Secular Humanism - Excluding God from Schools & Society
Secular Humanism is an attempt to function as a civilized society with the exclusion of God and His moral principles. During the last several decades, Humanists have been very successful in propagating their beliefs. Their primary approach is to target the youth through the public school system. Humanist Charles F. Potter writes, "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school's meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?" (Charles F. Potter, "Humanism: A New Religion," 1930)
John J. Dunphy, in his award winning essay,The Humanist (1983), illustrates this strategic focus, "The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: A religion of humanity -- utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values into wherever they teach. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism."
Is this what's happening? John Dewey, remembered for his efforts in establishing America's current educational systems, was one of the chief signers of the 1933Humanist Manifesto. It seems the Humanists have been interested in America's education system for nearly a century. They have been absolutely successful in teaching children that God is imaginary and contrary to "science."
Secular Humanism - Main Tool is Evolutionary Thought
Secular Humanism is manifested in Evolutionary Theory. To satisfy the fundamental question of "Where did we come from?" children are taught the doctrine ofEvolution. The first plank of theHumanist Manifesto states: "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created." The second plank states: "Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process." Certainly, the public school system propagates the Humanist doctrine (clearly an atheistic "religion"), and thus, condemns theconcept of God. This is an amazing irony.Creation Science has been successfully kept out of the public schools by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.) on the grounds that Creation is religious, and the government should not support religion in any fashion. "In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it, and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit with it." (H. S. Lipson, FRS, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution",Physics Bulletin, vol. 31, May 1980, pg. 138).
Yet Evolution has not been proved. In fact, it seems that the Theory of Evolution is contrary to established science. George Wald, another prominent Evolutionist (a Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate), wrote, "When it comes to the Origin of Life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way.Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!" ("The Origin of Life,"Scientific American, 191:48, May 1954).
Copyright © 2002-2021 AllAboutPhilosophy.org, All Rights Reserved