Bokelskere.no

For roughly the last 150 years the Western world, and increasingly the Eastern world, has come under the sway of a set of ideas and principles brought together formally, since 1970 in The Humanist Manifesto, under the rubric—Secular Humanism.

Though presented as something new, Secular Humanism had its precursors in the Skeptics, Cynics and Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome. Essentially what it proposed then and what it proposes now—stripped of its deceptive academic dress is: “What you see, hear, smell, taste and feel is all there is, Buddy. Deal with it.” While there is no formal Secular Humanist Non-Bible written for the unenlightened, if there were, its chapters might be headed:

The universe is an accident.
Matter precedes Mind.
Consciousness is a fortuitous spin-off of Matter.
Human life, indeed, all life, serves no higher purpose.
There is no consciousness higher than our own.
“Progress” ascends in a straight line from primitive hominids to ourselves.
Reliigion is delusion.
“Spiritual” and “sacred” are polite words for superstition.
Only modern science and the scientific method can reveal the objective Truth.
Contemporary man represents the most highly evolved level humanity has ever reached.

(John Anthony West)