Humanism and its cousin Atheism share the belief that we can ignore God (or any Divine) in our thinking and living. Humanism places humanity on top, and rejoices in the capabilities and achievements of humans and humanity.
(That, at least, is how I use the word "Humanism" here. There are other meanings, I know, such as humanistic psychology, which is an attempt to get away from purely materialistic explanations of human behaviour.)
To Christian thinkers, Humanism is usually seen as a kind of enemy, a religion or set of beliefs that are totally opposed to ours. When faced with Humanistic thought, many Christians try to reject it and fight against it, notable examples being the theory of evolution, modernism and post-modernism. But I have found value and validity in much that is written by Humanists. Why should this be? Am I merely naive or, worse, compromising? I do not think so. I am aware of problems in Humanism.
The short answer to that question is: Because (good, open-minded) Humanist philosophers dig down to understand how Creation operates in its various aspects, and what they find out is actually true to the nature of Creation. Some Christians also do that, but many Christians curb their studies by being content with such things as "Well, that is spiritual, so we need not / ought not investigate it, but just take it 'on faith'." Such Christians are infected with the Sacred-secular Divide.
For example, the Humanist philosopher G.E. Moore, in Principia Ethica, discusses how ethics and the idea of Good works. He brings out various distinctions, for example separating out three questions: What is Good? What things are Good or Bad in themselves? What is Good as a Means? and brought out useful principles that happen to echo much of what we find in Scripture. That aspect of Creation (which I believe God designed into it) is what Moore was investigating.
That, to me, is one main value of Humanism: it opens up our understanding of the way Creation works in a particular aspect, often better than many Christians do. The reason it does so is that we Christians are often tempted to limit the exploration and either say "Scripture says X so I must not explore the not-X" or "Supernaturality can easily explain this" (for example it is too tempting to explain many mental problems to the work of demons).
However, not always. I often find that humanist explanations and explorations are narrow even though deep. Often Humanist thinking is entrapped in various presuppositions that are unhelpful rather than helpful, or, by their humanism, they are prevented from acknowledging several aspects of reality. Both these can narrow and bias their ideas. One obvious one is that any idea of God or the supernatural should be excluded (beyond the needs of escaping the Sacred-Secular Divide), so psychology usually ignores the possibility of the work of demons. Possibly of wider impact is that the faith aspect of how humans operate is usually ignored. Either way, they end up with partial theories that do not quite work in practice. Another is that most presuppose the Nature-Freedom ground-motive, the presupposition of an absolute antithesis between control/determinism and freedom, so that they veer to one side or the other and do not manage to bring both together in a true manner. So I am also always careful and cautious.
What I do is LACE: listen carefully to what they might mean underneath wording that might alienate or appease me, affirm what I find as genuine insights, critique their presuppositions and assumptions to reveal fundamental weaknesses, and enrich what is valid in their ideas with things they might have missed because of their narrowed view. But do this with humility, recognising I too have presuppositions.
Author: Andrew Basden.
First created: 8 February 2024. Last updated: 4 October 2025 some rw.