The Strand Study Bible

JUDGES

472

JUDGES

21:25a Those who fail to place themselves under “rule” ( king ), try and rule themselves, which is never ideal. 21:25b Whenever godly leadership is absent from a people, “relativism” (the idea that people can only know truth from their own experiences; the philosophy of Humanism ) within a society explodes. Relativism is the belief that no absolute moral code exists outside of human reasoning (that is, what you decide is truth), and therefore man must adjust his ethical standards to each situation according to his own judgment. Anytime a society chooses to follow their own reasoning and do what is right in their own eyes, humanism triumphs and bizarre and sordid stories begin to emerge (Judg 17:1-6 & 18:1 & 19:1,22-29). Humanism is man becoming god in a world without God. Humanism is nothing more than men who sit in judgment of God. Tim LaHaye in The Battle for the Mind notes: Humanism is a man-centered philosophy that attempts to solve the problems of man and the world independently of God. 1 In order to successfully answer the humanist, who is controlled by modern humanistic psychology, the Christian must know seven facts: 1. Humanism (although atheistic) is a religion Humanism is more than a philosophy; it’s a religion in which man worships himself instead of God. William Earnest Henley, an atheist, in his book called Invictus notes: I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. 2 Even the United States declared humanism to be a religion. In 1960, the United States Supreme Court declared Secular Humanism a religion. A man by the name of Roy Torcaso was refused his commission as a Notary Public under Maryland law because he refused to raise his right hand and swear before God. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black and the Supreme Court struck down the Maryland statue as unconstitutional and wrote: Among religions in this country which do not hold to a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture and Secular Humanism. 3 Harold Rafton, another humanist, said: Humanism is a rationalistic religion based on science and centered in man. 4 Humanism isn’t the only thing that has become a rationalistic religion in our society today. Take global warming ( Gen 1:28 b ). While it is true that, due to the industrial revolution and modern industry, more CO 2 is being emitted into our atmosphere than ever before, yet according to the Scriptures, the world is not going to end due to man’s “misuse” of the earth’s natural resources. According to II Peter 3:7 , no matter what we do to the earth, we cannot destroy it. The world is going to come to a climatic end because of man’s sin against a holy God (Gen 6:3), not man’s sin against Mother Nature. Steve Forbes said of global warming: It’s now become a religion… and great fundraiser for extreme environmentalists 5 Dr. David A. Noebel, in his periodical called The Journal , said of global warming: While it is true that America, due to her automobiles and industry, is responsible for 25% of the greenhouse gases being emitted into our atmosphere and that 99% of all climatological scientists are warning us about the possibility of half of earth’s species being wiped out within the next fifty years or so, global warming won’t be the event that brings earth to her knees, global apostasy will be the event ( II Thess 2 : 1- 3 ). Global warming is but another sign, warning us that we are in the last days before Christ returns ( Mk 13:4 ). 2. The philosophy of humanism didn’t begin until c. 400 B.C. (meaning, humanism didn’t even exist for the first 3,600 years of man’s existence) Believe it or not, most humanists have no idea where their philosophy of humanism came from, where it was first imagined and spawned. Some think John Dewey (1934), who was influenced by T.H. Huxley, a racist, and his associates (Sellars, Randall, Burtt, and Wilson), who together published The Humanist Manifesto in 1933, were responsible for Humanism. However, the only “evil” that Dewey and his cohorts were responsible for was the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). People should know the facts. Two hundred years after Thales of Miletus (c. 600 BC) taught his Ionian science of Nature (the theory of Atheism) to the men of Greece, Socrates introduced his philosophy of humanism to the Grecian world. Socrates, the patron saint of moral twaddle (nonsense, rubbish, baloney), where those who are in on the game of biting wit smile knowingly as their master’s feigned ignorance, routs dogma and superstition. Socrates asked pointless, naïve questions of his students, in order to scorn them in the end. Because of his tragic use of sarcasm, with the intent of corrupting the youth of Greece, Socrates was imprisoned by the Greek authorities and banished from Grecian society forever. Realizing his plight and that he would no longer be allowed to spread his irony and satire in Greece, he chose to commit suicide by drinking the hemlock in 399 BC. If humanism is nothing more than man becoming god in a world without God, then common sense tells us that you can’t have humanism until you first eliminate God. A humanist therefore is an atheist “first,” for he cannot elevate himself until he has first dethroned God. Interesting enough, the father of humanism (Socrates - c. 400 BC) introduced his philosophy of That’s the prophecy of the Religious Left. More traditional religionists will recall, with the Psalmist, that the earth is the Lord’s footstool, and it is not the fragile porcelain imagined by some ardent secularists and religious faddists. God may indeed judge the world, but the sins that provoke Him might be more serious than purchasing an SUV or occasionally voting Republican. 6