|
sec-u-lar-ism (sμk“y…-l…-rąz”…m)
n. 1. Religious skepticism or indifference. 2. The
view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or
public education. --sec-u-lar-ist n. --sec”u-lar-is“tic adj.
--pro-gres-sive n. 1. A person who actively favors
or strives for progress toward better conditions, as in society or
government.
val-ue (v˛l“y›) n. Abbr. val. 4. A principle,
standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable: “The speech was a
summons back to the patrician values of restraint and responsibility”
(Jonathan Alter).
sys-tem (sąs“t…m) n. Abbr. syst. 3. An
organized set of interrelated ideas or principles.
A truly secular value system can only be built upon the
principles according to which
atheists derive their world views. Many atheists may deny whether these
principles are, every one, valid or real, but they stand up to the tests of
ages and, however they get expressed, are understandable and demonstrable to
be factually based. Religions have, time and again, attempted in all kinds
of ways to banish them from human awareness. They return each time to make
themselves known, and to grow within human consciousness until religions,
once again, attempt to banish the message from existence by killing the
messengers.
Secular Progressives know right and wrong according to
natural principles that are
not so obvious nor easy to set down as are those handed down to religious
folks. Ours are culled from the soil, distilled from the oceans, refined by
the winds and rains over time, and practiced without the bluster, brutality
and bragging that accompanies the edicts of the ancient. Ours are newly
discovered by each individual, and often practiced without accreditation by
the larger societies around us, who will claim them as theirs, even though
they have gotten them using our methods. I will attempt to set most of them
down in this document, even though it may take many entries over a long
period of time. I will accomplish it if I live long enough, with the help of
good and interested friends and the love of my wife.
Every value system in the world has its own version of
what gets called “the golden rule”. This one shall be no different, except
maybe in the way the rule is stated. The Christian version,
1erroneous
as it is, seems to be the standard: “Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you.” One secular version of it, as proposed by Thomas Blaylock in
The Honest Man’s Philosophy (ISBN: 1-4208-5153-9 (hard cover)) reverses
that with “Do not do unto others, that which you would not have them do unto
you.” The pagan version, “Do as ye will, harm ye no one,” covers the same
territory with fewer words, and is often known as the Wiccan Rede.
I would prefer to set down the secular version according
to actual practice rather than resort to a sentimental or poetic version no
one really follows. Our secular golden rule comes from the fact that we are
all respectful and respectable individualists, who struggled long and hard
to define our own dignified standards after culling out the mush and keeping
that which works. It is what secular people practice and corresponds to our
way of thought and our sensibilities. If that is so, why should I not put it
into words? After years of observation, I have settled upon: “Treat others
as they would have you to, for so long as you do not offend your own
principles.”
Now that we have an idea of the general nature of what
serves as secular ideals, maybe we ought to spend some time and effort to
ponder how anyone arrives at secular values, especially anyone who belongs
to a roguish group of uncultured individualists, as per our popularized
exoteric reputation. We can begin by taking another look at the definition
offered for secularism.
If one wants to define values that are indifferent to and
free from 2religious
influences, that one must turn to the surrounding world of events and
objects, to which (s)he feels (s)he must answer all its demands, of which (s)he
feels appreciation for whatever has been granted, and with which (s)he must
learn to interact in order to thrive and survive the best possible way. That
world of objects and events includes other forms of life and other human
beings, as well as the inanimate, and an awareness of past, present and
future. That is Nature, the only source of testable ideas that we all can
confirm for ourselves and put into practice however and wherever we live,
knowing full well what the results will be.
One learns from all of that, and takes lessons from
observing what happens to others and listening to their comments, complaints
and instructions. (S)He learns from experiencing pain and pleasure, which (s)he
divides among the emotional system that serves to provide guidance and a
logical system developed over time to provide counsel. The secular values
system is far more complex than the simple systems developed to serve
religious purposes. Most people find themselves not up to the task of
learning it, and so never begin to understand it. That makes it seem
frightening; and that serves to work for religious purposes when their
intentions are to discredit it. They do themselves injustice by that, and
betray the trust of their followers.
Their business being the dissemination of doctrine,
religions see secularism as occupying a powerful competitive position, and
do regard it as competition which they desire to subdue, even if it requires
them to resort to immoral means. They cannot help themselves, even though it
eventually works against them, because the values statements arrived at
under our system so heartily conflict with theirs. Let me offer a simple
example of a basic precept: In the secularist system, each individual is
agreeably held responsible for his and her own actions and choices, and so
the individual recognizes that in order to perform most responsibly and
achieve the most and best results, one must take care of oneself in order to
maintain the capability to give others the best possible care. In the
prevalent religious systems, a god comes first and foremost, and everyone is
expected to submerge his and her own best interests beneath that, which
offers a reason for why religious people (if they practice their beliefs)
will set aside their self-interests to the point of bankrupting their entire
family in order to support religious views in an election.
Secularists feel amazed by that. Secularists wonder how so
many people can support obvious liars to the detriment of their own lives.
Having taken the hard route to gain their own set of values, secularists
overlook that religions consist of value-systems that arrived from ancient,
unschooled principles most often taught by mentors whose only knowledge is
from the institutions that employ them, from a book whose chapters are
filled with depictions of the evil nature of knowledge. What seems obviously
wonderful to secularists has, for their lifetimes, been presented as too
evil for the religious to look at.
Other values get differently presented within the two
systems. Family values, in a religious system, means preserving the sanctity
and purity of family (not a particular family or one’s own family, but the
abstract concept of family) for the worshipful honor of their god(s). To a
secular person, family values refer to the responsibility to maintain the
welfare, stability, and viability, and to nurture the growth and maximize
the abilities and potential of his or her own family in each way they are
capable. Personal values, in a religious view, refers to one’s own
dedication and service to the god(s), and the fearful sublimation of self to
that purpose. A secularist who acknowledges no gods can hardly be expected
to hold that view. Instead, his sense of purpose and of personal worth
determine personal values set according to an overall lifetime purpose that
he or she has sometime recognized as being a worthwhile need to fulfill or
mission to accomplish. Just like their religious counterparts, secularists
will be found in all strengths and weaknesses in their awareness and
practice of this particular aspect of secular values. Most of us will be
downright sinful against our own values, seen in this light. Why must that
be?
The one advantage religious systems have over secular
systems is motivation. Lack of motivational resources and inspiration will
likely bring about our downfall sooner than all of the religions’ efforts.
The main advantage the secular system has over religion is accuracy.
Accuracy is the explanation for why independent-minded folks can find their
own way into secularity and, over a long period of time as they continue to
study and investigate, arrive at nearly identical conclusions about most
things of importance. Accuracy results from using the same source material,
which dependably responds to testing, and which maintains a constancy in its
requirements upon us that varies only according to environmental conditions.
Accuracy results also from the immediacy of the subject materials: We are
immersed in Nature, and Nature is what we must study if we expect to live
our best according to standards set by our interactions with it. Religion’s
standards come from hearsay and word of mouth, much of it written into books
of unknown origin, or from books based upon other documents of unknown
origin; and, religion’s standards depend upon the existence of a host of
unverifiable claims still waiting for demonstration of veracity after
millenniums of obfuscation, outright avoidance and red herrings.
Most of secularity’s value systems come straight out from
the action of common sense: If anyone should place their hand on a hot lid,
the results will induce them to avoid that action in the future. If sniffing
an aromatic flower induces pleasurable sensations, they will seek to do that
again. Truth be told, this is a common way for all human beings to learn
common values, if they have not been instilled with falsely contrived
compunctions against it.
It is the artifice that separate the religious from the
secularist: to be told an activity is immoral because a not-present god has
decreed it cannot be demonstrated to be true. The disparity between
allegedly god-given moral claims made by all the religious creeds demands
they be challenged and tested, and that cannot be done: the gods cannot be
called into presence so any so-called truths can be demonstrated. The
results of challenging allegations religions pose against certain activities
and conditions produce an amazing uniformity of results. It is that
uniformity that points an accusatory finger at those presenting religious
moral indictments and demanding laws be made in accordance to them. When
results are uniformly, dependably, and predictably null, the human beings
deprecating all kinds of natural activities and conditions have contrived
baseless allegations for whatever reasons one could presume, and are rightly
held suspect for it. More so, the onus of providing verifiable, repeatable,
testable evidence in support of their claims is theirs, even if they in fact
go great distances in avoidance and by proclaiming the contrary. Their
actions speak where they refuse words, and where their words are profuse.
The secular approach depends upon human curiosity for its
development and acceptance. That which cannot be tested is rendered null by
default. Claims that are forbidden to be tested are rendered null by
default. Claims made about deeds, edicts and actions rendered into existence
by beings not present are null by default until the alleged speakers and
performers show up to give verification; otherwise, it’s hearsay no matter
the secondary source, and hearsay is inadmissible. Null. Zero. No gods. No
angels upon whose naked bodies we would love to gaze with wonderful
admiration. No wonder they won’t show up: Christians would shoot them.
Muslims would lop off their heads. Jews would run at them with tanks.
Catholics would molest them, and Mormons would add them to their harems.
They’d never make it back to Heaven. It would be far better for them to make
their presence known in the midst of a barricading, nurturing group of
unbelievers. The worst they’d have to face there would be a barrage of
enlightening questions.
If such denizens exist, don’t you expect they know that?
This page copied from
http://www.atheistlloyd.com/spv.html |
