Can Man Live Without God?...

"Men have forgotten God." (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
"A person cannot live without worshiping something." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

The whole concept of modern Secular Humanism is to exalt man (glory to man in the highest!) and to dethrone God and put Him in His place, as they see it. In other words, they proclaim: Up with man, down with God! Man has attempted to make a name for himself ever since the tower of Babel (cf. Gen. 11:4) and believes he can get along without God's intervention, grace, or providence. Man is deluded into thinking he can rule God out of the universe and doesn't need Him. 

 Pertinent remarks by great thinkers: "Religion is indispensable to private and morals and public order" (Cicero); "No society has ever been able to maintain a moral life without the aid of its religion" (William Durant). Humanism has been defined as "religion without God." And you don't have to be an atheist to have no place for God in your life, practical atheists believe in God, but live as though there is no God. Psalm 10:4 (HCSB) sums it up: "There is no accountability since God does not exist."

Humanist historian/philosopher (and author of The Story of Civilization) Will Durant posed the dilemma we face today as the postmodern philosophy (that "God is dead") that permeates society; and humanists try to be good without God in the equation: "The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, nor even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God." People have no excuse not to believe in God (cf. Rom. 1:20), but they foolishly suppress the fact and are in a state of denial. They seem to think that God is no longer relevant, that we can solve our issues and problems without His input or intervention, and that we are basically good, not evil.

We live in an age when sinners decide that they are their own judges of morality and can make their own value judgments: "Everyone did what was right in their own eyes," much like Israel did, as recorded in Judges 21:25. Men find themselves judging God, rather than realizing He's their judge. Now the biggest problem nations face is that of keeping the peace, and there shall be wars and rumors of wars till the end, and when we reach peace we will no longer feel we need God. 

America is a so-called good nation by human standards as recorded by secular Alexis de Tocqueville, in his work Democracy in America, which he wrote after visiting the U.S, posited that our strength lie in our "goodness," and when we "ceased to be good we will cease to be great." This is not based on biblical nor historical precedent, but only personal deduction and observation.

Yes, America is different (we are probably the most religious nation on earth), yet we are failing on the world stage due to poor leadership and the good citizens (believers) cease to be salt and light and evil is winning by default, not because Christianity has failed, nor because its worldview is faulty, but because Christians fail to stand up and be counted, to take their stand for the right and to fly their Christian colors. It has been said by philosophers and historians that morality in a nation cannot be upheld without the aid of religion: George Bernard Shaw said that "no nation can survive the loss of its gods." George Washington said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

Christians ought to protest the secularization of a society that seeks to eradicate God from the public square and discourse. We cannot silence God, though! If we try to go to war with Him we will lose and our nation will lose its blessing and providential hand. We fight this by speaking up against the evils of society, even if it entails becoming activists and doing whatever you can to mobilize the church and equip them for the battle. We are not to passively allow Satan to seize control!

When you take God out of the picture, there remains a vacuum that is filled with satanic activity. When we cease to worship God, we will ultimately find something else to worship, because man is meant and designed for worship! God is the motive people have for good behavior because you see very few hospitals, orphanages, relief organizations, leprosariums founded by infidels. In India, they think that the suffering of man is caused by bad karma and you shouldn't interfere with another's karma!

We are at the point in our society where we don't know right from wrong and have lost our moral fiber because there's no moral compass and God condemns those who call good evil and evil good (cf. Isa. 5:20). There is an absolute standard to judge by and people do instinctively know right from wrong due to having a conscience and everyone is culpable to be blamed because of transcendent or natural law, which is above national law and even nations are subject to.

You could say that the new battle is against God and the new war of independence is from God! People, in general, think that the Ten Commandments are obsolete and don't apply to a modern society and don't feel bound by them, free to make up their own rules as they go along to suit themselves. As long as they can think of some reason to justify themselves and have good motives, the reason that they are doing the right thing.

But goodness isn't defined by man, but by God and is in conformity with His nature. The basic diagnosis of man is that he does things his way and not God's way (as Isa. 53:6 says, "... we have turned every one to his own way..."). We cannot know good without knowing God, for He is the final arbiter of it and will judge us and our standards of good versus His. 

 Without God, Shakespeare summed up the essence of life as Macbeth mused: "... 'tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing." If we are not in God's image, we are mere animals and glorified apes: "Do you think we are mere animals? Do you think we are stupid?" (Job 18:3, NLT)--teach man he is an animal and he will act like one.

"Without God, life makes no sense," according to Rick Warren! "If there is no God all things are permissible," according to Fyodor Dostoevsky, and there can be no absolutes or standards to measure perfection by. The world has nothing against religion as long as it remains privatized, but we are to spread the word and be obedient to the gospel without suppressing it--it's a command to obey not an option to consider. The implications of atheism are profound: No judge to make us feel guilty; no lawgiver to obey; no ruler or sovereign to submit to, no creator to emulate, know, and love; no hell to shun; and no heaven to look forward to--how dismal and bleak an outlook!

Romans 1:18ff shows what transpires once man leaves God out of the reckoning. In the final analysis, God will bless America by association again when the church repents and gets back on track fulfilling the Great Commission (not the Great Suggestion), and not when the church tries to implement Sharia law or usher in the Millennial Kingdom, to "advance the cause of Christ" through legislation or government. Soli Deo Gloria!

"To Justify The Ways Of God To Man" (quoted from John Milton)

"Expect Great Things From God; Attempt Great Things For God." --William Carey, father of modern missions in a sermon.

John Milton penned Paradise Lost to defend God's veracity and justice in His dealings with mankind.  This was an attempt to reach out to many who would not otherwise want to hear any type of apologetics from a Christian and had many audiences:  the skeptic, the cynic, the doubter, the contra-Christian, the fence sitter, the newborn believer, the adolescent believer, the mature believer, the backslider, the pagan, the nihilist, the earnest seeker or searcher of truth or the so-called answer, the sophisticated, the naive, the cultured, the Bohemian, and even the curiosity seeker.

We must realize that we don't always know who will read our Christian writings, and should be open to the idea of feeding them despite their identity or affiliation. Know the audience!   Did you know that William Shakespeare was a devoted Christian who mentioned Jesus Christ in his will?  We can recognize and verify this by his hundreds of direct quotes and allusions to the Bible in his plays, sonnets, and poems.  If you remove the Bible from his works, they seem to be empty and aimless.  He had a Christian worldview and probably felt that his mission was to reach out to the lost.  Many people have doubtless come to faith in Christ by first being softened in the heart by Shakespeare's biblical references.

Many people and students of literature don't realize that our Christian heritage in Western Civilization has been dominated or greatly influenced by Christian literature: Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy) , John Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress is perhaps the most famous and popular allegory every written), Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Robert Browning, Victorian poet with famed wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet laureate (In Memoriam), Robert L. Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped), Charles Dickens, Victorian author (A Christmas Carol), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German Shakespeare, (Faust), not to mention countless unsung heroes of literature.  In fact, the very first novel published in the English language, Robinson Crusoe, was most likely meant as an outreach because one can tell by his biblical references drilled into the conscious and unconscious by illustration and repetition.  I remember the one verse that stuck out in my mind that changed my way of thinking about literature with the impression only the Bible could make ( cf. Psalm 50:15, HCSB):  "Call on Me in a day of trouble; I will rescue you, and you will honor Me."  This verse is made real because we see it fulfilled in the storyline and one sees it so often that one is impressed. I may have already been a believer, but this verse brought conviction and God's Word doesn't come back void according to Isaiah 55:11.

There are twentieth-century authors who have greatly influenced literature and the unbelieving masses.   J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote The Hobbit trilogy and C. S. Lewis, author of the classic children's series, The Chronicles of Narnia, have been seen as movie productions, plays, and the subject of literature courses at schools of higher learning, as well as high school English classes.  These novels use imagery and metaphoric language to portray Christ.  Did you know that it was Tolkien who converted Lewis by telling him that Christianity is the great myth that has come true?

It is a great ambition to want to reach the lost for Christ in new ways such as writing fiction/fantasy, and many analogies and metaphors can be used.  But it is vital that one knows one's audience and not forget who you are targeting and keep in mind who to reach out to and you want to resonate with and strike a chord with that will indeed vibrate for eternity. He knows where his audience is and where they should be and want to be.  It is a sad commentary on our decaying secularizing culture that it is the best-selling authors who are shaping the values, morals, and ethics and even faith of our society.

But we need not give up the world to the pagans and lose by default and concede everything away without a fight; for Christianity has always survived because it has out-thought, out-lived, and "out-died,"  the competition. Basically, we are referring to the discipline of apologetics when we defend our faith and try to make it palatable to the unbeliever and this can even be in the format of literary apologetics like that of Tolkien and Lewis.  We need more authors to compete with the secular world and welcome any effort by a writer who feels called or gifted to enter this endeavor or discipline.
Soli Deo Gloria!

Roots Of Secular Humanism...

Humanism, An Idea From Antiquity:

You may believe that Secular Humanism is something "new under the sun," but it was an idea in the Aegean Sea area of classical Greece. Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things" (homo mensura).  It goes earlier than that to the plain of Shinar in Gen. 11:4 where men sought to "make a name for themselves."

"For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude.  Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened claiming to be wise, they became fools..." (Romans 12:221-22, HCSB).  

"...Do you have a monopoly on wisdom?  (Job 15:8b, NIV).

What the essence of humanism is, is glory to man in the highest:  the deification or exaltation of man, and dethroning of God.  Humanism 101:  "Up with man; down with God, because we can do good without Him!"  What they mean is to start with man as the measure or standard and judge everything accordingly:  Instead of starting the rationale with God--"In the beginning God..," the commence with man and his finite cerebral capacity, whereby God is infinite and the Greeks said that the finite cannot grasp the infinite--how ironic!  "In all his scheming, the wicked arrogantly thinks: 'There is no accountability since God does not exist" (Psalm 10:4, HCSB).  "...[A]ll is thoughts are, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 10:4, ESV).  (God is in none of his thoughts!)  When you take God out of the reckoning man becomes depraved without limit and God gives them up to go their own way--yes, even man's brain or intellect is depraved and is incapable of spiritual apprehension:  "No one understands" (cf. Rom. 3:10f).   "...My people do not understand" (Isaiah 1:3, NASB).   "...So the people without understanding are ruined"  (Hos. 4:14, NASB).  "...The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint"  (Isaiah 1:5, ESV).

Secular Humanism is defined as a religion without God in the equation.  It is completely incompatible with the Judeo-Christian worldview. Humanists do not believe that there is a supernatural and deny any deity or divinity of any notion in their reckoning.  When you take God out of the equation man loses focus and orientation, and has no moral compass to guide him and sees a distorted reality: such as Eastern religion seeing all reality as Maya or an illusion.  Humanism is a religion with high priests, meetings, and even has the Humanist Manifesto of doctrines to adhere to John Dewey was one of the early proponents who introduced the ideas into our educational system and is the so-called father of American public education.  They even have "Secular Humanist of the year" awards!  Their chief tenet is that there is no absolute moral code to live by and we are capable of concocting our own morality.

America is entering the New World Order (or era):  Trump vows to keep God out of it [politics]. Humanists want a world without God and any religious influence--even banning signage of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and schools, taking the motto "In God We Trust" off our coins, and "One nation under God" off our pledge of allegiance (they have already banned Bible reading and classroom prayer in public schools in 1963, when infamous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair protested and litigated).  Will we have a National Day of Prayer and a prayer breakfast at the White House? They are opposed to Christianity because they cannot stomach the fact that some people are "lost" and need salvation, and they believe in their Humanist Manifesto II of 1973:  "No deity will save us, we must save ourselves."

Their faith is in science, or should I say "scientism," which is using science for non-scientific purposes such as finding ethical, philosophical, and religious truth (an example is saying that the cosmos is all there is and all there was and all there ever will be--Carl Sagan). They are people of faith too--in the scientific method to solve our problems and lead to all truth.  There are not people of faith and people of reason or rationale, because everyone has faith and starts with some presupposition they cannot prove.  The building block of the "religion" is evolution and they regard any encroachment upon this dogma as heretical and intolerable. For example, Carl Sagan said that evolution is a "fact", not a "theory." Note:  It's unproven and unprovable since history is nonrepeatable, there are no witnesses, they cannot account for the origin of life nor the arrival of the fittest,  and a new species has never been observed to evolve in either the fossil record or in real time.

Humanism is indeed a religion, though they say it is not because they don't believe in "God." But even John Dewey said in A Common Faith that you can be "religious" without having "religion." Atheism has been declared a religion by the Seventh Court of Appeals!   Humanism is more than disbelief in God; it's anti-God and, as a worldview, interprets everything without God in the picture, which is contrary to the rise of Western civilization.  We might call Secular Humanism a post-theological worldview and they are in the process or rewriting history--a red flag!

A fundamental repercussion of their worldview is that God never intervened in history (Jesus is seen as a legend, myth, lie, etc.), and worse yet, man is not created in the image of God with a soul and spirit, but is a materialistic, naturalistic hodgepodge of atoms colliding with no divine purpose--life has no meaning or purpose (words anathema to them), and, since we are animals in heat avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, we can feel free to live without moral restraint, hell to shun, nor judgment to fear, just like animals and feel no "guilt," which comes only from religion. Note:  We are not a freak biological accident or some fluke of nature!  In scientific parlance, they are monists, not believers in dualism like Christians, in that they don't believe we have a mind, separate from our brain, but it's only a projection of brain activity and there is no soul or spirit within us.

The whole point of Secular Humanism is to be good without God and to be religious without the so-called religion! They deify and exalt man and dethrone and ignore God, making a name for the man and blaspheming God's name! Idolatry is not giving God His rightful domain!

So what?  Secular Humanists want Christians in their camp, but they must be willing to privatize their faith, not flaunting it or making it public--keep it in church!  What we are beholding is the secularization of our society where "we have forgotten God" (Will Durant, humanist historian).  The Constitution guarantees the free expression of faith or religion with no State interference or regulation.  Playwright George Bernard Shaw said that "no nation has ever survived the loss of its gods."  Dostoevsky said that without God all things are permissible--this is our future?  Caveat: Secular Humanists pin the blame for our problem on man's preoccupation with the spiritual element and mostly fault Christianity!  Soli Deo Gloria!

Humanism, An Idea From Antiquity

You may believe that Secular Humanism is something "new under the sun," but it was an idea in the Aegean Sea area of classical Greece. Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things" (homo mensura).  It goes earlier than that to the plain of Shinar in Gen. 11:4 where men sought to "make a name for themselves."

"For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude.  Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened claiming to be wise, they became fools..." (Romans 12:221-22, HCSB).  


The essence of humanism:  glory to man in the highest:  the deification or exaltation of man, and dethroning of God.  Humanism 101:  "Up with man; down with God, because we can do good without Him!"  What they mean is to start with man as the measure or standard and judge everything accordingly:  Instead of starting the rationale with God--"In the beginning God..," they commence with man and his finite cerebral capacity, whereby God is infinite and the Greeks said that the finite cannot grasp the infinite--how ironic!

"In all his scheming, the wicked arrogantly thinks: 'There is no accountability since God does not exist" (Psalm 10:4, HCSB).  "...[All] is thoughts are, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 10:4, ESV).  (God is in none of his thoughts!)  When you take God out of the reckoning man becomes depraved without limit and God gives them up to go their own way--yes, even man's brain or intellect is depraved and is incapable of spiritual apprehension:  "No one understands" (cf. Rom. 3:10f).   "...My people do not understand" (Isaiah 1:3, NASB).   "...So the people without understanding are ruined"  (Hos. 4:14, NASB).  "...The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint"  (Isaiah 1:5, ESV).

Secular Humanism is defined as a religion without God in the equation.  It is completely incompatible with the Judeo-Christian worldview. Humanists do not believe that there is a supernatural and deny any deity or divinity of any notion in their reckoning.  When you take God out of the equation man loses focus and orientation, and has no moral compass to guide him and sees a distorted reality: such as Eastern religion seeing all reality as Maya or an illusion.  Humanism is a religion with high priests, meetings, and even has the Humanist Manifesto of doctrines to adhere to. And John Dewey was one of the early proponents who introduced the ideas into our educational system and is the so-called father of American public education.  They even have "Secular Humanist of the year" awards!  Their chief tenet is that there is no absolute moral code to live by and we are capable of concocting our own morality.

America is entering the New World Order (or era):  Trump vows to keep God out of it [politics]. Humanists want a world without God and any religious influence--even banning signage of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and schools, taking the motto "In God We Trust" off our coins, and "One nation under God" off our pledge of allegiance (they have already banned Bible reading and classroom prayer in public schools in 1963, when infamous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair protested and litigated).  Will we have a National Day of Prayer and a prayer breakfast at the White House? They are opposed to Christianity because they cannot stomach the fact that some people are "lost" and need salvation, and they believe in their Humanist Manifesto II of 1973:  "No deity will save us, we must save ourselves."

Their faith is in science, or should I say "scientism," which is using science for non-scientific purposes such as finding ethical, philosophical, and religious truth (an example is saying that the cosmos is all there is and all there was and all there ever will be--Carl Sagan). They are people of faith too--in the scientific method to solve our problems and lead to all truth.  There are not people of faith and people of reason or rationale, because everyone has faith and starts with some presupposition they cannot prove.

The building block of the "religion" is evolution and they regard any encroachment upon this dogma as heretical and intolerable. For example, Carl Sagan said that evolution is a "fact", not a "theory." Note:  It's unproven and unprovable since history is nonrepeatable, there are no witnesses, they cannot account for the origin of life nor the arrival of the fittest,  and a new species has never been observed to evolve in either the fossil record or in real time.

Humanism is indeed a religion, though they say it is not because they don't believe in "God." But even John Dewey said in A Common Faith that you can be "religious" without having "religion." Atheism has been declared a religion by the Seventh Court of Appeals!   Humanism is more than disbelief in God; it's anti-God and, as a worldview, interprets everything without God in the picture, which is contrary to the rise of Western civilization.  We might call Secular Humanism a post-theological worldview and they are in the process or rewriting history--a red flag!

A fundamental repercussion of their worldview is that God never intervened in history (Jesus is seen as a legend, myth, lie, etc.), and worse yet, man is not created in the image of God with a soul and spirit, but is a materialistic, naturalistic hodgepodge of atoms colliding with no divine purpose--life has no meaning or purpose (words anathema to them), and, since we are animals in heat avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, we can feel free to live without moral restraint, hell to shun, nor judgment to fear, just like animals and feel no "guilt," which comes only from religion. Note:  We are not a freak biological accident or some fluke of nature!  In scientific parlance, they are monists, not believers in dualism like Christians, in that they don't believe we have a mind, separate from our brain, but it's only a projection of brain activity and there is no soul or spirit within us.

The whole point of Secular Humanism is to be good without God and to be religious without so-called religion! They deify and exalt man and dethrone and ignore God, making a name for man and blaspheming God's name! Idolatry is not giving God His rightful domain!

So what?  Secular Humanists want Christians in their camp, but they must be willing to privatize their faith, not flaunting it or making it public--keep it in church!  What we are beholding is the secularization of our society where "man has forgotten God" (Will Durant, humanist historian).  The Constitution guarantees the free expression of faith or religion with no State interference or regulation.  Playwright George Bernard Shaw said that "no nation has ever survived the loss of its gods."  Dostoevsky said that "without God, all things are permissible:"--this is our future?  Caveat: Secular Humanists pin the blame for our problem on man's preoccupation with the spiritual element and mostly fault Christianity!  Soli Deo Gloria!