format_quote Originally Posted by
AinEstonia
Religion does not unify people, if anything it does the opposite. There are conflicts between Muslims, so obviously you guys don't agree on everything.
And religion didn't lose its importance in Europe because people became so EVIL, but because religion was so abusive and oppressive. Obviously you can't say that religion has caused every conflict, or even the most. But religion most certainly has created a lot of problems.
And secularism is good, a secular nation is like a non-apartheid nation. If there's a reason you don't like secularism, it will probably be that there in a few secular European nations, Islam is kinda getting knee jerked, like the burqa ban in France, minaret ban in Switzerland or niqab ban in Belgium. Those things are stupid, but that does not mean that secularism is bad, just cause those things happened in secular nations.
Hey AinEstonia, welcome to our forum.
Let me answer you as the issues we are discussion are highly important and therefore have to
be addressed slowly.
First of all - I have the feeling that we are using the same words however have very different
things in mind and if we would continue this discussion we would not understand each other
simply because we speak about different things - also note that you have made many assumptions about me which are inaccurate without properly understanding what I say.
Let me explain you what religion means for me (and please reset any previous understanding you have about this word). In order to explain this to you I have to explain to you what secularism is.
Our existence is roughly divided into two domains:
1. Physical
2. Spiritual.
This is far from being vague. For instance, you do not need to go far and you can see this in your
on personal life:
- you have a body yet when you lift your hand it is a non-physical will that makes your body to
do that - this is the spiritual domain.
- when you drop an apple from a tree there is a certain non-physical force that pulls it down to the
ground (if you think about it you would see that there is no physical connection between the apple
and the ground).
Secularism by definition the weird idea of having a view of life which disregards the 2 domain as unimportant. Now, why would anybody want to do that?
You obviously won't want to do that - because anything a human being holds (or should hold) dear is in this (2) domain - like your family relations, wife, love, children and community are in this (2) domain (since the special connection you have with them is not physical but rather spiritual).
However, interestingly, there is a force in the universe which would have the interest to erase the (2) domain - and this is bureaucracy.
It's true - bureaucracy is important, however, we do not need to be stupid and let it erase away our lives.
The tension between religion and bureaucracy is the attempt to take control over the bureaucratic systems that are important for our life (this is not always highlighted because our media is a highly bureaucratic creature by itself).
True, during the time many mistakes have been done through this process - but this is mainly due the fact that previously in time people in general did not have the mental capacity to deal with the
full depth of religious ideas and a lot of times misunderstood them.
Today, this situation has seemed to change and all that is required is that the people who do have the capability would turn their attention to these issues for the benefit of their communities.