The Crisis of Secularism – There isn’t enough of it!
I found this provocative video via the National Secular Society. The speaker is Pat Condell. He makes some excellent points, although I think he spoils it a bit with some cheap gibes. You can respect others’ religious beliefs and still be a secularist.
Here are some links relating to the comments he makes:
Evangelical leaders see secularism as a greater threat than Islam
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/religion/Evangelical-Leaders-See-Seculari…
Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore: Secularism leads to sharia law
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/29/ten-commandments-judge-roy-moore-secula…
Pope warns bishops about secularism
http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/pope-speaks-nz-bishops-about-impact-secularism…
Pope: New evangelisation needed to counter crisis of secularism
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=10494
Cardinal warns of ‘aggressive secularism’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/24/cardinal-keith-obrien-aggressive-…
In the Dark 
September 1, 2012 at 2:41 pm
I’ve been following Condell for a while and he is a mixed bag. Of course I enjoy it when he slams other religions but not my own, but as a member of a society that is largely secular I don’t ask him to respect my views – I ask him only to respect my freedom to hold them, and that he should not make any major errors of fact.
September 1, 2012 at 4:43 pm
A lot of these secularists appear to be quite angry people who can’t wait to ram their beliefs in your face, a bit like what they accuse people who have a faith of doing.
I say people but they seem to be exclusively white, male and middle-class, perhaps they want to find something to get angry about so they can claim they are getting a bum deal.
Also a lot of what he says about Islam is similar to rants made by the EDL.
September 1, 2012 at 6:54 pm
I don’t wish to get contentious here so I’d say only that I encourage people to read and compare for themselves the lives, and words to their followers, of Jesus and of Muhammad, in the only remotely contemporary sources we have, ie the gospels, and the hadith+koran+Ishaq’s sira. Then you will know what authentic Christianity and authentic Islam are, rather than the versions painted by others. Then you can debate in an informed manner how our democracy should (or should not) interact with adherents to either system. At present this debate has been hijacked by all sorts of vested interests.
September 1, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Pat Condell once wrote on his website that I (or anyone else) should not be allowed to “raise my kids religious if I want to”. How would he enforce this principle? He suggests that religion lies behind most wars and suffering. But Europe in the last 150 years set off the two bloodiest wars in human history for reasons having nothing to do with religion, and the victims of Stalin and Mao, both explicitly secular, each run into tens of millions. Isn’t his rant rather over-simplistic without any consideration of why he thinks our secularism is OK and theirs isn’t?