In Reply to: Is Faith Good for Us? posted by moonshiner on July 27, 2006 at 19:08:15:
Moonshiner:
As I read the blurb you cut and pasted from “secularhumanism.org”, I became curious as to the nature of the webpage itself, so I read some of the page and its sub-pages.
It was quite predictable, as well as historically inaccurate (or at best omissive), and I learned nothing new about “secular humanism”.
It ignored the historicity of pre-Sophist Greek philosophy, definitely religious, plus other historical errors and omissions, and it never approached the historic fact of the great philosophical divide between science and religion CREATED by ONE religion, not all, caused by the so-called “Golden Age” Muslims, who created a false partition between originally Muslim-ONLY “revelational-knowledge-from-god-is always-valid-even-if-morally-and-logically-unreasonable-and-contradictory-of-all-OT-prophets-claimed-in-Muhammed’s-lineage” versus “always-assumed-to-be-valid-but-still-“Muslim-ONLY-rationalism”-as-the–limits-of-scientific-inquiry”.
In other words, the Koran could say completely CRAZY stuff (and it does, consistently), but it was “OK”, BECAUSE it was “Muslim-revelational-knowledge”, and the MUSLIM version of so-called “scientific inquiry” was biased.
Nevertheless, under the misguidance of the Catholic Church, and a lot of Western European existentialist philosophers, people who do not want to make their own inquiries, nor truly “logic things out” for themselves, seem to want to believe the anti-God party line.
And there ARE people who sympathize with many of the problems that SH names, who ARE Bible-believing Christians—that’s where humanism had its historic origins; like it or not.
Narrowing one’s readings to SH propaganda will hardly teach otherwise.
Historically, ISLAM, not the “ALL religion” source SH likes to claim as all one source and point of view, created a point of view which was then adopted by Augustine of Hippo, which was co-opted into the very philosophical core of the Catholic Church, which then WRONGLY pretended throughout their history, and still does, that “anti-science” was the ONLY point of view ever held by ANY Christians—not so historically.
A LOT of things happened historically which some claimed FALSELY were part of the beliefs and practices of the early church, its leaders and the original source documents, the OT and the NT—and claiming so has NEVER made it so; sorry.
On their “Affirmations” page, the SH folks say, “We deplore efforts to...explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.”
So, they are, at the outset, or “a priori” in philosophical terms, convinced themselves, and seek to cause others to assume a priori, that, in religious terms, “There are absolutely no absolutes” (a logical absurdity on its face).
They are dogmatic “anti-supernaturalists”, and insist upon pretending a philosophical certainty regarding data they have never measured.
In the “Religious skepticism” section, it very oddly states that “…secular humanists may be agnostics, atheists, rationalists, or skeptics, but they find insufficient evidence for the claim that some divine purpose exists for the universe.
They reject the idea that God has intervened miraculously in history or revealed himself to a chosen few or that he can save or redeem sinners.”
So much for open-minded inquiry, no?
According to the SH-ers, illogically, one CAN be all of those separate and distinct things at one time. To “be one of them” I suppose it should say, one could “claim” or pretend” or “imagine wrongly” to call one’s self “agnostic…rationalist, or skeptic”, but one MUST assume that, over against all of these “anti-SH presumptions”, if you will, that ONLY dogmatic atheism (DA) ACTUALLY represents “true reality”.
That’s a circular argument, so it actually says nothing logic-wise, it merely paraphrases its own unproven premise.
It is also hard evidence of all the prejudices and practices historically typical of “coercive atheism”. Duh.
Nothing new; there. SH is a RELIGION, itself—it has rationally (NOT “rationalistically” as within “rationalism”—it demonstrates PLENTY of that!) unprovable tenets of prejudice and philosophical belief, it is prejudiciously dogmatic, it is historically revisionistic, and, in fact, it embodies everything its “purist” adherents claim to deplore, and is a philosophical fraud; which is easily discoverable, upon any kind of serious and honest investigation.
And, it is passé, as well; since we are now in the age of “post-modernism”. If one NOW leaves a sub-Christian cult with the decision to revise ALL historical Christianity as the same thing one has experienced in an admittedly SUB-Christian cult, in search of what is the most “au courant” pop philosophy, that would no longer be SH, which claims to own “all of the ACTUALLY intelligent people”.
At least post-modernism assumes that all religious and philosophical experiences might have SOME element of truth in them—it’s less philosophically pretentious than dogmatic atheism; at least.
Also, both Nazism and the USA-crippling “Social Darwinism” were merely logical extensions of the RELIGION of “rationalist/materialist/atheism’s” (read “Secular Humanism”s) historical bastard children of unmeasured evolution “theory” (which I alternately call a “weak grouping of non-linear hypotheses”), as was Marxist-Leninism (both Soviet AND Chinese).
Anything “GOOD” SH has claimed comes from the ACTUAL “Christian” side of the fence, philosophically and historically, in modern times.
One CANNOT assume the non-religiousness of the Classic Greeks—they WERE religious, and they were SLAVE-OWNERS, and any time they spoke of “democracy and freedom” it WAS within the confines of “totalitarian nations’” political way of life.
And European history is rife with the twin philosophies of unscriptural Catholic hegemony and anti-science, and the Macchiavellian approach to socioeconomics.
SH consistently attempts to revisionistically ignore those facts; conveniently and innacurately blaming everything upon their “straw man” construct of “all religion”.
One may easily READ what Marxist/Maoist Leninism is: It is horribly cruel. It assumes an unproven “inevitable pattern” of history (WITHOUT any PATTERN-MAKER), which REQUIRES a violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat.
Trouble is, it could not account for basic human nature. People work harder for themselves and their loved ones than for any government, and always have.
“Socialism” brings SOME changes, but at great expense for nations embracing it.
Government CANNOT control both supply AND demand, on ANY national level, much less in a global market—they have consistently lied to themselves and their people about market expectations, which NEVER came as promised.
And, both communism and socialism are to one extent or another quite parasitic, and socialism is not only basically “communism for pussies” (no actual killing is claimed as “necessary”, although they have done, and DO, plenty of that), it makes nations very poor, as they cannot compete with democracies—do you see any of those so-called “organically atheistic” countries among the G8?
Have you checked out the TAX levels in the so-called “organically atheistic” countries, or their ACTUAL suicide rates—ESPECIALLY in Japan? Re-check some NON-biased sources for suicide incidence in most of the Scandinavian countries, as well; OK?
I would look for more reliable data than from a religiously dogmatic anti-God source, which obviously cooks its so-called data.
Do you see any prosperity in Central and South American countries resulting from ANYTHING Socialistic, much less Communistic?
Ché Guevarra is DEAD—GOOD! And the “Luz Sendero” (Maoist wannabes--“Shining Path” rebel) terrorists are ethically and functionally no different than Colombia’s and Bolivia’s narcoterrorists.
Or, does theism, especially in its recent non-Catholic form, have a different record; lately?
Got any NON-prejudiced sources for the claims of : “"In sum, countries with high rates of organic atheism are among the most societally healthy on earth, while societies with nonexistent rates of organic atheism are among the most destitute. The former nations have among the lowest homicide rates, infant mortality rates, poverty rates, and illiteracy rates and among the highest levels of wealth, life expectancy, educational attainment, and gender equality in the world. The sole indicator of societal health in which religious countries scored higher than irreligious countries is suicide."
To me, Christianity is not, in its purest sense, religion at all; it is a personal relationship lived in obedience to an experientially AVAILABLE God, who BOTH gave us actual free will, an inevitable awareness of the CONSEQUENCES of our choices, and a not-so-easy-to-escape conscience; leaving us all without excuse.
The philosophical grouping of ALL “religion…[as a]…simple and single path to righteous societies that religious fundamentalists seem to think it is..." ARGUMENT is patently a “straw man argument”.
Your article really said nothing at all; Moonshiner.
What else you got? ;-)
Sincerely,
OT2 (OldtimerToo)