snatchbalance

Laurentius

Well, like I said, we all have our own pathologies. Mine compel me to work towards the elimination of delusions when I see them in action.

Could this also not be a Humanist goal.

From my perspective, as an Atheist, I have a real responsibilty to engage in debate, and state truths as I know them to be, when the opportunity presents itself. I'm not going to pretend that I don't do this more for the preservation of my own integrity, than for any other reason. But I guess that's good enough reason for for me.

I would ask you this, how much good does the continued God myth do, compared to its potential for harm? Why condone practices, tacitly or otherwise, that have done, and continue to do, more harm than good?

If I say to a Theist, well, there is no god, and there is no truth to the Bible. What have I done? Interupted a pleasent dream? Do they get angry? Yes, butI don't know what to do about that.

Wish I had more time, but got to go.

Snatchbalance

[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>

ohwilleke

The "guts" of Humanism boil down to two things:

1. How do we decide what "making the people happy" is?

2. How can we arrange the affairs of humanity in such a way that individuals find it possible and desirable to make the people happy without getting into each other's way in counterproductive ways?

Humanists would generally recognize that it isn't possible to maximize everyone's happiness all of the time. Thus, a good society will necessarily entail some individual sacrifice for the collective goal of a good society. I wouldn't therefore call it pure hedonism. But, this doesn't necessarily imply simple utilitarianism in which the life of your brother has equal moral value, from your perspective, to the life of someone half a world away whom you've never met and have no connection to, even though you may have some moral obligation to both -- even if that obligation to those on the other side of the Earth is as meager as a moral obligation not to encourage your leaders to nuke them and obliterate them off the face of the Earth wne it isn't necessary to do so to preserve your own people.

Given the limited ability that each person has to take actions, we have to realize that no one individual should be held personally, primarily responsible for everyone in the world. Given this, and the way humans emotions are programed to work, it isn't responsible to allocate a higher responsibility to yourself and your family, than to your next door neighbors family or the family a world away, at least within reason.

This allocation of responsibility also keeps us from getting into each other's way. Most of the time, it makes sense to have only the people impacted by a decision have a say in that decision, so that the whole world doesn't have to agree on where John and Donna's kids should stay next weekend if they are divorced.

Another way of restating all of this, is that the the questions: What does the "happiness of the people mean", "what sort of society will achieve this", and "what are a particular person's moral obligations" are intricately intertwined, difficult questions.

Practically speaking, most of us do not arive at a moral order for the universe from first principals, even if these broadest goals do flow from first principals. Instead, I think it is fair to say that most secular humanists take as their starting point the moral order and sense of responsibility of the part of society that they are born into, but distinguish themselves as humanists by not leaving this traditional view of society unexamined. Instead, secular humanists examine new or close moral issues as they come up, within the framework of their larger goals. Sometimes this means baby steps. Sometimes this means that examination of a key issue may change a whole worldview.

For instance, many humanists at the dawn of the 20th century were enamoured of communism (something shown in its early documents) because this approach to economics aspired to address humanist values in a very direct manner, while the capitalism of the day appeared to be the source of a great deal of inhumanity. A century later, many humanists see practical flaws in the ability of communism to bring about the moral order it aspired to, and see a changed, more regulated capitalism proving more effective at achieving humanist goals like the betterment of the standard of living of the common man, than most people thought was possible a hundred years early. No doubt the next century will further refine our sense of morality.

Are the humanists today, any less humanistic in their philosophical come from, than those of a century ago? No. Humanists today are simply applying the philosophical implications of their core beliefs to a different set of facts.

In the same way, being a Young Earth Creationist or a believer in a flat Earth, was far less unreasonable during the era when the Book of Genesis was written, than it is today, when we have more evidence to work with.

One might even argue that yet another core belief of Humanism is that what is moral is informed by what we know.

And, there are certainly issues within humanism upon which I think it is fair to say that there is no consensus, although the mere fact that humanists have no consensus on them and don't fight a great deal over them, suggests that they are less important in this philosophy. For example, while I personally believe that no one is basically bad, I'm not sure that this would be a consensus position among humanists. I think you can be a humanist and think that most people are basically selfish and mean spirited and that some people are even outright evil, but that a few people really care about others and our society.

[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: ohwilleke ]</p>

Laurentius

mturner

AVE


You can't see it because I was reluctant to choose the individual or the community as the highest value of the Humanist approach. It is quite risky to prescribe one kind of happiness for everyone.

As far as I remember, Secular Humanism usually defines itself in opposition with theology, and that is why you will only find statements as follows:

"Humanist ethics is solely concerned with meeting human needs and answering human problems - for both the individual and society - and devotes no attention to the satisfaction of the desires of supposed theological entities."

For me, Humanism emphasizes both the equal importance of the human and the humanity. Therefore, the "greatest good" may be the happiness of each human being aongside with the preservation and thriving of humanity.

AVE


[ March 29, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

Laurentius

Somenone7

AVE


Am I forgetting it? If I were to write a book about the abuses the church does in my country and people all over the world were to be really interested in all the volumes, soon my writing would become more widespread than the Bible.

I'm not forgetting it, I'm temperamentally politics-oriented, but I'm trying to channel my efforts into right direction. Okay, on the social and political field I say go private, die for your creed, but this is the philosophical corner, where, I think, it would be a lot more fruitful to build something, to create a perspective on life that does not essentially justify itself only in opposition with religion. And even if the starting point of Secular Humanism is atheism, humanists had better seek further for a development of their theories and even see how their view is workable in real life.

In my country the dilemma has been solved as follows: all elementary and middle school children attend one Religion class a week, and it is the parents that decide whether their child will register in a group conducted by a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, ... or Atheist teacher. In high school Religion is no longer taught, and every youngster will be free to choose his/her belief according to the knowledge and experience accumulated. There may still be abuses here and there, but I think the law is quite fair.

Atheists did discriminate against believers in my country before the fall of communism, and at the time I thought it was being done with a good reason. At the moment there is a resurgence of religiosity not because people have suddenly become inspired but as a reaction against the political constraints in the past.

What is going on with the "melting pot"? Can't there be a "unity in diversity", or is it just a slogan?

Secular Humanism looks like a city constructed under siege. The political debate has its utility, which I do not deny, but I think that philosophically Secular Humanism would have more to gain if we could concentrate on the development of its own architecture. Or is it impossible and useless?

AVE

Laurentius

snatchbalance

AVE


As a personal philosophical stand, you must be free to assert your own perspective on things. But as a general humanist principle, this is what I’ve found to sound more reasonable:

“Humanism is a philosophy of imagination. Humanists recognize that intuitive feelings, hunches, speculation, flashes of inspiration, emotion, altered states of consciousness, and even religious experience, while not valid means to acquire knowledge, remain useful sources of ideas that can lead us to new ways of looking at the world. These ideas, after they have been assessed rationally for their usefulness, can then be put to work, often as alternate approaches for solving problems.”

Man is a religious being, and I’ve come to believe that atheism itself is a kind of religiosity. Competition will always exist, and no single religion, ideology or thinking will ever win over all the others. Having this reality, you may wish to ask yourself whether it is worth to engage in destroying what others are trying to build, or construct a better edifice and win them with its impeccable architecture.


AVE

Laurentius

ohwilleke

AVE


What I’ve noticed so far is that Humanism admits the existence of moral dilemmas and recommends that solutions be reached with compassion, tolerance and open-mindedness.

As for the rest of the post, wow, what can I say? I’ve read it with interest and just added everything to my database on Humanism.


AVE


[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

snatchbalance

Lauretius


It's a dirty business, but sometimes one needs to clear away the old to make room for the new.

Evolution cannot take place if the niche is occupied.

Snatchbalance

John Page

Destroy? A house built on sand? Why bother.

Laurentius

The Soldier

The soldier had not joined the army as a result of his free choice. As a matter of fact, he had been quite an unruly, egotistical young man, defiant toward any constraint, imperative or authority. Although his non-conformity and contemptuous boldness had earned him not only advantages, but also enemies, his limitless confidence had continued to fuel in him the challenging of taboos and restrictions, until one day the mob itself put a price on his head, and, running for his life, he had joined the legion. Looking thus for safety, he had found himself overnight part of what he abhorred the most: hierarchy, regulations and solidarity.

So there came the inevitable – one day he was charged for causing the death of one of his comrades; had he stayed, for both of them to resist a surprise attack for no more than several minutes, not only he but also his companion would have certainly survived.
“Son,” the commander pinned him against the wall with his cold stare, “you’re a disgrace, not a soldier. You’ve been seditious once too many. You were offered here the knowledge and training to become an outstanding soldier, which not once did you choose to treat with scorn and condescendence. And yet, I condoned it, saying to myself, ‘He’s an independent son of a bitch – he’s got the balls, one day he’ll make an excellent trooper.’ And then you disobeyed any hierarchy, but I condoned that too, saying to myself, ‘He shows initiative and imagination - one day we’ll all thank him for saving our butts from an absolutely no-way-out situation.’ But when the day finally arrives, and you are to use these qualities in order to prove yourself a trooper, you abandon your buddy? Son, you may think you’re a soldier when you put that uniform on, but there’s nothing military in you besides it. So, take it off right now, and get the hell out of our base. You’re no soldier.”

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

Laurentius

The parable of the soldier has been prompted by the attitude of the following sort of atheist reasoning:

(a) There is no God, so:
(b) There is no afterlife, so:
(c) Live has no intrinsic divine purpose or meaning, so:
(d) Existence is meaningless, so:
(e) Human life cannot represent a supreme value, and:
(f) No objective/absolute values can be found, so:
(g) Values are merely subjective, so:
(h) Values need not be justified, so:
(i) No hierarchy of values can be established, so:
(j) Universal, objective morality is not attainable, so:
(k) Ethics is futile.


Here's what Humanism typically holds:

Humanism is in tune with the science of today. Humanists therefore recognize that we live in a natural universe of great size and age, that we evolved on this planet over a long period of time, that there is no compelling evidence for a separable "soul," and that human beings have certain built-in needs that effectively form the basis for any human-oriented value system.

Humanism believes in a naturalistic metaphysics of attitude toward the universe that considers all forms of the supernatural as myth; and that regards Nature as the totality of being and as a constantly changing system of matter and energy which exists independently of any mind or consciousness.

Humanism, drawing especially upon the laws and facts of science, believes that humans are an evolutionary product of the Nature of which we are a part; that our minds are indivisibly conjoined with the functioning of our brains; and that as an inseparable unity of body and personality we can have no conscious survival after death.



My conviction is that the Humanist should emphasize that living and non-living matter are not equivalent, as neither are the conscious and the non-conscious.

(i) The living is superior to the non-living in that it offers solutions for self-preservation that the non-living lacks;
(ii) The volitive living is superior to the merely instinctive living in that from a set it chooses the one solution that seems to best fit its purposes;
(iii) The conscious volitive is superior to the non-conscious volitive in that it assumes the responsiblity of its own choice.

In the eyes of the humanist, due to the human beings' responsible choice to preserve and develop it, human life represents a primordial value.

Since humans have existed, values have always been objective. These values make up the culture one is given birth in. For each individual the system(s) of values where he/she lives is a GIVEN, not an option, a compelling reality as factual as the physical order of things. Values make up another code or system within which individuals are just born. For them such systems represent an immutable GIVEN; no such code can be changed or created without the cooperation of the whole community that makes use of it. Humans do not spring in nature like flowers. They are not actually born in the real world, but in a specific human interpretation of it, in a symbolic universe consisting of a system of values or competing systems of values. Social beings as they are, humans will at least formally (if not internally) adopt the minimum of principles that will confirm their belonging to a human community or another. These principles constitute an objective reality that impose on both each individual and the community as whole.

And if he were to reject all values that make up his humanity, a man would eliminate himself from among his fellow humans, the same as the soldier in the parable gets expelled from the army community.

AVE

[ March 31, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>