The Challenge of Secularism

Question 1

What is Secularism?

Answer 1

• The belief that religion should play no role in the running of the state, the affairs of government and in public life
• It is not the claim that religious beliefs are right or wrong, just that they should not play a part in the running of the state

Question 2

Quote the New Labour era episode on secularism

Answer 2

” ‘We don’t do God’ Mr Campbell interrupted”
- Shows that they were not willing to use religion in any corroboration with state matters

Question 3

What is procedural secularism?

Answer 3

• The state is to take into account all interests of its citizens and institutions
• They should not give priority to religion but treat it equally along with all other institutions

Question 4

What is programmatic secularism?

Answer 4

• The role of the state in a plural society is to be purely secular
• All religious views and practices should be excluded from public institutions such as government, public events, schools and universities

Question 5

What is the view of Theologian Rowan Williams on the matter?

Answer 5

• Favours procedural secularism and views the state as a ‘community of communities’
• This allows people to acknowledge the authority of their own religious belief as well as the authority of the state
• He argues the Church were always there to just preach the Gospel and not to govern, they were not to ‘privatise’ their beliefs but rather engage in society with a Christian outlook

Question 6

What is the French principle of La laïcite?

Answer 6

• The separation of Church and state (programmatic secularism)
• Led to heated debate about human rights to express beliefs
• Gov in 2004 banned the wearing of religious symbols in state schools as a result

Question 7

What is secularisation?

Answer 7

• The removing o religion and other ideologies from all public institutions and the erosion of religions social and cultural significance over time

Question 8

What are two reasons for secularisation?

Answer 8

• Sociological Evidence; Because religion is practiced by fewer and fewer people it has ceased to have a place in society
• Religious Harm; Some argue religious behaviour has caused harm and has opposition to human rights and civilised behaviour

Question 9

What is the Secularisation Thesis?

Answer 9

• Term used by sociologists to describe the process of secularisation
• Defined as the growing number of people who profess to have no religious affiliation
• Also defined where religion has lost its influence on society

Question 10

What are the ambiguities of the Secularisation thesis?

Answer 10

Measuring and defining terms; Not clear how to measure, more people are opting for ‘no religious preference’ but many still have spiritual beliefs

Influence and Authority; How much influence does the Church have on social policy in Britain? Argument is that these are being replaced - only mainstream religion has declined

Religious commitment and evidence from the past; Some argue that more people without religion shows secularisation, but in the past it was just a social expectation so perhaps now we have those with true religious beliefs

Question 11

What do both Freud and Dawkins argue?

Answer 11

• Scientific method is the only means to discern truth from falsehood
• religion in general and Christianity is an indicator of less civilised society

Question 12

What is the view of Freud on religion and neurosis?

Answer 12

• Believed religion was the cause of psychological illness
• He argues that religion belongs to the infantile stage of human development before a person has reason and needs external support and comfort
• He believed that his psychoanalysis could show that religion was a sickness which can infect individuals and societies
• When science prevails over religion humans will be able to live a content life

Question 13

How does Hume back up Freud?

Answer 13

• Came to a similar conclusion that religion is childish and mainly practiced by uneducated people of the world
• Those who are mentally grown up do not need religion

Question 14

What is the situation that Freud uses to explain religion as wish fulfilment?

Answer 14

• Case of a young medical student who had seen a ‘sweet faced dear old woman’ in a dissecting room which caused him to lose faith

Question 15

How does Freud argue that religion is wish fulfilment in the case of the medical student who had lost Christian faith then rediscovered it?

Answer 15

• Called it a classic example of the Oedipus Complex
• The old woman was his mother, and the desire for his mother sprang from his Oedipus Complex
• This was completed by a feeling of anger against his father, in this case against God the father
• The voices he heard were hallucinatory psychosis warning him to be obedient to his father and the original guilt was revealed by the experience of the dissection
• Therefore the religious conversion was no more than wish fulfilment to return to a sense of security he had in childhood

Question 16

What is the basis for Freuds claim that religion is an infantile illusion?

Answer 16

-In ‘The Future of an Illusion’ Freud argues that religion has been one of the most powerful and effective means of overcoming human fears of death
- Religion continues to provide comfort and meaning against the experience of the ‘terrors of nature’ and the fate of death and suffering within society

Question 17

What is Freuds argument for religion as infantile illusion?

Answer 17

• Religion provides comfort through its ritual and worship
• Little children find comfort in living a disciplined and ordered life imposed by their parents, e.g through rituals of washing hands and control of bladder
• The same way humans continue the process through ‘suppression, the renunciation of certain instinctual processes
• Seen in the repetition of religious ceremonies in worship and prayers which acknowledge the worshippers guilt and ask for forgiveness
• Repetition of this kind is obsessional and keeps the ego from being controlled by sexual and irrational urges

Question 18

What does Freud claim religion is through it being an infantile illusion?

Answer 18

• Claims religion is a ‘universal obsessional neuorosis’
• Repression of basic urges are replaced by promises of afterlife or rewards
• These are illusory and devices to ward off fear
• For society to grow up rationally religion should be abolished ‘our science is no illusion’

Question 19

How does philosopher Keith Ward argue against Freud claiming religion is an infantile illusion?

Answer 19

• Argues Freud is reductionist and that this is not an adequate explanation for the overwhelming religious and spiritual experiences millions of people have of existence
• All religious tradition has mystical experiences and characterised by the merging of the self and sense of the ‘other’

Question 20

How can Freuds own notion of ‘oceanic experience’ undermine his own theories?

Answer 20

• He described his friends experience as a mystical experience, an experience of being at one with nature
• Freud does not reject the validity of the experience but says ‘it is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings’
• Yet he still accepts the validity of the claim of the “spontaneous religious feeling”

Question 21

How might someone use truth claims to argue against Freud?

Answer 21

• Freud argues that some aspects of religion can cause neurotic and obsessional behaviours and there is validity in this
• These are emotional and psychological states of mind, they do not in themselves disprove the truth claims made by religion

Question 22

How might someone argue Religion is enabling to Freud?

Answer 22

• Freud argues religion is an infantile illusion that disables people and cuts them off from the world
• However some find religion extremely enabling and they find a richer appreciation of life through ti
• It gives shared communities a sense of purpose rather than social discontent

Question 23

How can one use guilt to argue against Freud?

Answer 23

• Freud argues how religion can be a cause and perpetuation of guilt and we should warn against controlling religious traditions
• This does not mean that all religions are controlling
• There are religious traditions which are not hierarchal and rather provide meaning and fulfilment that lacks from a material existence

Question 24

Is wish fulfilment always bad?

Answer 24

• Can be a source of creativeness and fuel the imagination

Question 25

What is Dawkins’ view?

Answer 25

• He views monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the particular cause of mental and physical
• He urges in his ‘God Delusion’ for people to imagine a world without religion, accept atheism with pride, understand religion is a form of child abuse and accept that the God hypothesis is weak

Question 26

How does Dawkins argue against God using science?

Answer 26

• He argues that there is simply no evidence for it
• The contrary theory of evolution by Darwin is much more viable as it has genuine scientific claims to back it up
• There is no leap to the supernatural and therefore he believes a belief in the supernatural is deluded

Question 27

How would Dawkins respond to NOMA by Stephen Jay Gould?

Answer 27

• This is the Non-overlapping magisteria which distinguishes the scientific facts of the world and the supernatural world described by religion
  Dawkins would argue not applying reason and rational thought would allow you to conclude that the world was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster

Question 28

How does Dawkins perceive religion as indoctrination and abuse? (Quote)

Answer 28

• He argues that religious beliefs create conflict and are a form of child abuse
• “preposterous idea… to indoctrinate tiny children”
• He argues this causes harm to children psychologically, e.g in Hell houses in the USA where children are taught about hell and how to avoid it

Question 29

What does Dawkins believe it means when a child follows their parents religion? (Quote)

Answer 29

• He believes that this is a form of abduction or kidnapping as the child is labelled as that religion without understanding what it entails or means
• “always a form of child abuse to label children”

Question 30

How is Dawkins supported by the case of Philomena Lee?

Answer 30

• Became pregnant as a teenager and was sent by her Catholic parents to a covent home to have her child
• Her child was taken and sold by the nuns and the child was told that her mother had died
• When she enquired about the child in adulthood she was told the records were lost but in actuality the nuns had burned them

Question 31

What are Alistar McGraths’ objections to Dawkins in his book ‘The Dawkins Delusion’?

Answer 31

Reason and Faith; Christians don’t believe faith is separate from reason, reason is necessary but ultimately faith is needed to make the leap, there are some things we do not categorically prove regardless of how rational we are

Metaphysics; Whilst Dawkins rejects questions of why the universe exists etc, many scientists reject this positivist view and instead argue that theology and philosophy provide important insight

Violence as necessary condition; Dawkins emphasises the violence that religion causes when in fact Jesus had taught against the use of violence. Atheism in communist regimes has caused plenty suffering

Question 32

What is the view of Charles Taylor on why Western society finds it so easy to reject religion?

Answer 32

• He calls these ‘subtraction stories’ whereby the stories used to justify secularisation remove religion as if thats the logical course of action
  “liberated themselves from certain earlier conflicting horizons”
• He argues we seem to have outgrown religion, and the stories told now are to show we can live competently without God in a dimension greater than nature itself
• These subtraction stories lead to ‘self-sufficing humanism’

Question 33

Why does Charles Taylor argue that the stories are deeply unsatisfactory?

Answer 33

• The failure of secular humanism is that it gives too much importance to the individual and his or her private experiences, this breaks down the communal aspect of society
• Saying God doesn’t exist is out of line with the dominant world history, and the West has rejected the notion that everyone in time has spoke of the divine
• Until we steer ourselves out of this secular phase of history we don’t experience the fullness of life and having a sense of the divine

Question 34

What is the view of Terry Eagleton?

Answer 34

• Marxist and Christian
• Believes Marx was wrong to leave out religion and is suspicious of secular capitalism and its impact on culture
• Argues that despite harm religious imagination has made a great contribution to human culture through art, architechture, literature, poetry etc
• He argues that secularists think this can all occur without religion, but only religion can really encapsulate the highest spiritual aspect of human existence, making secularism ‘largely doomed’

Question 35

How does Terry Eagleton argue against secularism further?

Answer 35

• Argues that no one makes the sacrifice that religious belief has demanded, e,g no one would be prepared to die for sport
• Argues the cause for secularism is not Dawkins’ positivism but rather Western secular capitalism which valued free competition and privatised everything
• This has a negative knock on effect and religion is considered to be private and irrelevant to the public sphere

Question 36

What does Eagleton argue about the events of 9/11?

Answer 36

• Argued that the positivist dream of a world without religion is wrong and without proper understanding of its nature can appear in a highly toxic form of fundamentalist extremism
• He is not condoning violence he is arguing that the source is from the anxiety caused by secularists being ‘anti-religion’
• Faithless western secular atheism and its fear of religion and faithless religious fundamentalism and its fear of the West, both types are equally flawed