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"Secularism is a euphemism for a set of beliefs that are the antithesis of faith. Boiled down, secularism is man's subordination of morality to his own earthly judgments, scientific and otherwise...[T]he secularist catechism holds that truth is subjective, relative or contextual; because it demands that rationality can solve moral and ontological questions about man's nature, that discrimination is the greatest of all evils and that patriotism is the only social disease that isn't sexually-transmitted. ...the thesis that our moral code can exist in the absence of a religious foundation...[S]ecularism -- and its cousin, multiculturalism -- are the primary causes of the weakening of western society at a most dangerous time in history. The weakness results...because secularism turns the bedrock of western society -- the moral code derived from Judeo-Christian faith -- into sand. By divorcing our societies from faith, we render every man's morality equal to every other's, and thus make them all valueless. When BObama says we are a nation bound by ideals and values, he postulates an impossibility: where do those secular ideals and values come from if -- as liberal dogma requires -- every man makes up his own?" --Jed Babbin

A myriad of pathologies have haunted the proper understanding and exercise of both faith and reason.The purpose of this proceeding is to try and take Western Christianity and its antecedent Jewish foundation’s pulse in America today. Let’s start by first stating its 2 primary appeals, in empirical terms.

The 1^st is  the fact that Christianity is the source and ultimate continuation of the concept of the individual. No other base philosophy has originated nor purports that concept. As a further point of reference, without the concept of the individual being the base entity around which all of mankind's socio-political structures revolve, civilization transforms to a place "where the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The 2nd is that it provides the necessary proven guidelines for, and this is key, the voluntary adherence to the proper rules and objectives for a free and prosperous society. Rules and objectives which are required by necessity, a necessity inherent for any form of society.  And with a look to the future, acceptance of a transcendent source of knowledge encourages attempts to push the intellect’s natural capacities to ever higher levels of understanding. As Melinda Selmys finds, one of the dangerous consequences of the decomposition of the belief in transcendent authority is the loss of any secure foundation for understanding good and evil. Within Judeo-Christianity there is a constant tradition that human reasoning has it limits. Social cohesion and order have always been a priority for the Church.  Many Christian philosophers today, such as Richard Swinburne and Alvin Plantinga concur the Christianity must be accountable to reason and evidence, but both agree that Christianity wthstands the test, although she has been fickle at times in her allegiances to particular institutions. Nevertheless, religion is just the first causality of this frontal assault.

So what’s the problem? Well, as George Santayana noticed years ago: “We still understand the value of religious faith… [but] the shell of Christendom is broken.”  Santayana voiced early the concern that there is an emerging aggressive paradigm shift occurring in U.S. Christianity. One that is in active opposition to traditional Western based Christianity. The shift ranges from Humanism to Pantheism. This is generating unavoidable polarizations, due in large measure to an also aggressive secularism. A secularism that is unable to co-exist with those of religious faith, particularly with those who believe in the Western based Judeo-Christian philosophy, with its external value system that contains absolutes. Furthermore, without questioning the validity of these paradigm-shifting beliefs through an active involvement by those of faith in the very real world of politics, business and education, the tenets believed in and expressed by Westernized religions will be all but eliminated.

Today, instead of a public order that tolerates religion, we have the myth of neutrality that obliges us to live as a nation with no common view of reality. The point of the myth is to provide a cover for neo-liberalism’s intolerance, indiscriminately. It is applied against almost all religions(2), except its own civil religion(1), which it views as beneath contempt such that religion simply may be dismissed without argument but, trotted out as a prop when it can be of political value for political power.

And the travesty of this will not be limited only to those of faith but also will be extended also upon those not practicing any of these faiths but nevertheless who enjoy the very real benefits they produce. This loss will include the concept of, and the environment necessary for, establishing, promoting and sustaining the recognition of the primacy of the individual and all of the freedoms that follow. This loss of the rights and benefits of the individual, which can only flow from a society  which establishes and maintains the necessary moral framework, is being undermined and destroyed by the very liberal secularists who espouse the fruits of an individualistic society. These liberals expound that individual betterment cannot be attained through traditional views but only through their ideologies and methodologies. All of which, in reality, achieve quite the reverse by undermining the character, decency and truth building "institutions" of our society, which range from private individual associations up through and including our jurisprudence system itself.

As Ravi Zacharias points out, modern secularization believes religious ideas, institutions, and doctrines have lost there social significance. For them people that have any religious convictions are viewed as being prejudiced and biased, unable to use fact, logic and reasoned conclusions when it comes to moral judgments and/or ethics.  The modern secularists’ objective, whether they are all cognizant of it or not, is to dilute or even destroy the concept of Western societies' values. A value set derived from a distillation of the Judeo-Christian philosophies (which includes an individualism entitled to and responsible for not only their own actions but, for its consequences on the community of man, independent of empirical political groupings). This secular process can be traced, from its early origins in the humanist movement, into what has evolved into today's more predominant movements, which exhibit a combination of pantheism (the worship of all forms of gods, creeds and cults with the environment, or nature as the unifying element), solipsism (the self as the only important thing) and socialism (government ownership of the creation and distribution of the wants and needs of society).

The activist secularists, with a deep commitment to this "movement", attack established value sets by employing a philosophy that claims: values are not absolute but, relative(3). This pluralization assumption, that all ideas are equally true, mocks the notion of truth itself. It is a symptom of a society that has lost its ability to think critically. One that deals with intricate issues in a simplistic manner, despite it being fraught with contradiction. The fallacy of this premise should be explicitly obvious from the contradiction occurred when they attempt to define their own belief system. Basically, their logic says: Absolutely values are relative! But that conclusion (the “relative”) destroys the assumption (the “absolute”) from which it was derived. Sound reasoning calls that type of logic—nonsense, when the conclusion destroys or contradicts the proof.

Nevertheless, the secularists first deride absolutes, very much demanding that this anti-belief be taken seriously(4). They are extremely intolerant of any challenge or resistance to this dogma. They respond to any lack of acceptance by attempting to demonize the opposition with the a characteristic zealousness as found in this quote: "… we will constantly associate those who oppose us with those names that already have a bad smell. The association will, after enough repetition, become fact in the public mind"—(Central Committee of the Communist Party, Moscow 1943 meeting of the Comintern). Which is perfectly acceptable to them since they believe that they themselves are the salvation of the human race. Which also serves to sanctimoniously assure them of their belief in their own significance to history. This, by the way, is what allows them to justify the "viciousness and desire" to destroy their opposition, entirely, without compromise or tolerance.

In essence, for these liberals, the end justifies the means, which requires of course a relative truth system. This of course demands the transformation from mankind basing its beliefs on critical thought, to basing them on feelings. Feelings which are relative, fuzzy and easily manipulated to "fit" the liberal objectives du’ jour. Absolute truths would stand in the way of the liberals' own actions. For the secular liberal masses, this post-modern-existential-nihilistic-relativism takes on all the trappings of religious fervor, becoming a religion itself. It is nurtured by the leadership in their movement, confirming what Chesterton said, that mankind has a need for religion and will find a way to employee one, even if that means a pseudo version that gets nasty.

Yet, liberal secularism fails to explain convincingly why it should have its beliefs taken seriously if there are no absolutes. What they really seem to be saying is that... "my actions determine what I deem is the truth. And I will make it up as I go along in order to allow me the greatest benefit at the least cost." Of course the inevitable cost will have to be born somewhere within society. There are no free lunches. Yet our current societal mainstream education mechanisms have long ago decided to stop educating people of that fact, subsequently, we have generations of citizens believing that myth along with their own victimization. So, in this complex affluent society of ours, the costs can be indirect, hidden and masked, for a while. Those costs are cumulative and unavoidable though. And will have to be paid, by everyone, always in the form of what is most dear to a society. In a free one, that currency, at bottom, is usually freedom.

So, although secularists take it upon themselves to denounce religious moral values, they contradict themselves since they cannot logically arrive at any objective values with which to denounce religions’ moral values, since that denunciation would imply a moral doctrine of some kind. Reference to the law is not adequate. Secularism’s logic fails to explain the justification of the laws they call for since there are no consistent values to base them on. They surely recognize that law is essential to the orderly functioning of a society (which by the way is the foundational premise of their socialism). Yet they fail to understand that law is, by its very nature, a value system. It imposes someone's values on another. It implies a moral obligation to obey. Morality, another way of defining a value system, is determined by action rather than reaction. In other words, right or wrong is defined by what you do, not whether you are caught or able to lie, buy or bully your way out. It operates as a teacher and provides a climate for the development of a belief. It also resolves conflicts within a system. It provides priorities when inevitable conflict occurs. The secularist’s ideology cannot function within this framework since its value system is relative, which is a fatal entropic flaw in all value systems of this nature.

Secular humanism is not a liberation from religion, but an ersatz religion itself. And as a religion, secular humanism comes off as pretty weak sauce compared to the real thing, it is covert morality masquerading as a science, Easily tripped up by the naturalistic fallacy: that “is” should be a reliable guide to “ought.” That turns out to be a fairly frothy mixture of malleable feelings that whatever feels right, is right. The danger with that should by now be obvious.

The reason the liberal must secularize the mechanisms in society is because that is the only way for them to achieve their goals. Yet, without the morality of the Judeo-Christian religions, the only way to enforce the law liberals must have in order to command adherence to their objectives, is to use authoritative, coercive force, hence—their constant need for growing government and its consequent power.

So, without a fixed value system to support the use of that force, for liberals might becomes right. Their legal systems come to substitute for value systems. It commands adherence to itself by the threat of force, it comes to equate legal to moral and illegal to immoral. At that point the state becomes the determent of what is right or wrong, du jour. And if facts stand in the way of their goals, rewrite that history and spin it. All the hallmarks of a valueless society. And like all valueless societies, it will devolve, as others before always have, into a confusing free-for-all-in-power. That eventually will become a harsh tyranny.

“The realm of religion no less than that of nature seems to abhor a vacuum. The forces that fill that vacuum are not necessarily benevolent.”—Alexander Rosenthal y Pubul

“ …the secular and materialistic dimension of Western modernity attests to a broad unhappiness with the impersonality and spiritual vacuity of liberal consumerist society.”---Francis Fukuyama

“The self-destructive dialectic within modern secularism debases man by ceasing to regard him as a being of a higher and divine origin…the result of man’s self-affirmation once he denied God…we are witnessing the process of dehumanization in all phases of culture and of social life. Above all, moral consciousness is being dehumanized…he has ceased to have any value at all”---Nicholas Berdyaev

(1) Progressivism, Neo-Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism and Communism are attempts to realize heaven on earth making them secularized political religions as such.

(2) The main exception is Islam

(3) The denial of the Absolute leads to the absolutization of the relative, in effect, the deification of the self.” ---Sergei Levitzky

(4) Contradicting this liberal ideology is science itself. The results of genetic and brain research have undermined materialistic assumptions. Yet many of the participants in those research projects are extremely reluctant to admit what for them is an unexpected and unwelcome conclusion. Instead they cling to triumphalist and reductive ideology that is in clear logical contradiction to their own findings. The work of Wilder Penfield and John Eccles point to the fact that “cutting edge” research results should elicit or revive at least the tradition of mind-brain dualism, in existence since Plato and that undergirds Christianity. It seems that non-empirical phenomena (meaning, truth, purpose, validity, non-contradiction, conceptualization, language) is assumed to exist a priori and is needed even to validate scientific investigation itself.

Further reading:

https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/24/google-attacks-christians-in-the-workplace-with-blasphemous-drag-event/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-attacks-christians-in-the-workplace-with-blasphemous-drag-event&utm_term=2023-06-24