Conservative Christian SIWs triggered by atheist Christmas billboard, need safe space

[One Bad Pig]

The religion of many (most?) atheists is secular humanism, which is certainly a "belief" with 15 tenants. AND, they even "take up an offering".

That would be "tenets" not "tenants."

You're welcome.

[Starlight]

The religion of many (most?) atheists is secular humanism, which is certainly a "belief" with 15 tenants. AND, they even "take up an offering".

I've described myself as a secular humanist before, but I do not agree with a substantial amount (50-66%) of that list. I think you mislead yourself when you think of secular humanism in this way.

[Cow Poke]

I've described myself as a secular humanist before, but I do not agree with a substantial amount (50-66%) of that list. I think you mislead yourself when you think of secular humanism in this way.

No.

[Cow Poke]

That would be "tenets" not "tenants."

You're welcome.

Yes, much appreciated.

[Sparko]

No.

What do you mean "No?" Doncha know that Starlight gets to define Atheism for everyone? What he believes, EVERY Atheist believes. He is the standard!

[Sparko]

Yes, much appreciated.

[Cow Poke]

What do you mean "No?" Doncha know that Starlight gets to define Atheism for everyone? What he believes, EVERY Atheist believes. He is the standard!

I actually typed "With which points do you not agree?", but I quickly realized I really don't give a flyin' flip, so I deleted that part.

[Sparko]

I actually typed "With which points do you not agree?", but I quickly realized I really don't give a flyin' flip, so I deleted that part.

well he started out by saying that Atheism is a religious view, but now that the other atheists are saying "no" he wants to backpedal and argue that it is not, apparently.

[Cow Poke]

well he started out by saying that Atheism is a religious view, but now that the other atheists are saying "no" he wants to backpedal and argue that it is not, apparently.

I know the atheists won't agree, but from my perspective, there's the religion of God found in the Bible, then there's "everything else" which is the religion of man. Naturally, the atheists will claim that Christianity is only "man's religion".

Secular Humanism is, indeed, the worship of man and his intellect and accomplishments apart from God.

[Mountain Man]

I think Craig is just falling back on the age old tactic of trying to bully his opponents into a game that is impossible to win...

I think it's hilarious whenever atheists basically admit that they can't defend their own worldview.

[Starlight]

I know the atheists won't agree, but from my perspective, there's the religion of God found in the Bible, then there's "everything else" which is the religion of man. Naturally, the atheists will claim that Christianity is only "man's religion".

Secular Humanism is, indeed, the worship of man and his intellect and accomplishments apart from God.

Naturally many atheists would say religions are about man constructing god(s) in their image. A lot of human religions have suspiciously humanoid gods(s) who look human, have human limitations, bicker with each other, etc. The Old Testament shows this sort of origin, where "Elohim" and "Jehovah" seem to have been understood as gods in the Canaanite pantheon (later merged), and he does very human things like wrestling with Jacob, not having power over chariots because he's a mountain deity, not knowing things and needing to investigate or send servants to investigate. Eventually Persian concepts from their Zoroastrianism religion, and various Greek philosophical concepts seem to have gotten mixed in, to lead to the monotheistic omniscient omnipotent and non-human deity of the medieval philosophers. [/tangent]



Anyway, let me explain how I think of secular humanism...

You probably find your relationship with your wife and daughters really, really, meaningful to you. Perhaps you would even give your life for them. You doubtless have many friendships you greatly value and find deeply meaningful to you personally. Perhaps you love your job, and perhaps it gives you a great sense of satisfaction. And around the world, billions upon billions of people find a deep sense of meaning and satisfaction in their relationships, in their friendships, in their work, and in their lives. I am not trying to say anything controversial here - I'm just stating the absolute obvious that every single person should be able to agree with: That all intelligent conscious beings get various kinds of satisfaction from people and things in their lives, and find those people and things meaningful in various ways. That's just how it is, that's just how people's minds work. Let's call this "natural meaning" - i.e. senses of meaning and purpose and satisfaction and joy that just naturally arise in life just as a product of the fact that we are intelligent conscious beings who have various intentions and purposes in our life and happen to find joy and meaning in relationships and the like.

Now, along comes religion. It tells us God Has a Plan For You. That Heaven in Infinite in length and goodness. God's Purposes are what matters. They give True Meaning to your life. Following God is all-important. Give up everything you have and Come, Follow Him. Beside Him, and His Glory, and His Purpose, all else is as dust, all else is meaningless beside His Infinite Greatness and Purpose. Insert a sermon of your choice on this sort of topic here. I'm not trying to be controversial with these particular phrases - but rather what I'm trying to get at is that religion, via its nature and its teachings, has a tendency to lay fairly exclusive claims to Meaning and Purpose. God's Plan for the world gives a Purpose To Your Life, the fact that God created the world gives Meaning to it. What I observe happening is that religious claims to meaning displace and override "natural meaning", they tend to consistently assert that the religious purpose and meaning is an order of magnitude, or infinitely, more important than any human-created sense of meaning or joy or purpose. Again, I don't think I'm being controversial here - religion fairly consistently makes bold claims about its own level of importance which use words like "infinite" and "eternal soul" and "God's plan" and "purpose for your life" etc. Religion by its nature tends to assert itself to be more important than the mundane world. Religious people even often view it as themselves vs "the world".

So what happens if you take away religion? If you draw a big red line through religion, and say that it's wrong and doesn't exist. A lot of religious people will panic at the thought and go all Nietzsche-esque and embrace Nihilism and say that removing religion strips life of the Meaning and Purpose that religion brings, and say that because there's no longer commandments of God to follow that there can't be any Morality either. Life without religion is perceived by them to be some sort of apocalyptically self-indulgent depression-inducing disastrously bad, sad, and immoral state of affairs. I see religious people saying these kinds of things all the time on this site. Again, I'm not trying to be controversial in saying this - I think everyone should be able to agree with me that a lot of religious people think religion plays a central role in providing meaning, purpose, and morality in life, and believe that atheists by denying religion are fundamentally cutting themselves off from access to those sort of things.

But what actually happens when you take away religion? All the things in the world that naturally give people meaning, purpose, and joy and which religion had dismissed and overridden, are still present. And not only are they still present, they are the only things in the world that give people meaning and purpose and joy. Every time an intelligent being finds meaning in a relationship, every time a person experiences joy in an activity, every time a person has a sense of purpose in their work, there is more meaning and joy and purpose that exists. Atheism does not zero these things by rejecting religion's attempts to add to them. Rather religion attempts to zero them by insisting there are "infinite" and "eternal" things that are so much more important that they zero them by comparison. Once religion is out of the way and stops zeroing these things, then these things can be truly appreciated for what they are. And in absence of an infinite standard to compare them to, these things get scaled by our perceptions to be larger - let me try and explain what I mean - the thing that is "most meaningful" to me that "guides me and my life" is always perceived by me as a certain 'size' in the sense that it "fills my horizons" - that which I focus on and focus my life on expands to fill my vision and becomes what I care about - its 'size' is the maximum size of my perceptions, my life, and my everything. So a religious person might dedicate their life to God, and with their every waking moment try to serve God, and work for God and eventually die for God. The meaning and purpose that filled and consumed their life was the thought of serving God and following his purpose. As an atheist, that's not going to be the meaning and purpose that fills and consumes my life, but I will certainly find other senses of purpose and meaning in my life, and those that I do find will naturally scale to fill my life, because if I find only one meaningful thing then that will be my meaningful thing, and if I find 10 of them, then all ten of them will be my meaningful things, and I find 1000 of them, then those 1000 will all in sum be the total of what I personally focus on and see as providing a sense of meaning.

I see 'secular humanism' a natural product of atheism, because once you wipe out the added 'infinite purpose' nonsense that theism tries to add in, what you have left giving meaning and purpose in the world are the intelligent conscious beings who are going about their daily lives ascribing meaning and purpose to all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. The sum total of meaning and purpose in the world is thus the sum total of all meaning and purpose created by such intelligent beings. The only meaningless world would be a world which completely lacked such intelligent beings to ascribe any meaning and purpose. That naturally follows from atheism, and acknowledging that in essence leads one to be a secular humanist. Because if you define 'religion' in a loose sense as 'that from which generates meaning and purpose in the world', then it follows in atheism that the 'god' is mankind who creates meaning and purpose. So when you say...

Secular Humanism is, indeed, the worship of man and his intellect and accomplishments apart from God.

...I somewhat agree in a loose sense. When you don't add in God, man is what there is (and aliens, of course, and the more intelligent of the animals that are capable of experiencing the world and having meaning and purpose in their actions and thoughts). As a result, furthering the well-being and freedom of those intelligent entities to create further meaning and purpose can be viewed as a meta-meaning/meta-purpose that one can have for one's life. And the most useful measure of the morality of any action becomes to what extent it furthers the ability of these beings to create meaning and purpose. The well-being and freedom of intelligent conscious beings becomes everything - and that is what fills my personal horizons, that is what I think about everyday, and that is what I am deeply deeply deeply passionate about and would die for, and that is why as an atheist I am naturally a secular humanist and deeply passionate about morality and helping others.

[Sea of red]

I know the atheists won't agree, but from my perspective, there's the religion of God found in the Bible, then there's "everything else" which is the religion of man. Naturally, the atheists will claim that Christianity is only "man's religion".

You do understand that the followers of all the other religions see things from the exact perspective, right?

[Cow Poke]

You do understand that the followers of all the other religions see things from the exact perspective, right?

They have a right to be wrong.

[Cow Poke]

Naturally many atheists would say religions are about man constructing god(s) in their image.

Uhhhh, yeah, which is exactly why I said...

Naturally, the atheists will claim that Christianity is only "man's religion".

[Bisto]

Anyway, let me explain how I think of secular humanism...

You probably find your relationship with your wife and daughters really, really, meaningful to you. Perhaps you would even give your life for them. You doubtless have many friendships you greatly value and find deeply meaningful to you personally. Perhaps you love your job, and perhaps it gives you a great sense of satisfaction. And around the world, billions upon billions of people find a deep sense of meaning and satisfaction in their relationships, in their friendships, in their work, and in their lives. I am not trying to say anything controversial here - I'm just stating the absolute obvious that every single person should be able to agree with: That all intelligent conscious beings get various kinds of satisfaction from people and things in their lives, and find those people and things meaningful in various ways. That's just how it is, that's just how people's minds work. Let's call this "natural meaning" - i.e. senses of meaning and purpose and satisfaction and joy that just naturally arise in life just as a product of the fact that we are intelligent conscious beings who have various intentions and purposes in our life and happen to find joy and meaning in relationships and the like.

Now, along comes religion. It tells us God Has a Plan For You. That Heaven in Infinite in length and goodness. God's Purposes are what matters. They give True Meaning to your life. Following God is all-important. Give up everything you have and Come, Follow Him. Beside Him, and His Glory, and His Purpose, all else is as dust, all else is meaningless beside His Infinite Greatness and Purpose. Insert a sermon of your choice on this sort of topic here. I'm not trying to be controversial with these particular phrases - but rather what I'm trying to get at is that religion, via its nature and its teachings, has a tendency to lay fairly exclusive claims to Meaning and Purpose. God's Plan for the world gives a Purpose To Your Life, the fact that God created the world gives Meaning to it. What I observe happening is that religious claims to meaning displace and override "natural meaning", they tend to consistently assert that the religious purpose and meaning is an order of magnitude, or infinitely, more important than any human-created sense of meaning or joy or purpose. Again, I don't think I'm being controversial here - religion fairly consistently makes bold claims about its own level of importance which use words like "infinite" and "eternal soul" and "God's plan" and "purpose for your life" etc. Religion by its nature tends to assert itself to be more important than the mundane world. Religious people even often view it as themselves vs "the world".

So what happens if you take away religion? If you draw a big red line through religion, and say that it's wrong and doesn't exist. A lot of religious people will panic at the thought and go all Nietzsche-esque and embrace Nihilism and say that removing religion strips life of the Meaning and Purpose that religion brings, and say that because there's no longer commandments of God to follow that there can't be any Morality either. Life without religion is perceived by them to be some sort of apocalyptically self-indulgent depression-inducing disastrously bad, sad, and immoral state of affairs. I see religious people saying these kinds of things all the time on this site. Again, I'm not trying to be controversial in saying this - I think everyone should be able to agree with me that a lot of religious people think religion plays a central role in providing meaning, purpose, and morality in life, and believe that atheists by denying religion are fundamentally cutting themselves off from access to those sort of things.

But what actually happens when you take away religion? All the things in the world that naturally give people meaning, purpose, and joy and which religion had dismissed and overridden, are still present. And not only are they still present, they are the only things in the world that give people meaning and purpose and joy. Every time an intelligent being finds meaning in a relationship, every time a person experiences joy in an activity, every time a person has a sense of purpose in their work, there is more meaning and joy and purpose that exists. Atheism does not zero these things by rejecting religion's attempts to add to them. Rather religion attempts to zero them by insisting there are "infinite" and "eternal" things that are so much more important that they zero them by comparison. Once religion is out of the way and stops zeroing these things, then these things can be truly appreciated for what they are. And in absence of an infinite standard to compare them to, these things get scaled by our perceptions to be larger - let me try and explain what I mean - the thing that is "most meaningful" to me that "guides me and my life" is always perceived by me as a certain 'size' in the sense that it "fills my horizons" - that which I focus on and focus my life on expands to fill my vision and becomes what I care about - its 'size' is the maximum size of my perceptions, my life, and my everything. So a religious person might dedicate their life to God, and with their every waking moment try to serve God, and work for God and eventually die for God. The meaning and purpose that filled and consumed their life was the thought of serving God and following his purpose. As an atheist, that's not going to be the meaning and purpose that fills and consumes my life, but I will certainly find other senses of purpose and meaning in my life, and those that I do find will naturally scale to fill my life, because if I find only one meaningful thing then that will be my meaningful thing, and if I find 10 of them, then all ten of them will be my meaningful things, and I find 1000 of them, then those 1000 will all in sum be the total of what I personally focus on and see as providing a sense of meaning.

I see 'secular humanism' a natural product of atheism, because once you wipe out the added 'infinite purpose' nonsense that theism tries to add in, what you have left giving meaning and purpose in the world are the intelligent conscious beings who are going about their daily lives ascribing meaning and purpose to all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. The sum total of meaning and purpose in the world is thus the sum total of all meaning and purpose created by such intelligent beings. The only meaningless world would be a world which completely lacked such intelligent beings to ascribe any meaning and purpose. That naturally follows from atheism, and acknowledging that in essence leads one to be a secular humanist. Because if you define 'religion' in a loose sense as 'that from which generates meaning and purpose in the world', then it follows in atheism that the 'god' is mankind who creates meaning and purpose. So when you say...
...I somewhat agree in a loose sense. When you don't add in God, man is what there is (and aliens, of course, and the more intelligent of the animals that are capable of experiencing the world and having meaning and purpose in their actions and thoughts). As a result, furthering the well-being and freedom of those intelligent entities to create further meaning and purpose can be viewed as a meta-meaning/meta-purpose that one can have for one's life. And the most useful measure of the morality of any action becomes to what extent it furthers the ability of these beings to create meaning and purpose. The well-being and freedom of intelligent conscious beings becomes everything - and that is what fills my personal horizons, that is what I think about everyday, and that is what I am deeply deeply deeply passionate about and would die for, and that is why as an atheist I am naturally a secular humanist and deeply passionate about morality and helping others.

Thanks for the explanations, Mr. SL -- I pictured something like that in my atheist friends's opinions.