Secular humanism

Symbol adopted by the movement

Secular humanism or Nontheism Secularhumanism is a term most commonly applied to the organised authoritarian liberal ideology, which is hostile to traditional gentile religion, culture and values, seeking to remove their influence from society. In terms of organisational structure, it developed directly out of the Ethical Culture movement founded in the 19th century by Felix Adler, a Jew based in New York. While communism appeals to envy in an attempt to incite the destruction of traditional society, secular humanism aims at a middle-class liberal audience. It indulges their pseudo-intellectual delusions of grandeur, by flattering them with all manner of flowery epithets—freethinkers, rationalists and skeptics.

The international umbrella organisation exposing this ideology, composed of more than one-hundred member organisations in fourty countries is the "International Humanist and Ethical Union". This was founded in Amsterdam in 1952, its first chairman for more than two decades was a Jew named Jaap van Praag. To date around five million people are associated with the organisation. There have been three manifestos, exposing the core views of the ideology in 1933, 1973 and 2003 respectively. The second, authored by a Jew named Paul Kurtz is the least ambiguous. It promotes religious indifferentism, moral relativism, globalism, radical feminism, homosexualism and Europhobia.

Etymology

Somewhat confusingly, this same term is commonly applied to the unrelated culture of the Renaissance in Italy, which developed after a revival in the academic disciplines of the humanities. The United States based publication, New Humanist, was the first to use the term in the context of this movement in 1928. This was the group which published the Humanist Manifesto I. Rejecting the attempt to usurp the name from the Renaissance, the term secular humanists began to be applied in the 1930s. The Anglican cleric William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury popularised this in 1943.

History

Some adherents prefer the more grandiose term "Humanism" and specifically with a capital H to distinguish it from other forms of humanism. This has been criticized as causing confusion with, for example, Renaissance humanism. The organized movement is relatively young with the first "Humanist Manifesto" being publicized in 1933. However, there were precursor movements before this. One example is the "Freethought" movement, which however sometimes was not politically correct. The prominent journal The Truth Seeker for a time supported eugenics, race realism, and stated anti-Semitism. More recently, it has been acquired by the secular humanism movement and is now politically correct. Jews have played an important role in the secular humanism movement. Examples include Felix Adler who founded the precursor "Ethical Culture" movement, Jaap van Praag, first and long time chairman of the "International Humanist and Ethical Union", and Paul Kurtz who has been called "the father of secular humanism". Today the "International Humanist and Ethical Union" umbrella organization represents more than one hundred organizations in more than 40 countries.

Origins of the ideology; Liberals, Unitarians and Jews

It can be said that there are two main lineages, that would for the most part converge to become secular humanism. The first descended ideologically from the so-called Enlightenment tradition, drawing from Auguste Comte and his Positivism and the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. The other organisationally from radical Unitarian Universalists in religious collaboration with Reform Judaism, through the Free Religious Association in the United States which began during 1867. The Unitarian Universalists who emerged from the radical reformation, were controversial amongst mainline Christians as they were renowned for their relativism, some to the extent of atheism. After the American Civil War, there was a revival in the concept of a Christian America. Jewish involvement in societies such as the Free Religious Association and the National Liberal League was purely pragmatic, aimed at breaking any state connection to Christianity.

Felix Adler, the son of an immigrant rabbi and Talmudist from Worms, Germany, was president of the Free Religious Association between 1878—1882. Ralph Waldo Emerson had been the first president. Adler had founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1876, which was the first society of the Ethical Culture movement, soon established internationally. The term humanism, in the sense of this movement, was first applied to Adler's ideology in February 1877. The various Ethical Culture societies which had developed were unified into the American Ethical Union in 1889. The movement would go on to encourage the foundation of the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. A follower of Adler, Stanton Coit brought the ideology to Great Britain and in 1896 founded what would become the British Humanist Association. There were also followers in Vienna and Berlin.

During the 1920s and 1930s, there was a resurgence in secular humanist organisational activity. As well as the ACLU front-group which worked to alter the American legal system to remove Christian inspired law for secular humanist variants, the First Humanist Society of New York was founded in 1929, by a Unitarian named Charles Francis Potter. On the advisory board, were several influential subversives, including Julian Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. In particular, Dewey is noted for his ideas for subverting the education system to indoctrinate children with liberal relativist values, popular with secular humanists. This theory of altering cultural hegemony through institutional entryism was not too different to what the Frankfurt School of the same era were devising for cultural Marxism. They published a periodical named New Humanist and through it released the Humanist Manifesto I in 1933. It was shaped by various cranks at the University of Chicago, led by Raymond Bragg, a Unitarian minister. It was signed for the most part by Unitarians, liberal re-educationalists and Ethical Culture proponents.

Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching? — Charles Francis Potter in: Humanism: A New Religion, 1930

United Nations, International Humanist and Ethical Union

Following the crushing of the resistance in Germany, the United Nations was established in 1945, in a move to work towards the establishment of a One World Government. While there has been a very strong communist presence in shaping the ideology of the UN, people associated with organised secular humanism have also played a subversive role. For instance Julian Huxley was Director-General of UNESCO for 1946—1948, Brock Chisholm was Director-General of the World Health Organization for 1948—1953 and John Boyd Orr was Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization for 1945—1948. An organisation known as the Aspen Institute was founded in 1949, with the purpose of indoctrinating leaders with secular humanist and globalist ideology to subvert cultural structures. It has centres across the world including New York, Tokyo and Berlin. Amongst those it has trained includes, leading officials of the Trilateral Commission, the White House, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as many others.

To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism and religious dogmas. — Brock Chisholm, Conference on Education, Asilomar, California, 11 September 1954. American Humanist Association's 1959 Humanist of the Year.

The most prominent, openly secular humanist societies joined together in federation under the banner of the International Humanist and Ethical Union at an Amsterdam congress in 1952. The preparatory work was done by the American Ethical Union, American Humanist Association, British Ethical Union, Vienna Ethical Society and Dutch Humanist League. These five societies were joined at the IHEU's foundation by the Belgian Humanistisch Verbond and Indian Radical Humanist Movement. The prime figure behind this drive was the founder of the Dutch Humanist League, named Jaap van Praag. A Jew from a Marxist family background, Praag became the first chairman of the IHEU, a position he would hold between 1952—1975.

The Indian Radical Humanist Movement especially played a significant historical role in politics; it was founded by Manabendra Nath Roy, a communist who was on the Executive Committee of Comintern and was married to Ellen Gottschalk a Jewess. Another significant leader was V. M. Tarkunde who would become a Board Member of the IHEU. They advocated separatism in British India, while at the same time agitated for involvement in World War II against the Axis, hoping that it would mutually destroy all European power. Secular humanists also acted as a fifth column during the Cold War; officially supporting the Pugwash Conferences of Cyrus S. Eaton, who was awarded the “Lenin Peace Prize” by the Soviet Union.

Feminism and the Abortion Holocaust

Secular humanism is moved by an impetus to destroy all authorities, traditions, ethics, and even nature itself, insofar as they impair individual autonomy. Consequently, it is inherently feministic and pro-abortion. Secular humanists have played an pivotal role in the Abortion Holocaust. Despite their professed love of free thought, secular humanists do not tolerate dissent within their ranks. In 2012, two women in the three-person group Secular Pro-Life were denounced as "hateful to other women" at the American Atheist Convention held in Washington, DC. Contemporaneously, secularist Pennsylvania State Representative Babette Josephs called pro-life women "men with breasts."

Expanding international network

Grand Orient Freemasonry repackaged

Organised secular humanism and its officially approved ideology, shares much in common with historical Continental Freemasonry, the Order of the Illuminati, the Jacobin Club and many of the followers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (although Rousseau himself rejected secular humanism). Secular humanism can be regarded as a repackaged freemasonry, marketed towards a new generation, minus the rolled-up trouser legs and aprons of old. They hold the same canon of "martyrs" as freemasons, figures supposedly "oppressed" by the evils of "irrational" traditional religion, i.e. — Galileo Galilei and the occultic proponent of the hermetic-kabbalah Giordano Bruno. They build on this dialectic, adding modern day would-be-martyrs to the cult such as Salman Rushdie of The Satanic Verses fame, who was declared a Humanist Laureate by the Council for Secular Humanism.

Overt links to organised freemasonry include Jacques Lafouge, the former Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France being the vice-president of the French section of the IHEU; Libre Pensée. He edited official Grand Orient magazine; Humanisme. Under pressure from freemasonry in Belgium, the European Union organised in 2010 a summit which included the European Humanist Federation (a close ally of the IHEU), freemasons and atheists. Despite their special pleading and claims to be devoted entirely to a materialistic scientism, there has been some cross-over between the secular humanists and elements of the New Age movement. Much like the simultaneous relationship between anti-clerical and arcaic Eastern-looking esoteric elements in freemasonry. Annie Besant, the follower of theosophical so-called "world teacher" Jiddu Krishnamurti and a founder of the National Secular Society—which is today an associate member of the IHEU—is a prominent example of this relationship.

Secular humanism has defined itself in opposition to the supernaturalism and "irrationality" of all religions. But it actually operates on the basis of assumptions compatible with the aims of Eastern Spirituality and later New Age concepts. Swami Vivekananda states that "Buddhists and Jains do not depend on God; they seek to evolve a God out of man". This approach is similar to that of secular humanism, which regards humanity as the source of meaning and value in life. New Age philosophy also takes humanity as the source and center of meaning. But it defines humankind as a manifestation of diety and thereby inflates it to cosmic dimensions. A personal transcendent God is excluded. Secular humanism and cosmic humanism, or Eastern spirituality, can be seen as connected beliefs. This meging of the two has spawned a new wave of movements which are combinations of the secular and the spiritual. These groups include human potential groups; self-actualization, humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, new therapies and religious groups which believe in a god within. Cosmic humanism includes specific groups such as Erhard Seminar Training, Lifespring and Scientology. Alexander suggests that the New Age worldview has thus become prominent as it attempts to infuse and spiritualize secularism. — John P Newport, The New Age movement and the Biblical Worldview, 1998

Center for Inquiry

Paul Kurtz was also involved in the creation of the skeptical movement and the Center for Inquiry organization that is involved in both movements, examples of overlap between the two movements. The Center for Inquiry in 2017 stated that:

"In 1973, Center for Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz and Unitarian leader Edwin H. Wilson drafted Humanist Manifesto II, a set of common principles to “serve as a basis for united action” in order to realize “a vision of hope, a direction for satisfying survival.” The first manifesto came about before the Second World War and the Third Reich. So the opening paragraph of the second manifesto illustrates that the ideologies behind the recent white supremacist convulsions are one of the key motivating factors for this second manifesto."

The most important claimed aims of the movement is supporting secularism and rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience, and superstition as the bases of morality and decision-making. Human rights and liberal democracy are also supported and in particular those aspects that are related to secularism. Secular humanism in addition generally support various liberal, politically correct views and activities, such as supporting globalism and "diversity".

The movement in the United States has been criticized for having few blacks and Hispanics, who are often religious. Christianity is a main focus for criticisms. There seem to be few criticisms of Judaism, Christian Zionism, and Jewish supremacism, despite often being religiously based.

Despite supposedly being against Islamization, the Center for Inquiry has opposed President Donald Trump's "Muslim immigration ban" and a German ban on the wearing of the burqa for federal employees.

See also

• Nihilism
• Unitarianism
• Islamization and anti-Islamization

Bibliography

• Limbaugh, David (2003). Persecution: how liberals are waging war against Christianity. Regnery Publishing. ISBN 0895261111. 
• Newport, John P (1998). The New Age movement and the biblical worldview: conflict and dialogue. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0802844308. 
• Sarna, Jonathan D (2002). Jews and the American public square: Debating Religion and Republic. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0742521249. 

External links

• Secular humanism and Sexual perversions at Subversive Thinking
• Education and New Age Humanism at LeaderU.com
• Secular Humanism at GreatCom.org
• Freemasonry and Humanism at GoMasons.org
• Secular Humanist Propaganda at Infidels.org