The Secular Worldview with Dr. Jeff Myer, part 2
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Dr. Jeff Myers: When we compare and contrast the world’s various worldviews, one chart reveals the Christian worldview as being based on the Bible with a Theistic (Trinitarian) Theology. The Secular Humanism worldview is based on the Humanist Manifestos (I, II, III) and is rooted in Atheism. “Ism” is a belief, “Theos” means God, and the prefix “A-” indicates no or not. So, and Atheist can be one of two kinds of people: Either people who believe that no god exists; or people who believe that no “god belief” is relevant (except the belief that “god belief” is irrelevant).
In regards to Philosophy, the Secular Humanists follow Naturalism (contrasted with the Christian’s Supernaturalism based on faith and reason). Naturalism is an expression relating to how things came about. Naturalism supposes that everything that exists came about through natural processes. Naturalists cannot prove this, but they make this the underlying assumption for developing the rest of their philosophy. That’s why you may find people who say, “We are Naturalists at our core.” Which means they begin with the assumption that everything that exists came about through natural processes and there is no supernatural existence.
Therefore, someone who believes that nature is all that exists has a hard time processing a Christian’s belief that there is something (namely, God) who exists outside of nature, or supernaturally. Sigmond Freud tackled this. He said:
“Human beings believe in God because they want there to be something bigger than themselves.”
Therefore, according to Freud, “god belief” is merely a projection of someone’s idealized father image.
In his book Faith of the Fatherless, Paul Vitz states that it is interesting that Secularists never actually prove that the idea of God is a projection of our desire to idealize a father image. He said that all the people who came up with that theory just so happened to have bad relationships with their fathers. Maybe Atheism is their projection of an idealized “no father image”? Perhaps due to the fact that they had bad relationships with their own fathers, they then want to destroy the idea that there is a perfect Father in heaven. So, how would you decide which one of these ideas is true? There must be something to help us decide besides the argument itself.
Regarding Ethics, Secular Humanism claims Moral Relativism. From a Secular Humanism standpoint, the Ethicist claims that ethics are relative to either the individual (which is not very popular, as this could culminate to anarchy), or more often it is relative to a person’s culture. So, one culture would have a different set of ethical norms and that would be okay, because that would be the way that it would evolve for that specific culture. (By contrast, the Christian worldview holds to Moral Absolutes.)
Regarding Biology, Secular Humanism stands by Neo-Darwinian Evolution. The original idea of Evolution was that species, through changes in their environment, either died off or survived through natural selection and evolution. As time progressed, Neo-Darwinists added the idea of mutation which – according to them – changed the genetic structure of certain species. Given enough replications, these mutations proved to be productive, resulting in changes from one species to another completely new species. Other theories of evolution have come along since, including genetic drift and punctuated equilibrium, among others. But, the Secular Humanist would prefer any of these Neo-Darwinian ideas over any idea that relies on a Creator, because if there is a Creator, then there is a God and all of a sudden, the idea that God is irrelevant to life doesn’t make sense anymore.
In Psychology, Secular Humanists subscribe to Monism or Self-Actualization. “Mo” means “one”, so human beings are of one substance – which is the body. Therefore, Monism holds that we are only comprised of the body with no regard to our soul. According to the Secular Humanist, the soul is merely an epiphenomenon, like a movie that the brain shows onto life, convincing us that we actually have minds that are separate from our brain activity. However, it’s interesting to see how many Secularists are now contradicting the ideas of Naturalism and Materialism. In fact, well known philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his book Mind and Cosmos, he said that all the arguments of Materialism fail, although that doesn’t mean that he believes in an immaterial reality, but he can’t believe that only the material world exists because none of the arguments are philosophically plausible. Then there’s Maurice Beauregard, author of The Spiritual Brain and Brain Wars. He offers a lot of interesting and compelling arguments stating that the idea that only bodies exist cannot explain the existence that we actually know we have.
In regards to Sociology, Secular Humanism values non-traditional family, church and state. In other words, the institutions of society are made up by people. If we don’t like them anymore, we can change them. Who would change them? Whoever is in power.
Regarding Law, Secular Humanism values Positive Law, or Legal Positivism. After WWII, people had to come up with a theory to try the Nazis for their war crimes. The Nazis did things that were so evil, we didn’t even have categories of laws to frame them within. Previously, no one had imagined that people would do such evil deeds. So, we developed a body of international law, which raised the question of whether or not it is morally, ethically, and legally correct to come up with a set of laws and then turn around and put that new set of laws on people who committed the enfractions before the law was developed. The ultimate decision came down to one of two sides: 1) We know that what the Nazis did was wrong because every human being knows that these actions were wrong, violating the natural law that is true across all cultures and all times for all people. The Nazis knew this natural law, should have obeyed it, but they didn’t. But, the Legal Positivists believed that: 2) Law is what the human beings who are in charge decide. Since “we” are in charge now, we will decide what is legal and what is illegal. There is a really bad problem set in this precedent, however. Legal Positivism means that human beings become the law. This is why the American Founding Fathers were so intent on saying, “The government does not give rights to people, but it only secures rights that were given to them by God.”
When it comes to Politics, Secular humanism aligns with Liberalism, also referred to as Interventionism or a Secular World Government. This is centered around the idea that people can be perfected. But, in order to do this, we need to use the government and institutions to achieve that goal. The family can’t do it. The Church can’t do it because it is bad and believes in a God that doesn’t even exist. Therefore, the government will establish what should and shouldn’t be done, which will be accomplished through law. But, the problem with legislation as the basis of reality is that it cannot ever really lead you to right action. Consider Colorado’s Foster Care Laws. There is one law that says that Foster Parents may not feed a Foster Child out of a dog bowl. Honestly, WHO WOULD EVER DO SUCH A THING?! And yet, somebody must have done it at one point in time to necessitate the law. But, while the law covers this one instance, it does not say that the Foster Parent must LOVE the child. Loving a Foster Child is not covered within the domain of the law. The hard truth is that politics and law are very limited in how they can bring about change in a society.
Regarding Economics, Interventionism is the key idea. In other words, they believe that the economy will go off the rails if we allow everyone to have free exchanges. So, the government must be involved and tell people what to do and what not to do regarding their sales and purchases.
Finally, there is History. Secular Humanism prescribes to Historical Evolution. Some Secular Humanists actually believe that we can take charge of our own evolution. Which means that the elites – those in power – can dictate how everyone else are going to evolve into our collective future. So, history becomes a part of an argument to justify a certain course of action, rather than an accurately understood story of facts of what happened in the past.
Now, if we understand all these underlying assumptions of Secular Humanism, we can see how they arrive at their conclusions.
But, know this – Secular Humanists have identified a number of certain truths. But, the question becomes: “Is this the larger story of the world as it actually exists?” The test for reality is not “Is the argument logically so?” But, the true test is whether or not an argument explains the victories and disappointments that humankind experiences in everyday life. In other words, something may be true… but is it the whole truth? Does it tell the whole story of the world, as is discovered according to the Christian worldview?
Now, I don’t know of a film that is more emotionally rich and psychologically complex and deals so searchingly with our deepest longings, deepest fears, deepest loves or losses than Disney / Pixar’s Up. But, Ed Catmull of Pixar tells an interesting story in his book, Creativity Inc. He said that the original script they were handed for the movie Up told the story of a king who had a castle suspended in the air. The king had two sons who quarreled with one another over who would have the right to the throne. Through the course of their quarreling, they were cast to earth where they were helped to understand one another by a tall bird. As you may now know, there were two elements that survived that original script: The title Up and the tall bird. Now, think about what kind of film Up would have been if that original story had been produced all the way through to the cinema. The director may have gotten his way, but he would have produced a story that would have never garnered the box office power that the movie Up had. It would have never touched its audience as deeply as the first four minutes of the actual animated feature did. In fact, Pete Docter, the director of Up recounts that when he was faced with the original script, he had to go back and ask the question, “What is the bigger, deeper story that needs to be told here?”
Secularism is one of those worldviews that tells a story of the world. But, I can’t help but wonder if it tells a story of the world that doesn’t really account for what’s really, truly important. Maybe the most important question WE need to be asking isn’t how do WE tell the story WE want to tell about our experience in the world; but, how do we allow GOD to tell His bigger story through us?
So, the Secular worldview is definitely not devoid of truth. It just doesn’t tell the whole truth – the whole story.
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