Secularism Flashcards
procedural secularism:
the role of the state is to take into account all interests of all citizens. this means not giving preference or priority to religion but treating it equal to other institutions.
Progmmatic secularism
the role of the state in a plural society is to be purely secular. all religious views should be excluded from public institutions.
Secularisation
The process of making a society more secular by removing the influence of religious organisations
Secular states do exist e.g. France and the USA
Within secularism, there are different approaches:
It is a belief that religion should not be involved in government or public life; religion and state decisions should be separated
A belief in a public space and private space and that religion should be restrained from public power; religion should be entirely removed from anything to do with the State e.g. schools, public holidays etc
The principle that no one religion should be superior/have a superior position in the state
Comte
Influence of Freud – outlines secular positivism
-We develop from theological view of the word to metaphysical (abstract view of the world), then to a scientific and rational view
-science will rid society of false views
-includes religion as it is harmful and dangerous
Freud
Beliefs about God and Religion
Rooted in Humes logic
‘The ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and familiar notion of superior powers.’
Freud believed that the idea of God is an illusion, uses psychoanalysis to develop Humes understanding
He believed that religion was a delusion that exists to protect us from nature and fate.
The experience of vulnerability and helplessness that humans experience as children is made more tolerable by the invented belief that there is a purpose to life.
A deity/higher being is invented to replace the sense of uncertainty with something uncontrollable à life.
We create a divine force to replace a sense of uncertainty with something uncontrollable.
He also believed that religion represses human desires, particularly the desires that are destructive to humanity such as sexual violence, theft and murder.
Wish fufillment
Wish fulfilment – the satisfaction of a desire through a dream or exercise of the imagination
Religion is wish-fulfilment because it reflects our subconscious projecting into our conscious minds – just like a daydream
He believed this is an infantile result of the Oedipus Complex because a boy learns he cannot sexually possess his mother and feels jealousy towards his father; this resentment is repressed into the subconscious mind and projected onto the idea of God (the ultimate father-figure)
1928- American doctor had written to Freud about how aa student he had seen a dead ‘sweet-faced dear old woman’ in a dissecting room, causing him to lose his faith and discover it shortly after through a powerful conversion experience.
Dawkins
Progmmatic secularist – religion is damaging/should be removed from the public sphere
religion is given a disproportionate place in society and appears immune to criticism because there is still a respect for it even when it is dangerous and intolerant.
programmatic secularist - aim is to persuade all right-thinking people that god is a delusion and that atheistic secularism is the only plausible alternative.
science and reason, religion and delusion
-Begins attack with focus on no evidence for god
-See instead scientific evidence of evolution
delusion is the persistent false belief contrary to the vast body of evidence which leans in favour of evolution
Jay Gould – Aims to reconcile faith/evidence
- NOMA (non-overlapping magisterial) which says the supernatural is a totally different kind from the material world and its not subject to scientific rational enquiry.
- Dawkins rejects this. he argues all things must be subject to rational enquiry otherwise one could believe anything, like in a cosmic teapot.
Dawkins - religion as indoctrination
religion is abuse because so many of its deluded beliefs damage children and adults psychologically.
Eg) he gives a wide range of examples, including hell houses in the US where children are taught about the terrors of hell and how to avoid it.
‘even without physical abduction, isn’ it always a form of child abuse to label children a possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about? Dawkins, the god delusion
Is indoctrination to reject teaching evolution in favour of creationism. it is a scandal to teach children the world is 6000 years old because the bible says so, while the mountain of evidence points to it being at least 14 billion
While children havent formed rationality, accept what they are taught as truth
It is an removal of thier free will and autonomy
Secularisation thesis
Basis that as autonomy/democracy/technology develops, religion in the world will decrease
Thus will develop into secular society as rationality devlops
-belief we can live according to reason without a need for religion
The Amsterdam declaration –1952 – sets out aims of modern humanism
Is ethics: all have dignity
Rational ; science used creatively to solve human problems
Supports democracy and human rights
Insitis on personal liberty and social responsibility
Not higher power beyond human values and creative aspirations
Taylor
He questions why we find it easy to not believe in God in the West despite religion being the norm throughout our history.
-. he claims the answer is what he calls ‘subtraction stories. these are stories we now use to demonstrate the truth of secularisation by removing religion as though it were obvious to do
See ‘underlying human nature that was there all along, but had been impeded by what is now set aside’
He challenges ‘subtraction stories’ when the removal of religion is seen as ‘obvious’ or that we have outgrown religion.
Substaction stories of Freud/Dawkins lead to ‘self-sufficient humanisation’
Stories we used in the past to explain religion are now deeply unsatisfactory
Opposes secular humanism
Leads to a ‘self sufficing humanism’ - where focus on the individual undermines all community bonds. Leads to a social alienation.
secular humanism gives too much importance to the individual and private experience, but it breaks the communal aspects of society.
Critiques how it is not that we have suddenly discovered what doesn’t exist, but that the western world is out of line from the dominant historical world narrative.
god has been present and essential through history.
- until we steer ourselves out of this secular phase of history, we will not experience the fullness of life which means having a divine.
Society;
He suggests that the presumption that a government will be Christian so the state and people within it will be too has been replaced with a plural religious situation. This means that the number of people following Christianity might be declining but the secularisation of Britain is not happening due to the many other religions that are still followers possibly because of immigration.
Eagleton
Marxist perespective we should be suspicious of secular capitalism and its impact on culture.
Religion as human experience
Religion has been harmful, but must acknowledge
-wealth of art, architecture, literature and more that has come from a religious imagination
- scientists think these occur without religion, but only religion can capture the highest aspect of human experience.
Religion has proved to be far the most tenacious, enduring and widespread symbolic system humanity has ever known.
- Religion touches on deep truths about existence which people have been prepared to die for. no one is prepares to die for music or sport, the secular religion replacement – not important enough
Secularisation for capitalism
- secular capitalism supports free competition by privatising everything. this has a knock-on effect where morality and religion are also considered irrelevant and private form the public sphere
On terrorism
- 9/11 indicates that the positivist dream of a world without religion is not only wrong but without proper understanding can appear in a highly toxic form of extremist fundamentalism
- 9/11 shows two extremes of anxiety: faithless western secular atheism and its fear of religion, and faithful religious fundamentalism and its fear of positivist and capitalism secularisation. both, he argues, are equally flawed.
Berger
Fails as see a resurgence of religion in many parts of thr world
Thesis fails to acocunt for growing muslim belief and fundamnetal chritsanity
Eg) 16 million muslims in the eu and 100 million christains in china
Yet some secularising affects – religious insiutions are now a voluntary association, not empyed for power, but charity/choice (this is posotive)
Berger proposed the theory of pluralism as an alternative to the secularization thesis. He believed that the modern era had led to an unprecedented emergence of multiple values and attitudes, which relativized the certainty of individual beliefs.
Dawkins - Faith schools
Dawkins – faith is a form of child abuse
Dawkins argues that religious schools replace evidence based approaches in understanding our world with superstitions.
Dawkins believes that labelling children as religious from a young age is a form of child abuse.
He believes parents have no right to inflict a belief system on their children and that the advancement of faith schools by tony blair was a profound mistake and should be reverse
Humphrey
How children have a right to own views
“Children, i’ll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas.”
-can lead to indoctrinations
There are examples of schools that have an extremist agenda or express extremist views e.G. Islamic school in east sussex, ultra-orthodox school in north-east london
Schools that teach fundamentalist or extremist schools do not promote pluralism, respectful disagreement
BHA
Lack ot tolernace/.Diversity
The british humanist society (BHA) believe that “young people of all different backgrounds and beliefs should learn with and from each other.”
Faith schools arguably segregate children into different religious groups, creating a sense that people of different religions live parallel lives, and increasing intolerance.
Knitter
Exclsivism dangerous
Faith school educate children to eradicate culutral diveristy
Paul knitters crisitcims ofexlcusuvism – see it as coloniol, christaian fiath schools erased native american population
‘Chirstian suprmacy is just as dangerous as white supermacy
Daly
Teaches sexist ideology
Mary daly and daphne hampson argue that is it impossible to be a christian and a feminist because christianity is too tightly interwoven with patriarchy.
Dawson
Replacing faith schools with secular schools can be seen an indoctrinating children into atheism.
Christopher dawson argues that secular education has a consciously atheist agenda.
Dawson believes that secular education deprives people of the ability and the right to make sense of their own culture – a culture which, to a large extent, is immersed in religion.
Ham
US evangelist, no schools are ever going to be ‘value neutral’- a humanist ideology would just be promoted instead, as well as schools reflecting our culture
Francis
Faith schools teach tolerance
There is no evidence to suggest that children who go to faith schools are less tolerant or open-minded or unscientific than those educated in secular schools.
E.G. Catholic schools teach about tolerant, the importance of inter-faith dialogue and being non-judgemental of others.
Professor leslie francis found evidence to suggest that students who attended faith schools were more open minded to people of other faiths, not less.
Conroy
–Argued that religious schools have another function than just to educate about religion as they give children the sense that they are not just being prepared for a place in a capitalist place of work and that human beings have inherent value and are not just objects to make money for big businesse
Marchant
She suggests there is compelling evidence for positive medical and psychological benefits arising from some religious belief. She did not seek to defend religion but explored how practices, such as social gatherings, stillness and prayer, belief in a loving God had benefits for participants of her research. She wrote that “feeling part of something bigger may help us not only deal with life’s daily hassles but to defuse our deepest source of angst: knowledge of our own mortality.”
Blaimres
“While secular’ is a purely neutral term, secularism’ represents a view of life which challenges Christianity head on, for it excludes all considerations drawn from a belief in God.”
Secularism elevates things that Christians believe should not be elevated to a high status e.g. such as the autonomy of man
Bolesch
Secularism can lead to people worshipping the material/fill the void with ideolog -states that “a culture closed to the transcendent will find the locus of the sacred in its own creations.”
Pannenburg
presents a long-term effects of secularism à without a belief in the divine origin of the world there is no foundation for order. Political rule becomes “merely the exercising of power, and citizens would then inevitably feel that they were delivered over to the whim of those who had power.”
He believes that secularism leads to a sense of “homelessness and alienation”.
Ford
critical of the idea that secular atheism is unquestionably good. state that atheist ideologies, such as fascism, communism and capitalism, have sought to write out religion from civilisation with devastating effects e.g. Nazi Germany, communist Russia under Stalin etc
Ratzinger
- look to damaging examples of secualirsm
Rg) communist russia – danger of lib theo being involved with secualr ideals
‘betray those they wish to help’
Warsi
’militant secularisation’ - It demonstrates similar traits to totalitarian regimes – a fear of distinct religious/cultural identities
denying people the right to a religious identity because they were frightened of the concept of multiple identities.”
Bonhoffer
Secularism will cause civil disobedience
Bonhoeffer called this ‘single-minded obedience’. The Christian has no time to decide who his allegiance is to. It can only be to God and not to any state or earthly government.
This led to Bonhoeffer’s ‘civil disobedience’ or refusal to comply with state laws which conflicted with his Christian principles. Such actions would be replicated throughout the 20th century in civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.
Weber
Argues when the role of religion, magic, superstitions and faith became less prominent in society, they were replaced by more rational motives for acting. He believed that modern society was ‘characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and, above all, ‘by the disenchantment of the world’ following the Enlightenment period and the Industrial Revolution
Wilson
Argued that following four factors encouraged the development of rational thinking:
Ascetic Protestantism - Protestant varieties of Christianity encouraged a rational approach to worshiping God – your ‘faith’ was essentially measured by your productivity.
The rational organisation of society – the establishment of schools, workplaces, governments all imposed systematic ways of acting on people.
A greater scientific knowledge of the social and natural world – he argues science provided more satisfactory explanations of many social and natural phenomenon than religions ones, and were better able to help people in tackling such problems.
The development of rational ideologies – such as Marxism which offered more immediate solutions to our problems in this life further challenged and undermined religion.
He argued that the rational world view fundamentally undermined the religious worldview, because it was based on the principle of systematic procedures to assess ‘truth claims’, whereas religious knowledge could not be tested and verified.
Bruce
Describes Christianity in Britain as a pale shadow of its former self.
- He further developed Weber’s concept of rationalisation to argue that people have developed more rational ways of thinking and a technological worldview rather than acting because faith leaders or religious tradition dictated that you should act in certain ways, without thinking about it, people were increasingly free to act for themselves.
-He also argued that although science and especially technology have challenged some religious beliefs, people may still turn to religion when technology fails.
Mc grath
Criticises Dawkins:
He argued science and religion do not conflict as they are different aspects of the human experience – the material and the spiritual.
He believes faith and reason are not inherently contradictory as faith is seen by some as fully rational – reason can discover morality and test if beliefs are true or false.
He argues the universe is so complex/cannot be fully explained by science. This does not mean that the ‘gaps’ should be filled with God but atheism is not the alternative.
He also says that many scientists believe in a complementary relationship between science and religion.
Lastly, he argues violence is not a necessary or inevitable consequence of religion as Jesus was a pacifist.
Woodhead
Conducted research about secularism in society and her findings were:
Whilst ‘no religion’ now exceeds ‘Christian’ as most people’s self-designation, ‘nones’ are not straightforwardly secular.
They reject religious labels but also secular ones; despite the ‘Dawkins factor’ they are not hostile to religion (e.g. against faith schools).
‘Nones’ share a liberal value set with many ‘somes’. In 2013-14, Britons were polled on ‘controversial issues’ such as same-sex marriage, abortion, assisted dying: 83% were towards the liberal end of the opinion scale (supporting individual choice), 100% of ‘nones’ were, contrasting most sharply with Muslims, evangelical Christians and Anglican and Catholic bishops.
Identified growth in alternative spiritualties e.g. Buddhist mindfulness as Christianity declines
She also argues that religion is not necessarily sexist or patriarchal and writes of a “religious feminism.”
Durkheim
Thought that religion binds societies together and he particularly thought that religion binds small groups together as they meet face to face and celebrate the sacred. He argued that as societies modernised and urbanised, these fundamental bonds are broken and religion is broken in that process as people move to cities and are individualised more.
Marx
Argued that religion was ‘the opiate of the people’ which allows the ruling classes to use it to keep social classes divided so they can stay in power. He thought religion would die out once we achieved the perfect socialist communist State. He believed that religion was a symptom of all that was wrong with society, a way of coping with the oppressions and difficulties of society. Once we realised the perfect society, he believed we wouldn’t need religion.
