With news last week that Pitzer College, a small liberal arts college in California, is instituting the first ever major in "secular studies," it is clear that sociologists need to catch up with what is rapidly becoming a "movement" of sorts. It goes without saying that the study of secularism and secularization is extensive and garners much academic and popular interest. The focus of much of this literature, however, is on the ways in which religious belief, religious practice, as well as religious authority are declining in the contemporary world.
Less is written about the ways in which secularism is an active tradition, with its own concerns, objectives, and worldviews. Although interest in this area is growing, the focus still remains centered on figuring out the numbers. For example, how many check off the "no religion" category? How many atheists are there really? What do they look like demographically? These questions, while important, do not tell us much about the socialization process of secular humanists. Where do secular people gather? What do these groups look like? Why do people join? What do they talk about? What do they hope to accomplish? Do they experience any challenges?
Years ago, I began a research project into Freethought campus groups to try and understand how young people are socialized into secularism. I surveyed and interviewed several members of secular humanist campus groups around North America and asked questions dealing with their religious background, their current religious identification, their thoughts on freethinking and atheism, their reasons for founding or joining the secular campus group, their group activities, as well as their objectives and challenges as a student group. It became clear that freethought campus groups (to take just one example of a secular space), by providing a safe place for conversation, by engaging in socialization activities, changing individuals' social networks, and creating a feeling of holding embattled viewpoints, fosters secular identity formation.
Almost all of my survey and interview respondents stated that they joined or founded the campus group for two reasons: to find likeminded individuals who approached the world from a secular viewpoint, and to provide a safe space on campus for secular minded individuals. As one member of the freethought group at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, pointed out, "I started going because I wanted to seriously consider whether religion, specifically Christianity, was viable. I researched the topic and found nobody could back up the claims of any religion. As a member, I get a great group of friends who relate to me with an interest in science and debunking religion." The lack of empirical backing proved to him that most religions were simply man-made fairy tales that do more harm than good.
A member of the freethought society at the University of Alberta told me that her main reason for joining was to provide an alternative voice on campus: "I felt that there were a number of people on campus who did not have a voice and needed representation. The Christians on campus were overrepresented with about 15 groups. I wanted to dispel myths and common misconceptions about atheism." The former President of Skeptics Group at the University of Guelph (in Ontario) notes that joining the group was emotionally significant: "When I first realized that I was an atheist it was a lonely feeling. Not only did I lose a whole group of friends from my youth group, but I lost this all powerful, all knowing, always there 'thing', so it was really lonely. But by finding the campus group and groups such as the Center for Inquiry, I've been able to find people to relate to again."
The majority of those interviewed and surveyed pointed out that the freethought group was a significant part of their overall social life. The networks and connections that individuals formed through group meetings and other gatherings often carried over into going out to dinner and movies. As one member noted, the freethought group "pretty much is my social life. I have a full time job and go to school full time. Outside of those two things, the rest of my life is just atheism/skeptic/freethinking groups. Most of my close friends are from different skeptic groups." Similarly, a former President of the Indiana-Perdue University Freethought group noted that the group is "a significant part of my social life. It is actually my only social life right now. We often go out for beer and/or coffee after meetings. When we see each other on campus, we will often hang out for a few hours."
Partaking in campus activities is also important for reinforcing a secular worldview. Campus activities may range from film screenings, hosting the Darwin Day conference, hosting panel discussions, advocating for secular values, as well as hosting guest speakers. As the founding member of the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics noted, her group is working on "getting a religious reference out of our convocation ceremony in order to have a more inclusive environment for our members. We will continue to advocate for secular values on campus." The non-meeting activities of freethought groups have at times been aggressive. As a member from the University of Washington points out, their freethought group maintains what he calls a 'rapid-response squad': "If there was a preacher in the center of campus condemning everyone to hell, we'd have Secular Student Union members there in pirate costumes, holding up signs lauding the Flying Spaghetti Monster. These preachers would stand in high traffic areas, and spout about how everyone was going to hell. It created a highly negative atmosphere. Students got angry. By standing close to him and acting ridiculous, we changed attitudes, from people taking him seriously to people laughing at just how silly it all was. The whole time, students came up to us and would thank us for being there."
While research into these and other developments is still in its infancy, it is fundamentally important for understanding secularism in the contemporary world. It should be fairly evident that secularism is not simply the absence of religion. Rather, it is a lively and active tradition with its own challenges, its own articulations of the problems facing society, and its own solutions for making the world a better place. Secularism as a social movement, then, will only continue to be a force to be reckoned with.
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Secularism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Secularism - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster ...
Secularism 101 - History, Nature, Importance of Secularism
Challenging Religious Privilege | National Secular Society
Pitzer College in California Adds Major in Secularism - NYTimes.com
Second. Any scorecard listing "the wonders of the world" as religion's accomplishments, has to be more than offset by the health benefits of civil engineering (sanitation systems) and biological sciences (medicine) alone. The largest increases in life expectancy resulted from the wonders of covered sewers and vaccines.
Third. Your scorecard also needs to add up the body-counts of religionist vs. secularists gone amok. (Stalin et al were pretty efficient at killing, but religion has had longer to pile up the bodies.)
You may find religion satisfying, but history does not support your assertion.
My second point is that folks began to look at the Book of Leviticus ( you know...the Bible) and realized that what God was telling the Israelites about santitation had "scientifc merit". You do realize that it was teaching from the Book of Leviticus that saved the Jews during the periof of the Black Death in Europe, huh?
Third point and sit down of this one. MORE HUMAN LIVES HAVE BEEN TAKEN in the last 100 years--due to secular philosophies--then in ALL THE CENTURIES that mankind has existed COMBINED on the earth!!! Now run and tell that!
Relgion drives society--not secuarl "logic" or "reasoning" or any of ther of that nonsense that you have been beguiled into believing.
"Atheism cannot be a belief system as it holds no positive beliefs, only negative ones."
This is incorrect, I don't care if Atheism is a belief system or not - but this statement is prima facie false.
"The burden of proof falls on the person arguing the positive regardless of who is making the claim."
Also incorrect, the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim ALWAYS regardless if that claim is positive or negative. The reason people make this assumption is that generally no one ever argues the negative (a random citizen doesn't start a court case to prove that he's innocent of a crime).
For example, an a-arbor-ist who denies the existence of trees would have the burden of proof. Trees quite obviously exist.
For bigfoot, fairies, leprauchans, and gods, who very much do not obviously exist, the person claiming their existence has the burden of proof.
He is allowed to deny that trees exist, and he rightly is not logically compelled to accept our claim that trees exist until we provide proof. And, rightly, hearsay and appeals to the world making much more sense and having meaning if trees exist or having a lucid dream in which you see a tree etc. is not good evidence for this person to accept our claim that trees exist.
In other words, when an atheist confronts a theist with the demands of 'Prove it!' they are being disingenuous with regards to proper discussion, unless the theist has asserted something to the atheist. Granted, this scenario is rather common (evangelicals etc.) my gripe is not that generally the burden of proof falls on the theists (it does) but the BS claim that because of the nature of the argument the burden of proof can NEVER fall on the atheists.
Reason has always been on the side of Creation and biblical teaching with truth as the intended result.
The function of hydrogen working as ordered inside of us is observable evidence that the entire universe consisting of hydrogen and derivatives is by design.
No test ever accounted for the extensive layers of sediments in the strata.
There is no evidence that any particles are able to do anything without being ordered.
Everything has to be pre-positioned before there can be any life forms.
It is science that supports Creation. It does not support any thing else.
you have got to be kidding right with logic like this quote it is no wonder you can believe in a grand accident. but you are right atheism holds no positive beliefs. life is just one big negative reality. no meaning or purpose to life, just a grand accident.
There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion - Thoreau
is there a materialist scientist in the world that has understanding of what thoreau has stated here.
if you want to up your game in a level of consciousness you may want to spend time studying and reflecting on the teachings of the mystics. or not stay unaware in this life, there is always another and another and etc. :-)
"Where do secular people gather? What do these groups look like? Why do people join? What do they talk about? What do they hope to accomplish? Do they experience any challenges?"
These loosely taken are excellent questions. But they are stated presupposing that secular people do gather, join secular groups, etc. I think that itself is a bold claim. Depending what you mean by secular (secular values broadly or secular humanists (I think this is the focus)) or if you study the related group of atheists, I think it's apparent that many people are secular and never meet up in a group with other secularists. They are just quietly secular. Or they live in a liberal area where secular values are common. At most maybe the debate religion online and never join a secular or atheist group in their area (that would describe me). So an important question before those questions (similar to "Where do they gather?" I suppose) is whether secularists generally gather at all. In what form do they gather. I think secularists often function very differently from a church congregation, and other times they form secular societies. I thorough study of just that would be interesting.
Secularism is a new word as far as I can tell, however it would seem to refer to someone who wants church and state kept separate. This is a political position and could form the basis for a movement or protest group.
Religious people are constantly trying to say that atheism is a religion. This is always amusing, as it appears the worst insult they can think of is to accuse atheists of being just like them. However, we aren't and it isn't. A religion must refer to a supernatural god or gods. That is part of the English definition of the word.
Both atheist and secularist groups are quite distinct from religions and show no signs of ever becoming anything like them.
Your definition of atheism is way too abstract. Atheism does not fall from the moon. For many if not most people - certainly in the West - who do not believe in God, their disbelief is a philosophical rejection, based on a range of positive values: the importance of intellectual honesty, for example. I would agree that knowing someone is an atheist doesn't tell you much else about them, but that's not the same as saying that there isn't anything else to know. People become atheists - or if they were not brought up atheists eventually come to confront and reject theism later - for reasons. And those reasons are worth talking about as positive values.
Your statement that religion "must refer" to gods is arbitrary.
Your points about atheists may all be valid, but they are irrelevant to the meaning of the word. To be an atheist is to lack a belief in a god or gods. The rest is neither a necessary nor inevitable condition of being an atheist.
As for the specific beliefs, the "new atheists" often believe in reason, religion, science, morality, history, mankind, progress....all of which are abstracts. In buying into the Hitchensian narrative, e.g., one fixates upon definitions of these words and narratives and evaluations surrounding them. One does not simply receive sense data without comment. To name, you must believe and judge. Religion, you may say, is indeed an abstract noun, but it refers to a collection of empirically observable institutions. But as much as you may wish to believe that you are thus simply "empirically observing" the phenomena which you cobble together into the idea of religion, you are in fact quite necessarily engaging in evaluation (hence belief) when you declare that historical phenomena are instances of overarching patterns.
How do you describe societies that are free of slavery? Such societies can and do take many many forms, the common theme being slavery is not permitted.
As secularism is not a thing, thus attempting to understand it by studying freethinkers is misguided at best.
I didn't realize until then that I am part of a movement that has some similarities to the anti-slavery (and anti-hereditary aristocracy) movement.
A society free of religion?
Daniel Dennett thinks we are hardwired for religion because we demand comforting explanations for events and are more willing to call speculation fact than to say that an event is unexplainable with present understanding.
Christopher Hitchens says he is not trying to rid society of religion. I would like to see religion deflated to the level of philosophy--just another way of seeing the human condition.
Slavery, hereditary aristocracy and religion--what a brew. Something to think about. Thanks. F/F
I didn't realize until then that I am part of a movement that has some similaritiÂes to the anti-slaveÂry (and anti-heredÂitary aristocracÂy) movement."
Oh, the narcissism!
For me and many others, this book single-handedly reversed the relationship between believers and non-believers. Harris explained that religious ideas are still just ideas, and can be treated as other ideas are.
The difference between religious ideas and others is that believers say they believe these ideas for emotional rather than rational reasons. This makes the discussion of them difficult and heated, but not out of bounds in polite society.
Thank you, Sam.
Thank you Sam.
My stress level is high enough as it is,instead of working to reconcile disparaging points of view, I choose to compete, the worldviews that results in the best results wins, the ones that produce nothing but fluff die out.
And I'm merely speaking of normal everyday 'religion'. When Religionists cross the line into indoctrination, coersion and social engineering then benign secularism is forced to adapt, to go into defensive mode, in dire circumstances even to become an insurgency defending itself against assault.