Actually I was responding to another poster who mentioned anti intellectualism being the reason churches and by extention ideologues beome dogmatic and restrict things like science. So I didn't introduce the theme as you call it.
I was actually defending that its not just anti intellectualism that is the motivation but a range of motivations and I think more social and cultural. Because I think many dogmatic movements are very intellectual in their own way. They have a method to their madness.
A post I cannot find in the sea of your posts and replies to them. (My post here was a response to a "bare" or "blind" post from you that was not in response to anyone in particular. Isn't there already enough content in this thread? (Yep.) Do we really need *new* topics to be introduced? (No, we don't)
No its not just a term. Thats what the ideologues want you to think it is, just a word. But its a fact that Woke or whatever you want to call the phenomena that has beset modern society as political correctness or identity politics its a reality that has been enforced into society.
Anyone who cannot see this is living on another planet. It is real enough that it has real world affects which I don't need to mention as we have all seen this. Enough so that the majority of people in the US rejected it.
I'm sorry, Steve, but whatever meaning the term "woke" had was destroyed about 3 years ago when a few American RW culture warrior ideologues decided to use to label everything they didn't like in modern American society. They had been trying to use "CRT" (in a different form than the original definition), but "CRT" couldn't encompass their disdain for gay and trans people. "Woke" as exactly 0 (zero) to do with *anything* in this thread.
OK lets see, So does Christianity have a negative impact on social progress or does good things for society.
The extent to which Christianity contributes to society is in proportion to its dominance. The harm is similarly proportional. Society would (as many have throughout history) do just fine without it.
Ita all semantics I think. Like I keep saying I don't think secular can be neutral. The very idea of secular being not connected with religion or spirituality is not a true representation of secular. The fact that secular means not connected to religion or spirituality means the opposite metaphysically.
You can't be neutral because you cannot live without some metaphysical basis for society. As soon as you start filling secular society with the details of how it should be setup you start coming up against philosophical, moral and metaphysical questions and situations that need to be applied in the real world.
It's not about "neutral". "Secular" is a label used for things not connected to religion, particularly when there is a religious version to contrast. While plumbing is secular, we don't usually call it such, since there isn't a thing like "Christian plumbing" or "Islamic plumbing".
So if you are not connecting to a religion or spiritual metaphysics you are logically connecting to a material or humanistic idea of metaphysics and morality. These cannot be seperated from each other.
NO NO NO. This is a false dichotomy. Please go learn what humanism is. Humanism is a SPECIFIC moral philosophy, just like Christianity is a specific moral philosophy/belief system. Objectivism is a secular philosophy that champions selfishness (and not all objectivists are non-believers, many are Christians)
Ok so the practical aspects of Christainity applied to how society and the world should be ordered is that we are made in Gods image, man and women. Can you see how the metaphysics and morality naturally comes in on this issue.
The metaphysics for Christains is that God oders nature and reality. There are natural laws and realities like man and women are made in Gods image. From this we have a bunch of other morals and realities associated with marriage, parenting and the family underpinning a strong society.
The metaphysics is there is a God, natural laws and order to reality that will be best as they conform to God the creator.
Frankly, you left out the salvation and worship parts. I've seen a lot of things that conflict with the above driven by both. Then there are the self-annointed spokesmen for God, each making claims about what the divine wants. These can alter the potential benificial aspect are available.
But secular ideology or humanism or whatever anti GOd or not connected to God idea about metaphysical reality and morals will oppose Gods order because it rejects God out of the equation.
Again, there are other alternatives to religion. For example, you forgot indifference to God (or gods). If someone does not believe a god exists, why should one make any efforts to oppose it. There is nothing about your god that makes me concerned about the claims of its opinions.
What does secular society actually advocate metaphysically. There is no God, no natural laws or reality and the world is a social construction. Humans are just the result of evolution, God and morality are human constructions and there is nothing beyond what we see.
Are you really that poorly informed? Why would there be no reality or natural laws without a god? There is nothing in the "natural laws" (or rather the fundamental laws of physics) that require a god in the slightest. (No god is even included in them.)
It can be nop other way. If secular society means not connecting with anything religious or spiritual then whatever fills that void is going to be the opposite material and human made conceptions about these issues.. Human made conceptions are not based on God but on self created ideologies.
To my understanding all ideologies are self-created.