Consider a ‘No’ answer to the question of ultimate significance. The scientific humanist must smuggle in some arbitrary sentiment in the face of insignificance to even begin to function. Science, for all its merit, is incapable of producing rational moral ethics all by itself. Here we can return to David Hume on is and ought:

...In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last [ie. highest] consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.

Saying something exists does not imply any moral commitment. Rather, morality is a product of people's relationships with God and each other. Secular knowledge then acts as a solvent, turning moral fiber into mush by dissolving these relationships.

A person decisively answering ‘no’ to significance is rationally free of all obligations to truth, responsibility, decency, and success of the species - supposedly the goals of humanism. Unlimited will-to-power, hedonism, and the death-wish appear to be the only rationally consistent worldviews of insignificance remaining. Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and their minions have shown the devastation and oppression that can be wrought, even with a humanist impulse. As the Marquis de Sade demonstrated through his life, human order and flourishing are hardly products of  “whatever floats your boat.” Ultimately, all boats sink. Unprepared sailors sink with them. The death wish extends well beyond suicide, as seen from the inglorious blaze of the Columbine shootings and the inspired copycats that continue to follow.

How then can even Christians see the increasingly ‘secularized’ West as good? They are still good in the West because the shadow of Christianity being departed still falls upon them. Once out of the shadow, all hell will break loose - just as Friedrich Nietzsche predicted - for they will no longer have a rationale to dignify, repent, or forgive. At best, a Tyranny of the Curious will ensue, leaving humility reserved only for the curious being curious, as long as that curiosity is deemed benign or to affirm the political order.

The Problem - heterodoxacademy.org

This is not only our future, but our past, as the communist countries have shown. In every case in the 20th century, the atheism of communism was not able to hold on to human rights very long. In the Soviet Union, human rights did not even survive Lenin. During the bloodiest century of all time, ‘peacetime’ oppression and murder were concentrated in these atheistic states. Once man has been reduced to merely political terms, he becomes a means-to-an-end. That inevitably means the end to many men.

And that should be expected, as the ‘Nuclear Option’ argument for atheism that humans are no more than robots made of meat is ever more persistently presented to us. Such a view is devastating for humanity. Robots that aren’t working are either fixed, reprogrammed, or scrapped and disposed of. How are humans to be looked at any differently? Mankind is made in the image of God, but how can God be understood as a person and give the image any significance if humans are not really ‘persons’?  Nuclear options are always acts of desperation, which is clear evidence that the 20th century was a very desperate time.

Even if human dignity is somehow smuggled in through a vague notion of progress or restored through some legal fiction, Game Theory eviscerates ‘secularism’. Press any great personal sacrifice onto a ‘secularist,’ and rationally they must fold their principles. Through self-interest, there is no reason for them to persevere, unless of course they enjoy pain or have a death wish. In his story ‘Nightfall’, Asimov recognizes this. He has a psychologist smugly tie up the Cultist in a moral-spiritual dilemma by giving his word that he would not interfere with the Scientists. The Cultist keeps his word - almost - while it is clear that none of the Scientists would have borne such a sacrifice - they are not that principled.

I am quite willing to put Asimov in with the benevolent moderate humanists, but even on the long shot that his lot could move the masses with their passion for knowledge (or against religion), they will eventually make an ideological or knowledge-driven mistake that will damage and kill real people. The correction to the mistake must either turn to the left toward a more centralized socialism (moving towards communism and ultimately autocracy) or give rise to a right lacking nuance, prone to authoritarianism and racism...or, like Hitler and Mussolini, do both at the same time - National Socialism. Fascism. Far Left or far Right, either way is a path to totalitarianism and murder.

A society where politics and knowledge are not the first things is more modest about the causes of events, less affected by perturbations, and therefore more stable. Once out of the shadow of Christianity, where human dignity is a result of being created in the Image of God, there is no clear definition of dignity beyond the personality-at-large; no reason to be tolerant if you can afford to be intolerant; and no self-correction beyond bloody revolution and/or religious revival. Of the humanist philosophers prior to Post-Modernism, when philosophy still mattered, only the empathetic Albert Camus - while denigrating ‘hope’ - sees all these points to their hopeless insignificant end. Even Nietzsche tries to make lemonade out of lemons with his übermensch and art.

Nietzsche, Our Contemporary by Eric Walther - philosophynow.org

  Demography of ‘Secularism’

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” - Jesus, Law of Spiritual Selection, John 15:1-2

A humanist might try to take refuge in science - Natural Selection, for instance - but it is of little help. Any appeal to ‘selfish genes’ - as the 1996 Humanist of the Year famously put it - engenders love for the family quickly diffusing outward into competition with all else. If genetic selfishness means anything, the annihilation of the weak, odd, old, and other are the proper sentiments of ‘decent’ humanism. Not surprisingly then, humanists under the label ‘progressives’ were quite supportive of eugenics in its heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. Eugenic policies in the United States included minimum and living wage laws, race-based immigration quotas, intentional ghettos, and forced sterilization. Several authors at the time argued for policies of euthanization of the feebleminded and “unemployable.” Once it got going in North America and the United Kingdom, continental Europe became inspired by it - especially Nazi Germany.

The list of eugenicists concerned about “race suicide” or “adverse selection” - the fear of the ‘in’ ethnic and social groups being out populated by a less couth ‘out’ group - reads like a Who’s Who of early 20th century progressivism: presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, novelist H.G. Wells, Fabian socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb, labor reformer Florence Kelley, economists Harold Laski and John Maynard Keynes, statistician Karl Pearson, biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan and the list goes on and on (Leonard, 2005). Some persisted even after World War II, when the horrors of Hitler’s Action T4 and Final Solution were laid bare. For instance, eugenics provided both justification and goal throughout all of Margaret Sanger’s work - another Humanist of the Year.

Eugenics Links

The supreme irony is that ‘secularism’ seems to supply an evolutionary selection pressure against itself. Atheists just don’t have that many kids, and the more conservative, faithful, and monotheistic religious people do. It can be hard to ferret the population data into these categories, but any attempt to do so shows the ‘secular’ severely short of replacement rate. 

Web Resources on Religion and Reproduction - blume-religionswissenschaft.de

Secularists are so far below replacement that any eugenics short of another Holocaust still has the religious populations clearly prevailing. Not only are ‘secularists’ numerically short, they demonstrably fail at propagating a culture that could ever be demographically self-sufficient. Feminist, hedonist, and trans-humanist movements are foundationally about separating adult life from child rearing, and therefore, those cultures utterly fail the first test of natural selection. There is no reason to believe ‘secularists’ will ever rise above replacement levels. 

In contrast [to the religious], I can't see any convincing arguments [for rearing children] acceptable to an educated non-believer. Philosophically, Society or Evolution are not absolute values and the simple answer that there might be "too many humans" around would be able to counter and silence any remaining moralistic claims.

Therefore, the empirical irony remains: The more Atheism is flourishing numerically, the more Religion(s) are winning out evolutionarily. - Michael Blume (May, 2013)

The population data is so striking that some ecologists are finally recognizing the positive selection benefits of religion. Many of these benefits are obvious. Religious people have been talking about them for millennia, just not in the language of modern science. As Elaine Pagels points out (1988), the Hebrews had long considered reproduction such a prime directive that a woman's inability to bear children was justification enough for divorce. When an entrapment question about divorce was put to Jesus (Matthew 19:1-15; Mark 10:1-12), he answered radically for his time: “What God has brought together, let no man separate.”

Short of mass extermination of the religious, the only savior of ‘secularism’ seems to be the invention of completely in vitro babies and a professional class to raise them, as in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Conversions might keep the atheist boat afloat awhile, but with the failure of global communism, the Western (actually, the Northern) world in managed decline at the hands of its humanist and hedonist masters, while the Brave New World rears its ugly head, the clock is ticking. Always behind the European fads, the United States may be the last post-industrialized nation where atheism is on the rise.

Atheism Links

  Wisdom

All of this shows an alarming loss of individual wisdom in the age of ‘secularism’. Alarming perhaps, but not surprising. Whatever sentiment is smuggled in to motivate people and make humanism work is by definition subjective. What are deemed facts are gathered together in such a way as to rumor reasoning, when in fact there are several massive leaps of faith involved. With an ill-considered sentiment at the center comes foolishness. We need not get moralistic to make this judgement - natural selection, social selection and basic economics suffice.

For one example that avoids basic moral categories (ie., lying, stealing, hurting and killing), consider the prevalence of permanent tattoos, once only the provenance of sailors, criminals, the unstable, and drug addicts. In the past two decades, millions of people who don’t necessarily fit these demographics - and many more that do - have chosen tattoos. The wisdom for them, “They are bad-ass…, bad-ass cute..., bad-ass works of art…, not quite as dangerous as they used to be…,” and the lemming logic, “everybody is doing it.” When pressed for a reason that could approach wisdom, the most superficial sentiments of individualism are offered. But there is no getting around it - tattoos are literally skin deep.

“Body art, deviance, and American college students” - drjkoch.org

Wisdom is often about probability and risk assessment. Tattoos are a choice. Taken together, that makes tattoos almost objectively foolish, even apart from any scientific type of study. Philosophically, a person who has chosen tattoos in the modern world has been swayed by fads and peer pressure towards membership in an unsavory group. The first impression of visible tattoos acts as a proxy for other foolish behavior. As I’m teaching my young kids what to look for in a stranger when they must engage them, avoiding those with visible tattoos - especially face and neck tattoos - is at the top of the list. Certainly there are exceptions among those who have chosen their tattoos, such as conforming to a ritual having an effect on life and station within the tribe common among many African and Polynesian groups (and perhaps partially excusing the military). But in a world free from that, what part of wisdom would warrant a tattoo?

Not that I want to ban tattoos - unwise people do us an incredible service by marking themselves. Nor should a judgement go beyond the first impression - I have met many who regret and many who endorse their tattoos who have proven trustworthy. Where I live, tattoos are ubiquitous. I must trust people who leave less than ideal first impressions. However, as we are entering the transhuman age, it will be interesting to hear the “wisdom” of a heavily tattooed parent when their child wants to replace their perfectly fine natural arm with a bionic one.

When considering moral categories, the loss of wisdom is even greater. This can readily be seen when comparing what seems wise to an apolitical Christian group uncorrupted by modernism, such as the Mennonites, with what seems wise under Hedonism, the dominant ‘secular’ ideal in American society today.

The Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups that include the Old Order Amish are ideal examples of well-functioning Christian communities. It's not that they don’t have any problems or members don’t occasionally do bad things, but rather they have a community formed around some basic principles that point towards a relationship with God and wise living. The highest of these principles is Gelassenheit, which variously means self-surrender, submission, and letting be. 

Question

Mennonite Wisdom 

“Gelassenheit”

Hedonist Wisdom

“Whatever floats your boat”

Comparison of average happiness. Prison, addiction, stability,

In all the questions above, the Hedonist is balancing pleasure with risk. Most of the risks associated with Hedonism are massively reduced by some form of slavery, if it can be afforded and not found distasteful. In contrast, the Mennonite could not consistently countenance any sort of slavery beyond that of apprenticeship. 

While the Mennonites are not against taking risks, risk should ultimately be in service to the community and future generations. Consequently, the Amish are responsibly doubling their population about every 20 years. 

“Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” - Jesus, Matthew 22:22 (context 14-32)

Whether one sees the living as those remembered by God or the fit community of Naturally Selection, it is clear in both cases that the Hedonists are dead. For those of us holding onto the knowledge project, the Amish life is not possible. Hopefully there is a middle way, because neither the happiness project nor the knowledge project leads to fitness. Christianity says there is another way - redeeming the world around you for Christ.  

“As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should [only] abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” - Paul comparing the Jew to the Gentile, Acts 21:25 (context 17-26)

Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches. Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts. Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them. - 1 Corinthians 7:17-20

What We Believe About Israel - centerforisrael.com 

Theism has always been upfront about its subjective basis - Mankind’s significance is based on a relationship with God. If we remove faith in God and all the mediocrity in between that and disbelief, we are left with the humanist, the sociopath and the sociopath masquerading as a humanist. How exactly would this produce a more just or humane world? What enduring principles could remain once the Judeo-Christian ones were extinguished? What arguments could be used to keep society at a workable humanist to sociopath ratio? Man cannot live on irony alone. Apart from hand waving, no answers seem forthcoming. Why then should the flip side of Pascal’s Wager be entertained when all it offers in this world is thin trivial truths, collective destruction and quite probably personal destruction? 

Works Cited

Asimov, Isaac (1994). I. Asimov: a memoir. New York: Doubleday.

Bahnsen, Greg and Stein, Gordon (1985). The Great Debate: Does God Exist? Bahnsen/Stein. Nacogdoches: Covenant Media Foundation.

Hume, David (1777). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Jeppson Janet (2006-06-06). Notes for a  Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing (1st ed.). Amherst: Prometheus.

Pelikan, Jaroslav (1987). Jesus Through the Centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Steer, Roger (1997). George Müller: Delighted in God. Tain, Rosshire: Christian Focus.

Swinburne, Richard (1993) “The Vocation of a Natural Theologian.” in Philosophers Who Believe Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Wheelwright, Philip (1959). Heraclitus. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.