The Humanist Concept Of The Universe

Bobby Witherington
Highland, California

In 1933, a group of 34 humanists in the United States set forth the philosophical and religious principles which they regarded as fundamental. The document they drafted is known as Humanist Manifesto L Herein are contained some 15 radical affirmations. Affirmation number one says: "Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existent and not created." Affirmation number two says: "Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process."

Forty years later (1973), Humanist Manifesto Il was published. In this even more radical document the signers thereof affirmed "a set of common principles that can serve as a basis for common action," and which were designed "for a secular society on a planetary scale." In this publication, Humanism's ungodly goals regarding Religion, Ethics, The Individual, Democratic Society, World Community, and Humanity as a whole are set forth. In the section on Religion we are treated to such statements as: "We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural; it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of the survival and fulfillment of the human race. As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity .... But we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves . . . . Rather, science affirms that the human species is an emergence from natural evolutionary forces."

In the book The Humanist Frame edited by Sir Julian Huxley, one of the founders of The American Humanist Association, we note these statements from the pen of H.J. Muller in his chapter on "The Humanist Future": "For once the theory of evolution was accepted, only wishful thinking could avoid the logical conclusion, so aptly expressed by Shaw, that man has created God in his own image, rather than the reverse. An animal among millions of other species of animals, living and extinct, man was confronted with the responsibility of justifying his own existence and of finding his own footing or else admitting his inadequacy" (p. 402). Later he said, "This illustrates that modern Humanism must be revolutionary in its outlook" (p. 413).

From the same source we read these words penned by Sir Julian Huxley: "Evolutionary man can no longer take refuse from his loneliness by creeping for shelter into the arms of a divinized father-figure whom he has himself created, nor escape from the responsibility of making decisions by sheltering under the umbrella of Divine Authority, nor absolve himself from the hard task of meeting his present problems and planning his future by relying on the will of an omniscient but unfortunately inscrutable Providence" (p. 19).

The preceding statements, made by authoritative figures within the fast-growing Humanist movement, are but a few among many that could be cited. But these are sufficient to prove that the Humanist concept of the universe is based on the evolutionary hypothesis. Of course, if belief in a Supernatural Being is summarily dismissed, as is generally the case among Secular Humanists, then belief in the theory of evolution becomes a logical necessity. Secular Humanists, in their minds, have reasoned God out of existence. Their philosophy is anti-Genesis from start to finish. They do not believe that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1), for they do not believe God even exists, apart from man's own imagination. They do not believe "God created man in his own image" (Gen. 1:27), for they believe God is simply a myth, and a myth can not create. Of course, man is real, so man is the creator - having, in the words of Shaw, "created God in his own image." Having completely reversed Genesis 1:27, in concept and conduct they are thus forced to, also reverse Jeremiah 10:23 and conclude that "the way of man" is in himself, and that it is "in man that walketh to direct his steps."

Let us get it straight; Humanism is not humanitarianism! Humanism is an evil tree that bears evil fruit, and which is rooted in the perverse soils of atheism and evolution. All true humanists are evolutionists. They believe life spontaneously sprang from non-life, and through eons of time evolved to produce life as we know it today, including man. To them, time plus chance equals man! In the words of Huxley, man is "made of the same matter and operated by the same energy as all the rest of the cosmos," and is "linked by genetic continuity with all the other living inhabitants of his planet - animals, plants, and micro-organisms." These, Huxley says, are all man's "cousins or remoter kin, all parts of one single branching and evolving flow of metabolizing protoplasm" (The Humanist Frame, p. 19).

Logical-thinking, ancient Greeks said: "From nothing nothing comes. Something is. Therefore something was." Modern men still quote these words of ancient wisdom. And well they should! Any mathematician knows that nothing subtracted from nothing, or nothing added to nothing still leaves nothing. Hence, the expression "something is; therefore something was" is axiomatic, or self-evident. The application of this principle leads us to say "for every effect there had to be an adequate cause." This principle is expressed in Scripture in the statement "for every house is builded by some man. . . " (Heb. 3:4). All intelligent people, including atheists and evolutionists, admit that a house did not build itself, nor did it evolve from a speck of mortar or a splinter of wood. It should be equally as obvious that "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Rom. 1:20).

Theists, atheists, and evolutionists, if they are honest, have one thing in common; they have to admit the existence of a first cause which caused everything else. Something had to initially exist in order for something to exist now. And there could be but three alternatives - eternal mind, eternal matter, or eternal nothing. To believe that eternal nothing produced something is unthinkable. He who believes this has a problem which generally calls for treatment in a specially designed institution! This leaves two alternatives: eternal mind, or eternal matter.

Let us consider the second alternative first; namely, the belief that life as we know it, its design, its amazing complexity, and intellect, evolved from eternal matter. On the one hand, this would mean that mind, which is superior to matter, was produced by matter, its inferior. This is hardly consistent with the "mind over matter" concept! More specifically, it means that life came from non-life - which is the antithesis of every scientific experiment and observation to date concerning the origin of life. Moreover, the eternity of matter concept is contrary to the second law of thermodynamics, which recognizes the tendency in all the universe to degenerate, or to descend from the highly organized to the less organized. If left alone, metal rusts, wood rots, and buildings deteriorate. This law, also known as the principle of entropy, argues that the universe (matter) had a beginning - obviously so, for if it is running down, it must have been new at some point in the past. Furthermore, the most current sophisticated, scientific methods available for determining the age of the earth all agree that it is relatively Young - much, much younger than even the youngest age which is demanded by the evolutionary hypothesis. In fact, the scientific arguments against the theory of evolution are so consistent and so conclusive that honest evolutionists have admitted that the one compelling reason why they believe it is because the only other viable alternative is to believe in God! Against evidence to the contrary, they have forced themselves to believe in the eternity of matter. And they believe that through blind chance inanimate matter became animate, or that non-life sprang into life (spontaneous generation). According to them, inorganic matter became organic matter, which, through a transmutation process, became vegetable life, which became animal life, which became man. And all this without design, purpose, or any assistance from an intelligent being! And these are the people who deny every miracle recorded in the Bible, and ridicule the virgin birth of Christ! They think it incredulous to believe a virgin could conceive and bear a Son, but they question the intelligence of a person who refuses to believe an amoeba sprang of ancient slime and evolved into man. They are hardly in a position to criticize "blind faith"!

The Humanist concept of the universe is atheistic and evolutionistic. Being a belief structure, humanism is a religion. It admits to being a religion, and it has been so declared by the U.S. Supreme Court. But it is a religion which worship and serves the creature while often denying the very existence of the Creator. And being a belief structure, or a religion, humanism adversely affects man's whole outlook upon life itself and man in general. In short, humanism was first conceived in the mind of the devil, and it can only lead to one destination - hell! We must "put on the whole armor of God," and take "the sword of the Spirit" (Eph. 6:11,17), and resist this "ism" which is spreading like a cancer throughout the world. It is already much later than most people think. But if Christians will be as evangelistic with the truth as humanists are with their lie it may not be too late. Consider ye well!

Guardian of Truth XXVIII: 13, pp. 391-392
July 5, 1984