It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists' position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has existed forever and ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form. Man is a part of nature, in the same sense that a stone is, or a cactus, or a camel. In this view, men and women are by chance more complex, but not unique. Within this world view there is no room for believing that a human being has any final distinct value above that of an animal or of nonliving matter.
People are merely a different ar- rangement of molecules.
There are two points, therefore, that need to be made about the humanist world view. The humanists of the Enlightenment two centuries ago thought they were going to find all the answers, but as time has passed, this op- timistic hope has been proven wrong. It is their own descendants, those who share their materialistic world view, who have been saying louder and louder as the years have passed, There are no final answers . And this same world view has given us no limits to prevent us from sliding into an even worse devaluation of human life in the future. So it is naive and irresponsible to imagine that this world view will reverse the direction in the future.