Secular Heresy?

The word 'secular' means 'of this age' or 'of this world', from the Latin saecularis. In Atlantis, where the watchful eyes and mighty thunderbolts of the secular priesthood are ubiquitous, it is interesting to see how the population has been mobilised to partake of the responsibilities of that priesthood.

Of late, the voice that has gone out has been one of, "If you want better education, you should take more responsibility; if you want the poor to be fed, feed them yourselves; if you want religious extremism stopped, do your own self-policing or else the wrathful gauntlets of the thunder shall squeeze the neck of free expression."

Well, if we are to be self-policing, let us have public heresy trials. For opinions against science, let us be allowed to haul people up before the justiciars and examined before the experts; for religious opinions, let us be allowed to drag them in for theological sanction. And should any be found excommunicate thereafter, let them not practise their heresies either in labs or in churches, in pulpits or in classrooms. Let them be taxed, banned, or cast out. Why not?

And let no politician be immune. Perhaps in this way, we might actually cull the spirits of stupidity from among us. Or will other, more evilly daft, spirits come in to take those vacated places?

Heresiarchs

And it came to pass that in the seventh month of the second year of Exile, that leaders of the Theobromine heresy made camp. On the place where they rested, they built a house of worship, and they called it Crf.

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I have been there, and I have seen it. And behold, my eyes were dazzled with the many temptations that could be found there. O, woe is me, that I have lived to see the sight!

The Lactic Heresy

"We knew in part, and yet we partook in part," saith the heretical, often with pride, as is the way of the heretic. But as the servants of the Bean have said in ages past and for now, it is best we drink as through a glass darkly - for to make either the excrescence of bean or the essence of leaf pale with the milk of goats is heresy, and of no benefit to the body or soul. Even the science of the secular doth agree.

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See also The Theobromine Schism, Caffeinism, and Coffee - A Meditational Triptych.