Why do Atheists care ....

[GoddessWhispers]

Atheists, Secularism,

Secular Government: Why Atheists Care About Secularism

Question:

Why do atheists care about secularism and secular government so much? Why don't they let the Christian majority make its own laws?

Response:

There is nothing about atheism which absolutely requires that one care about secularism. In practice, however, secularism and secular government are the primary foundations for religious liberty in society. This protects irreligious atheists who dissent from the dominant cultural expressions of religion from being forced into supporting, expressing, and helping religious beliefs and institutions in any way. Secularism benefits everyone, religious theists as well, but it helps remove the presumption of religious belief from public institutions.

Members of the Christian Right often try to tell atheists that they should be more grateful to Christianity for its role in the development of Western democracy and liberty, even though there is little within the Bible or ancient Christian traditions which provide any support for the sort of democracy we have today.

What's ironic is that one thing for which atheists should perhaps be grateful to Christianity is also the one thing which the Christian Right most abhors: secularism.

The concept that there is a difference between the spiritual and political realm can be found right in the Christian New Testament. Jesus himself is cited as advising listeners to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. Later, the Christian theologian Augustine developed a more systematic division by distinguishing between two "cities," one that ordered the things of the earth (civitas terrenae) and one that was ordered by God (civitas dei).

Even more important to the development of modern secularism were the devout Christians who were aghast at the devastation caused by the religious wars that swept across Europe in the wake of the Reformation. In Protestant countries there was initially an attempt to translate the principles of the religious community into the wider political community; that, however, failed due to the growing divisions between Christian sects. This forced a reduction of overt and explicit references to specific Christian doctrines — reliance upon Christianity, if it remained, became more general and more rationalized.

(Continues)

[MissMelsWell]

Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner with this sentence right here:

What's ironic is that one thing for which atheists should perhaps be grateful to Christianity is also the one thing which the Christian Right most abhors: secularism.

This was actually a pretty good article and fairly written.

Edited April 24, 2007 by MissMelsWell

[AtlantisRises]

Quite a good Article GW.

I quite enjoyed it. I have to agree more or less with what was said as well. I think Secularism is far better then a theology.