**5. Secular religions**

The increasingly contemporary desire for transformation through pharmacological enhancement, genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, cybernetics and computer simulation is perhaps equally one that is shared by the secular positions that discard belief in God, the gods and notions of enchantment.<sup>19</sup> Perhaps one of the earliest statements proclaiming humanity's unlimited and unrestricted potential is Protagoras' 'Man is the measure of things'. Secular religiosities along with those of the Abrahamic and Christian traditions share the notions that have been built into the Western concept of human rights: a right to self-development and to self-realisation. A key notion in the Western tradition of mainstream Christianity for at least its first eighteen centuries is to be traced through Thomas Aquinas back to Aristotle, namely the Christian belief that the human being is the only important member of this world and the secular supposition that the natural world has no intrinsic value.<sup>20</sup>

Overall, the secular or 'non-religious' religiosities include atheism, scientism, existentialism, perhaps agnosticism, various interpretations of deism as well as both naturalism and humanism. Additionally, we could also consider those major intellectual movements that the anthropologist Clifford Geertz considers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, namely 'Marxism, Darwinism, Utilitarianism, Idealism,

<sup>17</sup> Schillebeeckx [18].

<sup>18</sup> Poulsom [19].

<sup>19</sup> Hook [20].

<sup>20</sup> Singer [21].

Freudianism, Behaviourism, Positivism, [and] Operationalism'. <sup>21</sup> Admittedly, these last are not religions as such, but the secular outlook does not consider itself to be religious in the first place. Nevertheless, like all religions, all of these 'non-religious' religiosities still take a shared position concerning the relationship between and identity of humanity, the world and the supernatural. Whereas the dharmic religions in general dismiss the reality of the world, the secular orientation by contrast rejects the actuality of the magical extramundane. And there definitely remains at least a latent if not direct concern with ecology. Whether atheists, agnostics or secular humanists, people with these identities accept that this planet is fundamentally all we have got and that expectation of magical solutions is itself inimical to solving the imminent problems associated with climate change.

A standard argument by traditional religious believers and especially Christian and/or abrahamic is that morality depends on the existence of God. Divine Command Theory equates ethical behaviour to the prescriptive commands contained in a holy book. The moral life is considered to be absolutely dependent on the dictates from an authoritative and transcendent lawgiver. By contrast, the emerging secular thought is that while religion might be dependent on ethics, ethics themselves are independent and separate from religion.

In this light, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, discerns that 'secular ethics'

*embrace the principles we share as human beings: compassion, tolerance, consideration of others, the responsible use of knowledge and power. These principles transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers; they belong not to one faith, but to all faiths.<sup>22</sup>*

Moreover, but as a secular rejection of the Dominion Thesis, the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, in the 1970s, coined the term 'deep ecology' (1972) to promote consideration of the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. For Naess, human beings are not different from the nonhuman world but instead fully a part of it.<sup>23</sup> Likewise, by beginning moral reflection with the secular perspective itself, the 'focus on moral questions [becomes] freed from the [otherwise] ongoing and perpetual debate over religious claims'. <sup>24</sup> And as the 14th Principle of The Humanist Manifesto II states:

*The cultivation and conservation of nature is a moral value; we should perceive ourselves as integral to the sources of our being in nature. We must free our world from needless pollution and waste, responsibly guarding and creating wealth, both natural and human. Exploitation of natural resources, uncurbed by social conscience, must end.<sup>25</sup>*

The humanist position accepts humanity as a part of nature, not as an intrinsically separate entity, and human emergence has accordingly resulted from a continuously natural process rather than as the result of the work of a transcendent Creator.

<sup>21</sup> Geertz [22].

<sup>22</sup> Gyatso [23].

<sup>23</sup> Naess [24]; cf. Taylor ([25], p. 189n14).

<sup>24</sup> York [7].

<sup>25</sup> https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/manifesto2/ (accessed 18.01.2022).
