by: F.R. Duplantier

"Secular humanists are committed to the use of reason and science to understand the world," said Paul Kurtz. "We also believe it's necessary to develop a new morality appropriate to the present needs. I believe in the use of reason to build a good life on this planet without the illusion of salvation or immortality." That good life and that new morality are the subjects of a number of written works bearing the emblem of Kurtz's publishing house, Prometheus Books. Here are some of the titles: Atheism: The Case Against God, Beneficent Euthanasia, The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, The New Sexual Revolution, Ethics Without God, and Religion Without God.

In an essay entitled "Humanism and the Moral Revolution," Kurtz contends that traditional morality has been made obsolete by "an explosive technology that has rapidly transformed our culture. A sharp disparity has emerged between the new technology and our inherited moral codes." Kurtz believes that "the good life is achieved when we realize the human potential. This means that we ought to reject all those creeds and dogmas that impede human fulfillment or impose external authoritarian rules upon human beings. The traditional supernaturalistic moral commandments are especially repressive of our human needs," says Kurtz. "They are immoral insofar as they foster illusions about human destiny and suppress vital inclinations."

In another essay, Kurtz confides that Humanism "is related to a doctrine of liberation and emancipation. It values the autonomy of free agents, not only in their intellectual beliefs but in their aesthetic experience, their romantic or sexual proclivities, their moral tastes and values." No subject is taboo to free-thinking secular humanists -- no subject, that is, except one: belief in God. The faithful will be outcast in the coming new order, and the measure of the "freedom" of what passes for thought will be the fervency of one's nonbelief. "Humanism cannot in any fair sense of the word apply to one who still believes in God as the source and creator of the universe," says Kurtz.

Will free-thinking secular humanists suffer the faithful to exist as harmless anomalies and quaint anachronisms? No, our faith is a constant challenge to their infidelity; it makes them feel bad. Humanists cannot be truly free until all belief and all believers are exterminated. "For Humanism has always been opposed to any and all forms of tyranny over the mind of man," proclaims Kurtz. "This puts Humanism squarely in opposition to all authoritarian, religious or totalitarian ideologies that attempt to suppress, limit or censor human intelligence or to impose an orthodoxy of belief or morality." It's an unpleasant fact, but secular humanism and faith in God cannot coexist. One of the two must ultimately triumph. Pray that it is not the humanists, for they will not tolerate us as we have tolerated them.