It’s a movement that concerns Catholic leaders worldwide, including Pope Benedict XVI.
Actually it is a movement that doesn’t concern catholic leaders. It’s not their problem and it’s not a problem. The Pope doesn’t actually have any power over people who don’t believe in his divine ability. He is just an old dude who doesn’t have sex who is in charge of a bunch of men dressed in black who go around people’s houses telling them what to do.
“Radical secularism” threatens the core values of American culture, the pope warned a group of U.S. bishops visiting the Vatican in January. He called on the church in the U.S., as well as politicians and other laypeople, to render “public moral witness” on crucial social issues.
One of the core american values is a separation of Church and State. It’s in the constitution. By law the church has and should NEVER have any say on what crucial social issues is. Because this is an organisation that thinks gynaecology is a bigger evil than child molestation. They have ceased to be a moral example. The pope’s picture is better suited to an article on hypocrisy rather than morality.
“The larger concern with secularism is that it damages people, and that it actually keeps people from being reasonable with one another,” said Chad C. Pecknold, assistant professor of systematic theology in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
I think Chad C. Pecknold needs to look up the spelling of Sectarianism.
“It creates a great level of intolerance for people of faith. I think secularism for Pope Benedict is a feature of this growing bifurcation between faith and reason,” he told Catholic News Service.
Yes. Yes it does. Catholics clearly had no qualms about not tolerating beliefs in the various parts of the world when they sent missionaries to convert people. It’s also good to see that people realise that Faith has nothing to do with Reason. Yes, secularism causes a bifurcation between faith and reason because non secular societies do not allow reason. In a faith based world it is acceptable to fuck children and get away with it if you are sufficiently sorry. In a faith based world it is acceptable to fly planes into buildings, burn women, rape, pillage and loot. It is a world without reason because reasonable people are not allowed to speak out against a world where belief in magic is more important than reality.
Why should we be tolerant of a group of people who explicitly believe in a myth? Why should we be tolerant of a group of people who explicitly do things that are clearly stupid? Why should we be tolerant of a group of people who believe in things that are clearly harmful? Why should our beliefs as atheists be disrespected but Catholic belief accepted as sacred? Oh right! Because of that whole hypocrite thing the Pope has going for him.
Pecknold, who also is the author of the 2010 book “Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History,” said secularism is a greater threat to humanity than to the Catholic Church because it could lead to great social unrest and fragmentation.
The forces of secularism in Africa are trying to educate people and stem the spread of a deadly disease. The forces of Catholics run around encouraging the kind of behaviour that spreads the deadly disease. There are 24 million HIV positive people in the world.
20 Million are in Africa. The Catholic Church is part of the problem. These 20 million people will die of their disease (At the moment. We may come up with a cure but I am sure the catholics will claim that we are fighting god’s will or something equally idiotic in the hope that they can spread more desperate misery). Something tells me that catholics also think that secularism fragments the world because it prevents catholics from behaving like the good old days when it was completely acceptable to torture someone till they turned Catholic. After all, if everyone was catholic they wouldn’t be fragmented anymore.
Vilification of Muslims in the United States following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania can be viewed as an example of secularists’ intolerance.
The majority of attacks on Muslims in the US following 9/11 were carried out by CHRISTIANS. Ann Coulter? Christian? Fox? Christian? Republican Party? Christian.
Oh and my intolerance of muslims boils down to it being a world view that cannot take criticism without wanting to kill someone. It’s a faith that oppresses women. It’s a faith that encourages ignorance. It’s a faith that encourages terrorism. These are not intolerant statements. These are facts. I accept that there are muslims who do not fit into this mould, but I understand that there are a lot who are part of the problem either by participation, being complicit or by clouding the water by not admitting that the faith has a problem and that it requires mordernisation.
In short? I understand what VALID criticism is. There is a difference between saying “I think the culture of Burkha and the mistreatment of women is bullshit” and “Muslims are sneaking Sharia Law into our schools! Heave a brick at them!”. Valid Criticism is obviously something the church cannot grasp because it is a theocratic institution. No criticism in those is ever valid.
Richard Dawkins, vice president of the British Humanist Association and author of the 2006 book “The God Delusion,” was quoted as saying religion is dangerous “because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others.”
It does. I know plenty of Christians who don’t care about what happens to their children. I know plenty who pray rather than seek medical help.
And one has to realise that Dawkins is pointing out that there are people “of faith” like the murderer of Dr. Tiller whose “crusader mentality” allowed him to commit an act of considerable evil. Or the same mentality encouraged in jihadi terrorists.
“These are all examples of an attempt to cause civil unrest, which I don’t think are sustainable,” he said. “It could actually lead to greater and greater social unrest, and could potentially give so much power to culture wars that we become an increasingly fragmented society.”
No. They are examples of a society where freedom of speech is protected. Remember this man is part of an organisation which fights against the right of two people who love each other to be married. This is a billion dollar multi-national organisation that demands the right to bully children until they kill themselves. The only reason he fears a culture war is because he is losing because superstition cannot match reason. Because we live in a world where reason is rising and superstition is not.
Naturally the society he wants should be run on catholic values. If we stated that we are solving this problem of “fragmentation” by adopt
ing Sharia Law he would throw a hissy fit and demand the secularisation of the nation too. When catholics discuss the evils of secularisation they clearly mean the evils that affect them and prevent them from creating a catholic society. They have no qualms about other faiths being oppressed.
The poll numbers revealing growing atheist numbers and events like the “Reason Rally” have theology scholars focusing on what they believe is driving the secularism movement.
I think theology scholar is an oxymoron. I know people who are Shakespeare scholars but I don’t see them claiming the veracity of Bottom the Donkey.
“The cultural conditions have become more conducive to atheism. We can see that in economic ways in that we are encouraged to think of ourselves as economic individuals,” Pecknold said.
Oh heaven forbid human beings are economically independant and are allowed to make their own choices! If humans didn’t depend on the church then we cannot make them think that the effort of humans is really the achievement of a mythological being.
“We see that in the Tea Party, a libertarian approach to economic good in which economics is something that is merely representing my own self-interests,” he said. “That kind of radical individualism in economic terms or philosophical terms is itself kind of a practical atheism, in which you detach yourself from any sort of transcendent notion of the good, any sort of sense of a common good that you would participate in.
The tea party are idiots who would probably send their own children to work in the mines on a Sunday if they found out that child labour laws and weekend holidays were ideas brought about by communists. The Tea Party is a movement mainly driven by Christian libertarians who want zero government interference because they have no goddamn idea how the world works and assume that removing all rules makes society function smoothly rather than have one that implodes into Somalia. It’s a group driven by greed. Atheism is NOTHING like that.
The idea in atheism is that there is no god because there is no evidence of one. Just as Chaz Muth and Pecknold don’t believe in Krishna, the atheists doesn’t believe in Jehovah and Jesus. The inability to grasp this simple notion is astounding.
“A kind of view in which I can participate in something bigger than myself is kind of eroded from our economic practice as human beings.”
No. Atheists well and truly understand working something bigger than them. By definition a rally is an assembly of people who are working for something bigger than themselves. It’s typical catholic party line drivel. Atheism is evil because it actively stops catholic theological nonsense from being applied to everyone. The idea of secularism is completely lost on a group of people who don’t grasp that secularism means the ability to practice whatever religion (unless it actively harms people) free of interference. It means that muslims cannot declare that all catholics have to pay extra taxes. Or protestants declare that catholics should all convert or catholics declare that protestants all convert. It’s also a place where religious belief doesn’t get enshrined in law.
And that is what Catholic Party Liners hate so much about secularism. Because it prevents them from forcing other people to follow their rules.
As for me? I spent my day single handedly being as horrible as possible!
Clik here to view.
I spent my day being as evil as possible and providing healthcare in a rural environment. Instead of letting these people pray, I in my incredibly secular way encouraged them to come and seek medical aid instead of prayer.
So very evil! Bwahaha! First healthcare! Then their souls!