Freedom and the Law (Part 2):The Root of the Delusion

[You can find Freedom and the Law (Part 1) here.]

The root of the humanist delusion is simple to find, simple to uncover. The delusion is rooted in the thought that man is fundamentally good. Even a cursory study of history proves this wrong. After all, were not Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein simply doing what ever they wanted without any limitations whatsoever?

Humanism Defined
The basic beliefs of Humanists are summarized as follows:

1. Man is not natively depraved.
2. The end of life is life itself, the good life on earth instead of the beatific life after death.
3. Man is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth.
4. The first and essential condition of the good life on earth is the freeing of men’s minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition, and of their bodies from the arbitrary oppression of the constituted social authorities.

Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Centry Philosophers (Yale, 1932), p. 102.[i]

To a Humanist, “To speak of something as ‘supernatural’ is therefore to imply that it is imaginary, and belief in powerful imaginary entities is known as superstition.”[ii]

These ideas are founded in the Enlightenment’s humanistic rationalism, naturalism and the fictitious theory of evolution which is being pumped into our public (State) school children (a theory, by the way, which takes more faith to believe in than God’s Word). “Enlightenment thinking operated on the premise that there was no supernatural in a purely naturalistic world. Truth, ethics, and law was to be determined by man’s reason; theistic reasoning was an imposition on man’s freedom.”[iii] A simplistic rendition of the theory goes something like this: Given the fact of evolution, a creator does not exist. Therefore man is the highest form of life. He has evolved from the primordial slime into his current form and will continue to evolve into higher life forms. The only thing holding him back is the bondage of a primitive society still holding on to a now useless creation of man: religion and its ridiculous moral codes.

The problem with Humanistic mantras like the one which is the focus of this article is that when the rubber hits the road, those who pontificate such nonsense are really only talking about themselves and the same “rights” which they hold so dear are never extended to others (such as murders and rapists). The reason for this is because deep down they know that there are such things as right and wrong (good and evil), but they do not what to admit to it until their “rights” are infringed upon.

The current state of Humanism can also be called “Liberal Rationalism.” Phillip Johnson, in his book Reason in the Balance, has an amazingly insightful breakdown of the modern humanistic position:

In the philosophical sense in which I employ the term, liberalism refers not to a position about the level of government spending or to the desirability of change, but to the secular legacy of philos­ophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Its essence lies in a respect for the autonomy of the individual. Because liberalism starts with the individual, the most characteristic liberal political doctrines are the social contract as the foundation of legitimate government and individual rights as the basis of liberty. Contemporary liberals will speak enthusiastically of natural rights, but they tend to reject the concept of natural laws, in the sense of obligations that are supe­rior to those created by governments. Obligations in contempo­rary liberalism come not from nature, and certainly not from God, but from society, and they are clearly legitimate only to the extent that individuals have in some sense consented to be bound by them. Rights, on the other hand, are founded directly on our assumed status as autonomous beings.

Although the initial founders of liberalism were theists, the dominant contemporary form of liberal rationalism incorporates the naturalistic doctrine that God is unreal, a product of the hu­man imagination. The famous "death of God" is simply the mod­ernist certainty that naturalism is true and that human beings must therefore create their own standards rather than take them from some divine revelation. We cannot look to anything higher than ourselves, because there is nothing higher, at least until we encoun­ter superior beings from other planets. That means we have to start with human society (socialism) or with the individual (liber­alism) as the unit that is fundamentally real.[iv]

The problem with basing all standards on one’s own thoughts and inclinations is that individualistic, autonomous standards will always tend “to become progressively more relativistic and even permissive.”[v] Humanism is simply man attempting to make himself into his own god. As each individual, autonomous god becomes increasingly relativistic and permissive, the fullest expression of one’s godhood are repeated acts of guiltless, gratuitous, unmotivated evil.

Guillaume Apollunaire (1880-1918), called by Shattuck "the pressario of the avant-garde," was a champion of the gratuitous act, "l'acte gratuit," as the means to human freedom. Uncaused wickedness was for him (as for the Marquis de Sade and others) a liberation, because uncaused wickedness manifests a purely disinterested act, unmotivated evil. Because such an act is performed only to satisfy a totally personal whim, it becomes a free, uncaused, and therefore divine, act. In that act the perpetrator becomes a god. Because the act has no external reference, and no relationship to the situation, to gain or loss, to good and evil, it is ostensibly a pure act, a free act, or an infallible act or word.[vi]

True Humanism, when it brought to its natural and undeniable conclusion, is man trying to be god, desiring to what ever he wishes. But that is not man’s prerogative; it belongs only to the one true God, the God of the Bible:

“But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Psalms 115:3).

All of this provides excellent support the Christian world and life view, that man is basically evil, and therefore, in need of a Savior:

• Gen. 6:5 “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
• Ps. 14:3 & Ps. 53:3 “They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.”
• Isa 64:6 “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
• Rom 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

(Part 3: What is Freedom? Coming soon)

[i] Colin Brown, Philosophy & the Christian Faith (IVP, 1968), p. 227.
[ii] Phillip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (IVP, 1995), p. 38.
[iii] Mark R. Rushdoony, “The Grace of Law,” Chalcedon Report (The Chalcedon Foundation, February 2003 Issue)
[iv] Phillip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (IVP, 1995), p. 40-41.
[v] Ibid., P. 41.
[vi] Rousas John Rushdoony, Infallibility: An Inescapable Concept (Vallecito, CA, Ross House Books) 1978, p.34-35