I listened to this fellow speak and I really have to wonder if he is aware of the 200-year history of people like him trying to create atheistic religious imagery and what came of these past debates and efforts. Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne have ridiculed the idea.

In the English language, the names of historical eras are signified with capital letters. Some examples include the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Classical Era, and, yes, even the Enlightenment. The term “Enlightenment” gains its capital letter not from any pretense but from typographic convention.

“no assumptions, no faith, nothing like that – just pure, demonstrable, observable truth, well documented”

Typically, humanists claim that they are using reason to discover truth. They are—theoretically, at least—open to the possibility that what they perceive to be truth today might turn out to be false tomorrow. Christians, on the hand, typically claim that the truth has been revealed and is unchanging. It is erroneous to claim for humanism the kind of immutable certainty that Christianity professes.

By the way, in case there is any confusion, I should explain why the word “Christianity” is capitalized and “humanism” is not. Christianity receives a capital letter not out of any sense of exaggerated importance as insinuated above. It is capitalized because it includes a proper name or title (“Christ”) and because it refers to a specifiable set of beliefs. “Humanism,” however, refers to no one person, and it gathers such a variety of perspectives that it is usually accompanied by an adjective, such as Renaissance Humanist or Christian Humanist. When the term gathers such specificity, then it can be capitalized.

From the very beginning (note the term “enlightenment”, which by the way usually gets a capital E) they have used the language of religion.

And why not? These are religious questions being debated. The only reason humanists can get away with pretending their beliefs are somehow not “religious” in nature is because they have framed “religious” as being the same as “mythological” – both of which are further defined as “untrue” or “superstitious” – and these are framed as the opposite of what they believe, which is not a “religion” because it’s 100% based on “reason”, with no assumptions, no faith, nothing like that – just pure, demonstrable, observable truth, well documented.

As G.K. Chesterton said about Comte’s humanistic quasi-religion: “he alone saw that men must always have the sacredness of mummery … A feeling touching the nature of things does not only make men feel that there are certain proper things to say; it makes them feel that there are certain proper things to do. The more agreeable of these consist of dancing, building temples, and shouting very loud … It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions when he is not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them. I myself, to take a corpus vile, am very certain that I would not read the works of Comte through for any consideration whatever. But I can easily imagine myself with the greatest enthusiasm lighting a bonfire on Darwin Day.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/12/religion-for-atheists-de-botton-review

Of course, a temple seems to imply something being worshiped (be it reason, “enlightenment,” friendship, brotherhood, etc.), which seems to make an argument that atheism is as much a faith system as any other religion.

Still, if atheists want to beautify city skylines with majestic buildings, then more power to them!

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/26/oh-please/