Quotes About Secularism

I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative to solve our problems, and stop relying on prayer and wishful thinking. If we have faith in ourselves, we won't have to have faith in gods.

And won't the world be better if no one is ever again burnt in the name of God?" I asked. "If there is no more faith in God to make men do that to each other? What is the danger in a secular world where horrors like that don't happen?

They charged that liberal relativism, permissiveness (= moral laxity), affirmative action, and secularism were softening the national will, mocking ideals of loyalty and patriotism, and in the process undermining national unity in the global struggle with Soviet communism.

The Cold War liberal even discovered the political utility of a civil religion. He was prepared to put aside the secularism and rationalism that, historically, had been among liberalism's defining elements and to seek validation for liberal anticommunism abroad and at home by appealing to theology, most notably that of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism. Niebuhr was notoriously pessimistic, subscribing to a view that stressed the dark side of human nature.

I decided to take God and organized religion seriously, and to reject the secular life which in my teens had looked attractive because it allowed me to act in any way that I wanted.

Anyone who is still attached to religious ideas and continues to hold to them cannot, therefore, in the nature of the case, be a member of the Communist Party.

As North American culture glides toward secularism, significant numbers of church attendees view their church as a place where they gather in safety with others who hold similar beliefs and values. To them, the church is a home where they come each weekend to be healed, comforted, and encouraged before they venture back into an unfriendly world. Instead of being pioneers, venturing out to reach a lost world, numbers of churches have settled down to maintain the farm.

Secular humanists of every type may ridicule the Bible, but they cannot escape it; and in their obsession with change, calls for reform, doomsday warnings, and utopian visions, they continue to steal from it.

Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It's the absence of religion, and that's a wonderful thing.

'Secularism' is the most misused word in the country. Its misuse should come to an end.

I think that the secular work environment in general is a place that's challenging for Christians to thrive in without getting caught up in materialism or in competitiveness or in things that are really not important.

It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.

A lot of us were worried that the secular fabric of the country was under threat and it was time that citizens begin to speak out. Hence we called ourselves Citizen Speak India.

No god ever gave any man anything, nor ever answered any prayer at any time - nor ever will.

One of the advantages of atheism is takes so little of your time.

The world is polarizing over religion. It is getting both more religious and less religious at the same time.

We will not, therefore, lose our time praying to an imaginary god for things which our own exertions alone can procure.

Um Estado laico não é inimigo da religião; é um Estado que, para resguardar a liberdade dos cidadãos, desviou a prática religiosa da esfera pública para o âmbito que lhe corresponde, que é o da esfera privada. Porque quando a religião e o Estado se confundem, desaparece irremediavelmente a [L]iberdade.

Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. Atheistic humanism became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction.

One reason why the developed world has a difficult job grappling with the Islamist threat is that it doesn't take religion seriously. It condescends to it. In Europe's wholly secularized environment, the enduring religiosity of America is not just odd, but primitive.

The government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion.

In our secular society, school has become the replacement for church, and like church it requires that its teachings must be taken on faith.

You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.

One of the challenges of secularism is that it's not something outside us. In too many instances, secularism has so permeated the church that sometimes it's the frame of reference even for very good people, people who have a strong allegiance to the church.