Secularism - Weiye Loh on Diigo

May

19

2012

Council for Secular Humanism

local, state, and federal governments in the United States subsidize religion—to the tune of about $71 billion every year.

www.secularhumanism.org/index.php

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Religion State Tax Secularism

religious institutions, if they were required to pay taxes the same as for-profit corporations do, would not have nearly as much money or influence as they enjoy in America today. In this article we estimate how much local, state, and federal governments subsidize religions.
By suggesting that these groups should pay taxes, we are likely to be criticized by those who think that religions are largely charitable institutions engaged in beneficial service or charitable work and should therefore be exempt from taxes. This criticism requires responses at two levels, because there are two ways to think about religious “charity.” The first type of charity is the type that most people think of when they hear the phrase “serving people’s physical needs” (feeding and clothing the poor, building schools, and the like). The second type is different and involves addressing people’s “spiritual concerns.”
5 more annotation(s)...
- Do religions engage in charitable work that addresses the physical needs of the poor? Many do, but that is not their primary focus.
- But they don’t do as much charitable work as a lot of people think, and they spend a relatively small percentage of their overall revenue on such work. For instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS or Mormon Church), which regularly trumpets its charitable donations, gave about $1 billion to charitable causes between 1985 and 2008. That may seem like a lot until you divide it by the twenty-three-year time span and realize this church is donating only about 0.7 percent of its annual income.²
- Other religions are more charitable. For instance, the United Methodist Church allocated about 29 percent of its revenues to charitable causes in 2010 (about $62 million of $214 million received).³ One calculation of the resources expended by 271 U.S. congregations found that, on average, “operating expenses” totaled 71 percent of all the expenditures of religions, much of that going to pay ministers’ salaries.⁴ Financial contributions addressing the physical needs of the poor fall within the remaining 29 percent of expenditures. While these numbers may be higher as a percentage of income than typical charitable giving by corporations, they are not hugely higher (depending on the religion) and are substantially lower in absolute terms. Wal-Mart, for instance, gives about $1.75 billion in food aid to charities each year, or twenty-eight times all of the money allotted for charity by the United Methodist Church and almost double what the LDS Church has given in the last twenty-five years.⁵
- comparing their charitable giving to the performance of secular charities is informative. The American Red Cross spends 92.1 percent of its revenue directly addressing the physical needs of those it intends to help; only 7.9 percent is spent on “operating expenses.”⁶
- what about the spiritual concerns that religions address? Isn’t this activity a form of “spiritual charity”? And since most of the expenditures of religions are spent on addressing spiritual concerns (activities including worship services, pastoral counseling, baptisms, sacraments, and the like), couldn’t these expenses be seen as charitable, thus qualifying the religions as charities?
  
  No. Why? Because charity is the giving of something, not the exchange of something for something else. When religions give (money, clothing, labor, building materials) to address the physical needs of the poor, they are giving without receiving payment in return. There is no exchange of goods or services. Yes, those giving may feel good about what they’ve done, but that feeling is not given to them by the recipients of their charitable actions in exchange for the actions; it rather results from the charitable actions themselves.

Apr

7

2012

"His critique of those universal philosophies of history (Marx, Toynbee, Spengler) that have made a lasting mark on our century: philosophies which all claim to have discovered the ultimate meaning of history, both the basic principle of historical structures and the causal force behind historical development). To him, these philosophies show themselves to be a ‘secularization of theologies’. In the act of the ‘idolization of history’,’ such theologies obey the personal philosophical possibilities of their creators in a secularized civilization. By contrast to other political ideologies, the secular religions absorb metaphysical, spiritual components; in Aron’s view, they are nourished by the substantive core of the universal philosophy of history, for they adapt to the above-cited elements in order to establish a historical truth.

In its character of promising inner-worldly salvation, the secularized religion, eschatological promise and proclamation of an absolute, dogmatic truth instrumentalize history as an instance of legitimation of their respective world-views - world-views that are fixed in stone as true. Accompanying the substitution of Christian belief in a secularized mass society, one finds here both a simplification and a banalization of transcendent belief — even a caricature of it. The secular religions, which therefore have pejorative connotations, transpose the individual human being’s formerly transcendent expectation of benefit and salvation into collective, inner-worldly promises of liberation. These are supposed to provide an ‘equivalent of the lost eternity’ in the form of new kinds of homogeneous social structures."

gssq.blogspot.com/...secular-religions.html

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Philosophy Secularism Religion Marxism

Mar

4

2012

Going Godless: Does Secularism Make People More Ethical? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Non-believers are often more educated, more tolerant and know more about God than the pious. A new wave of research is trying to figure out what goes on in the minds of an ever-growing group of people known as the "Nones".

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,777281,00.html

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Secularism Religion

The secularists' problem is that, unlike the religious believers, they do not have a strong organization backing them. There is no such thing as a "typical" non-believer and every society has its own version of secularism.

Feb

23

2012

Is religion really under threat? | World news | The Guardian

Why then in Britain has secularism become seen to be hostile to religion? Because neutrality is too often assumed to require the bleaching out of all traces of faith, excluding religious belief and discourse from public life. But it doesn't, and we can see why by appeal to the notion of public reason, articulated most clearly by the late political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls was quite clear that the religious have no obligation at all to keep their faith entirely to themselves. "Reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious or non-religious, may be introduced in public political discussion at any time," he wrote, "provided that in due course proper political reasons – and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines – are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are said to support."

www.guardian.co.uk/...s-religion-really-under-threat

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Secularism Religion Politics

Secularism, in the political sense, is not a comprehensive project to sweep religion out of public life altogether. Nor is it a celebration of godless science
t all goes back to how we understand the core secularist principle of neutrality in the public square. Neutrality means just that: neither standing for or against religion or any other comprehensive world-view. That is why in theory, if not in practice, the United States is both culturally the most religious country in the developed west and constitutionally the most secular. There, it is clearly understood that the value of secularism is that it allows all faiths to practise freely, without any enjoying a special place at the heart of power. That explains why when I once took part in a panel discussion with a Southern Baptist, one of the most conservative of denominations, he was as enthusiastic about secularism as I was.
1 more annotation(s)...
- When we enter the public square, we are obliged to talk to each other in terms we can share and understand, not in ways that are tied to our specific "comprehensive doctrines". If we're debating the ethics of abortion, for example, we'd get nowhere if some insisted their views rested on their Catholic faith whereas others took theirs to flow inexorably from their atheism. What we all need to do is provide reasons that have some purchase for other people in their capacity as fellow citizens, whatever their world-views. That doesn't mean denying or even covering up the fact that we have religious or other motivations for believing what we do. It is simply to acknowledge that we can't expect these to carry any weight with others.

Aug

20

2011

Secularism and Its Discontents : The New Yorker

the Virginia Woolf Question, after a passage in that most metaphysical of novels “To the Lighthouse,” when the painter Lily Briscoe is at her easel, mourning her late friend Mrs. Ramsay. Next to her sits the poet, Augustus Carmichael, and suddenly Lily imagines that she and Mr. Carmichael might stand up and demand “an explanation” of life:

For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.

Why is life so short, why so inexplicable? These are the questions Lily wants answered. More precisely, these are the questions she needs to ask, ironically aware that an answer cannot be had if there is no one to demand it from. We may hope that “nothing should be hid” from us, but certain explanations can only ever be hidden. Just as Mrs. Ramsay has died, and cannot be shouted back to life, so God is dead, and cannot be reimplored into existence. And, as Terrence Malick’s oddly beautiful film “The Tree of Life” reminds us, the answers are still hidden even if we believe in God. Lily Briscoe’s “Why?” is not very different from Job’s “Why, Lord?”

www.newyorker.com/...110815crat_atlarge_wood

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Secularism Life

whether or not people did feel full or enchanted in centuries past, religion cannot be identified with the promise of fullness or enchantment. Both Christianity and Islam harshly challenge the self with an insistence on submission, sacrifice, and kenosis—an emptying out of the self, an exchange of the wrong kind of fullness for the right kind of humility—and Buddhism seeks to undermine the very idea of the sovereign, unified self. Revolutionary asceticism, which is what these religions in different ways embody, could be said to be hellbent on disenchantment.
the book valuably works over middle ground, the space vacated by both dogmatic religionists and dogmatic atheists. It is tolerant of, and even interested in, the varieties of religious practice, and maintains an engaged and equitable tone of voice. We might call this the New Secularism. All these qualities are found in the book’s first essay, by the Columbia philosopher Philip Kitcher, who establishes many of the terms of the larger discussion. Kitcher dislikes what he calls “Darwinian atheists” (that is, the New Atheists), who too often “think that once the case against the supernatural has been made, their work is done.” He implies that philosophy must combat and educate common religious prejudice and, by example, suggests that it is more likely to do this effectively than journalism or propaganda.
14 more annotation(s)...
- people tend to think that death “will damage the value we aim to create with our life.” We fear the gradual loss of our abilities as we get older; premature death is a special terror. But, he gently points out, immortality does not help with this:
  
  If your life is directed toward nurturing others who need your protection and guidance, and if, unluckily, you die before they are ready to cope without you, the fact that you will be restored—and maybe restored to them in some entirely different state—is immaterial. Your project, on which you have centered your existence, has still been compromised by premature death.
- Many religious people look forward to meeting loved ones in Heaven, Kitcher notes, and yet the reunion can’t be simply a continuation of life together on earth. If, say, a father lost his young son, as the Victorian agnostic Thomas Huxley lost his son Noel, Heaven would not restore what he most wanted, which was to see his son continue his life on earth. “Moreover, any reunion would apparently confront two strangers with one another, a parent whose life had extended in different directions after Noel’s death and a child who would no longer occupy the emotional space vacated by his earthly death,” Kitcher writes.
- many modern religious believers do not cleave to the kind of literal belief in God imputed to them by militant atheism. In order for secularism to have a wide appeal, he writes, it will need to become a secular humanism that is more than “blunt denial” but is as attuned to human need as religion has been, and as responsive to social injustice as the teachings of Jesus or Muhammad.
- Kitcher suggests that religionists and secularists actually agree about how to create meaning in a life. Many believers think of their submission to God not as compelled, he points out, but instead as “issuing from the choice of the person who submits.” Life develops meaning because someone identifies with God’s purpose. This identification must spring from an act of evaluation, a decision that there is value in serving a deity whose purpose is deemed good. Believers, then, make an autonomous choice “to abdicate autonomy in order to serve what the autonomous assessment has already recognized as good.” Both atheists and believers are involved in making independent evaluations of what constitutes life-meaning. They draw different conclusions about what that meaning is, but they go about finding it in similar ways.
- literary theorist and scholar Bruce Robbins attacks, in a different way, the idea that secularism implies meaninglessness or, at best, second-rate meaning. Robbins has little time for the idea of “enchantment”; the word seems to flatter certain emotions or activities (such as religious epiphanies or their secular substitutes), while excluding others. Secularism must find and create its own values, and these might be quite varied—for instance, “helping children with their homework or cooking good meals,” or “men campaigning to protect doctors from murderous antiabortion activists or Jews campaigning against Israeli settlements on the West Bank.” He faults Charles Taylor for assuming that modern secular life “is beset with the malaise of meaninglessness.” Weber’s word for disenchantment, Entzauberung, actually means “the elimination of magic,” but it is a mistake to infer the loss of meaning from the loss of magic.
- If a malaise besets contemporary life, Robbins writes, it may have been produced not by the march of progress but by the faltering of progress—“by the present’s failure to achieve a level of social justice that the premodern world did not even strive to achieve.”
- In the old theistic world, meaning and value were believed to inhere in the world itself, outside the human mind: in God, in the cosmos, and in God’s natural world, whether charged objects (such as religious relics) or the structure of the universe itself. Meaning came to you from out there. In a secular world, our meanings and values are thought to be generated by our minds and projected onto the world.
- When our neighbor doesn’t agree with us that murdering scores of people at an island camp in Norway is wrong, we do not shrug and say, “Chacun ses goûts.” When Tolstoy calls Shakespeare a poor writer, it is a judgment that judges Tolstoy, and marks his eccentricity.
- Secular explanations of the world (modern physics, astronomy, evolution) have not made the world less wondrous, and have not undermined the validity or the authority of our wonderment. Taking pleasure in the flight of a bird is not undermined by knowing a lot more than our ancestors did about how that bird evolved, and about how it works: on the contrary.
- The contemporary discourses that trouble Taylor seek to explain not the world but our minds. What happens when, say, neuroscience “explains” that our wonderment is merely an evolutionarily determined product of certain processes in our brain? Isn’t the strong evaluation that may sponsor such wonderment undermined by a mechanistic surrogate? Altruism, for instance, may involve strong evaluation: we admire it as something larger than ourselves, and those who don’t share our admiration of it seem inadequate, or worse. But where are we left when evolutionary biology tries to reduce the strong evaluation we make about altruism by claiming that, like all animal behavior, it is just a contrivance that benefits our selfish genes? In Taylor’s terms, the question is whether an “upper language,” in which we describe altruism as noble and admirable, can be fully captured by a “lower language,” of instrumental and biological explanation, a language that scrupulously avoids the vocabulary of purpose, intentionality, design, teleology.
- Taylor is skeptical that it can; he worries about the undermining allure of such reduction, and not without cause. These days, one is continually running up against a crass evolutionary neuroscientific pragmatism that is loved by popular evolutionary psychologists and newspaper columnists (of the kind who argue that we are happiest living in suburbs and voting Republican because neuroscience has “proved” that a certain bit of our brain lights up upon seeing Chevy Chase or Greenwich; or that we all like novels because stories must have taught us, millennia ago, how to negotiate our confusing hunter-gatherer society—I exaggerate only a little). Taylor is right to claim that the popularity of this type of reduction is “one of the most burning intellectual issues in modern life.”
- But he is perhaps too defeatist. There is good reduction and bad reduction. Taylor does not attack the bad reduction case by case, but proceeds as if it were generally already winning—as if it were already vitiating the prospects of a moral and meaningful existence. This is a little like decrying a conspiracy theory because it has damaged a sacred truth, instead of attacking the conspiracy theory as simply untrue. In this sense, Taylor’s essay seems a narrative of loss and lament, even as he protests that it is not. It would be better to lay the problem of reductionism at the doors of specific forms of reduction (many of those doors little more than temporary storefronts), rather than at the very large door of “post-Galilean science.” The former is secular argumentativeness; the latter is closer to religious elegy.
- Darwin foresaw as the goal of the evolutionary process . . . namely, the natural creation of man as a moral creature.”
- , Thomas Nagel wrote a shrewd essay entitled “The Absurd,” in which he argued that, just as we can “step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back also from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way.” Secularism can seem as meaningless as religion when such doubt strikes. Nagel went on to conclude, calmly, that we shouldn’t worry too much, because if, under the eye of eternity, nothing matters “then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.” This is impeccably logical, and impishly offers a kind of secular deconstruction of secularism, but it is fairly cold comfort in the middle of the night.

Jul

17

2011

Against religious freedom: A debate: Against Religious Freedom

there are two quite distinct ideas that fly under the banner of "religious freedom." The first is that people have the right to practice a faith, consistent with the rights of everyone else. We think this is vital and unassailable. However, as we will contend, it is misleading to label this idea "religious freedom." The second idea is that religions deserve some special accommodations under the law that are not available to comparable secular institutions or commitments.
Traditionally cherished and unquestioned though it may be, this latter notion of religious freedom is philosophically unsound, legally incoherent, and morally indefensible. To make real progress in the conversation about church and state, we must give it up.

secularconscience.blogspot.com/...against-religious-freedom.html

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Secularism Religion Discrimination Law Freedom

there are two quite distinct ideas that fly under the banner of "religious freedom." The first is that people have the right to practice a faith, consistent with the rights of everyone else. We think this is vital and unassailable. However, as we will contend, it is misleading to label this idea "religious freedom." The second idea is that religions deserve some special accommodations under the law that are not available to comparable secular institutions or commitments.

Traditionally cherished and unquestioned though it may be, this latter notion of religious freedom is philosophically unsound, legally incoherent, and morally indefensible. To make real progress in the conversation about church and state, we must give it up.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The religion clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution were perhaps the boldest and most novel assertions of the American experiment. Their formulators, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, hoped "to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries," as Madison put it. Neither man foresaw that the Free Exercise clause would come to mean what it does today: the "accommodation" of religion by granting practitioners a presumptive right to violate otherwise valid laws.
11 more annotation(s)...
- free exercise of religion entails that religiously motivated persons may disobey a valid and generally applicable law unless the government can demonstrate, first, that there is a "compelling state interest" in enforcing it and, second, that there is no alternative, less burdensome legislative means of pursuing this interest. In practice, this is a tall order, because a compelling state interest is considered more powerful than a merely "rational," “important," "valid," or "legitimate" purpose.
- A regime of religious freedom gives favorable treatment to some people not because they have a weightier claim but because they claim a particular identity.
- Church-state separationists, of course, want to uphold the Free Exercise Clause, but also the so- called Establishment Clause. And yet the Establishment Clause stands in tension with the Free Exercise Clause, interpreted as a protection of religious freedom. The Establishment Clause, as currently understood, forbids government from disfavoring or favoring religion as such. But by conferring special benefits on religion in the form of presumptive exemptions, the government is favoring it, in violation of the Establishment Clause. No wonder, then, that an increasing number of constitutional scholars are calling for an end to the special treatment of religion.
- Suppose someone were to propose a basic constitutional right to literary freedom, the right of writers to put on paper whatever they wish. Two problems would immediately be obvious. First, the freedom to write is already protected as it is a subset of more general freedoms that are guaranteed to everyone, such as the freedom of expression. Second, if the idea instead is that writers get some kind of additional assistance not already received by everyone, then the following question arises: what is so special about writing—as opposed to painting, cooking, or volunteering for charity—that it deserves to be singled out for favorable treatment from government?
- the free exercise of religion should be seen as one manifestation of more fundamental rights held by all people, religious and secular alike: private property, personal autonomy, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and perhaps most important, freedom of conscience—the right to make up our own minds on moral and spiritual questions.
- One family of arguments maintains that religion, or some characteristic of religion, is an important good that warrants special considerations in law and government. In this vein, legal philosopher Timothy Macklem argues that faith, understood as “a mode of belief distinct from reason,” provides “a way to come to terms with the unknowable where to do so is necessary to human well-being.” Yet this way of knowing, whether it is explained in terms of a priori intuitions or basic beliefs not arrived at by inference, is too narrow to capture all religious commitments—see Aquinas, Maimonides, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on the indispensible role of reason. At the same time, it is too broad to rule out important nonreligious commitments—see Hobbes, Hume, and Mill on the place of desire and value in the foundations of secular ethics.
- Another candidate for a public good inherent in religion is the search for “ultimate meaning.” Martha Nussbaum writes that “religion merits special deference from the liberal state, given its central importance to citizens in the search for meaning.” This conception of religion succeeds at excluding some secular pursuits, such as playing baseball or day-trading, and points to some- thing that most of us do care deeply about. But like the argument from faith, it is too broad to exclude all secular pursuits. We know of no reason to think that believers’ search for meaning is necessarily more profound than that of their unbelieving counterparts. Nussbaum’s argument serves better as a defense of “liberty of conscience”—not accidentally the title of her recent book on religious freedom, a liberty that belongs to all citizens.
- A second family of arguments for religious specialness maintains that religious belief is an exceptionally binding kind of commitment, central to the believer’s integrity. Treating citizens fairly means understanding and respecting such commitments. This suggestion has been developed impressively in the writings of William Galston and Michael Sandel, who emphasize that religious beliefs are not regarded by believers as optional but rather as unchosen commitments that are constitutive of their identity. This line of thought draws our attention to three features that a commitment might have: it is regarded as a categorical obligation rather than a mere preference; it was not voluntarily adopted; and it is essential to a person’s identity. But we must be careful not to overstate the presence of these features in religious commitments or their absence from secular commitments.
- it is not a necessary condition of a religious practice that it is regarded as inescapable. A self-identifying Catholic might recognize that as a Catholic she has a duty to attend Sunday Mass, while at the same time affirming other identities—as friend, colleague, mother, or life partner—that generate their own, conflicting duties and that sometimes take priority over her religious identity. Furthermore, believers may regard a religious identity itself as chosen. As Alan Wolfe documents in The Transformation of American Religion, “religion in the United States is as much about choice and personal autonomy as it is about belonging and community.” Readers who are attracted to Galston’s or Sandel’s position may doubt the “authenticity” or worth of such individualistic adherence. Yet if we are seeking an understanding of religion to inform our general system of law, empirical generalizations about the lived experience of people of faith should carry more weight than the opinions of political theorists.
- What these two strategies—religion-as-good and religion-as-binding—have in common is that they posit some property of religion that is supposed to justify special accommodation by the state. However, if our analysis is correct, the properties proposed do not map onto all and only religious practice. So, the most that these strategies could show is that the state must be sensitive to such properties, not that it must accommodate religious practice as such.
- A third and different strategy for vindicating the specialness of religion draws strength, perhaps surprisingly, from the doctrine of “separation of church and state.” For Establishment Clause reasons, we already single out religion for special treatment, such as denial of certain kinds of aid. It may seem that if the National Council on the Humanities but not the National Council of Churches is to be constitutionally permitted to receive direct government funding, then we must attribute to religion a special importance. However, this conclusion would be unavoidable only if we could locate no other, more fundamental constitutional rationale for preventing government establishment or endorsement of religion. There is such a rationale. It is the value of equal respect for citizens.

Jul

6

2011

A “Staunchly Secular” Civil Society? « guanyinmiao's musings

While I agree that people hold on to their religious ideologies and beliefs into civil society, I believe that it is important that the intentions and objectives remain separate from religious ideals and motivations.

guanyinmiao.wordpress.com/...secular%E2%80%9D-civil-society

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Secularism Civil Society Religion

The key is to strike equilibrium between our private beliefs and regions, with what is pragmatically the most feasible way to proceed; after all, civil society is a public space between the state and the lives of individuals. We must remain cognizant, more importantly, that while religion might be considerably proliferated in Singapore, we have to take into account that there are people who do not believe in a spiritual existence. This public sphere of civil society must remain open to them, unobstructed by barriers of faith and religion.
From a lay perspective, there is no clear reason why religion must be divorced from civil society in order for the latter to function effectively. In fact those with moral objectives (say, anti-abortion) are frequently funded or supported by religious groups. Furthermore, secular civil society groups (such as self-help groups in Singapore) are split amongst racial lines. Who is to say when such schisms should be allowed in civil society or not?
1 more annotation(s)...
- the problem with letting religion interfere in the sphere of civil society lies with dogmatism.

Jun

16

2011

‘What role for religion in education?’ BHA takes part in Accord Coalition debate

state-funded ‘faith’ schools should be replaced with secular, inclusive schools. Arguing in favour of children’s rights, Mr Copson said that ‘children are not the property of their parents but human beings in the process of growing into autonomous adults; they have rights of their own – to receive and impart information and knowledge of all kinds and have the opportunity to make their own minds up; the arguments made by some, including MCB, would deprive children of this entitlement.’

Mr Copson also argued that equality and secularism are principles to work towards, saying that ‘the state should not discriminate against its citizens in the way it affords them access to services including state education.’

www.humanism.org.uk/828

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Education Religion Secularism

University Tests Act, which banned Universities from discriminating along religious lines in who they admit to study and as fellows. Prior to the act, University College London (UCL) was the only University to admit students regardless of their religion.

Jun

10

2011

Churches Use 'Free Exercise' Defense To Block Abuse Cases

church leaders said they were protected by the First Amendment's separation of church and state from having to surrender personnel files, victims' complaints or other documents.

Attorneys representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints argued its records were protected by clergy-penitent privilege and the First Amendment's protection of the "free exercise" of religion.

Though the case was eventually settled in 2001, journalist Lisa Davis says the case represents a profound misuse -- and misunderstanding -- of the freedoms afforded to religious institutions under the Constitution.

www.huffingtonpost.com/...es-free-exercise_n_874515.html

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Religion State Secularism Law Abuse Children

Legal scholars say church bodies -- from Catholic dioceses to entire denominations -- often try to use the First Amendment to block victims' attorneys from accessing internal documents. In a case now headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, a religious school has tried to use the First Amendment to stave off an employment discrimination suit filed by a teacher.
Up until about 20 years ago, most states assumed the First Amendment barred anyone from bringing a claim against clergy, said Hamilton, the New York scholar.

"That theory was ... you could not go after the church because of one bad apple," she said. "But the more we've learned about clergy abuse cases, the more we're learning about the role the churches have played in covering up abuse and furthering that abuse."

"As the courts have become more educated, they have come to understand that religious institutions have to be held liable, and that the First Amendment was never intended as a protection for this kind of behavior."

May

8

2011

Pitzer College in California Adds Major in Secularism - NYTimes.com

Starting this fall, Pitzer College, a small liberal arts institution in Southern California, will inaugurate a department of secular studies. Professors from other departments, including history, philosophy, religion, science and sociology, will teach courses like “God, Darwin and Design in America,” “Anxiety in the Age of Reason” and “Bible as Literature.”

www.nytimes.com/...08secular.html

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Education Secularism

Studying nonbelief is as valid as studying belief, Mr. Zuckerman said, and the new major will make that very clear.
“It’s not about arguing ‘Is there a God or not?’ ” Mr. Zuckerman said. “There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious. I want to know who they are, what they believe, why they are nonreligious. You have some countries where huge percentages of people — Czechs, Scandinavians — now call themselves atheists. Canada is experiencing a huge wave of secularization. This is happening very rapidly.
“It has not been studied,” he added.

Apr

18

2011

TODAYonline | Voices | Secularism in its extreme can be intolerant

www.todayonline.com/...-its-extreme-can-be-intolerant

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Secularism Religion Law Politics

Secularism is that which favours a secular ideology as an imposition on society, just as would be done by an overtly religious state by its imposition of religious dogma on everyone.
No one religion should dominate the agenda of a country like Singapore. But secularism also means you are apparently barred from bringing in spiritual or religious ideals into public discourse. This is just another form of discrimination.
3 more annotation(s)...
- The fact is, none of us is immune to the values of our upbringing, culture, traditions or spiritual beliefs. We may discuss issues in public without quoting verses from a religious text, but that does not mean the ideas we "secularise" in public are not influenced by spiritual values.
  
  When we demand that a government or society show compassion, how certain are secularists that all those who clamour for this do so on grounds not rooted in spiritual values? If you discover that a person who champions human rights, tolerance and fairness for all in society is motivated by spiritual or quasi-religious beliefs, does this then invalidate the person's causes?
  
  To say that your motivation and values must be based on a secular humanism, whatever that means, before it can be allowed in public is not only hard to verify but smacks of intolerance of one's personal beliefs.
- As long as a spiritual idea is made acceptable in public discourse and is shown that it is meant to express a view that puts forward the good of everyone without bias against others, that view would be one of public reason and acceptable in our society.
- This letter shows a distinct misunderstanding of the definition of secular values. Secularism allows practise of all faiths. However, these fairytales should never be used to make decisions on policy. This idea seems to be stuggling to take root in the middle east where religion still resides in the dark ages.

TODAYonline | Voices | Why one defends the secular state

www.todayonline.com/...-one-defends-the-secular-state

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Secularism Religion Singapore Politics Law

Assoc Prof Tan considers several possible positions that an individual committed to a democratic, pluralistic and secular state might take. He might, as Assoc Prof Tan suggests, champion a system which bars all religious persons from entering into public debates. But, as she rightly notes, this would preclude a majority of religiously-inclined Singaporeans from public debates.

I disagree, however, with her characterisation of the defender of the secular state - he could simply be one who views with unease political arguments backed by reasons whose force are ultimately traceable to religious sanctions.
The advocate of the secular state would prefer a state of affairs in which ideally, all input into the public decision machinery are of the species "public reasons" - that which should appear fair and reasonable to well-informed individuals.

But Assoc Prof Tan is sceptical. She asks, "how does one know what is 'reasonable' or 'fair' without reference to standards of truth in comprehensive doctrines?"

We may come to know what is reasonable and fair by investigating whether or not, say, a certain public decision unduly burdens a certain group of individuals on arbitrary grounds, such as sex or race. We may come to know what is reasonable and fair by availing ourselves of empirical data which reveals, say, that a certain policy is impractical for reasons such as a lack of resources.
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- The notion of a "public reason" need not be a mere synonym for our brute, unreflected convictions, nor vague and prejudiced.

Feb

8

2011

Rationally Speaking: In Egypt, accepting democracy despite its risks

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...cepting-democracy-despite.html

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Democracy Theocracy Egypt Politics Religion Secularism

A recent political cartoon presumes to depict the current situation in Egypt as a potential transition from an autocracy – the 30-year rule by President Hosni Mubarak appears to be coming to a close – to either a theocracy or a democracy. It illustrates the question that many are currently asking: in which direction will this important Middle Eastern country swing?
As it turns out, Egypt already has slivers of both theocracy and democracy. Its Constitution is rather Islamic (though it does not require all laws to perfectly conform to Sharia), but its penal system is secular, and the people have some power (hopefully, more when Mubarak leaves). What many people fear is that under new democratic reforms, the Muslim Brotherhood will gain power and move Egypt toward a stronger Islamic orientation, resembling a theocracy (1, 2). This has even led several people to question whether we should really want Mubarak out of power.
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- while this concern is understandable, it should not be used as an argument against the full embrace of democracy in Egypt. Yes, the process through which Islam might take a stronger hold over Egyptian law would be democratic. But the fact that the Brotherhood might take more control – or more generally, that religion might influence law – is not a problem with democracy, it is a problem with religious belief
- Consider the U.S.: we have our fair share of religiously based laws, but we are not a theocracy. In the same way, an increased role for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt wouldn’t necessarily make for a theocracy either.
- democracy does not guarantee a secular society or politics. Democracy only guarantees people the right to speak and act their minds, and the power to create, revise, update, and change the laws as they wish.
- The legal and political landscape will look different depending on what the citizens believe. If the people are religious, the laws will reflect that.

Jul

27

2010

Balderdash: Anthony Grayling on Atheism

Anthony Grayling on Atheism

"Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

gssq.blogspot.com/...thony-grayling-on-atheism.html

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Religion Philosophy Agnosticism Secularism Morality Ethics

if you think that the reasons you have for thinking that there are fairies are very poor reasons. That it's irrational to think that there are such things, then belief in supernatural agencies in general is irrational... [Agnostics] fall foul of this picture...
we're all familiar with Popper's dictum that if a theory, a claim explains everything, if everything is consistent with the truth of the claim, then it's empty. It doesn't explain anything at all.

[On the claim that Science purports to explain everything, or that it claims that it will be able to eventually] I don't think Science does claim that at all, in fact. Science at its normal best: it is a public, a testable, a challengeable project. Always having to maintain its own respectability by saying what would count as counter-evidence against it.

And when people put forward views in Science, they publish them so that other people can test them, review them, try to replicate results, and I think that is absolutely the model of how an epistemology should proceed. Out there in the open and inviting the very toughest kind of response from other people...
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- [On the claim that there is no morality without God] In classical antiquity, in the Classical Tradition, there are deep, rich, powerful thoughts about the nature of morality, the foundations of ethics. The nature of the good life, which make no appeal whatever to any divine command. Or any government via this sort of spirit monarch in disguise, who will reward you if you do what he or she requires, and punish you if you don't. All the very best and deepest thinking about ethics has come from non-religious traditions...

Jul

23

2010

Rationally Speaking: On banning the veil

THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010

On banning the veil

rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/...on-banning-veil.html

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Religion Secularism Law Free Will

surely many women wear them just because they in general accept their social and religious customs. As stupidly degrading as such customs are, if the women are simply accepting their religious and social position, then it at least becomes on the scale of the high heels, thin jeans, woman-as-object problem that women face in this country, one that they cannot reject without becoming socially outcasted, at least to some degree, as well.

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