Can a secular western society work?

Question

im interested in the way behaviour, violence,abuse are all so prevalent in this technologically and wealthy advanced west

Answer 1

history keeps proving that answer to be NO.all the problems you point to come from being secular.its easy to understand that.if your not secular.good luck in your search.

Answer 2

I don't think these problems have anything to do with whether the country is secular or not.

I think violence and abuse usually happens western societies (and all other societies for that matter) because people with low social or financial status feel disempowered and attempt to take some power back by controlling other individuals through acts of aggression. There is plenty of violence going on in highly religious societies, religion often just gives people an excuse for their actions beyond the reasons I outlined above.

Answer 3

There are no proof there can NOT be.

Indeed, your US and A are nominally supportive of the separation of Church and State, but in practice a small, dominant  group imposses their views through their control of the media, industry, and political power.

The more educated a country is (higher level of education) the higher the level of secularism in the same place. So if you think your country is not secular, maybe you also should be looking at the education programs and how is science faring there.

Answer 4

Violence and abuse are not more prevalent in the west...freedom of information is.  It seems as though there is a lot of it because everyone reports it.

It's the way news works, there are at least 3 stories for every occurrence, with video, and analysis.  It's stories about violence, accidents, etc. that sells papers, and holds viewers, nobody watches the news to see a new senior center being built, but a train wreck, or a shooting somewhere always works.  It's human nature to look at the action.

Answer 5

It is working just fine in many countries, just not America. Example: Japan is a fairly secular society, with most of its citizens only following basic rites and passages of Buddhism and Shintoism, yet it has a vibrant and wealthy 1st World capitalist economy (2nd in the world behind the US in nominal GDP which is interesting because Japan is slightly smaller than California, 3rd behind the US and China, another highly secular society, in terms of purchasing power parity, and frankly economically better off than the United States right now) while holding some of the lowest murder rates in the world (0.5 per 100,000 per year) while America, highly religious, sees some of the highest murder rates in the developed world (5.5 per 100,000 per year).

This certainly doesn't mean that religion causes high murder rates, of course. It simply means that secular Western societies with respect to human life can and do work.