Preview

Naturalism Vs Secular Humanism

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1049 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Naturalism Vs Secular Humanism
Secular Humanism is the naturalistic ideology that embraces and places great emphasis on humanity’s exclusive authority to determine and establish an arrangement of moral and ethical principles. The involvement of any supernatural forces is suppressed due to the fact that the existence of anything that cannot produce tangible evidence through evaluation or experiments is denied. Science to secular humanists is what the Scripture is to Christians.

Secular Humanism stems from the philosophy of naturalism and thereby places its trust in evolving science and physical evidence as opposed to supernaturalism. The principles of naturalism heavily rely on pieces of evidence that can either support or refute a proposed hypothesis. Seeing as how
…show more content…
2). A secular worldview identifies and establishes science as the explanation for creation. Conversely, a biblical worldview solely gives credence to God from the creation of all life. Creationism, held by Christians, advocates for an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being that created everything “out of nothing” (Weider & Gutierrez, 2014, p. 65). As demonstrated, the fundamental and most crucial difference between secular humanism and Christianity perspective is how the universe and life came to be. With that said, the only real similarity between both ideologies is their zealous conviction that their ideology can be proven through scientific …show more content…
Undoubtedly, this element varies under cultural, society, and individual diversity. Consistent with their ideology, secular humanist’s Primack and Aspy, (1980), expressed that “making decisions on the basis of some supernatural force may lead to destructive irrationality” (p. 223). As a consequence, secular humanists adamantly reject the notions that supernaturalism presents absolute morality and truth that applies to every person, society, and culture perpetually. On the other end of the spectrum, Christians view morality as universal for it is objective and absolute rather than subjective and relative. Additionally, Christianity establishes their moral standards on “God’s holy standards,” which can be discovered within the pages of the Holy Scripture (Weider & Gutierrez, 2014, p.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    APWH unit 2 study guides

    • 1840 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis: "secular buildings"…

    • 1840 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Secularism is the belief that religion should not interfere with or be integrated into the public affairs of a society. Oxford dictionary defines "secular" as "concerned with the affairs of the world, not religious or spiritual" so in this sense all civil government is "secular". The only civil governments that are not fully secular in this sense are Vatican City and some fundamentalist Moslem states. The governments of all the major countries in the world – including Australia, the USA, Great Britain, New Zealand, Italy, India, etc are all secular governments. There are multiple factors which have contributed to the decline of religion's relevance for the integration and legitimation of modern life. The increasing pluralism and materialism of society alongside society's increasing individualism and dissatisfaction with traditional religions are major reasons for secularisation.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sean McDowell, a speaker at the conference and former atheist, explained the knowledge required to understand the secular worldview is primarily based on scientific experiments and discoveries. After McDowell introduced himself, he opened the presentation up to questions from the audience and began to answer questions as an atheist would. As I listened to the questions presented, I was impressed as McDowell was able to shut…

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Secular Humanism regarding the question of origin, seems to lean toward the determination “that matter has always existed and given enough time and chance, the end result is what you see around you today.” (Weider, Gutierrez 64). There is a lack of evidence that God exists and man is viewed rather as a machine, having no control over their existence and once man’s life has come to an end, this machine ends (65). Humanists answer questions of identity by believing that, “mankind is a product of evolutionary forces” (66). Mankind is viewed as a more refined animal, however mankind is not of higher quality over the animal kingdom. The answers to the question of…

    • 547 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Secularists think that they have the accurate view of the United States. They are persuaded that United States should be a godless or secular state. They deem that religion was not an important aspect in the formation of the United States Constitution. This confirms that the Constitution farmers did not like religion to have any influence on the public policy. According to them religion and politics do not mix. Thus, religion and government should be kept far away from each other. There are a number of historical facts that are used by the secularists to prop up their views. Actually, the most significant historical fact is the absence of "God" in the constitution of United States. They say that this absence is extremely important. Secularists are persuaded that the absence of "God" confirms that there ought to be a strict division of state and…

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Experiences, circumstances and values shape the way we think, and give us a foundation for what will become our “worldview.” In order to make a decision on what these beliefs are, we can make judgments based on both faith and scientific knowledge. The origin of Progressive Creationism brings lessons from the Bible into balance with evidence from contemporary science. Progressive Creationism makes room for explanations to scientific findings by interpreting a much longer time frame for creation, but it does not negate an God as being present at every stage, and responsible for the miracles of the creation of life. Influences that have led me to consider this position come from family, church, science classes, and my own personal interpretation…

    • 919 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Humanism is a belief that places value on humans individually and as a whole. Humanism involves the progression of humans and their rights. Humanism has many different eras and has evolved through time. Humanism can be placed into many categories. Humanism is focuses mainly on the needs and interest of man but not particularly through god. Christian Humanism focuses on the advancement of man with the backbone of Christian principles. Humanism comes as a belief just as well as religion and can be interpreted in many ways.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Johnson explains that secularism, “Helped shake off the shackles of religion and created the modern world.”18 He then proceeded to explain the errors within secular thought. He writes that, “Secularism is destructive for three reasons. First, it cuts off the elite from the common people…Second, secularism invents its own meaning for life….[and] Finally, secularism has trouble self-correcting once it does a bad thing, because there is no universally admired secular standard a secularist can appeal to.”19 In essence this way of thinking not coherent with the belief that morality comes within. There is no absolute truth and therefore there is no basis for determining what is moral and what isn’t. Social problems are dealt with on the grounds of human reason and not upon supernatural laws. Because of this the system slowly starts to break down as individuals continue to establish for themselves there own purpose for living, if they admit there even is one. Once again there appears to be a division between the starting point and the end result. Haught writes that, “Evolutionary insights into the story of how morality emerged in natural history may not be wrong as far as they go, but they do not work well if taken as adequate or final…

    • 4162 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Religion Vs Secularism

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Secularism is the principle of the separation of government and religion. Secularism offers comfort for people because it respects individuals and groups of which they are a part. It provides equality of all people because it does not provide privileges or special protection to religious people. When religion is absent, it creates an area of neutrality and welcomes others to come. This making…

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Secular Humanists believe that life began through evolution. Mankind came to exist over a period of millions of years through the process of evolution. Evolution definition here.…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Question of Origin-The Secular Humanism believe that life on earth is just a coincidence. They believe that earth just created itself 4.5 billion year ago out of no were. Humans and everything else on earth came to exist through a combination of chemicals that formed together over billions of years and gave us what we have today. (Weider, L., & Gutierrez, B. 2011).…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many different religions in our world and each entails a different type of commitment. Some have specific traditions when in the presence of a sacred item or temple, some pray to their God more often than others and some may attend church more regularly. On the other hand, some people aren’t religious and believe in the more scientific side of the world, these beliefs are called humanist perspectives. Religious and humanist perspectives are very different from each other. Religious perspectives deal…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Asignment No: 1

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The humanistic perspective is the view that identification with other humans is the most important association. Humanism is the philosophy that advocates a humanistic perspective of the world. Humanism generally states that human beings have basically the same needs and values regardless of their specific life circumstances. The humanistic identity stands in opposition to extreme forms of national, religious, racial, and gender identity.…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Christian Worldviews

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages

    As defined in Oxford Dictionary, philosophy is “the study of fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence”. It’s considered to be the other level of foundation upon which each worldview is based. To start with, Secular Humanism as Roy Wood Sellars writes, “Is naturalistic and rejects the supernaturalistic stance with its postulated Creator-God and cosmic Ruler”. Naturalists deny everything that isn’t made up of matter and doesn’t exist in nature. However, Humanists aren’t just naturalists, but they also list a variety of philosophical positions that fit their worldview, such as: materialism, organicism and other theories based upon science. Moreover, epistemology which is a part of philosophy, refers to one’s theory of knowledge through basically answering the question of, “How much can one know about reality, and how does one obtain this knowledge?” Naturalistic Humanism answers that everything in the physical world is knowable, and science is the proper means of knowing it. Likewise, Marxism/Leninism epistemology professes faith in science and just as much faith that all religious claims are untrue. V.I. Lenin writes, “The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism… a materialism which absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion”. In other words, what you see of nature is all there is, and because nature appears to be made up of matter of some sort, that is all there is to the real world. Lenin also wrote “Matter is primary nature. Sensation, thought, consciousness, are the highest products of matter organized in a certain way”. On the other hand, even though Cosmic Humanism is a branch of Humanism, it’s clearly different from Secular Humanism as well as Marxism/Leninism. Cosmic Humanism rejects naturalistic and materialistic philosophies because such explanations ignore the all-pervasive supernatural. Thus, the Cosmic Humanist arrives at…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most people in America consider themselves to be Christians. But, the Christian worldview is declining and is under attack form what most call secular humanism. We must be very careful to define what we mean by humanism. By humanism we are not talking about humanitarianism. Humanitarianism means being kind to people. Secular humanists are atheists. To many this is a hard statement but let us look at what they believe. They reject any concept of a Creator in favor of evolution. They believe that in the universe there is nothing above and beyond the universe. Therefore man, as the highest form of evolution, is responsible to: create his own law and morality and to save himself. Man is the secular humanists' god.…

    • 540 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays