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income is lost, which means he may get to spend very little time with the children he has. All of which matters little, if anything, to the church they’re members of. Obedience to the faith is the primary concern, not the physical, emotional and financial comfort of individuals. I can’t imagine anything more unhappy for a married couple than having to bear more children than they can handle, both physically and financially. It makes a happy life for children born into such circumstances very difficult as well.



Joy #3 - Health. When we are free to make our own choices in life – within the boundaries of secular law that is – we are in fact very healthy in spirit. Secularists don’t have priests or pastors looking over our shoulders telling us that what we are doing is "wrong," which means we are also free from unnecessary guilt. Secularists aren’t forced to attend church, since there are no civil laws on the books saying that church is a must on Sunday. Therefore, our Sundays are free to use as we choose, whether it’s to stay home and read a good book, indulge in wild, unrestrained sex with our spouses or significant others, have lunch in a good restaurant, or go to the beach in the summertime. We can dress in our nicest clothes, or wear little or no clothing at all. Naturally, the last option assumes we’re in the privacy of our homes at the time. There’s still that bothersome little law that prohibits nudity in public, unless you happen to be at a nudist camp or resort.



Joy #4 - Knowledge. It is well known that traditional and fundamentalist religions place certain restrictions on the kind of knowledge their members are allowed to pursue. In fact, many take the precaution of home schooling their children to make sure they don’t learn certain things that may allow them to challenge their parents’ religious beliefs when they become teens and adults later on. As a result, these children grow up ignorant in many things, which will severely limit them in terms of finding suitable employment when it comes time for them to look for jobs. Some extremist faiths keep their girls and women ignorant of almost everything, believing that the only suitable occupations for women are marriage and motherhood. Secularists have no such restrictions. In fact, we are free to obtain knowledge on any subject we want, to use for our benefit and often the benefit of others too.



Joy #5 - Power. Having the freedom to control our own destiny is very powerful indeed. Whether we use that power wisely is entirely up to us. We can use it to make good choices in life to benefit ourselves and others. There are those who argue that power should only be in the hands of leaders, and we must trust them to use the power they have for our benefit. I strongly disagree. Too often in past history, leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin have used this power for cruel and terrible purposes. Those who trusted them paid a terrible price, many with their own lives. To surrender the power we have to others is usually a bad idea, especially when they only have their best interests at heart, not ours. Will we stumble and make bad choices sometimes? Of course we will, and we often have. But we still must keep this personal power for ourselves, rather than handing it over without question. We cannot, as Benjamin Franklin warned us against, give up our personal liberty to have a little safety. When we do, we often end up losing both.



Joy #6 - Tolerance. One of the biggest advantages of secularism as I see it is the freedom to tolerate and accept philosophical or religious differences. Every secularist I’ve known is perfectly happy to allow others the liberty to practice their own faith or philosophy, as long as those others aren’t insisting we must trade our beliefs for theirs. The hard-line theists insist that secularism will eventually lead to anarchy, and a few believe we already have it. If that is the