The Sickness of Secularism

Seems that the voice of secularism / humanism / atheism is being heard loud and clear by the religious. My comments in Red

The threat to tolerance and coexistence no longer comes from religion.

by Soumaya Ghannoushi

"We are witnessing the rise of an arrogant secularist rhetoric founded on belief in the supremacy of reason and absolute faith in science and progress.

These high priests of rationality, who in Britain include in their ranks such names as Richard Dawkins and Anthony Grayling have erected a world of dichotomies, borders and fences: secular v religious, rationality v superstition, progress v backwardness, public v private

... today's self- proclaimed guardians of enlightenment and rationality are offshoots of the intellectual poverty of eighteenth century positivism and scienticism, who disfigure philosophy and thought, history and reality.

Why are there views disfiguring? read above as: I don't agree with what they say.

They are the victims of what may be referred to as a sick secularist consciousness.

Are the religious victims of a sick religious consciousness?

Just as they simplify the breathtakingly complex phenomenon that is the human being,

Dawkins and Grayling dont do this.

these missionaries of secularism impoverish the social order, filling it with sacred boundaries between the private and the public, and strictly laying down what may and may not be practiced in each.

why should i or my children be exposed to religious superstitions? Why should religion have so many privelages in todays society?

You may indulge in your religious "superstitions" behind the thick closed doors of your home, church, temple, or mosque. But the moment you step outside into the light of the secular sphere, you must discard your cross, turban, or headscarf. Communication, they insist, is only possible within uniformity. Such was the argument used in France to ban the Islamic headscarf in schools and government offices last year, and which is gaining currency in Britain today.

Secularist dogmatism is no less dangerous than its religious sibling.

for dogmatism read fundamentalism.

Secularism itself can be, and indeed has been in many historical instances, highly destructive. We should remember that Europe's modern history is scarred with the brutality of secular totalitarianism. Neither the Jacobins, fascists, Nazis or Stalinists were priests or theologians. They were fanatical secularists who worshipped in reason's grand temple and sacrificed hundreds of thousands for the god of progress, fervently vowing to create a new man and a new world on the ruins of the old.

the religious are deluded.

With the retreat of Christianity and shrinking of the ecclesiastical institution in Western Europe, the threat to tolerance and coexistence no longer comes from religion. What we should be dreading today is the tyranny of an arrogant secularism

religion can be tyrannical

which hides its exclusionist and intolerant face behind the sublime mask of reason, enlightenment and progress. "

so what is wrong with reason and the scientific method? Are not reason & science the best ways to understand the world? Should the delusion of "Faith" and "Belief in God" be replaced by "Reason" and "Science" today?

Now read the article by Anthony Grayling