Can the Secularists be Trusted?

[Wizard22]

When they forever hide and dodge behind invisible belief systems?

Or worse, they're not even self-aware of their own beliefs??

[accelafine]

When they forever hide and dodge behind invisible belief systems?

Or worse, they're not even self-aware of their own beliefs??

WTF do you mean 'self-aware'? Is it really so hard just to say 'aware of...'? Why do you Americans always feel the need to butcher the language?!!!

[Wizard22]

Because awareness is not necessarily self-awareness...duh?

[Wizard22]

Has anybody ever noticed how Secularists have a blind faith, worse than "the Religious", when it comes to "observable, verifiable facts"???

Wizard22, are you serious? Observable, verifiable facts aren’t "personal beliefs." They’re the foundation of everything allowing us to even have this conversation—physics, chemistry, technology, all the tangible systems you’re relying on right now. Calling those "religious beliefs" is absurd. This isn’t about elevating anything; it’s about recognizing the reality we can all test, replicate, and observe.

If you want to equate evidence-based understanding with religious belief, then maybe you’d like to explain how electricity or the internet runs on faith and not hard science. Because unless you’re communicating through divine intervention, your argument crumbles under the very facts you refuse to acknowledge.

Wizard22, are you serious? Observable, verifiable facts aren’t "personal beliefs."

They 1000% are.

It's almost like "observable, verifiable facts" have some type of 'Divine' nature to them, that must be believed in by everybody else, for all time.


A Secularist is to "Trust the Experts" as the Religious are to "Trust in God"???

Both regularly participate in Blind Faith.

[Wizard22]

Secularist:

I'm better than YOU because:

My priest is not a priest, but "An Expert".
My truth is not the truth, but "Observable, Verifiable Facts".
My religion is not religion, but "Science".

This makes Secularists inherently "smarter than" all the Religious types, right?


So, Secularists, you changed some words and labels around, call Creationism "The Big Bang Theory", and now, all of a sudden, magically, you're "better than" religious beliefs?

How aren't you a religion unto itself, again??? How are your 'Scientific' beliefs so holy and pure and cannot be critiqued?

[BigMike]

Has anybody ever noticed how Secularists have a blind faith, worse than "the Religious", when it comes to "observable, verifiable facts"???

Wizard22, are you serious? Observable, verifiable facts aren’t "personal beliefs." They’re the foundation of everything allowing us to even have this conversation—physics, chemistry, technology, all the tangible systems you’re relying on right now. Calling those "religious beliefs" is absurd. This isn’t about elevating anything; it’s about recognizing the reality we can all test, replicate, and observe.

If you want to equate evidence-based understanding with religious belief, then maybe you’d like to explain how electricity or the internet runs on faith and not hard science. Because unless you’re communicating through divine intervention, your argument crumbles under the very facts you refuse to acknowledge.

Wizard22, are you serious? Observable, verifiable facts aren’t "personal beliefs."

They 1000% are.

It's almost like "observable, verifiable facts" have some type of 'Divine' nature to them, that must be believed in by everybody else, for all time.


A Secularist is to "Trust the Experts" as the Religious are to "Trust in God"???

Both regularly participate in Blind Faith.

Wizard22, if your name reflects your age, maybe it’s worth considering a little patience and humility before making sweeping statements about “blind faith.” The brain, after all, doesn’t fully develop until around 25, particularly in areas related to critical thinking and decision-making. So perhaps hold off on equating verifiable facts with divine revelation until you’re firing on all cylinders.

Observable, verifiable facts don’t require belief—they require observation and evidence. They’re not divine; they’re just what’s there when you drop the metaphysical hand-waving and look at reality as it is. Trusting experts isn’t blind faith; it’s recognizing that their conclusions are based on evidence that can be tested, replicated, and scrutinized. That’s a far cry from faith in an unprovable deity.

If you’re going to lump science and religion together under “blind faith,” you’re either ignoring the fundamental difference between evidence and belief or deliberately conflating them to score rhetorical points. Either way, it’s not helping your argument.

[promethean75]

"Or worse, they're not even self-aware of their own beliefs??"

Are you telling me i have beliefs that I'm not even aware of? May i ask how that is possible? How to have a belief without knowing it, i mean.

[Will Bouwman]

Has anybody ever noticed how Secularists have a blind faith, worse than "the Religious", when it comes to "observable, verifiable facts"???

Can't say I have. Could you give an example of such an observable, verifiable fact?

[LuckyR]

Treating those who are given dogmatic "correct conclusions" who live in search of evidence to support their conclusion to those who make observations then derive conclusions from them, then adjust the conclusions as new observations come to light, as essentially two versions of the same phenomenon, is erroneous.

[Immanuel Can]

Part of the problem is that "secular" simply means "non-sacred." It's a negation with no positive content entailed. Somebody who's a "secularist," then, would be somebody who thinks nothing should be privileged as "sacred."

But then, secularists still want various things to be treated as sacred. They still believe in human rights, for example, or in their own autonomy, or in the responsibility of the state to remain non-religious, or in moral duties, or the liberty to terminate their own life, or the right of law, or social justice, or a life they have created...some are even environmentalists or vegans, treating animals or the planet itself as sacred.

The only way one can maintain such beliefs turns out to be not to think very hard about the warrant for regarding any of those things as sacred; because once you've declared NOTHING sacred, there isn't a road back to justifying those values. So secularism can only be maintained by the expedient of not thinking, of not being consistent, of not trying to ground one's beliefs in reason.

Instead, secularism tends to expend all its energies on deploring the religious, as if insulting others was somehow the same thing as proving and rationally grounding one's own beliefs. But of course, it's not. Even if, say, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, paganism and Theosophy are wrong in their entirety, that realization would not go one step in the direction of showing that a secularist's own preferred values were justified.

If secularism behaved genuinely secularly, it would amount to Nihilism. There's no other logical resting place for it.

Fortunately for us all, secularism is never logically followed to its own natural conclusions. If it were, we would not be living in societies, but in a permanent state of confusion and strife...for no values at all would be justifiable. So we may all thank our lucky stars that secularism is not self-aware.

[BigMike]

Part of the problem is that "secular" simply means "non-sacred." It's a negation with no positive content entailed. Somebody who's a "secularist," then, would be somebody who thinks nothing should be privileged as "sacred."

But then, secularists still want various things to be treated as sacred. They still believe in human rights, for example, or in their own autonomy, or in the responsibility of the state to remain non-religious, or in moral duties, or the liberty to terminate their own life, or the right of law, or social justice, or a life they have created...some are even environmentalists or vegans, treating animals or the planet itself as sacred.

The only way one can maintain such beliefs turns out to be not to think very hard about the warrant for regarding any of those things as sacred; because once you've declared NOTHING sacred, there isn't a road back to justifying those values. So secularism can only be maintained by the expedient of not thinking, of not being consistent, of not trying to ground one's beliefs in reason.

Instead, secularism tends to expend all its energies on deploring the religious, as if insulting others was somehow the same thing as proving and rationally grounding one's own beliefs. But of course, it's not. Even if, say, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, paganism and Theosophy are wrong in their entirety, that realization would not go one step in the direction of showing that a secularist's own preferred values were justified.

If secularism behaved genuinely secularly, it would amount to Nihilism. There's no other logical resting place for it.

Fortunately for us all, secularism is never logically followed to its own natural conclusions. If it were, we would not be living in societies, but in a permanent state of confusion and strife...for no values at all would be justifiable. So we may all thank our lucky stars that secularism is not self-aware.

Wow, Immanuel, what a self-satisfied heap of muddled nonsense you’ve managed to cobble together. You’re so busy patting yourself on the back for supposedly having a “warrant” for your own sacred values that you forget to apply any actual reasoning to what you write. The irony is almost too painful to watch.

You trumpet your personal take on “the sacred” as though it were some universal principle—never mind that literally billions of people on this planet neither hold your view nor see it as “privileged.” Meanwhile, you smugly dismiss any secular perspective as somehow empty and devoid of logic. It’s as if you believe the only path to meaning is total devotion to your brand of theism, and any alternative must be a shallow knock-off. That’s not merely arrogant; it’s embarrassingly simplistic.

Your entire argument boils down to: “Because I define ‘sacred’ in my own narrow terms, anyone who rejects my assumptions has no grounds for valuing anything at all.” You do realize that’s not a refutation of secular ethics—right? It’s just you repeating your premise over and over, then concluding you’re right because, well, you said so.

And the notion that “secularism can only be maintained by not thinking” is laughable. Look in a mirror. You’ve made a carnival sideshow out of straw men: painting secular people as cognitively lazy, refusing to notice that a huge number of philosophers and intellectuals—far more impressive thinkers than you, by the way—have defended secular frameworks for centuries with actual arguments and robust ethical theories. Meanwhile, all you can offer is haughty derision and cheap potshots like “the expedient of not thinking.”

By the way, claiming that the only truly secular outcome is “Nihilism” only spotlights your staggering ignorance. You’re so convinced your worldview is the only possible escape from meaninglessness that you’ve conveniently ignored everything from Aristotelian naturalism to Kantian deontology to contemporary theories of secular moral realism—just because they don’t flatter your theology.

Maybe, before you go congratulating yourself as the savior of “value,” you could pick up a philosophy text not written by a sycophant from your bubble. At least then, if you still feel compelled to spout self-serving nonsense, you could do it with the faintest trace of sophistication.

[Immanuel Can]

Part of the problem is that "secular" simply means "non-sacred." It's a negation with no positive content entailed. Somebody who's a "secularist," then, would be somebody who thinks nothing should be privileged as "sacred."

But then, secularists still want various things to be treated as sacred. They still believe in human rights, for example, or in their own autonomy, or in the responsibility of the state to remain non-religious, or in moral duties, or the liberty to terminate their own life, or the right of law, or social justice, or a life they have created...some are even environmentalists or vegans, treating animals or the planet itself as sacred.

The only way one can maintain such beliefs turns out to be not to think very hard about the warrant for regarding any of those things as sacred; because once you've declared NOTHING sacred, there isn't a road back to justifying those values. So secularism can only be maintained by the expedient of not thinking, of not being consistent, of not trying to ground one's beliefs in reason.

Instead, secularism tends to expend all its energies on deploring the religious, as if insulting others was somehow the same thing as proving and rationally grounding one's own beliefs. But of course, it's not. Even if, say, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, paganism and Theosophy are wrong in their entirety, that realization would not go one step in the direction of showing that a secularist's own preferred values were justified.

If secularism behaved genuinely secularly, it would amount to Nihilism. There's no other logical resting place for it.

Fortunately for us all, secularism is never logically followed to its own natural conclusions. If it were, we would not be living in societies, but in a permanent state of confusion and strife...for no values at all would be justifiable. So we may all thank our lucky stars that secularism is not self-aware.

You trumpet your personal take on “the sacred” as though it were some universal principle

Look above. I've only spoken about secularism, and not a word about "my own personal take on the sacred". I've done nothing of what you claim.

Aren't you interested in speaking truth at all?

[attofishpi]

If I owned a shop and two people both equally suited to the job I need one of them for, i'd employ the one that is Christian over an atheist (for obvious reasons).

[Gary Childress]

If I owned a shop and two people both equally suited to the job I need one of them for, i'd employ the one that is Christian over an atheist (for obvious reasons).

Like any good slave driver, I suppose.

[attofishpi]

If I owned a shop and two people both equally suited to the job I need one of them for, i'd employ the one that is Christian over an atheist (for obvious reasons).

Like any good slave driver, I suppose.

Oh no, owning a shop and employing people (* paying them) is really not a nice thing for people to do, is that it?