1. Sourced in the Emotion of
Dreadful Fear
For the Secularist, when the State
began to work on the atom bomb, his social and cultural allegiance
had to be to the State. No matter how wrong he might have considered
the State’s action, the Secularist, as a social actor, is compelled
by reasoning that “my country right or
wrong, my country!” As a collective, there is nothing
higher than the State, and there are no laws higher than the
laws of the land.
There is no “secular
faith” or “secular scripture”
so there is no way for the individual or group to become secular other
than by stating that one is secular. In contrast to
religious believers who can be accused of heresy or ex-communicated
or de-frocked, no such “de-secularization” process exists
since there is no ritual of secular initiation which
is comparable to a religious rite of initiation such as Christian Baptism.
Secularists teeter on the edge of being nihilists
(that is, believers in nothing and no-meaning) to being existential
“secular humanists” (that is, being “as
human” as one can be in the moment). Secular humanism is buoyed
by hope and optimism. While avoiding
fantastic utopian dreams, for example, of a Kingdom
of God or even a Peaceable Kingdom here on Earth, Secularists hold that
humans could create a secular utopia—this was
Communism's vision as well as that of a wave of utopian socialist
community experiments in America. In this tradition,
Americans proclaimed a New Deal and a Great
Society—which would make real the Declaration of Independence's
implied promise of everyone receiving the benefits of "Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness."
Most Secularists, following the general principles
of the National Secular Society,
would consider the Earthfolk story to be just
unredeemed supernaturalism induced by hyper-emotionalism. They would
peer at the Mushroom Cloud and simply conclude that
humanity can make mistakes, but ones which can be undone
if reasonable people sit down together. However, while
they would accept the Earthfolk insight that people live in
dreadful fear and terror, they would argue
that people can as likely live in a world where humans collectively
seek to live freely and pursue their own happiness.
Continue—Fear
