How Secularism Leads Us Astray

Have you ever noticed how secularism leads us astray? The Theory of Evolution, published as "On the Origin of Species" was introduced in 1859. In no way does it disprove the existence of God, and doesn't really try to explain how life arose from inanimate matter, but it became widely popular as the intellectual foundation of life without God.

But this changed our whole way of thinking in ways that have led us astray.

After the end of the First World War the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up. Two new nations were created, Czechoslovakia in the north and Yugoslavia in the south. Both of these nations were created by the victorious Allied powers in the war. Neither nation would last indefinitely, both coming apart in the 1990s.

But their ends would be very different. Even in the secular late Twentieth Century the primary difference would be based on historical religion.

Czechoslovakia was compromised of Czechs and Slovaks. Both had been historically Catholic. The breakup of Czechoslovakia was completely peaceful, and became known as the "Velvet Divorce".

Yugoslavia broke apart too, but the breakup was far from peaceful. Europe was horrified that organized massacres and the shelling of besieged cities was going on here.

How could the endings of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia possibly have been so different? What about, of all things, religion?

The two primary ethnic groups comprising Czechoslovakia were both historically Catholic. But Yugoslavia was compromised of historically Catholic Croatians and Slovenes, historically Orthodox Serbs and Montenegrins and, largely Moslem Bosnians.

The breakup of Yugoslavia was a multi-faceted conflict. But every one of the conflicts was between sides of different historic religions. Combat between Catholic Croatians and Slovenes and Orthodox Serbs, some combat between Croatians and Moslem Bosnians and, worst of all, between Serbs and Bosnians.

Later in the conflict the autonomous region of Serbia known as Kosovo, which was predominantly Moslem, would attempt to separate from Serbia. The only two Yugoslav republics that would remain federated throughout were Serbia and Montenegro, both of which are historically Orthodox by religion.

The only republic that separated peacefully was North Macedonia. That also follows the historic religious pattern. Like Serbia it was primarily Orthodox but it's church had earlier separated from the Serbian church.

This deadly conflict was 100% along the lines of historic religion. But why was Yugoslavia put together as it was in the first place? Serbia had not been part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire but was included as the core republic of Yugoslavia.

Could it be that the secular mentality that was brought about by evolutionary theory caused those in the victorious Allied powers to disregard how important religion was? Religion was rarely mentioned in the news of the breakup of Yugoslavia, other than pointing out that Bosniaks were primarily Moslem, but the multi-faceted conflict was entirely along historic religious lines.

The other great empire which was broken up after the First World War was that of the Ottomans. As in Europe, new nations were created out of it's former territories. A new nation was created called Iraq, centered on the historic city of Baghdad.

But, as in Europe, the secular mentality caused religion to be ignored. Sunni and Shiite Moslems, as well as an ethnic mix of Arabs and Kurds, were packaged together in one nation.

Such a new mixed nation needs an extended period under a strong leader to hold it together, what I refer to as the Strong Leader Binding Phase. In Yugoslavia this strong leader was Josip Broz Tito who was, by the way, a very good leader. The best known of the strong leaders of Iraq war Saddam Hussein. But, as we can see, the country fractures along religious lines when the strong leader dies or is removed.

Once again, the secular mentality led the victorious Allies to put together a country that ignored religious lines.

Humans are designed to believe in something. When we do not believe strongly in God we just make something else into our "religion". How many people have you known who treat their economic or political ideology like a religion?

In 1929 the global economy crashed, beginning in New York. The primary reasons were over-speculation and workers not being paid enough to be able to buy all of the goods that were being produced by the industrial complex that had been built up during the First World War.

Unlike Donald Trump in 2020, U.S. President Herbert Hoover did essentially nothing to support the economy, it being against his Republican ideology of "laissez-faire", leaving the economy alone. The resulting Great Depression was almost certainly the worst time in modern history, as it directly led to the Second World War. A party called the Nazis got the idea of absorbing unemployment by drastically increasing the armed forces and getting factories back to full production making military equipment for them.

With humans being designed to believe in something, ideologies like Nazism and Communism thrived by giving people who no longer believed in God something to believe in.

If it were true that we "evolved" without God then a human being is nothing more than a bundle of molecules that just happened to bounce together by random chance. If a person is really just a bunch of molecules, then what is really so bad about killing them?

Finally see if you can believe this. After the Theory of Evolution was introduced there were people who thought that wars were primarily religious in nature and that secularism would be a wonderful thing because it would end wars.

For more about how we must have been created by God see the creation blog, www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com

For more on how religion really does underly the world see the posting,"Understanding The World In Terms Of The South And West And The North And East", April 2016.