The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[Seax]

What do you mean he's human-centric?

Imma go out on a limb and say that it means that God’s actions, motivations and desires are centered around human beings.

Boru

(Non-Christian) Theists have made this exact same point. The Stoic Chrysippus made the exact same observation:

We should infer in the case of a beautiful dwelling-place that it was built for its owners and not for mice; we ought, therefore, in the same way to regard the universe as the dwelling-place of the gods.

I think this is obviously true, but it offends the more narcissistic. They want to think that the universe exists for them, that its centred around them & exists for their benefit. They certainly don't want it to be the other way around. It's why Christianity had such appeal in the Late Roman Empire. While their world was ending, it promised them that God loved them and had a pie in the sky waiting for them, he just wanted to make sure they deserved it before giving it to them. It really took off on the Roman cities, which by that point had become human landfulls, collecting all the worst elements from across the empire like moths to a lamp. Then the more airheaded & fashion-conscious of the upper orders of Roman urban life noticed the trend & began converting. Soon enough even greasy politicians like Constantine began to take notice, and the feel-good narcissism won out.

Secular humanism is an expression of the same narcissism, albeit without the supernatural hockuspockus. But instead of making a man out of God, like the Christians, secular humanism seeks to make a God out of man, or some notion of 'humanity.'