capsaicin67

I'm going to vote for both on this issue!

I think that "secular" means the right thing and is historically accurate.

And I think that it must enter the public's consciousness associated with their own language of meanings, priorities, etc.

Most are never going to actively seek to become students of the Revolution and law etc. So Secular must be marketed to = something that they understand and want and have strong feelings about.

Right now the xian multimedia apparatus is so pervasive [and perversive] that it could say "secular" = "ax-murderer" and it would become interchangeable. Unforntunately, the reverse is also true. Everytime there is another scandal in the RCC, they just shout "Faith!" louder, and prop the pope up on a platform and "Weekend at Bernie's" him through another country [I love that imagery, courtesy of a caller to WLS]. Scandal after scandal plus their own history shouts and begs to be acknowledged and for the masses [no pun intended]to come to their senses and see that the all the emperor is wearing is, well, new funny clothes and hats! There's no emperor, just new clothes! What a tough sell. And they do it fairly easily. That's *really organized*, organized crime IMHO. Impressive in a very treachorous way.

Alonzo Fyfe

The problem lies in the magnitude of the resources that will be required in order to accomplish this task. How are you going to provide them with this education? How much will it cost in terms of time and effort? In the mean time, what has not been accomplished while effort has been devoted to this task?

This is why I argue for speaking to people in their own language. It is simply more efficient.

If people take the word "secular" to mean "atheist", then using the word "secular" in any other way will simply bog down the conversation, inviting confusion and promoting false belief while extra work is thrown into the conversation to try to get through this bog.

All the while, fighting against those who WANT the people to confuse "secular" with "atheist", who are trying to feed this confusion, and have a vast store of resources with which to do it.

To me, this sounds like a recipe for failure. I do not see how much good can be done this way.

d'naturalist

Thanks for the replies. Alot of good points to consider.

I'm also a fan the word "secular" and agree that we need to re-educate the public in terms of what the word really means; however, is it the best term to use for CSS issues?

The problem I see is twofold.

First, while "secular" is a technically accurate term, we're dealing with an American populace that tends to respond to things emotionally instead of intellectually. There's no need to "dumb down" the terminology -- I'm just suggesting that it might be more productive to use a terminology that inspires wider support from the general public. A widely religious populace sees no benefit to itself in having a religion-free gov't (their faith tends to blind them to the inherent dangers), but describe that gov't in terms of being all-inclusive or standing for the equal rights & status of all it's people (religious and non-religious) and I think the average person would be more willing to support it as an act of national pride. Practicality dictates that it's easier to be ideologically neutral than to give attention to all the different ideologies that call this country home.

The second part of the problem is our own tunnel-vision. Church-state separation, ideological freedom, the Pledge of Allegiance & National Motto, are not just secular issues. The McCarthy Pledge, for example, marginalizes not just us, but buddhists, hindus, pagans, Native American spiritualist, Hawaiian animists, and others. We need to do some coalition building on these issues. Take a step or two back and recognize that these aren't just our problems. They're everyone's problems. I know we address these issue from that perspective, but are we really attacking these issues from that perspective?

I know I'm basically just talking PR & semantics, but hey, that's how politics in the 20th century (and so far in the 21st) seem to work.

Alonzo Fyfe

I have participated in a great many debates where somebody has attempted to make the case that "secular is not atheist."

They are ignored -- because many people believe that secular IS atheist and if anybody says otherwise they are simply trying to create a smoke screen behind which they are trying to hide their anti-God agenda.

After all, only atheists are out there arguing that "secular is not atheist", and we all know how reputable those atheists are.

If you feel like you are bashing your head into a brick wall, the rational thing to do is to move away from the wall -- to go around it or over it instead.

The arguments that I use follow the principle of "speak to them in their own language."

*********

You should do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If atheists were in the majority, would you have them adopt one and only national pledge that began, "I pledge my allegiance . . . one nation, recognizing that there is no god, indivisible...."? Would you be comforted by the fact that your child could simply walk out of the room when this pledge was said?

Would you have them adopt a national motto that says, "We Trust In No God?"

Or would you rather have them adopt a pledge without the words, "recognizing that there is no God," and a motto more like, "e pluribus unum?"

If the latter, then it seems to follow that no good Christian can accept the pledge or the motto that were created during the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, and would see the merit of returning to the pledge and the motto that served this country so well before 1954.

The first amendment says nothing less than this: That Congress shall give no set of beliefs preference over any other, that a Congressman with political power shall treat people of no belief any differently than he would want the people of that belief to treat him if they were in power.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Are you respecting that principle here?

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The word "secular" is never used, but the conclusion remains the same.