Secular humanism (as Irving Kristol has pointed out) is virtually an established religion, with the added advantage (as James Hitchcock has pointed out) that it doesn’t suffer the disabilities currently imposed on acknowledged religions.
At one time it was plausible to say that this humanism was common sense, plus a little science and history: reason herself as she speaks when liberated from superstition and dogma. It was the light at the end of the tunnel of the Christian era, when man would return to the sunny rationality of the ancients, a condition enhanced by modern scientific method. This view is expressed in the very names given to historical eras: Dark Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment.
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