Comments on: Beyond church and state

By: Ferneysien

Ferneysien — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:32:44 +0000

It is difficult to know where to begin with this mishmash of incoherent ideas. What Marqusee seems to be arguing for is a new secularist/atheist movement adhering to an ideology of anti-capitalism. Much of the murder and mayhem of the 20th century — continuing in some places well into the 21st century — was the work of just such a movement and its exercise in large areas of the world of political power on the basis of the “eternal truths” it claimed to have found, making it as much a “secular cult” with its holy books, ikons, priests and prophets, as any theist-run nation state. And why this vehemence against Dawkins and Hitchens? whose aim is/was to educate rather than to impose any ideology. As for “awe and reverence rooted in the here and now”, has Marqsee read Dawkins’ “Weaving the Rainbow”?

By: Nev

Nev — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:51:28 +0000

As a secularist I can’t agree with the last bit either, I don’t see how that applies to secularism at all

By: Nicodemus

Nicodemus — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:29:30 +0000

Mike’s last 3 paragraphs contain assumptions about secularism that I, as a secularist, cannot agree with.
‘ . . . . widely held secular beliefs that imperial power is beneficent, that ‘growth’ can be unlimited in a finite environment, that the deficit is caused by too much public spending? . . .’ I suspect that most secularists are far more liberal in their views than that. Certainly my views are.

It is very simple really. It is possible to be both secular and religious, holding that that no religion should be privileged in public life, while conducting one’s personal life according to religious convictions. I am a secularist and an atheist, not wishing to control people’s private beliefs but reserving the right to resist other people using shared spaces to impose their beliefs on me.

By: Spirokeat

Spirokeat — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:01:51 +0000

At first I was ‘Ahhh’.
But then I was ‘oh”.