[Above: the United Nations, a chief temple of the humanist religion]
Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life. –The Humanist Manifesto II ( http://americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II )
The quote from Humanist Manifesto II identifies the humanists’ god in one word: we.
Except, of course, some of that we is more god than others.
Oh, there’s a small price to pay. You have to give up “the prayer-hearing God, assumed to live and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them” because “it is an unproved and outmoded faith.” For the time being, you have to give up the hope of eternal life, too–and the forgiveness of sins. But once they learn how to download John McCain onto a disc, so he can be a U.S. Senator for the next 900 years, they may get around to making some form of immortality available to the common herd.
But again, I draw your attention to that key word, we. We are gonna do all the things that God shoulda done, but didn’t. We, through our anointed Scientific Experts, are gonna (1) control the environment, (2) get rid of poverty, (3) get rid of disease, (4) live practically forever, (5) –oh, and this is such a good one!–“significantly modify our behavior.” Yessir, they’ve had lots of practice modifying other people’s behavior! Where do you think those miles of barbed wire and those heaps of corpses come from?
The humanist will say that there is no divinity, nothing higher than man himself–the pinnacle of evolution, the boss, the cat’s whiskers, poised ready to unlock vast new powers! But again, some are very, very much higher than others. The ones outside the barbed wire are definitely higher than the ones inside.
The humanists’ god is not the State, but the very special individuals who operate, advise, and control the state–and are fantastically enriched by doing so.
This is the religion that has taken over the Western world and all its relevant institutions–the state, science, the nooze media, the schools and universities, courts, the entertainment media, and even a rather sizeable chunk of the churches.
It, in turn, is controlled by, and is the servant of, spiritual wickedness in high places which the humanists do not admit exists.
Yep, the silly little worms are now going to defy the boot that is about to stomp them. They are so proud, it is amazing to see such audacity in the face of the soon coming judgment. Laughable, but extremely sad too.
When the secular humanists are drowning, or trapped in a burning building or diagnosed with cancer, or think they are about to be robbed, murdered or raped they don’t call out to themselves for help. Generally when all hope of human help is lost they call out to the one who made them. Then afterwards, unless they find faith through it, they explain it away and return to their self-worship and laughing at those who believe in God..
Well said–but I’m afraid some of them have hardened their hearts even beyond that. On his deathbed, atheist Christopher Hitchins spat out declarations that God does not exist.
I often find that, when I ask such people, “All right–then what do you believe in?”, I either get no answer at all, or some bilge about “science” or “reason.”
It’s a sad thing to contemplate.
Secular humanism is indeed a religion