Secularism on the Rise in the West

[Dr-Pepper]

My dad said something like that. He said if most of the public thinks the earth is flat even when we have evidence that the earth is round. Does that mean the earth is flat? It’s like the rise of secularism. Does it mean Atheism is true when everyone thinks that and even when we have evidence for Christianity? no.

 

[TK421]

Several decades ago Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a book, Foi Et Avenir (Faith and the Future) that walks us through what is happening right now, and he concludes that after the decline, that in a highly secular environment, people are going to be panting for deeper truth and the Church is going to provide that and a partial re-conversion will happen.

He’s not a mystic but he just reaches these conclusions with reason.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Now, in Abroz’s defence, US society runs on the idea that we are all allowed to worship according to the dictates of our conscience.

In practical terms, that mean we all live under a polite fiction that all belief systems are equally valid.
They’re not, but we “act as if”. It gets us through the day, and besides, you win more flies with honey than vinegar:

Where the conflict comes in is when we get to these places where we have to sort among many different POV to get to the truth for matters of public policy.

 

[Genesis315]

Who knows if things will get better this time. At some point however, things won’t get better. They’ll just keep getting worse until Christ returns.

From the CCC

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.574 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth575 will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.576
…
677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.579 The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.580 God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.581

 

[Mister_Friscus]

I’m quite interested to see where the current American leftism (not classic liberalism) is going to go, and how far they’ll go.

It’s no secret that they view Christian beliefs of transgender, homosexuality, abortion, marriage, etc. as “problematic”, “bigoted”, “hateful”, etc.

However, they can’t try to crush the Christians widespread who believe it because they don’t have the power… yet.

There’s already a gigantic sample of censorship and cancelling of people with the wrong opinion. I just wonder how long it will take before leftists go after Christianity, because they definitely want to.

 

[TK421]

@Genesis315

That’s not necessarily preceded by a period of decline through.

 

[arvo]

I don’t want to be rude - but just imagine - what amoeba thought about the future of world some 500.000.000 year ago when amoeba was the crown of the Nature at that time. She thought that world is crazy when the first multi-cellular organisms emerged.

It is similar today. There is transhumanist movement https://transhumanist-party.org/, bio-hacking communities, eternal life medical research Turning back time with emerging rejuvenation strategies | Nature Cell Biology " Turning back time with emerging rejuvenation strategies", movement for morphological freedom Morphological freedom - Wikipedia including technological augmentation.

Yeeh, business and human beings are super-competitive today. And the right-wing people are becoming super-intolerant towards social support. So - the competitiveness+lack-of-social-support means that human being is determined to fight for life and death to survive in super-competitive economy. And any biological self-modification or technological augmentation can be of help.

So - you should accept that some people will remodel themselves to be happy. And many others remodel and augments themselves to survive (heh, remove further any social support, go further into right).

So, transgender, homosexuality is just beginning. There are lot of other stuff in coming - morphological transformation, tran-species development, technological augmentation, emergence of new trans-human species.

I wonder - how monkeys reacted when they saw that some of their brothers and sisters were becoming human beings. Now we can see it today - how we react when some of the human being are transcending the bounds of human specie? Lot of ideological uneasiness is happening here.

But that is the evolution, that is the path of nature. Who we are to stop it?

 

[arvo]

p.s. and I believe that I can be Catholic and Transhuman. I pray and I hope that the Church will be able to adapt to the evolution of human specie. As she can adapt to the Science which provide more facts about human psychology, sexuality, biology, cognitive makeup.

Maybe Vatican III will clarify it (I hope that there will be Hellas Planitia Council instead of Vatican III; Hellas Planitia is on Mars)

 

[Dr-Pepper]

I mean if the Catholic Church has survived over 1500 years, has been through so much persecution, and trouble since we found out the earth is round and that the earth wasn’t made in 6 days. I think they will survive that.

 

[Dan_Defender]

In practical terms, that mean we all live under a polite fiction that all belief systems are equally valid.

Yes and add to that the idea that God will save everyone, even the faithless.

 

[Pattylt]

There’s already a gigantic sample of censorship and cancelling of people with the wrong opinion. I just wonder how long it will take before leftists go after Christianity, because they definitely want to.

This comment brought a question into my mind. The term cancel culture is a relatively new one but the actions of condemning or canceling another’s point of view isn’t. As a long time agnostic, I lived in hiding for years because of social shaming of atheists/agnostics as did the LGBT community.

I do know several atheists that would love nothing more than to see the total demise of Christianity however I know of no one that wants to legislate it away or to even target it for persecution. I’m not saying there isn’t one out there…just not to my knowledge. Most secularists just don’t want the encroachment of Christianity into our lives as it often was in the past.

So, I’m not sure the majority of atheist/agnostics want to “crush” Christianity. They just don’t want it to be the yardstick of determining who’s worthy to run for office, determine law and dictate societal rules. We really don’t hate religion in general and most of us came from a religion to begin with along with loved ones that are still religious.

 

[arvo]

0Scarlett_nidiyilii:

In practical terms, that mean we all live under a polite fiction that all belief systems are equally valid.

Yes and add to that the idea that God will save everyone, even the faithless.

But the Catholic teaching supports such tolerance - it is via notion of Conscience. Noone is condemned to the Hell if she/he acts in good Conscience. There are many non-Catholic evil people who acknowledge his/her evil nature. But there are also many non-Catholic people who have notion of being good and who strive to be good and whose mental structure, knowledge, life experience has not revealed that they should be Catholics. Therefore - they act in God conscience and they are good people, they have good deeds.

Well - this is more the question about evangelisation - under what conditions we can say that the other people should accept Catholic teaching? Can we hope that such fundamental notions about God, morality and other thing - that such fundamental notions we can teach to other people lightly? What could we thing about other man if he/she accepts Catholic teach by reading one brochure or by hearing one sermon?

People beliefs and wisdom can not be changed with such ease and we should accept that. If other people are acting in Good Conscience and if they are not willing to change their belief (which are according to their Conscience and everyday Wisdom) how can we condemn them?

That is why evangelisation, very rational and very thoughtful evangelisation is necessary with the invitation to the discernment and argumentation and thinking.

Aquinas has more about that:

Conscience – Thomistic Philosophy Page

 

[Dan_Defender]

But the Catholic teaching supports such tolerance - it is via notion of Conscience. Noone is condemned to the Hell if she/he acts in good Conscience. There are many non-Catholic evil people who acknowledge his/her evil nature. But there are also many non-Catholic people who have notion of being good and who strive to be good and whose mental structure, knowledge, life experience has not revealed that they should be Catholics. Therefore - they act in God conscience and they are good people, they have good deeds.

I am aware of that, but that doesn’t cover everyone, certainly not the faithless. And IMO that those who act in good conscience and are inherently good were never drawn to the truth is more like a myth. I prefer to believe that those under invincible ignorance (which IMO are a few) have baptism of desire.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

We don’t condemn anybody. That’s way above any of our pay grade.

Conscience/invincible ignorance could be a whole another thread.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

We really don’t hate religion in general and most of us came from a religion to begin with along with loved ones that are still religious.

I definitely see a pretty big gulf between the atheists/ agnostics who are polite and respectful of those with religious belief, such as yourself and some other folks I know, and the atheists/ agnostics who think it is fine to spew vitriol against one or more religions. Usually in USA the religion that gets spewed upon the most by the spewers is Christianity, because it’s politically incorrect/ bigoted to criticize Jewish people, and educated atheists/ agnostics also see it as politically incorrect/ bigoted to criticize Muslims and Hindus here. Buddhism is generally seen as an ethical system rather than a “religion”. So that leaves Christianity, which is to these ath/ ags the root of all evil and responsible for bigotry towards all the other religions as well as towards unbelievers.

While I can certainly see how some of my fellow “Christians” bring criticism upon themselves by often not acting very “Christian” IMHO, the levels of hatred and nastiness some ath/ ag people reach, usually in response to some bad situation or negative family interaction in their own past, can be a bit scary even to me. A couple of my “friends” are known for such anti-religious rants. I stay connected because I know they are good people underneath, but it’s like they don’t realize that their unfiltered speech is hurtful/ scary, or worse yet don’t care. I’ll admit I have gone back and forth over whether to cut a couple of them off. I usually end up just putting them on mute till they go back to posting about dogs or cooking. The stuff they say is also just plain ridiculous (e.g. claiming that all religious people die terrible deaths while all unbelievers die happy deaths, that sort of thing).

 

[Freddy]

Pattylt:

We really don’t hate religion in general and most of us came from a religion to begin with along with loved ones that are still religious.

I definitely see a pretty big gulf between the atheists/ agnostics who are polite and respectful of those with religious belief, such as yourself and some other folks I know, and the atheists/ agnostics who think it is fine to spew vitriol against one or more religions.

You must realise that American theism is such a mixed bag that it’s almost impossible to designate one specific aspect of Christianity as being better or worse than any other.

Even a single denomination as Catholicism has quite a variety of people within that denomonation that have extremely different views.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I don’t disagree, but I thought the discussion was about why some Christians feel threatened by ath/ ag and secularism. I suppose there are ath/ ag who feel threatened by Christians also but if such a person is in some social setting where he knows or has reason to believe he has several Christian friends, one would think he would at least have some respect for his friends as being well-meaning and benign people. I don’t go on rants about how ath/ ag are ruining the world, it’s not a big reach to expect others to show me the same courtesy, and many folks seem to be able to manage that.

 

[commenter]

commenter:

ReaderT:

“Acquire the Spirit of Peace, and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” (St. Seraphim of Sarov)

True, but holiness includes not only the Spirit of Peace but also the Spirit of Reason and the Spirit of Action.

You’re not gainsaying Saint Seraphim of Sarov, are you?

No, not at all. His spirituality points all of us towards God.

 

[StudentMI]

I don’t see it getting better in the West any time soon. I think the East and Africa will be the shining lights of the Christian world for a long time.

 

[Pattylt]

Do you think this is much more common on comments but not in face to face conversations?

I have read some absolute vitriol by atheist agnostics myself and yet I don’t know any in real life that would ever talk this way to anyone! I’ve just assumed it is being written with filters removed but in real life, we all keep our filters active. And the extremism! Once again, if you actually question some outrageous remark, they’ll back down and tone it down. Even though it is only taking place in text, I still worry about all the texts with no filters in place. It sure makes it look like we’d be more aggressive and violent than I think we actually are. But, it is a bad look and others should challenge it more than they do.

And it does happen both ways. Many Christian forums are very harsh when discussing atheism, too. Yet, I doubt they’d speak that way to ones face. It’s why social media can be so destructive. Too many let all their guards and filters down and just vent and it’s ugly, mean, vindictive and terribly wrong.