"The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which the people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good.
"The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious thoughts throughout the modern world. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs.
"Religions the world over are under the necessity of coming to terms with new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience."
Professors John Dewey, E. A. Burtt, and Roy Wood Sellars are among the signers of this statement. It is an excellent and comprehensive statement, but one is left wondering why the name "religious humanism"? It is difficult to become enthusiastic when one realizes that these men take to themselves the thunder of the atheists of the past, and under the misnomer, "religious," place before the public what all atheists of the past ages have been preaching.
It is most gratifying to perceive that such distinguished men as signed this statement are frank enough to admit the extent of the religious revolution, and determined enough to take a hand in the clearing away of the débris that clutters the crumbling of all religious creeds. Yet it is only fair to point out that this statement contains nothing that would not be recognized by those intrepid atheists of the past, and little more than they urged in their time. I refer to those brilliant French atheists La Mettrie, Helvetius, d'Holbach, d'Alembert, and Diderot.
CHAPTER XIX
THE DOOM OF RELIGION; THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM
One should recall the charge of atheism directed against the keenest thinkers of antiquity and the greatest of its moral reformers. But what was personal and incidental in the past, depending largely upon the genius and inspiration of seers and leaders, has now become a social movement, as wide as science.