ANTITUSSIVE

From a website attacking the subject (I've lost the url):

"In the spiritually challenging decades between the two world wars, psychiatry and psychology flourished. It was an era when fear and pessimism had enshrouded the globe ­ an era when poison could masquerade as promise. John Dewey, an adherent of psychologist Wilhelm Wundt ­ and the man who would later pollute America’s education system with Wundt’s theories ­ designed the 1933 Humanist Manifesto. Dewey believed that what man had always done was precisely what should no longer be done. Signed by more than 34 community leaders and dignitaries in 1933, his manifesto denigrates religions and their ability to help solve people’s problems. Couched in a deceptively mellifluous style, this declaration emphatically denies man’s spiritual nature and aspirations with the arrogance of contemptuous authority.

"The Manifesto called for a one world “religion” which was not to be chained to “old beliefs” but to be influenced by scientific and economic change. “There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century.” Rather, religion should be a “human activity” in the direction of a “... candid and explicit humanism.”

"A list of fifteen precepts was drafted. These included:

 Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

 Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

 Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

 Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.

 The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.

 We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.

"In 1973 ­ in the face of nuclear threats to mankind ­ the Humanist Manifesto II was published, delivering an even more savage blow to the sanctity and validity of religion.

“'... [H]umanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith. “Traditional moral codes... fail to meet the pressing needs of today and tomorrow....” “Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful.... [T]he total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.'”

"The year 1980 saw A Secular Humanist Declaration continue the attack, declaring that people can lead meaningful and wholesome lives without the need of religious commandments or the clergy."

X-P's comment:

Among other prominent signatories to the original Humanist Manifesto aside from Dewey were Voltaire (literature), B. F. Skinner (psychology), and Isaac Asimov (science). Among the latest signatory is the widely known UK-based novelist Salman Rushdie.

Essentially what secular humanists are saying is that (1) our own hope to happiness and salvation lies in us and (2) we should abolish the traditional dualistic concepts (mind and body, body-and-soul, good-and-evil) So if we are our own hope at achieving personal happiness, satisfaction or salvation, the implication is that There Is No Creator, There Is No God. And if the universe is a monistic universe, i.e., one that is made of just one single element, the implication is that You Have No Soul. This belief has insidiously crept into the entire academic system. Before long, it could mean The Devil Does Not Exist as well. The latest incarnation of this belief system is found in the New Age movement.

Visit: http://secularhumanism.org

# posted by Resty Odon @ 12:07 PM