Was my first reaction on reading this story in the Guardian yesterday. The proposal is that several Humanist Chaplains currently resident at universities in the US are potentially headed our (UK) way to offer their kind of non-theistic social services at universities here. The main subject of the story is a chap called Greg Epstein he is a humanist chaplain at Harvard, I've heard him speak a couple of times on various youtube videos and he seems sensible enough, Greg says that the services he offers are quantifiably different from those received through psychotherapy, counselling and mentoring, this leaves me wondering what they actually are, is he like rent-a-mate?
The clear danger or perhaps hidden agenda here is that humanism camouflages itself as "religion" in order to be better accepted that it becomes one. I'm not convinced, it seems to me like an attempt to sneak something in under the radar although I'm struggling to see what "it" is exactly, perhaps I'm being over cynical (doesn't sound like me?) but from 30,000ft this smells like the same kind of snake oil as the other side sell?
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