A secular debate about secular debates

[lordpasternack]

Are secular debates really the best types of debates, or could we honestly set a better precedent? Is it perhaps best to have expressly strictly non-religious debates rather than merely secular debates? Is anyone growing weary of all the secular debating that has taken place over the past month within this subforum and elsewhere, even while some of it may have been salutory? What are the feelings present about secular debates in general?

[Hermit]

"A Debate on (insert issue) from a secular point of view", though more wordy, makes more a little more sense to me than "A secular debate on (issue)", in so far as it does not imply the exclusion of religious aspects commonly applied to said issue. I don't see much point of "secular" in either case.

[Feck]

Why should any debate have to called be secular ,esp around here ?

[JimC]

When catholic priests discuss their next liturgy, do they have a Mass Debate?

[RandomGuyOnCouch]

For most intents and purposes, I think the distinction between "secular" and "non-religious" is largely one of semantics. However the OP titles the topic, it will communicate essentially the same idea.

Also:

When catholic priests discuss their next liturgy, do they have a Mass Debate?

Sophomoric humor of the win.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Why should any debate have to called be secular ,esp around here ?

Personally I've never been interested in pushing the atheist point of view. I'm more interested in stopping religious nuts imposing theirs.

[dj357]

Personally they are becoming a bit jading simply due to the sheer number of them around, but I think that's merely a response to the annoyance with the necessity in certain circumstances to make sure that it is expressly secular. As far as secular and non-religious goes my own personal understanding of those two distinct phrasings would be that secular would potentially mention religious motivations or effects on the topic at hand though give them less credence than secular ones and non-religious would disavow all religious intersection on the topic matter, unless it was expressly a religious topic.

[JOZeldenrust]

I would expect that all debates on a site, claiming to cater to rational people, were secular. What grates me about these "secular debates" is that they aren't about religion or atheism. Most of these debates are about ethics. As such, they have no place in this subforum. They should either be in the politics subforum or in the philosophy subforum.

[TheGreatGatsby]

When I started the original secular debate thread (abortion), it came due to my frustration with the religiousness of the abortion debate, which equated pro-life with theism and spiritualism, and pro-choice with a relatively secular position. My intention was to initiate a discussion based on secular arguments, free from the religious rants one commonly sees in such sensitive issues.

I had no idea I had created a Ratz meme.