Comte

The problem with Auguste Comte's proposal to put man in the place of God as the "grand être" is that it puts a real thing in place of an abstraction. An abstract God can represent the intellectual achievements of the greatest men and ignore the intellectually insignificant. By elevating "man" above his intellectual products, we have granted a place to nonintellectuals in intellectual life which they do not deserve. The great products of the human intellect—science, mathematics, philosophy—are worthy of reverence because they are true, and because they are difficult, not because they are useful to nonintellectuals.