Religious Tolerance According to Secular Humanism Model: An Analytical-Critical Study

Religious tolerance is an emerging issue in the West. This discourse emerged as a reaction to the discrimination of religious institutions against Western society. After the end of the Second World War, this issue became stronger and achieved success with the declaration of an International Day of tolerance by the United Nations. However, the tolerance that is promoted is not based on religious rules and guidelines. The tolerance that is promoted contains the values of secular humanism, which is characterized by reasoning and worshiping humans above religion. Secular humanism itself is a religious worldview based on theological atheism, philosophical naturalism, spontaneous generation or evolution of biology, moral relativism, legal positivism, and political globalism. Secular humanism is not only a worldview that some Western societies believe in, but it is now a worldview recognized by the United Kingdom and has become a council in the United States of America.Based on the background of the study, the researcher wants to research the model of religious tolerance based on the principles of secular humanism. In addition, researchers will also discuss how the response of Western scholars and Islamic scholars in viewing the religious tolerance model of secular humanism.This research is qualitative research in the form of library research. To obtain the principles of religious tolerance in the model of secular humanism, the researcher used a philosophical approach. In this study, researchers used two methods: the analytical method to analyze religious tolerance in the West and secular humanism itself. The second is the method of criticism to show weak points in the religious tolerance of the secular humanism model.The result from this research is acknowledge that religious tolerance in the secular humanism model to tolerate means to accord other individuals or groups some respect, but not that to agree with them; it only recognizes the rules and allows them some degree of liberty of belief, taste, and pursuits. However, this definition does not follow secular humanism principles; free inquiry, separation of religion and state, freedom, ethics of critical intelligence, moral education, religious skepticism, reasoning, science and technology, evolution, and education. Several from these ideas become the principle of religious tolerance in the secular humanism model, namely free inquiry, ethics based on critical rational inquiry, separation of church and state, skepticism, human rights, and equality.This research is still in the basic and limited in any aspec. Therefore, the researcher expect the academician to continue research on religious tolerance in the secular humanism model in terms of other aspects.