04.04.11
A new approach to secularism, religion, and the left
This is a big subject and I may do one of my ‘online netbooks’ on these issues.
But the problems with Eagleton’s recent book on Marx deserve a challenge, from the left.
Meanwhile the New Atheists have made atheism unusable, so that needs a new approach.
Actually the two questions are related:
the issue of the left is not to replace modernity but to realize its essential achievements in a challenge to the overgrowth of capitalism.
The new atheism isn’t new: it is recycled from the era of Marx’s work in the age of positivism and Feuerbach, etc… The problem is that the issue was to oppose the exploitation of religion. Atheism was a poor strategy to do that. The materialist world of the old left produced a total ostrich open to every form of occult exploitation. The New Atheism won’t be any different.
Agnoticism is the only way to go here.
The new atheists have misunderstood secularism which is not anti-religion necessarily. There is every possibility of looking at the issues of religion in secular terms, e.g. Kant’s rejection of theistic morality next to his effort to found the subject of ethics in a new formation suitable for a secular culture.
In general the left has no business being dogmatic on theism. To force atheism on the public to create socialism is the biggest blunder made here. Agnosticism, and the aggressive expose of religious exploitation would work much better.
Much more to say here, but the new atheists, and the old left, were very unstrategic on the subject of religion and theism. And that contributed to failure of the era of revolution.
Secularism, religion and the left said,
April 9, 2011 at 11:41 am
[...] http://darwiniana.com/2011/04/04/a-new-approach-to-secularism-religion-and-the-left/ [...]