Human beings are special, of higher dignity and worth than other animals, because they're created in God's own image and likeness. It's actually true humanism.

The biblical writers assumed many things about reality that modern, Western people do not assume because we've been conditioned by our cultures to assume otherwise.

We, including many Christians, read the Bible through "eyes" conditioned by, and even accommodated to, modern Western culture plus the influences of messages and ideas from other cultures that are alien to the worldview of the biblical writers. Therefore, in order fully to understand the Bible and allow the Bible to absorb the world (rather than the world - culture - absorb the Bible) we must practice an "archaeology" of the biblical writers' implicit, assumed view of reality.

If the biblical writers were writing today they might spell out some things more clearly, given how easily even Christians fall into thinking in ways alien and foreign to the biblical story of God and creation.

Before saying 'I disagree' be sure you can say 'I understand.'

Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, "secular humanism" is an oxymoron.

We're created in God's image, but our souls or spirits are not offshoots of God's own Spirit - as New Age teachers would have us believe.