Posted on 09/14/2007 12:27:56 PM PDT by pabianice
The obvious error here is in assuming that secular = reason. It doesn't. In fact, hard-core secularists are typically some of the most unreasonable, irrational people you will meet.
Time to kick some sand in their face...
Are these people connected to George’s Human Fund?
And you're *absolutely* certain of this,"Reverend"?
The couple in the picture have to be from central casting.
A humanist “American Gothic.”
The couple in the picture have to be from central casting.
A humanist “American Gothic.”
Exactly. And environmentalism has many religious tendencies (devil figures, hell, redemption, salvation, purchase of indulgencies/carbon credits), yet the press doesn't notice.
Lack of imagination and shortage of poets forces them to use or misuse existing memes.
His wife, Linda Antoun Miller, said being a humanist to her means “that we alone have responsibility for our world and that we should try to increase the good, the true and the beautiful. We make our own heaven and hell on earth. Being good because you will be rewarded in the hereafter is less than doing good for purely generous reasons.”
Well, that approach brought us the bloodbath that was the 20th century. These people never have to answer for that, as, say, Christians are called onto the carpet for the Inquisition or the Crusades. Nobody ever makes them define terms like “good” or “generous” or “true” or “beautiful” when they throw them around, or even challenges them as to why these things are desirable in and of themselves. This woman is a psuedo-intellectual twit, spewing platitudes that are not anchored in anything other than what sounds good to her right now. Twit. Her husband also qualifies as one. Neither of them accurately states the theistic position from which they dissent. Twits.
Humanism is the aging hippie’s refuge on the way to Hell.
It was a fad among the “intelligentsia” before World War II showed the depravity that humans are capable of.
Two thoughts:
First, how does he "know" that death is final? He might believe it; he might have faith that it is so. But it is irrational to state that he knows it.
Second, if death is final, then ultimately nothing else matters. In the long run, we are all dead, as Keynes so famously said. And as soon as anyone dies—Rev. Miller included—the universe ceases to exist for that person.
If all is nothing more than atoms and void, it is ultimately pointless to talk about truth, rationality, or morality. The Universe cares nothing about those things, or about us. Do good, do evil, or do nothing—in the end, each is equally pointless.
As a secular humanist myself, my big problem with the (H)umanists is that they use their worldview as a cover for the promotion of socialism.
They want a voice in the political process.....all they have to do is talk.
First, how does he “know” that death is final? He might believe it; he might have faith that it is so. But it is irrational to state that he knows it.
_____________
The great nothing may have briefly coalesced from chance quantum phenomenon, learned english, told him so, and then died.
_____________
Second, if death is final, then ultimately nothing else matters. In the long run, we are all dead, as Keynes so famously said. And as soon as anyone dies—Rev. Miller included—the universe ceases to exist for that person.
______________
But until then he can have photos taken of him in sandals and socks, and he can lead his church of nothingness for the purpose of celebrating the meaningless. I think he just stopped reading before the end of the book. Here is where the Reverend stopped, I think.
Ecclesiastes 1
Everything Is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow
I concur with your critique, they are thick as fleas in Pugetopolis as you found out. For the past 12 years or so, in Kitsap County more than 3/4th’s of the elected RAT politicians from school board member up to commissioner are secular humanists and they too meet at the Unitarian Universalist Center in Bremerton. What a coincidence?!?!?!
Hmmmm. Sort of a mix of the lisping Toulouse Lautrec character from the movie Moulin Rouge ("do you believe in truth, beauty and love?"), John Lennon ("imagine there's no heaven"), and Kant. Lord, save our nation from the Church Ladies gone bad.
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