Humanism

[AFTT47]

What I find interesting is that some atheists have the most penetrating critique of humanism.  In particular Professor John Gray.  What he argues is:

"Humanism is the new religion or new faith in a post-Christian Europe. It is the dominant worldview that informs everything else.

Post-Christian? Well, we live in hope  
Anyway, I've never encountered a humanist who would accept that it's a religion. An ideology, yes; a philosophy, yes; a world-view, yes. Conflating the definitions of those with 'religion' is deliberate misrepresentation and makes me question the veracity of JG's analysis.

I don't mind owning up to some degree of faith. We Secular Humanists have a decidedly optimistic outlook based on the assumption that not only are we capable of doing great things but that we WILL do great things. We can make an evidence-based argument for that based on the track record of our species - particularly the meteoritic rise of knowledge and technology of the past few centuries and the ever increasing rate of that rise - but it's certainly not a slam dunk. Our optimism is colored by emotional bias to some degree. So what? What's the consequences if we're wrong? Where's the harm of striving towards excellence and having faith that we will achieve it? Far better than sloughing through life, whining whoa is me and we suck IMO.