The Misanthropic Humanist

Some secular humanists are bound to hold most people in contempt

Photo by Altaf Shah, on Pexels

Christian apologists like to say that God loves sinners but hates sin. Yet following Paul’s rationale for the supposed need for the sacrificial death of God’s son, these apologists will also insist that human nature is corrupt, that we all suffer from an “original sin” of proudly departing from God’s plan for us.

At some point, just as pebbles added to pebbles eventually turn into a heap, our tendency to “sin” would have made us less lovable to our Maker. Similarly, if you invent a device that eventually keeps malfunctioning, you may lose even your nostalgic admiration for how this handiwork used to operate well.

If a deity created the universe, and God expects perfection, why should God be understood as loving his Creation? God might pity lesser beings for their struggles, but that’s not uplifting adoration. Or God might be self-sacrificially compassionate so that he rushes to the aid of lesser beings, but again, that would say more about God’s nature than our merits.

Setting aside that dubious religious context, a similar question arises for secular humanists.

You don’t hear much about humanism even though this ethos is implicit in all the institutions that distinguish modern lifestyles…