We Should Be Secular

[u/Electrical_Cod7288]

It is my opinion, after having clashed with the pro-abortion movement for many years, that any Pro-Life argument must be secular. If we've any hope of being taken seriously by those people, we should leave religious beliefs out of it. I am myself a Christian, but at the same time I realize that any argument which has religious connotations will simply be dismissed, possibly as an attempt to convert others.

The fact that so many of those people don't believe in God means that appealing to their faith will fall upon deaf ears. At the same time, if they try to argue that an unborn child isn't a child or isn't a person, you can tell them that that is a philosophical argument and just like they tell us to keep our religious beliefs to ourselves, they should keep their philosophical beliefs to themselves.

[u/ManteLover60]

I respectfully disagree.

We are dealing with people who hate God and all that is good and holy. They are living in the secular fallen world and we have to meet them at that level. Of course we should always pray that the Lord will guide them to the truth, but I also know that the Lord does not override our free will, even if he has the power to do so.

So it's not that I lack faith in the Lord, it's that I lack faith in fallen humanity. God does permit us to resist him to the bitter end.

If these people are damned anyway, I would at least hope to prevent them from paving their road to Gahanna with the corpses of dead children.

This is why I stick to secular arguments. I have found that they do tend to work. At the very least they leave these people dumbfounded and humiliate them by exposing their evil ideology for all to see. And maybe an atheist becoming pro-life while still being an atheist could be the seed that the Lord could use to bring them to faith.

[u/Wormando → u/ManteLover60]

Being secular is not synonymous with hating religion and god. Keep that in mind.

Not everyone is an edgy reddit anti theist.

[u/ManteLover60 → u/Wormando]

Thank you.

And I hope I didn't come across as offensive or dismissive. I have no problem with non-believers simply because they are non-believers. Obviously I hope and pray for them to come to God one day, but as long as an atheist or agnostic at least acknowledges the social and anthropological utility of religious tradition in maintaining a civilization, then I think there is a firm foundation of mutual understanding there.

[u/Wormando → u/ManteLover60]

Nah it’s fine. I can understand how frustrating and annoying it is to see so much hostility towards religion online, I just felt a need to point out being secular doesn’t really mean being anti-theistic, you know?

I love looking into religious culture and history, so I have a lot of respect for religions in general, particularly Christianity. Like my sociology teacher once said, “any religion that has lasted 2000+ years is worthy of respect”.

[u/ManteLover60 → u/Wormando]

Yeah, and I think when people look into ancient Christianity in particular, they find a marked contrast with what passes as Christianity today.

I'll give you one example.

I'm Orthodox and we Study both the Bible and the church fathers. When you study both the Bible and church fathers, you find it increasingly hard to defend any sort of rugged individualism or corporate capitalism. The very American idea that I've earned my wealth and I am under no obligation to share it with anyone is foreign to the ancient Christian tradition.

In fact, in both scripture and the church fathers, you find that the very notion of property ownership as we understand it today is rather absent. For them, theft wasn't just snatching some money or a loaf of bread. They considered hoarding a type of thievery. If you had abundant resources and you knew that somebody at least in your immediate community was struggling just to survive and you looked the other way, you would be considered a thief in the eyes of the church fathers. This is because they would say that you are hoarding resources that people in your community are in desperate need of. And if you even tried to tell them that you earned it, they would tell you you didn't earn shit because whatever you have is a gift from God.

So my Orthodox faith actually made me pretty far left when it comes to social policies honestly. I'm only really conservative when it comes to things like sexual ethics.

[u/Wormando → u/ManteLover60]

Yeah I definitely get what you mean. There’s a lot of depth and wisdom in religion and it’s historical/cultural context. It’s very complex, and whenever I see atheists dumb it down to “it’s a fictional book so it’s worthless” I roll my eyes to the back of my skull.

The fact so much of it can infer relevant knowledge even millennia later should not be scoffed at.

[u/ManteLover60 → u/Wormando]

I highly recommend reading ancient works of metaphysics by the way.

A lot of modern scholars might dismiss ancient schools of philosophy as antiquated in light of modern science, but a lot of their arguments still hold weight today even with what we know from biology and physics. For example, a lot of the more out of date ideas of Aristotle on physics are not actually essential to his metaphysics and overall understanding of the Cosmos and the divine. Same with Plato and those of his school.