A short note about religion: Via
Political Animal, we learn of an Op-Ed in the
Los Angeles Times that claims secularism is a competing religion to other faiths. The
essay is objectionable on multiple grounds (like citing the Discovery Institute) but we wish to highlight the following claim made by the author:
What is a religion, then? Simply, a system of beliefs based on stories that explain where life comes from, what life means, and what we, as living beings, are supposed to be doing with our few allotted years.
This is followed by an assertion that secularism is a religion based, in part, on the fact that it has a creation account - which other faiths have as well. Then he concludes:
... what we're seeing is an unacknowledged interreligious civil war."
Let us be clear: A religion is a religion if it has
supernatural elements (e.g. a god or immaterial soul). Other systems of thought that do not have supernatural elements can never be considered religions.
posted by Quiddity at 6/18/2004 05:24:00 PM
While the dictionary certainly supports the contention that religion equates to a belief in the supernatural, that definition is inadequate from a legal and Constitutional standpoint.
Unitarian Universalism, a religious group with a long history in America (the church of John & John Quincy Adams), does not subscribe to any supernatural belief and it's statement of belief ranks humanism equally with Christianity, Judaism, and other beliefs as a source for their tradition.
Recently the Texas comptroller tried to deny the tax-exempt status of a UU congregation because they did not subscribe to one system of belief. Fortunately she reversed her ruling after getting considerable flak, but her action raises a valid point.
If the government gets into the business of declaring that only supernatural belief systems are religious, then only supernatural belief systems are protected by the First Amendment. I would argue that the Constitution protects both supernatural and natural belief systems that attempt to answer the questions "...what life means, and what we, as living beings, are supposed to be doing with our few allotted years...".
David Kilnghoffer's error in the LA Times piece is in conflating science ("where life comes from") and non-supernaturalist religious beliefs and in postulating the existence of an organized religion where one does not exist.
What Mr. Klinghoffer implies by his unsupportable confluence of scientific knowledge with what he terms "secularism" is that those who hold supernatural beliefs deserve government protection from science. That is unacceptable. There is no demonstrable connection between the scientific community and some specific "secular" belief system. While scientists have a lower belief-in-God percentage than the populace at large, there are a substantial number who do believe and among the rest there is no evidence of an adherence to any coherent set of "secularist" beliefs.
Klinghoffer's thesis is not valid, and his closing assertion that secularism is an "aggressive religion competing for converts", is simply preposterous. However, let's not be too hasty in restricting religion to supernatural beliefs - that can lead us in the wrong direction.
