Secularism will not survive, indeed, has not survived! Secular humanism, on the other hand, will survive but with far less influence than it presently has. Let me explain.
Secularism, as defined by Ian S.
Markham in his A World Religions Reader, sees human life as nothing
more than “complex bundles of atoms in an ultimately meaningless
universe” (p. 6). Secularism is a not a worldview by any definition
of the word.
Secular humanism, on the other hand, is
a religious worldview with something to say about anything, anyone,
and everything, and all proudly displayed under its religious
symbol—the Darwinian fish. As Irving Kristol noted in Commentary
magazine (August 1991), “Secular humanism is more than science,
because it proceeds to make all kinds of inferences about the human
condition and human possibilities that are not in any authentic sense
scientific. Those inferences are metaphysical and in the end
theological.”
Secular humanism, therefore, has a
perspective on theology (atheism—Darwin made it possible to be an
intellectually fulfilled atheist); philosophy (naturalism—only
matter and the void are real); ethics (relativism—there are no
moral absolutes except abortion); biology (evolutionism—life
originated as a foamy, blue-green algae pond scum); psychology (the
mind is reducible to chemical reactions in the brain); sociology
(trial marriages, open marriages, homosexual marriages, and hook-ups
are all morally equivalent); economics (a John Dewey-type socialism,
Democratic Socialists of America, etc.); law (positive law pioneered
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “living Constitution,”); politics (a
liberal heaven on Earth, world government, United Nations, U.N. Human
Rights Commission, etc.); and history (multiculturalism, blame
America first)!
Secularism, per se, has nothing to say
about most of the above ideas, issues, and disciplines except to say
that God is dead, long live Mother Nature! Hence, who would want it
to survive? After all, a meaningless universe is not very exciting
and atoms even less so (unless, of course, they are Designed).
Secular humanism, on the other hand, has staying power because it has something to say and has a platform to say it— the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, CNN, colleges, and universities.
However, as Alister McGrath notes in his The Twilight of Atheism, secular humanism’s theological foundation (atheism) has lost its moral high ground during the twentieth century with millions shot, starved, or slaughtered (Stephane Courtois, ed., The Black Book of Communism). Then, too, Intelligent Design advocates are crawling up its back, having already persuaded one of Free Inquiry’s contributing editors to bid adieu to the old guard (Antony Flew).
Add to this the postmodern Left’s assault on science, reason, and technology (see Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition, p. 248), and we find secular humanism increasingly in the crosshairs.
All in all, while secularism is graveyard-dead, secular humanism is hanging on by half a dozen threads and a respirator. How long? Probably until two or three more Antony Flew-types, using reason and science, jump ship!
The Reverend David A. Noebel is the president of Summit Ministries, an educational Christian ministry based in Manitou Springs, Colorado. He is the coauthor (with evangelist and Left Behind novelist Tim LaHaye) of Mind Siege: The Battle for Truth in the New Millennium (2000).
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
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Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
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