The Challange Of Secularism Flashcards
What is secularism
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secularism: a belief that religion should not be involved in government or public life
1) a principle that no one religion should have a superior position in the state
2) a belief in a public space and private space, with religion being restrained from public power - secularisation: a theory that religious belief would progressively decline as democracy and technology advanced
- secular: not connected or associated with religious or spiritual matters
- in the west the role of religion is changing, fewer people are identifying as religious
- today there are around 9 million people in the UK that follow a religion other Yh an Christianity
Religion as an infantile illusion: Freud
- Freud believed that developed forms of society were major causes of oppression
- it belonged to the infantile stage of human social development before a person has developed powers of reason and is therefore in need of external support
- “the religions of mankind must be classed as among the mass delusions”
- Hume came to the same conclusion that religion in childish and mainly practiced by uneducated people
Religion as the result of wish fulfilment: Freud
- Freud thought religion makes us feel less vulnerable, its the product of wish fulfilment
- if we believe any suffering will be balanced in another life, it makes it more bearable
- we invent deities to ease our uncertainty, something infinitely more wise than us has a plan, so all will be ok
Dawkins science and reason, religion and delusion
- for Dawkins, clearest explanation of the process of nature has been provided by science and the scientific theory of evolution does not need a God
- belief in a divine creator is unnecessary and deluded, a persistently false belief contrary to the vast body of evidence
Religion as something for children to escape from: Dawkins
Dawkins thinks:
- life should be meaningful without reference to Religion
- adults should be able to fund meaning in life from other sources than religion
- Religion is repressive and should not be a part of public life
- e.g. religious dress codes as a way in which religion represses women
- Religion dampens scientific understanding and progress
- Religion causes conflict in the world
- conflict between Catholicism and Protestants in Northern Ireland exemplify the problem
- Dawkins is particularly concerned about the indoctrination of children by religion
- concerned that in bringing children up as religious, by labelling them as religious, harm is being done
- Dawkins illustrates ’the religious mind’, a mind in which the sprinkling of water over the head of a baby can totally change that baby’s life in a way that takes precedence over the consent of parents and children, and over everything that ordinary common sense and human feeling would see as important
- that an uncomprehending child can be regarded as religious is absurd, something that comes about when a mind is ’hijacked by religious faith’
- believe bringing up a child as religious is a form of long-term psychological abuse
- the power of belief to abuse us far greater than the impact of physical abuse
- used example of conversion he had with a women who had been a victim of sexual abuse as a girl but found the abuse of the fear of going to Hell even greater than the sexual violence
Religion and belief as a source of well-being: Marchant
- Marchant argued that some beliefs can be shown to be good for people
- doesn’t seek to defend religion, but explore how a range of practices and beliefs bring about physiologically measurable benefits
- she writes that “feeling part of something bigger may help us not only to deal with life’s daily hassles but to defuse our deepest source of angst: knowledge of our own mortality”
Laïcité: French secularity
- Laicite has resulted in the removal of state-funded Christian schools
- also led to the ban if wearing religious symbols and clothing in public
The separation of Church and the State
- key idea is that religion should have no bearing on influence in the public world
- government decisions affecting public services should be based on a democratic, non-religious foundation
Education and schools
the Heritage argument:
- in England, the school system was established by Christian Churches
- Churches built many of the schools in existence today, and continue to own a lot of school property
- removing Churches from schools could constructed as theft
Richard Dawkins:
- “fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on running the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well meaning eager young mind”
British humanist association:
- BHA states schools should not be able to recruit students based on their religion or hold acts of worship in lessons
- practice of faith in schools results in segregation and increasing intolerance
diversity:
- evidence is not clear whether religious schools are more or less diverse when they measure ethnicity
- Catholic population often have a greater population of poorer migrants, leading to rich cultural diversity
- Leslie Francis states there is no empirical evidence to suggest students from faith schools are more intolerable
- young Christians often show more positive attitudes to religious diversity
Charles Taylor:
- argues there should be more recognition that societies are increasingly multicultural
- all people deserve equal recognition and so schools with religious character may foster these cultures and prevent identities from disappearing into homogeneity
Christopher Dawson:
- in communist countries, anti-religious ideology led to religion becoming endangered
- people’s professed neutrality towards religion in secular education revealed a programmatic intention to remove it entirely
- removing religion from art, culture etc not only derives religion of outward expression, but deprives people of the ability to make sense of their own culture
Professor James Conroy:
- religious schools have an important part in a liberal democratic state
- religious schools perform a ‘liminal function’ that serves to test the perspective of human flourishing
- they exist to counter general view that the market should define human flourishing and that individual people are little more than cogs in the machine of economy
- they instead propose an idea of the other that transcends capitalism
Government and state
- British monarchy is the head of the Church of England
- The House of Lords has 26 seats reserved for Bishops and Archbishops
- some argue the continuing involvement of Anglican Christianity in law making is not in keeping with the times
-John Rawls developed the idea that those in charge should have a ‘veil of ignorance’ where they should imagine they are unaware of their own religion, social class etc - Rowan Williams draws a distinction between two types of secularism:
1) procedural secularism: refers to a public policy which does not give preference to one religious body over another, the state sees itself as the overseer of a variety of religious communities
2) progammatic secularism: public manifestations of religious allegiance are inhibited or even banned so that everyone shares a public loyalty to the state
The failure of the secularisation thesis
- many argue that secularisation theory is based on some mistaken assumption that the change was inevitable
- a secular state is not necessarily atheistic but may be filled with believing people
- e.g. the USA remains just as religious as it did a century ago, even though its officially a country in which Church and State are separated
- Peter Berger says the world today is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more
- David Ford suggests we need to stop thinking about the development of the world in linear terms, and instead that we do not know what is going to happen throughout the world
