someproteinguy wrote:
Secularists also can't threaten an eternity of torment for disobeying their created tenants. The carrot and stick approach fails if you have a wimpy stick.
Sure. Social adoption is another facet of the issue, but I'm just looking at the ethical choices themselves. Abortion is a great example of this in action. Most people, myself included, believe that the right of the woman to control her own body is gradually superseded by the right of the developing fetus to live. It's a very reasonable and workable approach. It also ties in nicely with some core operating principles of our own system of laws (the idea that laws should resolve conflicts of competing rights within our society). However, it's shocking the sheer frequency with which someone who merely questions the possibility that some loophole or rule might be in violation with that reasonable middle position is labeled as "religious" and dismissed on that grounds.
I just think it's a terrible methodology to use. Judge the position, not something else you've associated with it. Yes. Lots of religious people oppose elective late term abortion. That does not mean that if I also oppose it that I'm religious, much less that the opposition is wrong. It's quite possible for ethical positions to be derived in the absence of religious belief. In fact, it's the core tenant of secular humanism. Yet it seems like when one attempts to do this the very folks who argue hardest that secularism can derive ethical outcomes will label those who do as religious.
And I find that ironic and self defeating.