Secularism vs. Atheism

It has been a while since I have posted (I have been extremely busy, especially at work), but I was briefly inspired today so I thought I’d throw a random post in.  Hope you guys enjoy it.

Many Christians simply do not understand the difference between “secular” and “atheist”.  In their eyes the two are exactly the same thing.  This comes from the apparently commonly held belief (I’m not sure whether it’s so much a “belief” or just a “claim” they often make to bolster their arguments) that not talking about God somehow promotes atheism.  I can kind of see how, if you had twisted your way of thinking so that you could accept obvious bullshit as absolute truth, one might come to the conclusion that “removing God” from something was inherently atheistic.  However, to “promote” atheism one cannot simply remove any given god.  To “promote” atheism one has to speak out against the concept of gods.

This is the major difference between secularism and atheism.  To promote atheism is to teach that there are no gods.  To promote theism is to teach that there are one or more gods.  To promote secularism is to have nothing whatsoever to say on the matter.

Really, it’s all a matter of perception.  If, for instance, our schools were actively promoting atheism (I mean REALLY actively promoting atheism, not the “promoting atheism” claimed by ignorant doomsayers), then secularism would be the champion of the religious, assuming they could not simply kill all people who disagreed with them and force their beliefs on all children everywhere.  Secularism would be okay by them if it were removing “not their beliefs”.  They would have no problem with it at all.  Then Christians could easily see how secularism was different.  There would be no confusion at all.  Why?  Because the only reason there is confusion today is because they want there to be confusion.  They want to smudge the line, stretch the truth and obfuscate the facts because secularism means a change in the status quo, which favors them.  Contrary to all of their claims, Christians do not want an equal playing field.  They’ll accept an equal playing field if they have to, as they have tried to do with the “teach the controversy” bullshit.  (Unfortunately for them the only “controversy” about evolution is in their heads.)

Equality is what Christians want only when they can’t have superiority.  Even then it’s often only a pseudo-equality they are actually attempting to achieve.  To “teach the controversy” appears, on the surface (and in their claims), to give “equal” classroom time to two competing ideas, one a scientific theory, the other a fanciful fairy tale thinly disguised as a scientific theory.  If you listen to them then “teaching the controversy” would be “equal”.  After all, people who’ve done all the work of figuring things out have one idea, people who would rather let moldy old parchments which tell of unicorns and magic dictate their reality have another idea, presenting both would be “equal”.  Of course that is a false dichotomy.  There are those who believe life on this planet was seeded by aliens or meteorites.  They may or may not be concerned with the origins of that life, but it is possible that neither the theory of evolution nor the fairy tale of intelligent design fits in with their beliefs.

In the end all of their complaints are about answering the same question.  “How can we get (more of) our teaching in the classroom so that future generations of children don’t look at people with our beliefs like they were some kind of alien retards?”  That’s really what it’s all about; propagating their beliefs.  They have no interest in equality because, all things being equal, science is going to kill idiotic religious beliefs sooner or later.  And that’s the real problem they have with secularism.  It makes all things equal.

Many probably do actually believe that secularism in schools promotes atheism.  Though I don’t think all of them are too stupid to figure it out, they are all at least too stupid by choice to want to figure it out.  It will be a while before the world as a whole rejects fairy tales in favor of enlightenment and knowledge, but in America and, especially, many European countries the winds of change are blowing, sometimes in gale force.  That has to be pretty scary for many, especially those who already believe that they are so super special and that their message is so super dangerous to anyone who doesn’t agree with them that the world is out to get them.

Fortunately, courtroom judged clear up to the Supreme Court have access to dictionaries and are, generally speaking, pretty intelligent people who are fully capable of figuring out the vast difference between “secular” and “atheist”.