The idea that humanity is sinful and unworthy and the end of the world is near or at least inevitable has a very long and deep religious background. Yet these themes frequently crop up among those who are making a point of the inferiority of religious thought. I have a certain distaste for how much people apparently love to think in terms of labels rather than substance.
>The idea that humanity is sinful and unworthy and the end of the world is near or at least inevitable has a very long and deep religious background.
Really? I haven't seen that at all. If you're talking about Christianity and the whole "end times" stuff, that's a little different: that isn't humanity "driving itself to extinction", that's some deity deciding that humans are bad and proactively eliminating them. I don't see that as the same thing at all.
In fact, why I said this seemed to be offending peoples' religious ideals is that I think the idea of humans making themselves extinct directly counters this religious idea that a deity is the one in charge of humans' fate. To them, if humans are all eliminated, it can't possibly be because humans did it to themselves (as this is what they'd call a "humanistic" or "secular" idea), but could only happen because their deity made it so. And conversely, as long as humans are "good" enough (meaning they worship the deity enough, nothing about them wrecking their environment or obliterating themselves with nuclear weapons) then the deity will protect them from their own mistakes.
"Humanity" as an entity with purpose or a mind is substantively the same as a deity from my perspective.
It's an abstract concept that is analogous to a single human, that is supposed to exist without a specific location in space and time, and has free will, causes things to happen and/or is blamed for them. And I see the same lack of empirical evidence for the concept.
So, yes, you may not see it as the same thing, but I quite definitely do.
I often think downvoting is overdone, though.