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Originally Posted by Textcritic
So one would think. However, according to the book that I am presently reviewing (see post #202), "confessional secular humanism" is the real enemy. |
Yeah, without reading it I can't speak specifically on their whole argument but from your quotes on it I can certainly assume they must have to make some pretty bold assumptions and under those assumptions make their argument.
As per this point specifically:
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The authors define "humanism" rather arbitrarily as "confessional humanism": "A belief system in which human beings have replaced God as Creator, Ruler, and Savior". It seems that the "goal" for every humanist is material prosperity and comfort, which they might achieve through advances in science and technology, or through the conquest or "domination" of nature.
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Its very interesting the usages of the words 'material prosperity' IE humanists are cold, material acquiring beings; and conquest/domination of nature like our goal is anything other than to understand and learn the world in which we exist in.
Its difficult to deal with intelligent people, who intentionally muddy up the philosophical and historical views to skew them or misuse the words to define their ultimate viewpoint.
As I'm sure you can appreciate, listening to a well respected Theologian explain anything can really frustrate an analytical or rational being, because of the word games and twisting of historical context into their points.
I guess thats why I love the premise to tackle big issues by considering them as natural processes, religion and of course belief are exactly the kind of topics that science not only can reasonably investigate, but should.
As Daniel Dennett points out, as any religious person wouldn't you want your faith examined from a naturalist point of view to either add to your own strong faith or to examine something from a differing perspective. If we look at all religions, they don't all do it the same nor are they equal in weight or result. So to analyse and learn as much as we can on why certain religions do certain things we need to approach such questions from a scientific viewpoint to better understand such things.
Obviously plenty has been studied under the Theological perspective over the last few thousand years.