Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

Contrary to Christian notions that the Bible can inform and guide our worldly
existence, the secular humanist only acknowledges a reality known and established by
human observation, experimentation, and [human] rational analysis (i.e., naturalism).
Where the boundaries of social behaviour are concerned, naturalists argue that moral
boundaries are derived in like manner, as tested through experience. There is no need for
holy books, and divine imperatives -- man can govern himself, and since ‘God’ is not
scientifically testable, what rational, modern, scientific human would surrender his life
and the greater order of humanity to such mythical and mystical foolishness. Consider,
for example, this brief quotation from the Humanist Manifesto:
We find insufficient evidence for belief in the
existence of a supernatural; it is either
meaningless or irrelevant to the question of
survival and fulfilment of the human race.
As non theists, we begin with humans not
God, nature not deity. Nature may indeed be
broader and deeper than we now know; any
new discoveries, however, will but enlarge
our knowledge of the natural (Manifesto II,
First premise).
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Modernisation versus Westernisation
David R. Gress, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and co-director
of the Center for Studies on America and the West, cautions that we do not confuse
Westernization, with modernization. In our increasingly globalized world, it is arguably
more often modernity -- not Western culture per se -- that is being exported, embraced by
and incorporated into other [primary] cultures. Modernist notions like capitalism,
democracy, secularism and secularization, progress and science are ever more widely
embraced around the globe.
To help make this distinction, consider for instance and by comparison, that while
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa