I’m going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that the reason is to remove dignity from the other side, making it easier to poke them with sticks. Much the same way as religious fundamentalists may be referred to as Fundies.
Indeed. I’m an atheist, but I remember enough of my Christian upbringing to see the false premise here. Man is a creation of God, subjugated to Him. The soul is something one needs to worry about “saving”, but it is not elevated above God. Nothing is elevated above God.
And fundamentalists don’t do tolerance. Humanists think we should be nice to everyone, which includes people perceived by Christian fundamentalists to be enemies. Like Muslims and Jews.
What about God’s mom? She was probably a pretty cool lady.
It is a Divine Truth that God does not wear a hat.
I may have misinterpreted but when I looked at secular humanism in the late '70s or early '80s, it struck me a being an atheist religion and, being non-religious, I didn’t give it much thought after that. I wonder if American fundamentalists prefer to attach secular humanism because they too see it as a religion and therefore something they understand well enough to attack.
Bollocks to “they aren’t human”, but if the chaps with the big eyes don’t want five rounds rapid maybe they shouldn’t tip cows and probe people’s buttocks so willy nilly.
As for the AIs, pulling the plug is just common sense. Skynet’s not going to prevent itself, is it ?
I don’t think they do understand it. They try to portray it (as you said you saw it at first) as an “atheist religion.” It isn’t. And it isn’t actually all that human-centered, only being so in the sense that humans are the only ones around right now that have the power to improve the world (or harm it.)
Sitnam got it right: “Humanists believe in the achievements man can make on their own in the elevation of their species.” But, further, most humanists also believe in improving the environment, in rescuing endangered species, etc. We aren’t so human-centric as to want to kill all the deer and put up condos.
Seriously? Need a beret to be cool.
It’s not humanists that are so bad, it’s those secular humanists.*
*It’s important to make such distinctions, as in the case of the 1930s Klansman who once told an audience “We’re not anti-Catholic, it’s those Roman Catholics we’re against.” 
Well, there you have it. The shaman who performs a magic dance before each hunt and gets a share of the resulting meat isn’t going to be pleased if hunters start going out without his blessing and visibly enjoying exactly the same success rate.
My experiences concur. Humans and their souls were basically playthings to the deity, whose plan was sacrosanct. The plan is for the Jews to have some desert time? Harden that Pharaoh’s heart!
Just gonna say, as a conservative Christian or Christian conservative who has been involved to various degrees of the Christian Right over the past 30+ years, I knew exactly what BG was talking about- and of course, it was the Secular Humanist philosophy as espoused in the Humanist Manifestos I & II. Educated CC’s such as Francis Schaeffer pointed out that, of course, there is a Christian humanism that sees human worth, rights, dignity & potential as rooted in our creation in God’s image & redeemed through the Saving Work of Jesus.
Gotta go now to get ready for church.
I’m not particularly in-the-know with regard to Christian Fundies but receiving denouncement from them is generally a badge of honor for intelligent folk.
The writer Edward Abbey, when confronted by a large rattlesnake on his doorstep one morning:
I would say that to fundamentalists, the word evokes the whole complex of modern thought to which they are opposed: lack of piety, the elevation of the importance of human thought, including science, above the eternal religious truths and the traditions they feel are practically the same thing, the tolerance of what they believe to be sinful behavior, the whole shooting match.
Humanism has been associated with the dissolution of moral boundaries since the French Revolution and Rousseau. It has, you could say, a dark face and a light face. You can despise fundamentalism as much as you want, but they have a certain point.
I also came to state the obvious that fundamentalism isn’t limited to Christianity, nor is opposition to humanism limited to that branch of fundamentalism.
Only in so far as their definitions of such boundaries are self-regarding.
Take, for instance, the Divine Right of Kings. Humanists say that people should be self-governing, and not ruled by accidents of heredity (which usually can be traced back to conquest anyway.) The fundamentalists (of bygone eras) condemn this is the dissolution of a moral boundary – but only because they have defined the divine right of kings to be a moral tenet to begin with.
Enlightenment thought was about changing moral definitions, regularizing them and especially putting them upon the basis of reason. To those who are not amenable to reason-based processes of deduction, this can seem to be an attack upon morality. To others of us, it is the first great advance in morality in centuries.
Well yep. I wasn’t saying they have the right or only definition, just that they indeed have one.
Fair enough; my apologies.
“You know who else had a definition of morality?”
Here’s an article written by Rick Perlstein in Rolling Stone which covers the issue. Money quote (but there’s so much in there, I can’t really summarize it without quoting pretty much the whole thing):