good for a society?

Emile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, had his doubts. Even though he was an atheist, and a democrat (small “d”), Durkheim argued that religion provides essential cohesiveness to a society. That’s why the Enlightenment was tricky because, though it was a good solvent, it lacked the glue necessary to hold a society together.

Specifically, as Tonnies, a German sociologist, pointed out, the Enlightenment destroyed gemeinschaft, the unconditional permanent binding of human beings (tribe, family, “my country 'tis of thee”, religion, etc) - the only linkage which can withstand the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. In place of gemeinschaft, the Enlightenment substituted gesellschaft, the limited liability corporation with its temporary, contractual, conditional, egocentric, purely rational calculus of cost and benefits.

Gesellschaft may be our undoing.

The question seems to be less about whether religion or secularism is better for a society as such, but about recognising that there are certain things that are demonstrably good for people, and discerning what kind of society will best provide these things for the greatest possible number of people - a religious establishment or an a-religious establishment.

I don’t think it’s necessarily correct to say that the Enlightenment - as an intellectual movement - was responsible for the destruction of the kinds of social and familial ties that had obtained prior to this time. There were other forces at work during the same period of history - not least those of industrialisation, migration and concentration of populations into and around cities, the rise of modern capitalism - which fuelled the breakdown of socially cohesive structures like extended families and the kinds of community interrelationships that subsisted in villages and small towns.

What secularism offers that is not offered by religious establishments is pretty much what it says on the box - freedom of religion for believers of various faiths and freedom from religion for those of us who neither want nor feel any need for religious faith. All this set against a background of civil obligations that essentially set down the minimum behavioural requirements for membership of a society, such that anyone who repudiates these obligations - breaks the law, that is - is subject to punishment or sanction of some sort. Religious communities may provide additional expectations and their own set of sanctions on top of these, but in a truly secular society, breaking the law for religious reasons is not tolerated. It’s questionable whether there has ever been a genuinely secular society, just as there has never been a real socialist society. Australia certainly isn’t completely secular, and although the US has separation of church and state enshrined in its constitution, it is a de facto Christian nation in many ways.

People are inclined to worry that moral and social values have deteriorated and that the times in which we are living are worse than the past. People have had this inclination for almost all of recorded history (so probably before that too). One of the things people seem to fear more than anything else is that if there’s no authority behind a system of ethics, people have no reason to behave well - in short, that we are not naturally moral animals and will always, given the chance, take the shortest possible route to individual gratification. Religion claims authority, but as even a cursory glance at history will show, this authority can be appropriated to support just about anything, and benefits from some show of force. Secular authority dips into ethical philosophy and social theory, but like religious authority, it relies upon force and coercion, when we get down to brass tacks. Where this becomes problematic is in the underlying assumption that people cannot be trusted to act cooperatively, to look out for each other, and generally act morally without basically being threatened to do so - because obviously we have no concept of mutual benefit! This is perhaps where the idea of gesellschaft has some merit, since at least contractual relationships recognise the key feature of human morality - that it is reciprocal.

 

[levinas12]

I don’t think it’s necessarily correct to say that the Enlightenment - as an intellectual movement - was responsible for the destruction of the kinds of social and familial ties that had obtained prior to this time. There were other forces at work …

A lot of heavy hitters believe there is a strong connection between the Enlightenment, industrialization, social alienation, etc.

Horkheimer and Adorno, the Frankfurt School marxists, did the classic text on this (Dialectic of Enlightenment). What they argued is that the Enlightenment made instrumental reason dominant.

This is consistent with Talcott Parsons. He lamented that modern societies are characterized by the randomness of ultimate ends. There is no one overarching mythos. Each person pursues his/her own bliss. Society’s purpose is to provide only the means.

With the dominance of instrumental reason, comes the threat of totalitarian governments (which is why Horkheimer and Adorno, both Jewish, wrote their book while WWII was still raging).

I know this sounds like Sparks notes on social apocalypticism in the 20th century.

But maybe Yeats was right - the center cannot hold - and the rough beast is slouching towards us.

 

[levinas12]

This is consistent with Talcott Parsons. He lamented that modern societies are characterized by the randomness of ultimate ends.

OK, Parson did not lament. Let’s just say he pointed out.

 

[tonyrey]

A few recent examples of what happens when secularists obtain power:

In 1995, the Russian state commissioner confirmed that 200,000 Russian Orthodox Priests, monks, and nuns were killed…

In Romania, more than 5,000 Orthodox priests were imprisoned, and 400 priests from Romania’s Eastern- rite were killed after their community was outlawed…

The culmination of the antireligious campaign occurred when Enver Hoxha declared the state atheist in 1967. He declared that

Albania is the world's first atheistic state, whose only religion is Albanianism....

Article 37 was added to the Albanian constitution in 1967, which read:

"The state recognizes no religion and supports and carries out **atheistic propaganda in order to implant** **a scientific materialistic world outlook in people.**"

Albania had a fundamentally violent and sustained antireligious campaign…

Young people were encouraged to attack mosques, churches and tekkes and to turn in remaining clergy to the authorities. Clergy who were still alive by 1967 and had survived twenty years of persecution, were killed or sent to hard labour camps.

wikipedia