blatham wrote:george
... But this line needs attention..."the modern secular religion of political correctitude."
You equate two things (faith and secularity) which are different in very critical ways. That's a common maneuver for faith holders (which you may or may not be) who are unhappy with the diminished influence of the church. Your first post above, last paragraph, makes a clear suggestion that this is your position. Atheism leads to retrograde morals, etc. ...
You posit that a secular world view and a faith world view are but two instances of the same thing - belief, perhaps. That is absolutely false. ...
The absence of agreement with a popular belief structure does not make for a second religion. Secularity or atheism are not religious positions, they are very simply instances of folks not accepting the green leprecaun thesis.
Well, I was tempted to hit you with a few Medieval syllogisms, but I'll pass.
I suggest that the modern grammatical doctrines of political correctitude are but the cant of a belief system that is not only far from having a rigorous basis in empirical fact, but which also springs from a priori assumptions which, while not necessarily relating to a creator, involve as much presumed infallibility as any faith based doctrine. While they may not involve the normal questions of faith directly, they have all their other characteristics. The modern secular doctrines are hardly detached, scientific, and devoid of values - quite the opposite is true.
With regard to your epistemological distinctions, I believe atheism should be held as equivalent to faith in a creator. Agnosticism is a bit different in that it suspends judgement. The cant of religion and the cant of political correctitude alike admit of no uncertainty. The former, however, is - at least in some cases - more lyrical and possessed of elements of soul-satisfying poetry than is the latter.
Just as astrophysics couldn't explain the evolution of the observable universe without the mind-bending notion of quantum inflation, biologists are now confronted with contradictions between accepted notions of orderly genetic evolution and the age of the planet - there just hasn't been enough time for the specified process to have done what we observe has been done.
