The Challenge of Secularism

Question 1

What is endism?

Answer 1

The belief that history has ended with capitalism and liberal democracy as there is no better system that can follow it.

Question 2

What is secularism?

Answer 2

The belief that religion should play no role in running of the state, the affairs of government and in public life.

Question 3

What is procedural secularism?

Answer 3

The belief that the role of the state should be to take into account the interests of all its citizens and their institutions, meaning that it should not give preference to religion but rest it equally along with other institutions.

Question 4

What is programmatic secularism?

Answer 4

The belief that the role of the state should be purely secular, all religious views or practices should be excluded from public institution.

Question 5

What is secularisation?

Answer 5

The active secularising of society by removing religion and other ideologies from all institution.

Question 6

What is secularisation thesis?

Answer 6

The process of secularisation defined as the growing number of people who profess to have no religious affiliation.

Question 7

What is fundamentalism?

Answer 7

The traditional and now ultra-conservative view that a particular religion should have total political power.

Question 8

What is anti-theism?

Answer 8

The view that religion is harmful even as a private belief and thus society would be better off without it. People should be legally free to believe it in their private lives, without social and cultural pressure against holding religious beliefs.

Question 9

What does Freud argue religious belief is?

Answer 9

Freud argues that belief in religion is caused by the psychological fear of a chaotic, unpredictable world and a fear of adult life and its responsibilities. During childhood, order is represented by the father. So, religious people find comfort by projecting an order-providing eternal father – God – onto reality.

Question 10

Why is Freud’s regarded as an anti-theist?

Answer 10

“Religion may be altogether disregarded … It’s doctrines carry with it the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race”. – Freud.

Question 11

What is Dawkin’s infantile stage?

Answer 11

Religion provides meaning and purpose to people, rather than enabling them to create it for themselves:

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.” – Dawkins.

Question 12

What does Dawkins argue faith is?

Answer 12

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” – Dawkins.

Question 13

What does C. Hitchens argument on religion?

Answer 13

Religion is unable to remain just a private belief because of the belief in converting others. Religion is therefore a threat to freedom:

“They won’t be happy until you believe it too … because that’s what their holy books tell them … [religion] isn’t just a private belief. It is rather, and I think always has been … a threat to the idea of a peaceable community.” – Hitchens.

Question 14

Why does Dawkins argue religion causes prejudice and violence?

Answer 14

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction … [a] bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser … misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal” – Dawkins.

Question 15

What religious harm suggests a reason for secularisation?

Answer 15

Some have argued that the active secularisation of society is beneficial because of the harm religion causes, especially its opposition to human rights and civilised behaviour.

Question 16

What is the secularisation thesis?

Answer 16

Over the past hundred years there has been a decline in church attendance in most industrial societies, indicating that it is true that people are rejecting religion in favour of non-religious beliefs and ways of life.

Question 17

What does the secularisation thesis not propose?

Answer 17

Whilst it is true that the influence of Christianity itself has declined in the industrial west. Secularism does indeed pose a challenge to traditional forms of Christianity, this does not necessarily mean that Christianity will eventually die out in western societies.

Question 18

What did Auguste Comte say?

Answer 18

Civilised societies develop from the theological to the metaphysical and finally the positive view of the world. He believed that religion would give way to secular positivism and that the power of scientific reasoning would rid society of all its false views of the world.

Question 19

What did Freud’s use of psychoanalysis show?

Answer 19

Religion is a sickness, which can badly infect individuals and societies.

Question 20

What does Freud and Hume both collectively agree on?

Answer 20

Only by employing reason and questioning superstitious beliefs can humans and human societies live happy lives.

Question 21

What does Freud’s ‘The Future of an Illusion’ debate?

Answer 21

In this essay Freud invents a debate with an imaginary opponent, responding that in the future reason will prevail, religion will end and the instinctual life will win, only then will humans be able to live truly content lives.

Question 22

What does Freud argue religion overcomes?

Answer 22

In his book ‘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 and suffering caused by human civilisation.

Question 23

How does religion provide comfort, according to Freud?

Answer 23

Religion provides comfort through its worship and rituals. Religious rituals continue the process through the ‘suppression, the renunciation of certain instinctual impulses’.

Question 24

What does Freud conclude religion is?

Answer 24

Religion is ‘a universal obsessional neurosis’. The repression of basic urges are replaced by the promises of after-life and rewards. But these are illusory and merely devices to ward off fear and compensate pleasure s forfeited in this life.

Question 25

What is Freud’s approach?

Answer 25

Freud is a reductionist.

Question 26

How does Keith Ward criticise reductionism?

Answer 26

Reductionism is hardly an adequate explanation for the overwhelming religious and spiritual experiences millions of people have in existence.

Question 27

What is Dawkins secular argument?

Answer 27

Dawkins secular argument is that religion is presently given a disproportionate place in society and appears immune from criticism because society still respects religious beliefs even when these beliefs are dangerous and are themselves intolerant.

Question 28

What does Dawkins argue supernaturalist monotheistic religions cause?

Answer 28

These religions cause mental and physical harm. This is not just because belief in God is unfounded but the very notion of a creator justifies irrational and dehumanising behaviour.

Question 29

Why does Dawkins claim a belief in God is delusional?

Answer 29

Delusion is the persistent false belief contrary to the vast body of evidence which now lends weight to the theory of evolution, therefore those who continue to believe in God are deluded.

Question 30

What is Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’?

Answer 30

It attempts to distinguish the factual world from the supernatural world. NOMA advocates argue that the supernatural world is of totally different kind from the material world, then it cannot be subject to scientific rational enquiry.

Question 31

What does Dawkins ‘The God Delusion’ greatly oppose?

Answer 31

‘Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents’.

Question 32

What does Alister McGrath ‘The Dawkins Delusion?’ point out from Dawkins argument?

Answer 32

Christian’s do not think their faith is irrational and independent from reason. Reason is necessary in order to test true and false beliefs but ultimately faith makes a leap to the transcendent.

Question 33

What are Charles Taylor’s ‘subtraction stories’?

Answer 33

Charles Taylor questions why we find it easy in modern western society not to believe in a God, while this has been the norm throughout society. He claims the answer is ‘subtraction stories’, these are the dominant stories we now use to demonstrate the truth of secularisation by removing religion as if that is the obvious thing to do.

Question 34

Where does Charles Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’ refer to ‘subtraction stories’?

Answer 34

‘What emerged from this process - modernity or secularity - is to be understood in terms of underlying features of human nature which were there all along, but had been impeded by what is now set aside’.

Question 35

What does Charles Taylor’s ‘A Secular Age’ suggest?

Answer 35

We have outgrown religion, as the explanations or ‘stories’ we now use to explain the world are designed to show that we can live full and complete lives without the need for God.

Question 36

Why does Taylor argue against secular humanism?

Answer 36

A failure of secular humanism is that it gives too much importance to the individual and his or her private experiences but this is undesirable as it breaks down the communal aspect of society.

Question 37

Why does Eagleton argue secularism is ‘largely doomed’?

Answer 37

Secularists argue that human culture can occur without religion, but only religion can capture the highest spiritual aspect of human experience. Secularism is ‘largely doomed’, he argues, because it cannot replace what religion captures of human experience.

Question 38

Where does Eagleton state secularism is ‘largely doomed’ within, ‘The Death of God and the War on Terror’?

Answer 38

‘I say ‘largely doomed’ because religion is an exceedingly hard act to follow’.

Question 39

What does Eagleton argue the root cause of secularism is?

Answer 39

The root cause of secularism is the way in which Western secular capitalism has valued free competition by privatising everything. This has a negative knock on effect where morality and especially religion are considered to be private and irrelevant in the public sphere.

Question 40

What is secular humanism?

Answer 40

It describes all those who believe that humans can live good and noble lives according to reason and without the need for religion.

Question 41

How could faith schools contribute positively to society?

Answer 41

Some argue that having many types of faith schools contributes positively to social diversity and social cohesion.

Question 42

What does the separation of the church and state assume?

Answer 42

The secular assumption is that faith is a private matter and should not interfere with public matters of state, which are decided by reason and law.

Question 43

What is theocracy?

Answer 43

Theocracy is the belief that religion should play a role in public life and in the governance of society.

Question 44

What does The National Secularist Society state?

Answer 44

‘If Britain were truly a secular democracy, political structures would reflect the reality of changing go times by separating religion from the state.

Question 45

Why is the challenge of secularism not a threat to Christianity?

Answer 45

The challenge of secularism is therefore not necessarily a threat to Christianity. It is right that it should give a reasonable account of itself and justify its place in society where there are many different belief systems which in a democracy seek to live harmoniously together.

Question 46

Why does David Ford and Jose Casanova criticise secular atheism as good?

Answer 46

They note that atheist ideologies, such as facism, communism and capitalism have been used as brutal methods to eradicate religious populations.

Question 47

What does Dawkins say the gold of Christianity is?

Answer 47

Christianity has played in the criminalisation of homosexuality, exercising influence over the law to criminalise anything that differs from the moral absolutes it offers.

Question 48

What does Ford refer ‘minimal secularism’ as?

Answer 48

Leads people of different religious beliefs to see a value in minimal secularism, which allows different communities to live in peaceful tolerance.

Question 49

What does Kwame Appiah’s ‘Mistaken identities: Creed, Country, Colour, Culture’ refer to?

Answer 49

‘If they can’t adapt, they’re often abandoned’. Religion does change in response to the society that it encounters.