As regards to humanism I believe that no man however acute his knowledge and perception may be, can ever hope to reach the heights of wisdom and understanding of the Divine Physician God
That's probably a comforting thought for you, but the evidence contradicts it. All progress has come from empiricism, not faith, and not from the pronouncements of men speaking for gods. From them we get ideas like homosexuals displeasing gods.
Following biblical scripture gave man the Middle Ages, with its pseudosciences and authoritarian regimes allegedly sanctioned by a deity (divine right of kings). People were subjects living under the thumb of kings and dying left and right of infectious disease and food poisoning, many children not making it to two years, and many of their mothers dying in childbirth. Is that what you meant by the height of wisdom and understanding of the divine physician? He lost a lot of patients needlessly.
Humanism and Enlightenment values replaced that with something much, much, much better. We received science, which has made life longer, more functional, more comfortable, easier, more safe, and more interesting, as with the Internet and RF. And it transformed subjects without rights into autonomous citizens.
And that it is only through adherence to the laws of God for each age that humanity can progress and advance.
Just rebutted. If you had counterexamples, you would post them. I know that you do not. Believing by faith that a system of thought is perfect and complete because it comes from a god is how one stagnates. It's why the Baha'i will never update their moral code regarding homosexuality. They can't without conceding that they are the source of it, not a god.
The True Educators of men have always been the Prophets and Messengers of God.
No. Faith is unrelated to education, which is teaching by showing. Faith is imparted via indoctrination, which skips the showing part and simply makes unsupported claims that it repeats until they are believed. That is NOT education.
Many so called humane laws originated from one Manifestation of God or Another, ideas copied from Them by men, and then rebranded by them in a non religious form claiming originality.
If they can be rendered into non-religious forms, then what do they have to do with religion? What is religion's contribution to moral theory?
I think you have it backward about who is stealing from whom. How many times a month do we see Christians claiming that America was founded in Christian principles or that science was a Christian invention because there were Christian scientists? One RF poster has argued that humanism itself, a repudiation of faith as a path to truth, is a product of Christianity. Humanist morals have surpassed the Christian moral set and has been informing it and modifying it for the last few centuries, just as science has been doing for Christianity for an equal time.
Before humanism, Christianity was like Islam is today, which still has people being pushed off of towers, being burned alive, stonings, and having hands removed. Christianity's equivalent was crusades, inquisitions, and witch hangings. Why shouldn't it have been? They look about the same on paper, and the Christian Domininists are champing at the bit to return to the good old days barbarism.
Islam has only recently begun experiencing the benefit of humanistic advances. Iranians are revolting for freedom, a humanist value. Afghanis lost their major humanist influence when the West withdrew and relapsed into its older religious version of life. In America, the Christians defeated the humanists regarding abortion, and threaten to return American women to the world their religion envisions.
You've got it completely wrong. These religions are anchors to human progress, both intellectual and moral. Humanists don't steal their ethics. They improve them, with clergy kicking and screaming all the way. And then, when the new values are assimilated and seem mainstream, Christianity tries to take credit for that.
- "We hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain; it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession--and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance." - Mark Twain
- "It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers." - Bertrand Russell
All and any humanistic teaching or doctrines which benefit humanity I firmly believe can be traced back to the teachings revealed by God to One or Another Manifestations except of course that there is no God.
How about the teaching that reason and empiricism are the only paths to truth about the world? What do you suppose any of the religions could teach humanists about loving one another, or the proper way to treat neighbors? Do you think that Baha'ism has ideas that would improve humanism were it to incorporate them? If so, which? How about the one to consider homosexuals defective? Humanism hasn't been able to come up with that piece of morality from the Abrahamic religions.
The Baha’i teachings contain a lot more than just humanism but a blueprint for a world civilisation.
There you go again with the hyperbole. Baha'i has no blueprint for anything. Humanism, which informs secular agencies like NATO, the UN, and Amnesty International, outperforms Baha'ism in promoting peace, just as the secular governments outperform the churches regarding helping the needy.
Virtues like justice and compassion taught by humanism have their origin in countless teachings from the Manifestations which are just plagiarised and rebranded without a God. But without the power of God it cannot rejuvenate or rehabilitate the fortunes of mankind. I believe only God’s Elixir, His teachings can achieve that.
The religions have failed. Only secular humanism has improved the human condition. The humanist vision of justice and compassion both outperform the Abrahamic religions, which is as deformed as its ideas of mercy and love. They can't get the Golden Rule right - doing it, not saying it. Not even close. I refer you back to your faith's homophobic doctrines. Why would a humanist take moral counsel from people who think like that?
