Humanism, One of the three major worldviews, is at least as old as the Greeks and the Romans (Greer 232). Humanism may even be as old as recorded history. The Romans inherited their worldview and religion from the Greeks. The gods in Greek and Roman thinking were just larger than life versions of common men and women (Schaeffer 1976, 21). The Greeks in turn obtained their worldview from the Egyptians, who Alexander the Great conquered.

The two earliest recorded civilizations were the river cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Mesopotamia the rulers of the people were representatives of the gods, while in Egypt the rulers were regarded as gods (Greer 5 and 7). One may regard the visualization of the gods in human form as the first steps in the development of humanism.

The humanistic worldview leaves humanity with two options regarding God. Humanity may totally reject the existence of God and become atheists, or they may say that they do not know if God exists or not and become agnostics. Agnostics do not know if God exists or not (Young 1.13).

The humanist worldview places humanity at the center of all things. In this position, humanity becomes the standard by which all things are valued. Things that benefit humanity are regarded as good, while things that could harm humanity are seen as bad (Schaeffer 1981, 23). When man becomes the center of all things, God must be removed from this position. When taken to its fullest extent, humanism not only removes God from the center, but also totally eliminates God. With the elimination of God accomplished, man is left free to become God. Once one has become familiar with worldviews, one can go through a rather simple process of selecting the most suitable worldview for use in every-day life.

The Greek and Roman empires became the ultimate expressions of the humanist worldview. Greek and Roman societies worshiped humanity by promoting the ideal human form in art. The gods were super humans (Greer 5). With the Edict of Milan, Constantine officially changed the religion of the Roman Empire from a paganism to Christianity.

Constantine And Christianity

Constantine’s support of Christianity appears to have been primarily a matter of political expediency, for Christians by then were numerous and Constantine needed all the help he could get against his rival for the imperial throne. At the Battle of Milvian Bridge Constantine defeated his rival, and before this crucial battle Constantine is said to have had a vision which led to his conversion to Christianity.

The vision actually took place near the temple to Apollo and was of the sun god. Apparently, Constantine had been initiated into the Sol Invictus cult or the cult of the Invincible Sun. The sun god of this cult was the actual subject of his vision. For the duration of his rule over the Roam Empire Constantine served as high priest of the Sol Invictus cult, the religion he indorsed as the state religion of the Roman Empire.

Roman emperors imposed the Syrian cult of Sol Invictus on their subjects at least a century before Constantine. The Romans blended it with the solar worship cult of Mithras. Constantine worked to blend all other religions present in the Roman Empire under the dominance of the Sol Invictus cult. Compromising Christian leaders were convinced to join this movement based on limited similarities between paganized-Christianity and the Sol Invictus cult.

For purely political reasons Constantine deliberately played down differences between Christianity, Mithras and Sol Invictus. He redefined Jesus as the earthly manifestation of Sol Invictus (Colmer).

The Renaissance

The result of Constantine’s influence was that the church located at Rome began a steady departure from its foundations rooted in the Bible. The departure of the Church from a Biblical worldview fully blossomed during the period of history known as the Renaissance. The beginning of the Renaissance may be credited to one man, Cosimo de’ Medici. In 1444, Cosimo founded Europe’s first public library at San Marco. Cosimo had a large numbers of Greek, Hermetic (the occult sciences, especially alchemy; magic), and Gnostic (relating to, or possessing hidden intellectual or spiritual knowledge) texts translated and made readily available. He instructed the University to Florence to start teaching Greek for the first time in Europe in seven centuries. Cosimo also stared academies to teach and promote the Greek humanistic worldview (Baigent 139).

Among the most influential promoters of humanism during the Renaissance was Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas worked to reconcile the naturalistic teachings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle with the Bible (Taylor 18). Aquinas claimed that Christian teachings had to be made subject to the humanist teachings of Aristotle (433). Aquinas soon moved beyond trying to combine the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of Aristotle to replacing Biblical ideas with those of Aristotle (Schaeffer 1976, 82). Aquinas promoted the humanist worldview to the point where he actually challenged the traditional arguments for the existence of God (Johnson 143 – 144).

Aquinas started a philosophical tradition of mixing Christian and humanistic worldviews (Schaeffer 1976, 56). When Aquinas discovered that it was impossible in some instance to reconcile humanism with Christianity, he simply divided knowledge into spiritual and secular realms (Crains 238). In this view, the Bible had nothing to do with the physical world or our understanding of it. Humanism was first promoted in the literary world around 1600. The leader in expressing humanism I literary form was William Shakespeare (Greer 263).

The Enlightenment

Humanism was further advanced during the historical period known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophers continued rejecting the Christian worldview, while actively supporting and embracing the old pre-Christian humanistic worldview (Schaeffer 1976, 38). The Enlightenment produced a blending of humanism and Christianity called Deism. Deism viewed the universe as a large watch made and originally “wound” or put into motion by a “Divine Watchmaker”. The watchmaker-God of Deism rarely intervened in the daily running of the universe. To the Deists, God had long ago removed himself from the affairs of his creation (Greer 329). In short, Deism handed God his termination notice, and humanity was well on its way to assuming management of the universe.

A great promoter of the Deist universe was Isaac Newton. Newton’s many accomplishments in mathematics and science may be summed up showing that we live in a mechanical universe, run by mathematical formulas (or scientific laws) open to man’s discovery (Arnstein 82). From its early days, Newton was involved with the Royal Society eventually becoming its leader, which had been founded in 1660 by Robert Boyle and other promoters of the Hermetic arts in England (Baigent 144). Under the guidance of Newton and his associates, humanism became mechanistic humanism. Mechanistic humanism sees the universe as operated by natural laws, not the will of God. Mechanistic humanism seeks to explain everything in nature by natural processes.

Mechanistic humanism soon became the dominant worldview at Europe’s leading universities. This was the context in which Charles Darwin was educated. As a result, even as a young theology student he began to reject many of the teachings of the Bible. His teachers at Cambridge further aided this departure, while encouraging Darwin to embrace all the teachings of mechanistic humanism. When Captain FitzRoy, of the H.M.S. Beagle, requested a naturalist for his ship’s second voyage, professors Peacock and Henslow of Cambridge University recommended Charles Darwin (Leff). Peacock and Henslow were both members of the Royal Society. Darwin’s findings on the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle were reported to the Royal Society in London. Upon returning to England, Darwin began to formulate his theory of evolution. On January 24, 1839 Charles Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Henslow, Darwin’s professor from Cambridge, presided over the first open debate over Darwin’s evolutionary theory before the Royal Society (Fuller). The Royal Society helped introduce and promote this theory.

Humanism And Evolution

The introduction of Darwin’s theory of evolution (which was not really an original theory of his) attempted to remove God entirely from the universe, by even allowing its creation to be explained in naturalistic terms (Taylor 126). Marx and Erikson applied Darwinism to social situations. Marx developed the Communist economic system based on the humanistic aim of elevating humanity to its highest level of self-fulfillment (Johnson 228). Erikson’s interoperation of religion from a humanistic worldview allowed humanism to actually become a religion. Humanist outright claim their religious status (Wilson 17 and 22). In 1961 the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins declared humanism to be a religion (Schaeffer 1981, 54). Humanism is the religion where man obtains salvation simply by human reason (Greer 333). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries humanism had infiltrated almost every aspect of western society (Dobson 8).

Conclusion

Humanism replaces God with man. Once this is accomplished, all things observed in the universe must be explained in naturalistic terms, any supernatural explanations must be outright rejected. Humanism shuts out any worldviews that offer anything other than relative values and standards (Schaeffer 1981, 112). Reality is seen as existing independently of man’s mind. True objectivists, would reject that man has any part in creating his reality. The way in which humanism seeks out knowledge is purely through reason. Humanists rely on reason to give meaning to what they perceive. Man’s reason is seen as the only way to give things value and distinguish between right and wrong (Rand 1082).

The humanist worldview is sometimes also called modernism. Modernism was elevated to dominance in the Enlightenment on foundations laid in the Renaissance (Grenz 2). Shortly after World War II, changing social conditions challenged the foundations of the humanistic worldview. Postmodernism claims we are now living in a period of time after the modern period, which has a philosophically distinct foundation. Postmodernism proposes that truth can be only known from a certain viewpoint (Bogdan 20). Reality is created by the souls that share an existence with the universe (Zukav 35). Postmodernism embraces a pantheistic worldview. Once one has become familiar with worldviews, one can go through a rather simple process of selecting the most suitable worldview for use in every-day life.