Place and Position in a Complicated World
For thousands of years humanity has been contemplating the structure, function, and purpose of the cosmos — Disregarding millennia of human effort toward understanding their place seems wasteful at the very best.
I must concede to holding uncompromisable viewpoints, even as I look for value in conflicting world views. I find an area rich in “uncompromising truths” to be the ideas contained in the world’s sacred writings. Many will claim divine origin and intervention in their composition.
For me the contents of sacred texts, and in particular The Bible, have done nothing but support my position as a Christian atheist. I know what is right and wrong and those values have come to me through a society established through Judeo-Christian roots.
I have always had trouble with arguments calling our society a secular organism built upon secular values. The simplest counter would be to point out the Roman, European, and British foundations of our legal system. Those foundational traditions were deeply religious ones, Christian ones. Sighting secular values is fine, but leaving out the pathway those values traveled passing through religious societies is a willful falsehood spouted by many.
If we are a secular-born society then it is in name only, and so a distinction without a difference. As such, the…
