# "And whether you agree with it or not, it’s given us everything from Dante to the Declaration of…
Date: 2025-05-28

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"And whether you agree with it or not, it’s given us everything from Dante to the Declaration of Independence."

You're letting Christianity claim the humanists work now?

Plus the humanists would deny "copying" anything. If there are rules one can calculate for how humans should live then of course Christianity will get some of them right and those will appear to you "copied". Christianity will have in that sense "copied" those rules from older religions.

"Contrast this with the secular humanist position, which seeks to maintain the moral authority of religion while jettisoning the metaphysical scaffolding that gave those morals their force."

God never gave morals any force. That's one reason why Christians are guilty of nearly all the world's worst atrocities - though better killing technology is the more likely root cause.

I don't want to speak for you but I think what you believe is just that Christianity is a better religion than secular humanism. In particular I think you are saying pure indoctrination IE God is a better way to keep control of a society.

Towards that proof whether or not humanists admit the religious nature of their religion more or less than Christianity is a red herring. Even if all humanists operated as a religion like Cult of Reason after the French Revolution, you would still think pure indoctrination is better.

I think pure indoctrination could have been better if it weren't obviously failing in the presence of science and globalized communication. Just watch Taylor Tomlinson crowd confessions on religion; modernly indoctrination is just not working.

" 'reason' becomes a floating signifier"

God was a floating signifier long before "reason" was - the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the holocaust, any Protestant vs Catholic conflict like say the Thirty Years' War, etc. etc.

In order to avoid being a floating signifier God has to make frequent appearances among humans and technology just makes those appearances tougher and tougher.

This argument reminds me of the move from a gold backed dollar to a fiat currency. Lots of people were and are bothered by removing gold but gold itself was only ever worth the value people artificially ascribed to it. Plus modernly gold just stopped working.