At the core of humanism and before in theism is the idea that human is special. That human is crown jewel of creation. That everything that is was created to serve human. However for that to be true - human needs to be distinct, special, better - else we are just greedy and are thus not fulfilling our role in the cosmos.
Whats inconvenient is that more that we find out about the world - the more it seems that we are indeed nothing special, that we might have taken some traits to a whole new level, but more in a way like cows bear more milk, or some birds master flying better. So that puts our self serving acts under a big question.