So Secular Pluralism posits that people are essentially good and somehow some things have gone wrong. So how do we fix the problem? The Secular Pluralism plan of salvation is basically this: education, which leads tolerance.
If people are basically good, all we need to do is educate them thoroughly and let their innate goodness take over. Then we will all at least tolerate one another, even though we will certainly not all agree on everything.
This has many things going for it. Education is essential to peaceful co-existence on this planet. But education as the panacea for all our ills is a myth.
Let's take life at UNC-Chapel Hill. No one would dare to posit that UNC-Chapel Hill as a university community is free of the ills of racial injustice and other systemic issues. As a subset of people, the students, faculty and staff at UNC-Chapel Hill are in the 99.99999 percentile of the global educational level. And so if a group of over-educated people such as ourselves can't conquer these problems, what hope does 99.9999999 percent of the world have? None.
Education is a critical part of the process, crucial to genuine progress. But it's a myth that education alone will fix everything. And that's a good thing. There's too few with access to the education that would be required to reach this nirvana.
The problems that we're taking on run much deeper than the band-aid of more information. There's a deeper need for transformation that cannot be addressed by morally-neutral educational processes. And the salvation that the world needs must be much more broadly accessible than the illusion offered us by secular pluralism.
Fortunately, it is.
1 comment:
I like what you said: " The problems that we're taking on run much deeper than the band-aid of more information." We are not the standard, the answer, or the remedy. We are the problem that need the Great Physician, who offers the real cure and the real life and life eternal. Great post and illustrations to back.
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