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From: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Secular Humanism" banned in the US Schools.
Message-ID: <744@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-Aug-85 00:15:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcnc.744
Posted: Thu Aug 22 00:15:04 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 15:09:40 EDT
References: <4141@alice.UUCP> <938@bunker.UUCP> <161@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Distribution: net
Organization: North Carolina Educational Computing Service
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Xref: watmath net.politics:10571 net.religion:7450
Summary: 

Why I don't worry about this, and what you folks are missing, is that
it is impossible to define a non-trivial body of thought which comprises
"secular humanism."  You can say: "Evolution is part of the body of
secular humanism, therefore we can't teach it."  Wrongo!  Secular Humanists
(if such exist) may happen to subscribe to evolutionary theory, but so do
a broad spectrum of folk who are "not" secular humanists, as do an equally
large number of people who don't know whether they are or not.  It makes
about as much sense to say that evolution is part of the doctrine of secular
humanism as it does to say that modern medicine is part of such a doctrine.

I think a few tests in the courtroom will reveal the bogey-man of secular
humanism (or secular dialectical humanism as Jimmy Swaggart likes to call
it) to be precisely that.  It can probably only be defined as religion
which includes that set of beliefs not included by other religions, especially
fundamentalist Christianity.  To believe in something is not necessarily
the same as having that something be a religious belief.

-- 

						Byron C. Howes
				      ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch