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Creation 37(1):6, January 2014

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Secularism is atheism

Editorial

by

Secularism-atheism

Not long ago, the great Western democracies were unashamedly Christian in their politics and education. Of course, not everyone was a genuine Christian (re-born of the Holy Spirit and adopted into God’s family). In addition, not everything done by those nations was ‘Christian’, but the worldview of almost everyone was basically biblical.

… secular effectively means materialistic or ‘God-less’

Consequently, state institutions sponsored Christian celebrations. Parliaments had daily Christian prayers. School assemblies had prayers and Christian hymns, and the readers used for teaching reading contained many Bible passages.

This has largely been lost. Apparently we can’t have Christian activities anymore; state-sponsored things have to be ‘secular’. But what is ‘secular’?

Secular: “Not connected with religious or spiritual matters” (oxforddictionaries.com). So secular effectively means materialistic or ‘God-less’.

‘Secularism’ was coined by British atheist George Holyoake in 1851. ‘Atheism’ evoked opposition, and therefore hindered the promotion of the godless worldview, and so Holyoake coined the term ‘secularism’. Atheists later adopted ‘secular humanism’ for the same reasons; it sounds much nicer than ‘atheism’.

So secularism is atheism. Countries that were once Christian have become secular (atheistic) in their public institutions.

This explains why atheists are at the forefront of getting evolution taught without competition in schools and universities.

How has this happened? I think there are several factors:

  1. The invention of a creation myth that allowed for aggressive atheism. This is cosmic evolution. God did not create; the universe made itself. Man invented God. Before Darwin, the only option for someone who did not want Jesus as his Creator and Saviour was deism, belief in an unknowable creator-deity, as opposed to the God of the Bible. This explains why atheists are at the forefront of getting evolution taught without competition in schools and universities.
  2. This materialistic creation myth took over the universities because it appealed to the intellectual pride that thrives in such institutions—man determines his destiny, not God. And teachers, politicians, government bureaucrats, journalists, and judges got their ‘higher’ education in these institutions.
  3. Evolutionism then invaded the public school system, because new generations of teachers had been trained in the evolutionized (secular) universities. Aiding and abetting this transformation were those of an atheistic mind-set amongst the ruling elite who promoted secularism as the only ‘fair’ route for taxpayer-funded enterprises. Dissent was easily quashed by appealing to the ‘experts’ (on education, law, science, sociology, etc.) at the universities!
  4. Meanwhile secularists promoted mass immigration from countries that had no Christian ethos. Then they argued that Christian content had to be removed from public life because it might offend someone who was not a Christian. Complaints from the actual immigrants were rare, but it was another effective lever to impose atheism as the state religion.
  5. Atheists have been very actively promoting their views (secularism) at every level of society, but especially in academia, politics, and the media.
  6. Meanwhile, Christians have been sleeping on the job of being salt and light in the world, with the widespread development of a ‘private faith’ mentality where ‘faith’ is in a separate box to academia and politics. There is often a lot of activity ‘in church’, but much less outside.

Creation magazine provides a strong counter to the many facets of cosmic evolution, the philosophical foundation of secularism. This includes big bang cosmology (see p. 50), geology with its false ‘deep time’ (22, 26, 38, 47), evolutionary biology (21, 29, 52, 56), wayward archaeology (44), and of course we present the Bible’s true history of the world (30, 40, 44). CMI’s new book and documentary, Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels, powerfully refutes the secular creation myth (18).

Creation equips and encourages Christians to get involved in countering the secularism of our day. May you use this edition to be salt and light in your community!

Posted on homepage: 3 November 2014

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