[Serious] How many reasonable solutions are there to any particular social issue?

[no one]

42, the answer is always 42.

[Rhizomorph13]

It means the same thing that religious humanism does.  Secular humanism is secular with respect to -other- religions (but certainly not all of them - plenty of fuckin "buddhists", eh?).

Consider this.  As a secular humanist, can you imagine any reason why you wouldn't want humanist principles, values, and conclusions informing your government and society?

Yes I have a problem, if the root was religious.

Quick example: a sect of Christianity with a central belief that homosexuality is to be cured instead of accepted would maintain that the greatest humanitarian decision regarding homosexuals would be to "treat" them of their horrible affliction and their belief would be informed from their bible.

I just wholly reject your "-other- religions" idea

Secular Humanism is simply NOT a religion and you are muddying the waters unnecessarily.

I would also assert that you need not link religious and humanism because religion has a main thrust of being the best thing for humans without an added word whereas secularism needs the humanism part to differentiate from the negating idea of secular(which simply indicates not religious, or without a god).

[brewer]

There are only a handful of reasonable options/opinions to any particular issue - it is absurd to believe that every/any issue has tens of reasonable solutions.

Let's get serious, and solve some problems using those critical thinking skills that atheists are inherently endowed with and reason some reasonable solutions.

Are you the person that will be telling me what I should accept as a reasonable option/solution?

Kinda sounds like you want to be doing the solving for me.

[Belacqua]

Secular Humanism is simply NOT a religion and you are muddying the waters unnecessarily.

Maybe it would clarify things to be stricter about the word "secular." 

I don't think that it simply means "non-religious." It is an attitude or policy held in regard to religion. Specifically, it means that you think a given area (government, education, ethical choices) should be made without regard to religious dogma. (So it wouldn't make sense to say that people before religion, like cavemen, were secular. Because they didn't have a policy in regard to religion.)

This means that you could have a secular government even if everyone in the government was religious. They just agree that the government itself shouldn't operate on religious principles. 

I think a secular humanist might in fact hold certain ideas which sound religious. Maybe a belief in the afterlife, or something like that. But he would acknowledge that such beliefs shouldn't form public policy.

In practice it might be kind of tricky, since a person who really believes his religion is the Truth would want to use its principles in policy decisions. But as an ideal or a policy it makes sense. 

Humanism has various meanings. It originally meant Renaissance scholars who studied non-Christian writing, especially the Greeks and Romans. Of course the Greeks and Romans had their own religion, so a lot of what they were reading wasn't atheistic. 

But I think that any society which wants to welcome diversity would pretty much require a secular government, education, etc. And humanists (in the modern sense) would hold to their own reason-based beliefs and argue for them in the marketplace of ideas. If they made it into an assertion that they know the Truth, then it starts to seem religion-like -- or at least ideological -- and maybe stops being secular.

[Succubus#2]

You forgot Plato.

[Rhizomorph13]

Secular Humanism is simply NOT a religion and you are muddying the waters unnecessarily.

Maybe it would clarify things to be stricter about the word "secular." 

I don't think that it simply means "non-religious." It is an attitude or policy held in regard to religion. Specifically, it means that you think a given area (government, education, ethical choices) should be made without regard to religious dogma. (So it wouldn't make sense to say that people before religion, like cavemen, were secular. Because they didn't have a policy in regard to religion.)

This means that you could have a secular government even if everyone in the government was religious. They just agree that the government itself shouldn't operate on religious principles. 

I think a secular humanist might in fact hold certain ideas which sound religious. Maybe a belief in the afterlife, or something like that. But he would acknowledge that such beliefs shouldn't form public policy.

In practice it might be kind of tricky, since a person who really believes his religion is the Truth would want to use its principles in policy decisions. But as an ideal or a policy it makes sense. 

Humanism has various meanings. It originally meant Renaissance scholars who studied non-Christian writing, especially the Greeks and Romans. Of course the Greeks and Romans had their own religion, so a lot of what they were reading wasn't atheistic. 

But I think that any society which wants to welcome diversity would pretty much require a secular government, education, etc. And humanists (in the modern sense) would hold to their own reason-based beliefs and argue for them in the marketplace of ideas. If they made it into an assertion that they know the Truth, then it starts to seem religion-like -- or at least ideological -- and maybe stops being secular.

You can't have a secular government with all religious people. I mean, I get it, you can try but...

your ideas inform your actions and if your ideas are informed by a religion, that will color your governments policies.

You said, "I think a secular humanist might in fact hold certain ideas which sound religious. Maybe a belief in the afterlife, or something like that." That wouldn't be secular as per this definition, "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis."

Make no error; I understand that this is only the start of the discussion and dictionary definitions don't settle things, but I AM attempting to clarify things by using a simple, strict definition of secular that occludes mystical ideas full stop.

[Belacqua]

Make no error; I understand that this is only the start of the discussion and dictionary definitions don't settle things, but I AM attempting to clarify things by using a simple, strict definition of secular that occludes mystical ideas full stop.

That's fair. 

People might disagree about definitions, but it makes sense to specify the one we want to use in this particular discussion.

[Succubus#2]

Well fuck my old boots if it isn't Lunaphiles the verbose. Link.

I see this forums future, this thread will go on for pages hundreds of pages, about black people and white people.

And black people and white people.



You heard it here first.

[Rahn127]

I'm not quite sure why you want to know how many solutions there are to a problem.

Let's look at climate change.

That's a pretty damn big issue because it affects everyone on the planet.
You can probably come up with several thousand reasonable solutions.
Will any of them be effective ? Probably not.

The problem is that solutions may or may not actually solve the problem.
They are proposed solutions. A lot of the time we can't determine if a proposed solution will be effective or not.

So my question is, what is it that you really want to know ?
Your title doesn't really take us anywhere.

[Mr Greene]

Maybe it would clarify things to be stricter about the word "secular." 

I don't think that it simply means "non-religious." It is an attitude or policy held in regard to religion. Specifically, it means that you think a given area (government, education, ethical choices) should be made without regard to religious dogma. (So it wouldn't make sense to say that people before religion, like cavemen, were secular. Because they didn't have a policy in regard to religion.)

On what basis are you claiming that cavemen had no religion?