Every country should be run by secular governments

[paarsurrey]

So we have the most murderous century ever.
The bloodiest war ever, started by the actions of a secular nationalist party.
The 2 most murderous regimes ever, both secular.
The first nation to industrialize a genocide, secular.

If you forget your ideology and preconceived assumptions and simply look at the facts, can you explain precisely how 20th C secularism actually led to a reduction in violence?

I meant from secular ,not secular in name but in substance, any form of government with any name which provides good governance, equal and equitable justice in the secular subject/matters of the state, without discrimination between any religion or any denomination of them and between the believers and disbelievers or Atheists etc.
Secularism per se does not guarantee the above features.
I know perhaps the only countries that mentions secular in its constitution is the Russian state. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Regards

 

[illykitty]

So we have the most murderous century ever.
The bloodiest war ever, started by the actions of a secular nationalist party.
The 2 most murderous regimes ever, both secular.
The first nation to industrialise a genocide, secular.

If you forget your ideology and preconceived assumptions and simply look at the facts, can you explain precisely how 20th C secularism actually led to a reduction in violence?

I personally wouldn't equate state ideology to secularism. We have a perfect modern example of this: North Korea. It's more akin to a state religion than secularism.

 

[LuisDantas]

II know perhaps the only countries that mentions secular in its constitution is the Russian state. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I don't know about the word secular, but laicism (a related concept) is mentioned (but not truly adopted) in Brazil's, and IIRC in France's as well, at the very least.

 

[Augustus]

I personally wouldn't equate state ideology to secularism. We have a perfect modern example of this: North Korea. It's more akin to a state religion than secularism.

If the argument is that secularism makes people less violent, then I don't really see how it is reasonable to limit this purely to 'the right type of secularism'. Otherwise what is being discussed is really a broader political and value system rather than simply secularism.

 

[Augustus]

That can be true, but right now throughout the world I would say it isn't that, I don't see people killing each other and starting wars over their what they own .

They do when what they own/want to own is a large area of land...

 

[Aquitaine]

If the argument is that secularism makes people less violent, then I don't really see how it is reasonable to limit this purely to 'the right type of secularism'. Otherwise what is being discussed is really a broader political and value system rather than simply secularism.

Secularism on its own isn't some sort of Peace Magic, though surely you can see the benefits of having a secular government in terms of fairness and stability?

 

[Augustus]

Secularism on its own isn't some sort of Peace Magic, though surely you can see the benefits of having a secular government in terms of fairness and stability?

I wasn't arguing against secularism, just the claim that it makes people less violent. I have a strong preference for secular government.

 

[Father Heathen]

Why can't theistic governments provide "justice to all population equally and equitably"?

Because some variations of the sky daddy concept call for skulls to be crushed for the most trivial and arbitrary of offenses.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Perhaps religion like sex should be practiced in private by consenting adults.

Also politics should be kept out of religion.

 

[LuisDantas]

So we have the most murderous century ever.
The bloodiest war ever, started by the actions of a secular nationalist party.
The 2 most murderous regimes ever, both secular.
The first nation to industrialise a genocide, secular.

If you forget your ideology and preconceived assumptions and simply look at the facts, can you explain precisely how 20th C secularism actually led to a reduction in violence?

I have to question you interpretation big time.

For one thing, why on Earth do you think the Nazis were secularists?

For another, you are discounting, quite recklessly, the influence of theistic-backed doctrines such as the White Man's Burden and the Divine Right to Rule of monarchs.

 

[Kirran]

I think irrelevant to this violence issue, there are instrinsic advantages to secularism in its respect for individual human dignity.

 

[Sunstone]

A merely secular government isn't necessarily desirable. Stalin's Soviet Union was a secular government. What is far more desirable than a merely secular government, in my opinion, is a secular government based on the humane values of the Western Enlightenment.

 

[Augustus]

For one thing, why on Earth do you think the Nazis were secularists?

Err, because they were?? Why on Earth do you think that they were not?

For another, you are discounting, quite recklessly, the influence of theistic-backed doctrines such as the White Man's Burden and the Divine Right to Rule of monarchs.

I'm sorry, I don't get the relevance in this context. What have they got to do with the major 20th C conflicts? Divine Right was more a medieval concept.

(Also the 'White Man's Burden' was equally supported by many secular rationalists based on scientific theories of race, when they weren't advocating eugenics anyway)

 

[Sunstone]

Secularism in and of itself might not make people less violent, but it seems possible to me that when a people largely adopt the humane values of the Western Enlightenment, they tend to become less violent. Stephen Pinker, for instance, has made the argument that “we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species’ existence", and -- if I correctly recall -- among the factors he identifies as having brought that about is the adoption of humane values that can be traced back to the Western Enlightenment. For an independent analysis of why Pinker thinks we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence, see here.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The 20th C really disagrees with you on that one...

Compared to widespread revolutions, rampaging zealots, Crusades, Inquisitions, yes, indeed, we have become way more peaceful over the past few centuries. Europe, for example, is nearing a full century without any inter-European wars.
The Decline of Violence

Take homicide. Using old court and county records in England, scholars calculate that rates have plummeted by a factor of 10, 50 and, in some cases, 100—for example, from 110 homicides per 100,000 people per year in 14th-century Oxford to fewer than one homicide per 100,000 in mid-20th-century London. Similar patterns have been documented in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The longer-term trend is even more dramatic, Pinker told me in an interview: “Violent deaths of all kinds have declined, from around 500 per 100,000 people per year in prestate societies to around 50 in the Middle Ages, to around six to eight today worldwide, and fewer than one in most of Europe.” What about gun-toting Americans and our inordinate rate of homicides (currently around five per 100,000 per year) compared with other Western democracies? In 2005, Pinker computes, just eight tenths of 1 percent of all Americans died of domestic homicides and in two foreign wars combined.
As for wars, prehistoric peoples were far more murderous than states in percentages of the population killed in combat, Pinker told me: “On average, nonstate societies kill around 15 percent of their people in wars, whereas today’s states kill a few hundredths of a percent.” Pinker calculates that even in the murderous 20th century, about 40 million people died in war out of the approximately six billion people who lived, or 0.7 percent. Even if we include war-related deaths of citizens from disease, famine and genocide, that brings the death toll up to 180 million deaths, or about 3 percent.
...
“Beginning in the 11th or 12th [century] and maturing in the 17th and 18th, Europeans increasingly inhibited their impulses, anticipated the long-term consequences of their actions, and took other people’s thoughts and feelings into consideration. A culture of honor—the readiness to take revenge—gave way to a culture of dignity—the readiness to control one’s emotions."

The Decline of Violence

You are less likely to die a violent death today than at any other time in human history. In fact, violence has been declining for centuries.
Just a couple of centuries ago, violence was pervasive. Slavery was widespread, wife and child beating were acceptable practices, heretics and witches were burned at the stake, pogroms and race riots were common, and warfare was nearly constant. Public hangings, bearbaiting, and even cat burning were popular forms of entertainment. By examining collections of ancient skeletons and scrutinizing contemporary tribal societies, anthropologists have found that people were nine times as likely to die violent deaths in the prehistoric period than in modern times, even allowing for the world wars and genocides of the 20th century. Europe’s murder rate was 30 times higher in the Middle Ages than it is today.

What happened? Human nature did not change, but our institutions did, encouraging people to restrain their natural tendencies toward violence. In more than 800 pages of data and analysis, Pinker identifies a series of institutional changes that have led to decreasing levels of life-threatening violence. The rise of states 5,000 years ago dramatically reduced tribal conflict. In recent centuries, the spread of courtly manners, literacy, commerce, and democracy have reduced violence even more. Polite behavior requires self-restraint, literacy encourages empathy, commerce changes zero-sum encounters into mutually beneficial exchanges, and democracy restrains the excesses of government.

WWII killed more people than any other war, but the 20th century still follows the trend of declining violence.

 

[Ouroboros]

So we have the most murderous century ever.
The bloodiest war ever, started by the actions of a secular nationalist party.
The 2 most murderous regimes ever, both secular.
The first nation to industrialise a genocide, secular.

It's hard to tell who wins the top 10 of most murders. The 100 year war in Europe, whole countries lost majority of their people. Genghis Khan killing a 5% of the world population (that would be 350 million today). And so on. It all depends on if you count just bodies or a ratio to the number of people in the world.

But otherwise I agree, secularism doesn't remove violence or war. Religion is really just a form of ideology, and at the core of a dispute, it's a difference of opinion rather than simply religion. Two of the same religion can fight for instance, and many wars were political, strategic, ideological, etc, and not religious. Even secular societies can be strictly ideological, like Communism. Secularism doesn't automatically mean freedom or safety.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Who is this "we" that began to question and doubt the cross centuries ago?

Everyone, no one. A generalized term to reflect the behavior and actions of our species.

My bible says people have been questioning and doubting it from the beginning, while others believed.

Your Bible also says all the world's languages came from the same place, that a man was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it, that a boat barely bigger than the average cruise ship contained 2 of each unclean animal and 7 of the clean ones, and that the sun even held still in the sky.

Just because you're on the side of the questioning and doubting doesn't mean it needlessly divides people to those who believe.

It does divide. First you have the division between believers and non-believers, and then you have a myriad of divisions within the believers: Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Mennonite, Lutherans, Calvanists...the list goes on and on. And they were and are the greatest threat to each other.

But as for the holy wars and witch burning you might want to blame the popes and freemasons.

The Pope leads a Christian Church. The Freemasons tend to promote Christianity.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The bloodiest war ever, started by the actions of a secular nationalist party.

The Nazis were very, VERY much about "God and Country." If you read through Mein Kampf, you will see, many, many, many times, Hitler wrote he was a Christian, he was fighting for the Cross, and he was doing God's will. That is not secular ideology.

 

[Kemosloby]

Everyone, no one. A generalized term to reflect the behavior and actions of our species.

Your Bible also says all the world's languages came from the same place, that a man was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it, that a boat barely bigger than the average cruise ship contained 2 of each unclean animal and 7 of the clean ones, and that the sun even held still in the sky.

It does divide. First you have the division between believers and non-believers, and then you have a myriad of divisions within the believers: Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Mennonite, Lutherans, Calvanists...the list goes on and on. And they were and are the greatest threat to each other.

The Pope leads a Christian Church. The Freemasons tend to promote Christianity.

Well if you can talk the pope and freemasons to get out of our government I will back you on that.

 

[LuisDantas]

Err, because they were?? Why on Earth do you think that they were not?

I paid attention.