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The Myth of Secularism Rick Booye

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The Myth of Secularism Rick Booye The Myth of Secularism Rick Booye I. Defining Terms. A. Myth. 1. A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon… 2. A widely held but false belief or idea. B. Secularism. 1. Online Dictionary: Of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal. 2. Philosophical Secularism. Secularism as a philosophical worldview, not simply as a political construct to create a separation of church and state. (Wilfred McClay, prof. of intellectual history, at Pew Research interview) a) Political Secularism: the idea that the state cannot and should not mandate a religion. b) Philosophical Secularism: the idea that life is essentially non-theistic, unless you want to think about God. 3. Philosophical Secularism refers to a worldview that assumes life is essentially un-religious, naturalistic. It maintains that real life is not related to God and that the idea of God is a human construct. 4. Modern Philosophical Secularism does not state flatly that God does not exist (though some atheist secularists do say such things). Instead it says that the ideas having to do with God, religious convictions, values and so forth, have no place in public discourse or culture-shaping. a) Theological knowledge is not actual knowledge of reality. (1) It is not factual, and therefore not relevant to actual life. b) Theological thinking should not be allowed in the public square. II. Philosophical Secularism, the way many Americans assume it, is essentially a myth. 5 points A. It claims not to be atheistic. But that is a myth. 1. Secularism is the assertion not that God does not exist, but that he is irrelevant to public knowledge and cultural discourse. This was the stated position of George Holyoke, who coined the term. But… a) This is philosophical slight-of-hand. If God exists—he is by definition relevant. b) If you claim he exists and is not relevant, upon what theological basis are you making that assertion? 2. By asserting that God is not relevant to public life the secularist is really saying that God might as well not exist at all. This is practical atheism. 3. So secularism is actually atheism masquerading as intellectual integrity/neutrality. B. It claims not to be a “faith” position. But that is a myth. 1. If PS is closet atheism—it is a faith position. a) PS claims to be based on “facts” derived supposedly from science and sociology and psychology. But none of these “facts” address God’s existence at all. 2. The idea that life is entirely naturalistic, that God cannot be brought into the picture—is itself a statement about God and one that must be assumed rather than proven. That is, a faith position. 3. The idea that you can’t believe in God unless his existence is proven to you empirically is itself a faith assumption about you (that you should be able to figure eternity out) and God (that he is sufficiently “within” the universe to be proven to you. 4. All ultimate truth claims are based on faith positions, presuppositions that cannot be proven. Secularism lecture page 1 C. It claims to be inclusive, tolerant and pluralistic. But that is a myth. 1. In fact, it claims implicitly to be the only valid worldview. 2. By excluding the very idea of serious theism from public discourse philosophical secularism is claiming implicitly to be the arbiter of reality—the only valid worldview. a) Is PS tolerant? Not really. Theism is almost universal in world history and the vast majority of people in this country claim to have a real faith in God. Yet, publishing a scholarly paper in one of our secular universities that references providence, God, Christ, or spiritual issues as real facts is career suicide, if any “secular” publisher will even touch the manuscript. b) Is PS pluralistic? Not really. Usually secularism appeals to the idea that nobody knows the whole truth about God, and therefore nobody can speak of real knowledge of God—except the secular pluralist apparently. 3. Even supposedly non-religious people pray and believe in life after death. 4. By claiming that “nobody really knows” about God, secularism claims to know the Ultimate Truth. D. It claims to be the majority report in the world. But that is a myth. 1. You get the impression from TV and media and public education that everybody is secular. But if you scratch the surface you find the opposite. 2. The “secularization theory” of the 60s said that as societies modernized they would become less religious. This simply hasn’t happened. The opposite has happened. Religion is everywhere in the world and in the news. 3. Quote Prothero on Secularization Theory. E. It claims that we can remove our religious knowledge from public discourse. But that is a myth. 1. It is nonsense to say that faith convictions have nothing to do moral public policy. Voting and legislation are by definition moral enterprises and morality is grounded in faith in something transcendent, usually God. 2. It is nonsense to say that religion does not affect morals and those morals cannot be legislated. Classic secularist dogma: You can’t legislate morality? The fact is that you can’t not legislate morality. The only real question is where the morality originates. Is it based on human ideas or on God’s Secularism lecture page 2 III. What should our response be as Christians? A. Be clear on the Christian worldview and how it is different from secularism. (Frame’s outline) 1. Ontology. In the beginning God… a) This is a perfectly legitimate presupposition with more logical support than secularism. 2. Epistemology. a) God’s Word creates and sustains and teaches us to think. 3. Ethics/values. God’s moral will revealed a) Derived from God and His Word 4. Gospel: Jesus Christ is Lord a) God has become a human and has single-handedly changed the destiny of the universe. B. Be informed about the nature of our culture. 1. This is our mission field 2. Where you are, and who you want to communicate with.? Learn the language. C. Be prepared with a respectful and clear, but unintimidated, response. 1 Peter 3:15 1. Philosophical Secularism is all foam and no beer. It cannot support its own ethical systems without resorting to a sort of fideism, or irrationalism (moral reality just “is”) Secularism lecture page 3 IV. Notes. A. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (quoted in Willard, Knowing Christ Today, p 11) If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all … One reason why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. B. Ambrose Bierce on human reason. From Mike Mason, The Gospel According to Job, 146. [Human Reason] “Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.” C. J. Budziszewski on Atheism. From Geisler and Hoffman, Why I Am A Christian 2nd Edition, Baker, 2009, p.58. J. Budziszewski is professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin, where he has taught since 1981. He specializes in ethics, political philosophy and the interaction of these two fields with religion and theology. My pretense when the agnostic mood struck me, was that we cannot know anything about God or his existence. Now, there is a great difficulty in dogmatically asserting God’s unknowability. To say that we cannot know anything about God is to say something about God; it is to say that if there is a God, he is unknowable. But in that case, he is not entirely unknowable, for the agnostic certainly thinks that we can know one thing about him: that nothing else can be known about him. Unfortunately, the position that we can know exactly one thing about God—his unknowability in all respects except this—is equally insupportable, for why should this one thing be an exception? How could we know that any possible God would be of such a nature that nothing else could be known about him? On what basis could we rule out his knowability in all other respects but this one? The very attempt to justify the claim confutes it, for the agnostic would have to know a great many things about God in order to know that he couldn’t know anything else about him. In fact, doesn’t he actually have a rather elaborate picture of God in his mind…filled with all sorts of colorful details? Details like what? First, the agnostic must suppose (have faith) that any possible God is infinitely remote— because otherwise he couldn’t be so sure that he couldn’t know anything else about him. Second, the agnostic must suppose that any possible God is either powerless to make himself know, unwilling to make himself known, or unconcerned about whether he is known or not—because otherwise he would have provided the means for the agnostic to know him. Third, the agnostic must suppose that any possible God is completely unlike the biblical portrayal of him—because in that account, God is anything but remote. He desires to be known, he has already provided the means for the agnostic to know him, and in fact the agnostic does know him (Rom.1:18ff) Secularism lecture page 4 D.
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