Maybe controversial - Religion IS bad, but.....

[arewethereyet]

Man, I type a response to a post and the post is gone before I can complete the reply.

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It's happened several times.

There were some good posts I had responses to.




So, I just checked definition of secular and it turns out a religious person can be secular.

Seems reasonable since I know religious have founded secular charities.

According to the Wikipedia article on Secularism. "Significant contributions to principles
used in modern secularism came from prominent theologians and christian writers such as
St. Augustine, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Martin Luther, Roger Williams, John Locke
and Talleyrand"

Interesting, seeing christians lay a claim to secularism.

I'm no history expert, so who knows. Still, it makes me wonder.

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A couple posters here have implicitly laid claims to secularism, without support, in posts that
are no longer around. Glad the posts are gone. I don't want to call them out on it.
Before coming here, I used to lay claim to secularism myself. 

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Basically their claim was along the lines of; we are secularists, secularism is good, religious aren't, so they are bad.

Yes religion is bull, - and very bad - but the fact remains that they are doing charity, and doing secular charity.

To date, when I've heard people talk about secular charities it's as if the charities were necessarily Atheist.
Sure some promote/are Atheism/Atheist, but, charities are defined by their mission statement. Many, if not most, take no position on god.

Difficult seeing the secular St. Jude Children's Research Hospital as Atheist. Secular Sunday Assembly and the Oasis Network explicitly
state that they are not Atheist. Who am I to know better than them? Murdock Trust, secular, promotes religious and secular organizations.
Atheist and promoting religion? Until recently secular Children International gave only to Holy Land causes. Was it Atheist?
The non-theistic American Ethical Union describes itself as a "religious movement, and is recognized by the U.S. government as a church.
Now there's a story. 

Claiming organizations, that take no position on god, for Atheism and Secularism didn't quite feel right to me.

It seemed to me that with %70 of Americans religious, roughly %70 of most secular charity volunteers should be religious,
and the same %70 should be true of most secular charities' paid management.

I've searched, and found no data on the beliefs/non-beliefs of such charity workers.

Now that I've seen the christians claim secularism (above).
If both religious and non-religious can claim most secular charities as theirs, on the basis that they share secular ideas...

Surely the people who have claim to a secular charity are the ones who work there, take responsibility for it, as well as those who donate to it.


Now, I'm not judging, or accusing anyone. I'm partial to using the word 'secular' liberally, myself. It is just that it is difficult to
keep my topic on course when I can't even apply a shared understanding of Secularism or Atheism.


Anyway, the topic of these posts was "I kinda wish atheists did charity better than them" not, "I wish secularists did charity better."

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More when I can.

You are new here and ready to call out long time members.
Great plan.
More when you can - oh, the an-ti-ci-pa-tion.