Secular Humanism or Naturalism is one of the most widely held competing worldviews today. It rejects God and replaces Him with human beings, operating on their own reasoning power and abilities to understand the world around them. Human beings, with rational intellect and creative abilities, take the place of God in explaining and understanding the world around us.
GOD OR MAN? Unlike Biblical Theism, in Secular Humanism and Naturalism there is no God. All that exists is the material world that can be experienced through the five senses. Naturalists and Secular Humanists reject the foundational biblical belief that the world came to be through Creation by the sovereign, all-powerful God of the Universe. They instead accept that the natural world around them has always been and will always be, or many accept the scientific theory of the Big Bang. Either way, their understanding relies on physical forces and chemical process acting on matter, and rejects supernatural explanations. Naturalists tend to put outsized faith in science and reject God as counter to human reason. In fact, God does not exist within the Secular Humanist or Naturalist Worldview, because there is not enough scientific evidence to reach a reasoned conclusion that there is a god. His existence cannot be proven through the means of science, so therefore, God does not exist. Personal faith is not rational or legitimate proof of the existence of God.
HUMAN NATURE: Human beings are the highest form of life. Secular Humanists and Naturalists see human feelings, emotions, and personality as mere chemical reactions within the brain. The idea that there is a soul or spirit is also just a result of chemical reactions within the brain. Everything individualistic about a human is biologically determined, rather than the creation and design of human beings by God in His image (imago Dei).
SCIENCE VS. RELIGION: Reality for Secular Humanists or Naturalists is made up of matter, which has measurable, identifiable physical properties, such as density, weight, height, etc. Things outside the natural world, such as spirituality, religion, or God, are a “social construct” or a creation of needy human beings to provide answers in earlier times before we evolved more fully, creating new and better methods of scientific research and experimentation. Miracles are impossible and if something appears to be a miracle, there has to be a scientific explanation. Looking back at human history, a Secular Humanist or Naturalist may argue that creating religion may have served an important evolutionary purpose. But as human beings have evolved, as we become more sophisticated in scientific research and experimentation, we reached the point where we are able to learn about and know the universe, and to answer questions our ancestors were unable to answer. For a Secular Humanist or Naturalist, we have evolved beyond our ancestors’ need for God or religion. In fact, they believe, holding onto fundamental religious beliefs can be dangerous–and certainly limiting to human potential.
CREATION VS. EVOLUTION: Biblical Theism believes that the sovereign, personal God of Scripture created human beings in His image (imago Dei) and He made each one of us unique, down to the number of hairs on our head. God also created the Earth and everything in it. Science can explain much of this created world, but our intellect is finite, leaving some things we cannot fully explain through science or reason. Naturalists or Secular Humanists reject the idea of biblical creation and instead embrace evolution, scientific origin theories such as the Big Bang, and other scientific explanations. A Biblical Theist sees no inherent conflict between religion and science, instead the one helps explain the other. A Secular Humanist or Naturalist, on the other hand, dismisses religion as superstition and antithetical the ability of human reason to engage in scientific discovery and understanding. So confident are Secular Humanists and Naturalists, they see no limitations to what human intellect and abilities can do.
WHAT HAPPENS AT DEATH: Upon death, an individual just ceases to exist. Since humans are comprised of matter and nothing more, when the physical matter stops working correctly, that individual’s series of chemical reactions stop and that being ceases to exist. In contrast, the Biblical Worldview makes clear that the human soul has an eternal destination, a literal heaven or hell, based on whether an individual accepts the free gift of salvation through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
ETHICS AND MORALITY: When it comes to ethics, Naturalists tend to go along with whatever the surrounding culture dictates, or what their reason would lead them to see as moral. Like the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras, Secular Humanists and Naturalists believe that “man is the measure of all things” – including what constitutes moral or ethical behavior. There is no objective, transcendent standard or “natural law” in the universe, therefore ethics and morality can only be a result of human consciousness.