The Dangers of Secularism

I have been reading many comments on this forum about how bad religions are for society, and in response to that I
would like to propose the following historical argument.I’m not the greatest historian around, so I am open to
correction but here’s my view:Secularism is a recent phenomenon. It really got going in the early 20th century. It was an experiment in doing
without religions in which no one could believe anymore (God is dead, etc.)What happened to fill the vacuum of this lack of religious belief?Communism
Fascism.
2 world wars.
The HolocaustTherefore, I conclude that secularism has its own special dangers, perhaps even worse than problems caused by religious cultures.Comments?This message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-13-2005 06:25 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-13-2005 07:25 PM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

It doesn't matter if it is religion or ideology or whatever. Anytime you a hand full of extremists combined with a mass of followers, you run the risk of atrocious acts.Don't get me wrong. I have never said that religion is the source of all evil. What I have been saying is that too much of anything almost always result in unpleasantness, and religion tend to have the habit of spinning out of control. This is because out of all the philosophies and ideologies, religion is the one that encourages ignorance more than any other.Just how much enthusiasm a child has about things if goddunit or "it's a miracle" seems to be the only explanation for everything?

the crusades
911
the inquisitionturns out it really has nothing to do with religion or lack thereof. people are just generally nastyThis message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 05-15-2005 10:13 PM

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אָרַח

Atheism doesn't assign any kind of moral code to its followers, as most religions do. It's just a belief regarding the status of gods, it neither condones nor condemns murder, war etc. I doubt that any of the atrocities that Stalin committed can be tied directly to his lack of faith in any gods.

I relation to your point, allow me to look at some numbers. In 1986 42% of adults attended religios services in the avergae seven day period. This climbed steadily until 1991 when in peaked at 49% (research by the Barma group). During that same period murder rates rose from 20,610 in 1986 to 24,700 in 1991. Forcible rape went from 91,460 to 106,590 in the same period. Other types of crime showed similar increases (Source is the FBI uniform crime report).So, when we see an increase in religious activity, we also see an increase in crime. What does that tell us?Nothing. That those increases happened at the same time tell us nothing about religion or imply that it is a cause of increased crime. The same applies to the atrocities committed in what you claim to be a secular period of history. They tell us nothing aboiut secularism.Also, Nazi germany was not all that secular, nor were the agressors in WW 1.

I think the big problem with your assertion is that the two World Wars, Communisim and the Holocaust were not the result of secularism.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Surely communism, which is officially atheistic, is about as secular as one can get.

I think "secularism as an experiment" is far too active an image to describe the decline of religions. If a religion is not believed in anymore, then that's that. Secularism isn't actively put in place where a religion dissappears, people simply stop believing in the religion, period. Why should a lack of religious beliefs be a vacuum? Do people have to have something to believe in? (I mean 'believe' in the sense of thinking something is true without support.){edited to correct spelling}This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 15-May-2005 10:05 PM

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Actually, only as practiced in certain instances. There is nothing about communism that precludes religion. In fact, most early Christian communities operated on what could only be described as a communist philosophy.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What I think jar was getting at is that you are implying causality when the best you can reasonably assume is correlation. To take one of your examples, Naziism, although it had some christian rhetoric associated with it, wasn't a specifically religious movement. It was certainly evil, but why do you assume that godlessness is the root of that evil?
You can associate Secularlism with Naziism, but it isn't a motivating factor in the establishment of the party or its actions.Have you examined the other historical factors that created these conflicts/movements?

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'Most temperate in the pleasures of the body, his passion was for glory only, and in that he was insatiable.'

Eric Hoffer, IIRC in his book The True Believer points out the similiarities in Communism and religion. I think of Communism as a secular religion. Marx was a prophet of sorts and proclaimed the inevitability of an ideal state. Though it was in some ways a caricature of religion it seemed that it inspired a fervor of belief that was similar.I don't see this religion or secular thing as something we have a choice about. As humans developed science and technology beginning with language, fire, and later agriculture our lives changed as did our impact on the planet. It's just not religion it's our biological success and our technology that threatens us and many other species.We are changing and secularism is only one part of that change. I don't see that the Catholic church to take one example is adapting well to the human population problem. And because most Christians seem to look forward to the world coming to an end the problems of pollution don't seem to rate too highly with them. Maybe George Bush and his business buddies feel like since the world will be destroyed soon anyway why should we try to preserve it or take care of it? Might as well profit from it while we still can as presumably in the new earth God won't allow raping and polluting the earth for profit? If the end times are near better get what you can while it's still possible. In this case it seems to be secularism that leads to policies that better sustain our environment.Humans have problems with religion and with secularism as well as technology and many other things. I'm not sure how to sort this all out and could anything be done to change this anyway?lfen

The point of this thread was to suggest that all this talk about religion being the root of all evil is perhaps a little unbalanced.
Some have suggested that my topic was flawed in that I was attributing causes to secularism when actually the causes of these events such as wars were quite different. Might we also say the same about the causes of evil during periods dominated by religious belief?Now as regards to my idea that secularism was an "experiment." I think that is precisely true as regards Soviet communism. Here we have an idea that is purposely and systematically anti-religious.We see the result.You can blame the Soviet failure on a flawed economic theory, but might the same logic be applied to those periods that were dominated by religion and produced evil, as the Soviet Union produced evil?Now I'm all for secular humanism as practiced in Europe today but what we must realize is that secular humanism is a fragile concept, easily turned into something lethal.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-15-2005 03:41 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-15-2005 03:43 PM

Well I don't think religion is the root of all evil. Well yeah, but I see that applying equally to religion. Mark Twain does a very good job of this so I won't even try to satirize the sad efforts people have made to save one another's souls through wars, torture, burning at the stake, etc. Humans are prey to many deadly enthusiasms.lfen

I agree, Ifen, but the point is that secularism is just as prone to evil as a religious culture.