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Below, I give a Summary of The Humanist Manifesto (Parts I 1933, and II, 1973), with some brief comments of my own in square brackets.

Everyone concerned about what is looking very much like the decline of the West, should know what this Manifesto preached – and preaches still.

Although it is a highly self-contradictory document and of low intellectual value, it clearly sums up the entire philosophy of “secular humanism” that is today so much in the air. It has been signed by hundreds of influential intellectual and political figures such as John Dewey, Issac Asimov, Sir Herman Bondi, Sidney Hook, Sir Alfred Ayer, B.F. Skinner, and Sir Julian Huxley; by feminists such as Betty Friedan, by economists such as Gunnar Myrdal, architect of the Swedish Welfare State, and of course by the Sex-Ed Mafia, Professor Lester Kirkendall, Alan Guttmacher, and Canadian abortionist Henry Morgentaler, past President of the Humanist Association of Canada.

I used the word “preaches”, because the signatories refer to themselves as “religious humanists” –  founders of a new “vital, frank, and fearless religion capable of furnishing adequate social goals and personal satisfactions” to the world. The essence of this “religion,” which denies any supernatural reality – is the worship of man himself. The God-man.

What follows is an abbreviated list of their founding beliefs in their own words. Reflect upon them; even though very few teachers have ever heard of this manifesto, many of these values and beliefs are today being transmitted to our children in most of the public schools of the land, as matters of fact, through the process of infusion. And of course, they are spread by media and entertainment folk of all sorts. They are especially powerfully communicated via the highly-charged medium of Sex-Ed, if not by intent, then by consensus.

Recall that as early as 1925 there were over 1,000 U.S. schools actively involved in “progressive education”, much of it steered by people in complete sympathy with the views listed below. The thousands of teachers in these schools, and the Teacher’s Colleges that trained them, constituted a vast unofficial network for the promotion of so-called “humanist” values, via the media, the bureaucracy, and the law – even though the vast majority of humans in the Western world have never abandoned their strongly held Judeo-Christian values – ones utterly in conflict with this so-called religious-humanism.

My book The War Against the Family gives an overview of this clash of values. If there is any doubt as to the religious fervour of these single-minded folk and their eagerness to use the schools to implant their views, study this recent quote from The Humanist (January, 1983), the mouthpiece of the American Humanist Association. Readers should be aware (I was not) that the word “humanist” as used here has nothing to do with feeling good about other human beings. It is a specific technical term employed to describe an intentionally atheistic philosophy created to invent “human” solutions to world problems (in translation, this ends up meaning with no God, but with lots of government):

…the battle cry for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith; a religion of humanity…These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers…utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever they teach…the classroom must and will become an area of conflict between the old and the new…

The Principles of The Humanist Manifesto (1933)

1) “Religious Humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.”

[That’s it. No Explanation how you get something from nothing! I can’t resist sharing with readers the laugh I got when reading a graffiti inscription once. The first line said “God is Dead!” and was signed “Nietzsche”. The second line said “Nietzsche is dead!” and was signed “God”].

2) “Man is part of nature and has emerged as the result of a continuous process.”

[They are Darwinian evolutionists. They don’t specify what we are continuous from. The many scientific challenges to evolution theory are never mentioned].

3) “…the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.”

[No mention of the universal spiritual life of Mankind, for reasons of 1) and 2), above.

4) “The individual born into a particular culture is largely molded by that culture”

[This is the grounding for the humanist reshaping of society by reshaping culture – the old left-liberal belief that a “progressive” change in the culture will produce a change in the individual].

5) “…the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values”

[This opens the way for teacher-manipulation of students’ moral views. Science is the rationale for the jettisoning of values. Ironically enough, these humanists leave the door open to the possibility of God when they add: “Obviously humanism does not deny the possibility of realities as yet undiscovered…”].

6) “Religion consists of all those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant…[therefore] The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.”

[In short, any logically-consistent body of secular beliefs can now be called “religious”]

7) “Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist’s social passion.”

[It is also a recipe for self-interest and hedonism as the goals of life. Notice the assumption that within each person lies something good called a “personality”, that has simply to be uncovered by getting rid of all external repressive authority. What humanists intend is to abolish the Outer God of morals, and substitute for it an Inner God of Nature].

8) “In place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.”

[This is an honest description of the religious urge behind all forms of socialism]

9) “It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural.”

[humanism is said to be a religion … but there will be no religious emotions?]

1O) “…reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education…humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.”

[The word “hygiene” ought to make people plenty nervous. Curiously, they do not define their abstract, collectivist, never-before-seen utopias as “unreal”].

11) “Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfaction of life.” [Sex-Ed is a prime vehicle to steer children away from the idea of sexuality as linked to the sanctity of marriage, family, or the spirituality of religion, and toward the narcissism of sexual pleasure alone. All self-control is characterized as repressive and authoritarian].

12) “…All associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions…is the purpose and program of humanism.

[Obviously, these folks are not saying believe in Man and live your own life. They want to “control” and “direct” they are coercive humanitarians in black robes].

13) “The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and co-operative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible…Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.”

[This is Creed for pure socialism, the works of which lie about us today in failure and ruin].

Humanist Manifesto II (1973) is more of the same, but there a few twists that pertain to the subject of education:

* “We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction.”

[This thinking is the basis of all “situation ethics,” and it has been emphasized for decades in North American schools as MVE, or Moral Values Education – though many educators have backed off after witnessing the me-first behaviour of all the little demons they were producing].

* “In the area of sexuality, we believe that intolerant attitudes, often cultivated by orthodox religions and puritanical cultures, unduly repress sexual conduct. The right to birth control, abortion, and divorce, should be recognized…individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their lifestyles as desired…moral education for children and adults is an important way of developing awareness and sexual maturity.”

[Thi is not a recipe for liberty, but for unrestricted libertinism. Few are aware of the difference. This particular paragraph is a concise statement of the ambitions shared by such as cultural Marxists and so many others who have made it their ambition to totally re-structure Western civilization  ].

The balance of the manifesto – really, a sort of Bible for the faithful – calls for:

More Charters of “rights” (no obligations are ever mentioned), for a kind of popular socialism (a contradiction, because all socialism requires top-down control of citizens); for separation of church and State (although the “religion” of humanism will be taught there); for central economic planning; for “moral equality” (as if this were a State-conferred attribute, rather than something we earn); for universal public education (naturally); for a system of world law and a “world order” (yet another level of government, control, and taxation). And finally, such Humanists want a public devotion to the abstract concept of “all mankind” as “the highest commitment of which we are capable,” one that “transcends the narrow allegiances of church, state, party, class, or race…” (in other words, one that transcends human beings in every precious and personal particularity of their concrete, lived  reality). It sounds like a recipe for control by the Knowledge Class, the new priesthood. Man’s admiration of himself is to be the new Religion.

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