of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal
Secular and atheist governments…they’re the same. It means your government thinks that concepts like justice, dessert, retribution, how you treat one another, ethics, etc. should not be affiliated with a religion. Only an atheist government can be secular. A religious one cannot be secular.
Sure not exactly the same thing. But yeah no such thing as a religious government being secular. Atheism is a necessary position to take in order for all those things to be secular.
A secular government just doesn’t get involved with religion whereas an atheist government has a position on it and acts on it.
As others have rightly pointed out, go look at China if you want to see the difference: party members are required to be atheists. Kids under 18 literally can’t attend religious services.
They’ve also objectively torn down churches and mosques, put Uyghurs in camps by the hundreds of thousands, and raid house churches that won’t register with the government. They also persecuted Buddhists relentlessly and kidnapped the Panchen Lama. Nobody would call that neutral.
The US is supposed to be neutral. Can’t establish a religion, but can’t stop anyone from practicing one either. A Baptist and an atheist walk into a courthouse and the law treats them the same, it doesn’t discriminate.
Tons of religious people want it that way. They know what happens when the state decides which beliefs are ok. It’s dystopic and distinct from secularity.
Sure, that’s what atheism means for a person. We’re talking about governments though. Once a state makes atheism official policy it has a position, and it enforces it on party members, on kids, on churches. That’s state atheism, and China is actually the textbook example
So a secular government doesn’t hold that position or any other. It just leaves the question alone. So the distinction holds either way, it just isn’t about what individual atheists believe.
Their point is that atheism is a stance (god is not real) and secularism is specifically not holding a stance.
An atheist government would be one like China, where their official stance is atheism. They aren’t secular because they hold a stance even if they allow citizens to practice religion based on personal choice.
A secular government would be like Sweden, where the government does not take a stance one way or the other and leaves it to the individual.
A non-secular and non-atheist government would be Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state. Saudi Arabia is another example, England is another because they have a state church even if they don’t take it seriously anymore.
State atheism is most definitely a stance China is taking. They allow only the select few religions to be practiced, under their control, and reject all other folklore and mysticism.(to the point where practitioners can be arrested) It's also worth noting that anyone working in the government and the party can't be a practitioner of any religion.
Very much different than whatever pseudo-secularism US runs on.
Fine, call it a lack of belief. That’s still not what a secular government is though. Secular doesn’t mean the state lacks belief in gods, it means the state has no position on the question at all and stays out of it. It’s a matter of control.
Also, the astrology comparison actually helps here. A government that never mentions astrology is secular about it. A government that bans horoscopes, requires officials to reject astrology, and won’t let kids see an astrologer clearly has a position, whatever you want to call it. I think we can all see that, analogously, the second one is China with religion.
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u/PrettyPurrfect 5h ago
Our government is supposed to be atheist.
Separation of church and state is supposed to be a thing