I was talking to my neighbor the other day, and I was describing somebody else I knew. The neighbor says, mid-conversation, "what's her sign?" Completely seriously, like it was a perfectly natural question to ask somebody.
Was she assuming that I believed in astrology (in the EXTREMELY dubious contention that knowing the month somebody was born will elucidate their personality)? Isn't it somewhat rude to assume that somebody subscribes to your crackpot belief system?
If I were a Christian, I'd love to ask her about her friends. "Oh....is so-and-so saved?"
But I can't, because I subscribe to the emerging religion of secularism. To the asonine view that the scientific method, combined with rigorous logical argument, is the best arbiter of truth.
I like the scientific method because, if astrology contains some truth, then the scientific method should be able to detect it. As my buddy pointed out after I objected to the explanatory use of astrology in casual conversation, celestial bodies exert gravitational force on the earth, which changes over the course of time. Also, people who were born at the same time had parents who copulated at the same time, and perhaps the time of copulation is co-incident with some characteristic of the parents, which could in-turn effect the outcome of the child.
So, there's at least a conceivable causal connection, implausible though it may be, between date of birth and personality based on scientifically recognized understandings of physical, biological, and psychological paradigms
But if there is, the scientific method would be able to detect it. Social scientists could easily design a survey or mine other studies for data that would reveal the existence of systematic personality differences between Leos and Capricorns.
Secularism IS a religion, though, and it is one that has very few true adherents. Truth be told, I'm not really a true believer either. It's a religion because, for its adherents, it creates an operating paradigm through which they orient themselves to existence. It also involves a degree of faith, both in its orthodox and heterodox manifestations. In the orthodox version, there is always a degree of faith in human reason and in the existence of an external world, combined with a faith in the reliability of that world (random quantum physics notwithstanding). There is a faith in the accuracy of analytical methods, like regression, and in the fundamental principles behind experimental design. To most people, these are incontrovertible. But, as a former philosophy student, I can tell you that the arguments of the Skeptics and empirical epistemology were pretty damn solid. The human mind can come up with fairly indisputable reasons to doubt just about any contention put forth. So, even with the strict SCIENTIFIC skepticism demanded by the scientific method, there is still a remainder of unjustifiable faith (i.e., a belief based upon insufficient evidence to constitute proof).
Ok, now on to the heterodox secularism. Orthodox secularism involves a tremendous amount of accepted uncertainty about the world, because the scientific method (officially, anyway) accepts the possibility that anything could be the case, always qualifying beliefs with the caveat "this is what the data suggests most strongly so far." It is always open to the possibility that the next experiment will yield a different result that upsets the paradigm (see Kune, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). For all beliefs that cannot be disproved by experiment or regression analysis, the scientific method demands silence and uncertainty.
Many, many secularists regularly go beyond the limits of science to make claims about "facts." Who was it..Carl Sagan maybe?....who famously said "Evolution is a fact!" Implying that it cannot be doubted. But as Descartes argued, there could always be an evil demon out there trying to trick me. So, if scientists make claims about facts, they are usually violating the principles of their discipline. The same is true, by the way, about supposedly a-priori claims derived from pure reason (math and logic). This is not to say that people shouldn't have beliefs about the world. It's not even to say that it's wrong to have GRADATIONS of belief, with certain believes held more strongly than others. It's only to say that, in pure orthodox secularism, you should always admit the possibility (even the tiny possibility) that you're wrong.
Ok, enough epistemology for the moment. It was a nice trip down philosophical memory lane, but now onto my point about secularism's few adherents.
Most people can't handle a purely secular worldview, because it tends to suggest a fairly value-less assessment of human existence. Regarding the existence of existence (i.e., why there's something rather than nothing), pure secularism's answer would probably be something along the lines of, "it appears to be an accident." Regarding the existence of human consciousness, the answer be something like, "it appears to be an accident...a very short-lived one."
The human psyche is such that most folks find pure secularism unpalatable. They dilute it with a much more Religion-y religion, humanism. They try to figure out someway to inject beauty and value into secularism's purely observational and explanatory system.
This is basically what I do...I'm a secular humanist, by and large (with a part-time side faith in bigfoot and mothman). Humanism says, "yes, the world seems vicious and random and cruel and meaningless, and yes, I'm gonna die forever, and yes, the human race will go extinct....but I shouldn't be paralyzingly terrified and depressed, because this painting is pretty, and that baby smiled!"
It's bullshit, in other words. It's no different from the belief that a random dude rose from the dead 2000 years ago so that, not only do you get to live beyond death, but you get to live in a paradise too! It's bullshit.
I recognized this bullshit long ago, while I was still a Christian. I hated the fact that secular humanists lorded their intellectual integrity over believers, because they were doing the same goddamn thing...rationalizing their unjustifiable beliefs through dubious reasoning, simply because it made it easier to get up in the morning.
However, because I do think that ridiculous beliefs admit to a continuum of ridiculousness, I find the articles of faith in humanism to be a little more intellectually palatable than those of christianity. They have a little more evidence to back them up, cause that painting really is pretty, and it really is nice when that baby smiles.
Still, though, if you're a humanist, try to keep your intellectual hubris in check. If you're a genuine secularist, you're probably drunk or in a mental institution, and I give you props.
