Humanism: A House of Cards Built from a Marked Deck
- drmichaelblunk
- Mar 12
- 5 min read
With their mantra “Good without God,” secular humanists are atheists and agnostics who believe they are building an equitable, just world through science, educational reforms, and political action. According to the American Humanist Society, “Humanism is a nontheistic worldview with ethical values informed by scientific knowledge and driven by a desire to meet the needs of people in the here and now. At the foundation of those values is an affirmation of the dignity of every human being.”[i] According to Humanists International, “Across the world, the number of non-religious people is growing all the time. It is estimated there are 1.1 billion people in the world who are religiously unaffiliated, which means they identify as atheists, agnostics or describe their religion as ‘nothing in particular.’” Their website goes on to explain:
· Humanists base their understanding of the world on reason and science, rejecting supernatural or divine beliefs.
· Humanists reject all forms of racism and prejudice, and believe in respecting and protecting everyone’s human rights, including the right to freedom of religion and belief.
· Humanists believe we have a responsibility to respect and care for one another and the natural world.
· We give our lives meaning and purpose. Not believing in an afterlife, or any “divine purpose” for the universe, humanists focus on making meaning and purpose for themselves, on living a good life in the here and now.[ii]
American author Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.” To the simple and the naive, the tenants of humanism are not without appeal. After all, who would not like to see a better world brought about by the eradication of racism and the protection of basic human rights? Who would object to everyone living a life of meaning and purpose? It is easy to understand humanism’s appeal to the irreligious.
Upon closer examination, however, humanism is riddled with fallacies and incongruities. Firstly, humanism seeks to make science their god. No reasonable person will deny the benefits of science, but science has its limitations; furthermore, scientists are not always right. About the time I graduated from high school, we were warned of an impending ice age. Top scientists forecasted ecological gloom and doom upon our world. The imminent ice age never came, of course, but the gloom and doom did not end, for the next generation of scientists gave us global warming. The long list of cataclysmic woes issued by the scientific community were nothing more than false alarms. All too frequently, science cannot seem to make up its mind. Once again, when I was in high school, homosexuality was deemed abnormal behavior (which it is), but when popular opinion began to shift, same-sex perversion became normalized. My point is this: What science teaches today may very well be discarded tomorrow. At no time was this more evident than the conflicting information we received during the Covid pandemic. Dr. Faucci, America’s so-called Covid authority who claimed to “represent science”[iii] during the pandemic, has since been discredited. During the pandemic, the scientific community and the mainstream media continually lied to the public. One of the media’s leading talking heads assured her audience that no one treated by the vaccine would suffer from Covid. This was nothing more than a baldfaced lied. Science changes, but God’s word is immutable. Scientists are often wrong, but God’s word is wholly reliable. By the way, there are legions of bonafide scientists who believe the scriptures, follow Christ Jesus as their Savior, and shun secular humanism. We may rightly wonder how humanists regard leading, accomplished, highly esteemed scientists who are born-again Christians.
Humanists claim to oppose racism, yet Charles Darwin, the famed British evolutionist who sought to prove a world without God, considered dark-skinned people as inferior to “favored” people of European descent. In his 1859 evolutionary treatise, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, he concluded that pygmies and other non-whites were “lower organisms, savages, low, and degraded.” Less than a century later, Adolf Hitler, who was highly influenced by Darwin’s writings, sought to create the master race while denigrating Jews and others as being subhuman worthy of extinction. A staunch humanist, Darwin did not invent racism, but he propagated the belief in racism more than any other scientist of his day.
Darwin’s work led to the pseudo-science of eugenics, that is, controlled human breeding designed to create a better race of people.[iv] It is worth noting that Charles Darwin’s cousin, Sir Francis Galton, was a leading proponent of eugenics.[v] Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was one of America’s leading advocates of controlled human breeding. Sanger referred to blacks, Jews, Arabs, and Native Americans as “human weeds.” Her “Negro Project” was initiated to eradicate a people she considered to be far inferior to whites.[vi] Among humanists and liberals, Margaret Sanger is esteemed as a pioneer in women’s rights and “reproductive freedom,” but rather than being a hero, she was a vile racist and a proud white supremist.
By the way, I contacted one of the leading humanist societies asking them to clarify their positions on Charles Darwin and Margaret Sanger; I was told a response would follow within forty-eight hours. I did not hear back from them.
Humanists claim to be champions of human rights, but these human rights do not extend to the unborn. Likewise, we must never forget that dictatorial humanists such as Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong murdered untold millions of their own countrymen. At its core, communism is godless and purely humanistic. Individual rights mean nothing. Subjects of communism live in slavery, yet communism touts its disdain for God while claiming to elevate beleaguered humans from suffering and degradation—which it most certainly does not. Humanists believe they, the truly enlightened who have thrown off the shackles of behavior imposed by God, are making the world a better place, but as George Orwell wrote, “Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. This is an illusion.”
Humanism is a house of cards that offers no real solutions to such gripping issues as sin, death, salvation, and eternity. The Bible alone tells us who we are, why we are here, how we are to live, and where we go upon death. As beings made in the image of God, all humans, not just a favored few, are of immense worth and value. We find hope and encouragement through Christ Jesus and Him alone. Soviet dissident, Christian writer, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life.” It was humanism under the name of communism that had sent Solzhenitsyn to the nightmarish Russian gulag. Other than incongruous, muddle-minded philosophies, humanism offers nothing—absolutely nothing to alleviate human suffering, need, and want. It could be rightly argued that humanism promotes human misery. In the end, humanism fails to address mankind’s greatest enemies. Surely, those who adhere to the teachings of secular humanism are deceived people whose thinking is corrupted by sin.
As King David wrote, the fool has said there is no God (Psalm 14:1). Their deeds are corrupt, their thinking is vile, and they are convinced they and they alone hold the keys to making a better world. I have yet to see how the world has benefitted from humanistic philosophies.
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