Secularism eh?

[Rusutsu]

I haven't introduced myself or anything, you'll have to forgive me for that, but I do have a question...

Inasmuch as at least some of the religions up for discussion have been 'governed' by a group of leaders(/insiders?), who not only exert spiritual influence over adherents but control vast wealth as well... is the general (European) trend towards (sometimes away from) secularism of the last 200 or so years an aide or a hindrance to religious understanding?  I'm thinking that some ideological distortions arise from the social physiology of religion, and therefore that secularism has its own value in religious understanding.  Or am i just contraditing myself?   

[Vir Lucis Ex Deus]

Welcome to the boards - as you have no doubt gathered new members are a nice sight to see around here!

Trends towards Secularism are by definition a hinderance to religious understanding...however, many people would argue that they are helpful in order to understand religion!  Certainly disciplines such as neuropsychology and even anthropology have used the secular viewpoint to help us understand religion and religious systems.  However, it can quite easily be argued that most individuals within a so called 'secular' society are not secular in the truest sense of the term - they all have some form of spiritual or religious beliefs...and if society is made up of individuals and most individuals are not truly secular, then maybe we are mislabeling a bit?

We would first have to define what we mean by secular society, beyond the textbook definition which I don't believe exists yet.  There are certainly things that can be said from a secular point of view about religion - just look at Dawkin's God Delusion for a rather critical example (although he takes on a more religious and fanatical approach then most non-secular types!) - but they will remain just that, secular viewpoints.  When discussing religious experience and relation to God/Divine/Most High/Source/Whatever, opinions coming from an inherently 'anti-religion' point of view run the danger of being deemed irrelevant in many regards because they exist outside of the boundaries of experience that are being spoken of.  It doesn't really matter if the experience of God can be shown to be the result of certain brain functions and pure biology - that still doesn't get us any closer to determining what is really going on, why, and what effect it will have on any given individual.

I guess you can see that because of the viewpoint I am coming from I don't seperate religion/science like the so called 'secular' people do.  In the end we are just basing our arguments upon personal experiences and biased assumptions - the individual is key to this whole problem, and it is the individual that remains the reason why there will never be a single answer that can satisfy all manifestations...