Secularists are not atheists

[rug]

Secularism is about separating church and state, not disbelief. Mixing it up with atheism serves only the right

Sunday, Sep 9, 2012 12:00 PM EDT
By Jacques Berlinerblau

Secularism leaves the mystery of deity to the chartered imagination of man, and does not attempt to close the door of the future, but holds that the desert of another existence belongs only to those who engage in the service of man in this life. —George Jacob Holyoake, “English Secularism”

American secularism has lost control of its identity and image. That’s because the equation secularism = atheism is rapidly gaining market share. It is increasingly employed in popular usage, political analysis, and even scholarly discourse. This formula is muscling out an infinitely more accurate understanding of secularism as a political philosophy about how the state should relate to organized religion. If this association prevails, if secularism simply becomes a synonym for atheism, then secularism in the United States will go out of business.

Which is fine by the Revivalists and which may account for why they perpetuate this confusion. In these circles secularism has become another word for godlessness. As one journalist perceptively observes, “secular” is a “code in conservative Christian circles for ‘atheist’ or even ‘God-hating’ . . . conjur[ing], in a fresh way, all the demons Christian conservatives have been fighting for more than 30 years: liberalism, sexual permissiveness, and moral lassitude.”

Not only foes draw this link, but friends as well. The website of the Secular Coalition for America describes the group as “a 501(c)4 advocacy organization whose purpose is to amplify the diverse and growing voice of the nontheistic community in the United States.” This community, it points out, is comprised of “atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans.” An affiliated organization, the Secular Student Alliance, refers to its mission as “to organize and empower nonreligious students around the country.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/09/secularists_are_not_atheists/

[dmallind]

1. Ah - another lecture on correct word usage with a headline displaying far worse error

Secularists are not ALWAYS atheists would be true, or Not ALL secularists are atheists. But a huge proportion of secularists ARE atheists and as near all as makes no difference atheists ARE secularists.

And if the writer or anyone else thinks that even granting this transparent piece of exclusionism to attempt to distance oneself from the new scarlet A will make Conservative Christians NOT consider secularists who are not atheists to be demonic and god-hating, then he or she is a blithering idiot. To that type of Christian - the majority type - anyone wanting God and government even slightly separate is the enemy and always will be. Embrace it.

[rug]

2. Secularism is not Atheism is more precise.

The separation of church and state says nothing about belief or nonbelief. Nonbelief in a god says nothing about separation of church and state.

Conflation of these ideas does have poltical consequences, as the article points out.

[cbayer]

4. What's wrong with correct word usage.

Do you disagree that the word is often being misused to exclude believers at this point?

[Goblinmonger]

5. Of course it is misused

but the point is that the headline says that secularists are not atheists when, in truth, many secularists are atheists. That's some poor wordsmithing right there.

[cbayer]

3. Another good argument on why we need some new vocabularly.

This reminds me of the co-opting of all things christian by the religious right. Once they take the word, it is very hard to take it back.

The broader term secular could be used to include both believers and non-believers in a powerful political coalition, but I am concerned that it has already been used to exclude, and even belittle, believers.

The article does a good job of explaining how that happened, but I am not sure it has done much to reverse it.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Some are, some aren't.

[Starboard Tack]

7. Atheists are secularists. Some secularists are atheists.

I suspect that most secularists are not atheists. I know several evangelicals and born again Xians who are secularists. Their religious beliefs may be strong, but they don't all carry them to the ballot box.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. So based on anecdotal evidence that proves nothing,

you conclude that "most secularists are not atheists".

OK.

[tama]

9. What about disbelief in statism?

Those who see statism as religion? Can atheist astatist (non-believer in statism) be a secularist? Separation of statism-religion from human society?