An article in the current Free Inquiry magazine to which I subscribe has some very good articles on what they call “secular” vs “religious” humanism. I bill myself as a “spiritual seeker” and I have called myself an “irreverent non-believer.” While that sounds contradictory, it really isn’t because I do have a sense of the spiritual in humanity. This article articulated what is pretty much my strange magical non-belief — as follows:
Some among the ancient Gnostics, those great spinners of mystical, allegorical mythologies, had a name for the Ultimate Godhead. They called it “Man” (Anthropos, human being). This is a very old idea, rooted in the Upanishads where the world springs into being from the self-sacrifice of the Primal Man, Purusha, whose name is also one of the words for “soul.” What a breathtaking myth! What a powerful image! Let me suggest that the Gnostic myth implies something about what distinguishes religious from secular humanism, namely, a belief in the divinity of human nature. Such belief may not be a necessary condition for religious humanism, but it seems to me a sufficient one. That is, if you believe human nature deserves the epithet “divine,” you qualify as other (or, if you prefer, more) than a secular humanist.
I think of Ludwig Feuerbach and his relentless hermeneutic of suspicion. Feuerbach held that theologians are correct when they say we can discern the divine attributes. They are right to believe in such things as divine love, justice, mercy, sagacity