Just as Christian morality is not the same as secular morality, neither is secular care the same as Christian care.

Secular care is very choosey; it picks and chooses.

On a recent walk I met two runners who identified themselves as atheists. Having established that they were open to discussion, it was immediately apparent that they did not want to engage in religious debate. You may feel that this is their privilege but would you say the same about failing to educate people?

On the principle that atheists think that the rest of us are deluded, why do so many of them not engage in debate, even to the extent of an informative one-liner? In all my years of Christian outreach, I have only once come across an atheist with a one-liner. He was in a hurry but at least he had something to say. It was not a good one-liner, because it told me only about himself rather than challenging my thinking. At least he tried.

Atheist attitudes

Although there are notable exceptions, I propose that most atheists do not care about religious people and they would happily let them go to hell with their religion, except that they don’t believe in hell. Possibly this salves their conscience. It may be that they reason that the religious are simply wasting their lives, with no risk of eternal consequences, but even so, are they happy that the religious should waste their lives on a fantasy?

Does this not imply the need for more religious discussion and debate, to expose and clear away the arguments that don’t stand? I hope that the increase in social media will eventually teach people to be careful with their speech and improve conversation, discussion and debate. However, this will take time. Christian debate would speed it up, but secularism slows it down to the evolutionary snail’s pace that they believe in.

Almost all religious people want to help others towards faith in God. Most of them do so freely, giving their time and resources freely to this end. Indeed, if they ask for money, it is usually suspect. There are multitudes of charlatans who are in the business of manipulating man’s religious conscience for money or personal prestige. If there was more Christian discussion and debate this blight in public affairs would be exposed and discredited.

However, this blogpost is about secular care. Some secularists engage in public debate, but even these can fall foul of the same charges leveled against charlatan preachers who promote themselves, often for money and personnel prestige.

So my question is why ordinary secularists do not feel enough care for their fellow human beings as to have developed personal secular evangelism. Why do they shy away from discussion? They may say that they have more important things to discuss. Really? Is mental health not rising up the agenda, young people scared by the apocalyptic stories from climate activists? Why is their secular hedonism, “let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” not comforting the minds of young people who cry out for more than this?

The New Atheists

The New Atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are an exception. They have campaigned as best as they were able to disabuse their hearers of belief in God, believing that this is for the betterment of mankind to help them to be free. This presupposes that the default position is belief in God, which these debaters frequently deplored. Christians believe that the default position is that people need to be reconciled to the God to Whom their conscience bears witness, thus Christians preach about God for the betterment of mankind.

So there are exceptions, but they are rare. They are called New Atheists because they are prominent and aggressive in debate, only confirming how little debate the old atheists employed. The old atheists simply used the educational system to push their agenda, but the emergence of the New Atheists is because even this is not working. Steve Jones and Richard Dawkins regularly complain about the prevalence of Creationism in America.

This New Atheist polemic will be a useful example for study during the biblical Millennium. For the most part, the atheist community is happy to leave the argument with their champions while they themselves get on with their lives. If personal debate should be attempted, they refer to their champions. It is not wrong to refer to the best arguments on each side; indeed, this ought to be done. However, this blogpost is about personal care for one’s neighbour, and such referrals to authority by atheists are usually in the spirit of “you get on with it yourself, I am not going to waste my time on you.” The social media acronym DYOR (do your own research) illustrates my point rather well.

This is the difference between Christian and secular care. Christian care seeks to help others at all levels. Secular care is selective and biased towards one’s own interests.

Links:

25 Mar 2019: Professor John Lennox’s experience of secular care.

23 Sep 2019: the inadequacy of the secular care promoted by the political left and/or right – “the left” tries unsuccessfully to imitate Christian care while “the right” is eclectic and ignores many issues through ignorance of ‘street-level’ issues or ‘the lived experience’ of the poor and needy.

18 Apr 2023: American professor unwilling to debate with academics.

22 Jul 2023: Just Stop Oil protestors do not care.

9 Dec 2023: academic shut-down of debate. Fear among academia. The victim culture of taking offence has damaged academia.

15 Dec 2023: my contentions is supported by Stephen Bond, an atheistic former skeptic: “The average skeptic has little time for spreading the word of reason to the educationally or intellectually lacking. His superior reason is what separates him from the chumps around him, and he has no interest in closing the gap. For him, the appeal of the skeptic clique is its exclusivity. It’s a refuge from the stupid masses, and a marker of his own special privileges. It’s Mensa rebranded.” ”Look past the crocodile tears on any online debunking forum, and you’ll quickly find that the majority of visitors are not drawn there by concern for the victims of irrationality, but by contempt. They’re there to laugh at idiots. … rather than illuminate the world, they prefer to gather on skeptic forums and try to outshine each other.”

21 Dec 2023: Japanese “care-giver fatique” leads to killing relatives and suicide.