Why don’t humanists give value to humans?

Not someone with whom I would usually agree, but ...

Humanists (and by that I mean secular humanists for now) would do much more to persuade me of their world-view if they took more seriously the idea that the human is of fundamental value. Instead, secu­lar humanists are becoming increas­ingly cavalier with their central belief. They have become a bit like Christians who don’t believe in God. This leads me to ponder whether human life is really all that safe in the hands of human­ists.

Here, for instance, is a passage from the British Humanist Associ­ation’s website: “Religious people also often use phrases like 'the sanctity of life' to justify the view that life has intrinsic value and must not be des­troyed. Humanists, too, see a special value in human life, but think that if an individual has decided on rational grounds that his life has lost its meaning and value, that evalu­ation should be respected.”

Oh, how nice: humanists think life has a “special” value, whatever that means. Less sarcastically, it is clear that here is an admission that the value of human life is down­graded by those who call themselves humanists. Read more
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