Richard Dawkins and the Battle For Man's Future

Richard Dawkins and the Battle for Humankind's Future [Excerpts]

by Paul Anthony Melanson

Secular Humanism has all the characteristics of a religion. The Secular Humanist places man at the center of things. In the Humanist Manifesto II, which was released in 1973, humanists called for a new faith: "...traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them is an unproved and outmoded faith. Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Responsible minds look to other means for survival." (Humanist Manifesto II, The Humanist; September/October 1973, p. 4). Humanism is, therefore, fundamentally at odds with Christianity which regards God and not man as the supreme value of the universe.

Because Humanists recognize the importance of the public schools in advancing their man-centered religion, they do everything in their power to ensure that children are indoctrinated into the tenets of Humanism even as they attack faith-based schools. It was Paul Blanshard, writing in The Humanist, who said, "I think that the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to lead toward the elimination of religious superstition. The average American child now acquires a high school education, and this militates against Adam and Eve and all the other myths of alleged history." (The Humanist State, March/April 1976, p. 17).

Richard Dawkins, an atheist and evolutionary biologist, is doing his best to wage war against faith schools in Britain. Even though Johann Hari, columnist for The Independent, has celebrated what he refers to as "the slow whining death of Christianity" in Britain, writing that, "My country, Britain, is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else," Mr. Dawkins is alarmed at the tremendous growth of faith schools in Britain. We read here, "The number of faith schools in Britain is rising. Around 7,000 publicly-funded schools - one in three - now has a religious affiliation." And Richard Dawkins, being a propagandist for the new religion of Humanism, finds this intolerable. "Enough is enough" he says.

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