Dr. Robert Reymond on Secular Humanism

Interesting piece of argumentation from Dr. Reymond demolishing the irrationality of the Secular Humanists:

The problem that all secular humanism must face, however, is this: Can an empirical, purely descriptive philosophy, a philosophy that repudiates theology and concerns itself only with a description of what is in human experience, provide a ground for the oughts of universal moral prescriptions, indeed, for any moral prescriptions whatsoever? A negative response is obviously the only response: One can never derive "oughtness" from "is-ness". No doubt many humanists disapprove of the brutality and murder perpetrated by Soviet Communism, urging that the world should "make love, not war", but Joseph Stalin showed a personal preference for murder when he thought it appropriate and contributory to the propagation of worldwide communism, as did Chairman Mao. And many moderns have a personal preference for adultery over monogamy and for theft over labor. Thus murder, adultery, and theft, as much as friendship, fidelity, and honest labor and private property, have on empirical, descriptive grounds a claim as values because they have been discovered as values in human experience. How then can a theory of ethics that restricts itself to descriptive facts provide a ground for normative prescriptions? ...

Probably most humanists today attempt to avoid this problem by speaking of moral obligation as a social demand. Instead of looking to theology for the imposition of moral sanctions, they look to society for the imposition of such. Apart from the fact that this appeal does not really avoid the problem of ground (where is the argument to establish an individual's obligation to any society?), it must address this question: If morality is a demand of society, which society? Is it the demand of the family, the church, the nation, or all humanity? ... But then morality becomes loyal to the State, and we are right back where we begin — with murder, adultery, and theft becoming moral obligations when Nazism, Fascism, and Communism demand them.

On purely empirical grounds how can society obligate any man to sacrifice his personal preference and ease for the improvement of others? If there is no God and men are simply products of an impersonal beginning plus time plus chance, why should not every man say as the student said to Francis Schaeffer, "I want to destroy." If there is no God why should not every man step out of the line and join the student in his bent to destroy or, at least, in his "dropping out" of society. And if humanism can do no better than to call such people social sponges, social misfits, and other derogatory names, it has abandoned rational argument and can provide no ground for moral education.

... In an empirical philosophy, one may find the verb is, but the verb ought has no logical standing.

— Robert Reymond, Faith's Reasons for Believing (Ross-shire, Scotland, UK: Mentor, 2008), pp. 413-414. Bold supplied.

Secular Humanism, and in fact all forms of empiricism, will always fail to provide a coherent meta-ethical theory, and the epistemic ground for the existence of their ethical declarations. All of them commit David Hume's "is-ought" fallacy, as there is simply no way an "ought" or ethical imperative can be derived from an "is" or ethical norm or description. This is why the postmoderns have rightly discerned that the entirety of Modernism, of which Secular Humanism is a major actor, has feet of clay, and that such humanist ethical pronouncements are, in [Michel] Foucault's view, a form of power play. After all, if there is no ground or basis for one's ethical pronouncements, then all the utopian pontifications of the secular humanists are just merely opinions just as subjective as all other views, and no more authoritative than the views of any other person. To say that the humanist view is correct therefore is a form of epistemic subjugation of the majority who are non-Secular humanists to the Secular humanist "bourgeois", though I must add Foucault is not necessarily adverse to the latter.

Secular Humanism and all forms of empiricism are meta-ethically and epistemologically bankrupt, being unable to provide a coherent and logical framework to understand the world. [Other more sophisticated philosophers have continued coming up with more and more complex theories, but besides throwing Occam's Razor, we would not be going there since it is too academic anyway, plus I would then need to do much reading for little effect] Post-modernism understands this failure and therefore denies that such framework exists at all (the denial of the metanarrative). Of course, this does not solve the problem, but I digress.

The Secular humanists and New atheists should focus on Post-modernism, as post-modernism has destroyed their entire epistemic foundations, or at the very least gives the impression of destrying it. People like Dawkins et al can rant how much they want, but in the overall scheme of things, they are on the losing side. The winners are the post-moderns and neo-pagans (ie Cosmic humanists) who will take over the culture (barring reformation and revival), and these are the ones who we Christians need to face in the future. To put it bluntly, Secular humanism is so passè, and while there is certainly need to refute their false belief systems, their numbers are generally on the decline. Writing more "God Delusion" books is not going to help increase their numbers by much.