Is There Something Wrong with the “New Humanism”?

I read this because my antennae always come on when I hear Atheism and Humanism together. Is it me? But when I hear “humanism”, I usually hear people who speak from one particular political agenda. Whereas I see atheism as a-political. Atheists belong to many different political circles. But I do find some atheists that feel their politics are a natural outworking of their atheism.

I don’t really think non-theism is something to necessarily be proud of. All it means is that you are thinking rationally, which is what an average person should be doing anyway.

After reading the article, I went to the comments, and it became very clear why Mr. Scruton is on the wrong track. His tale of woe gives ammunition for every Christian stereotype of the immoral, woe-begone atheist, one step away from nihilism.

Mr. Scruton is a philosopher, so I guess he is missing the real excitement of modern science: he misses the exalting of man, meanwhile over in the lab we are building one. He sees attacks on religion, missing that it is really about telling people that there are better uses of their time.

Three cheers for the “new” Humanism. No more slouching around, for fear of offending the child-adults still dreaming of Santa Claus.

It says nothing, or next to nothing, about faith, hope, and charity; is scathing about patriotism; and is dismissive of those rearguard actions in defense of the family, public spirit, and sexual restraint that animated my parents

Yay!

Yep, everything was better in the good ol’days. You tell em grandpa!

I think the term “concern troll” rather adequately describes this Mr Scruton.

“The new humanism spends little time exalting man as an ideal. It says nothing, or next to nothing, about faith, hope, and charity”

It says nothing about faith? Should it really?
I don’t like the word faith. For such things as trusting your own possibilities and future, I think we should promote another term.
Hope? I disagree. It does.
Charity? Another word I don’t like. Talk about the feeling of solidarity between human beings. Not about charity.

“is scathing about patriotism”

Patriotism is a trick used by those in power to send some people to war and to scare others, deprive them of their liberty, even torture them. Is that really so great?

“and is dismissive of those rearguard actions in defense of the family, public spirit, and sexual restraint that animated my parents.”

Sexual restraint? Hmm, what a nice cause to fight for. But what has humanism got to do with it?

“Instead of idealizing man, the new humanism denigrates God and attacks the belief in God as a human weakness. My parents too thought belief in God to be a weakness. But they were reluctant to deprive other human beings of a moral prop that they seemed to need.”

Either it’s a weakness, and if you get rid of it, you get stronger, and you should help people to do so. Or it’s not, and you don’t care. But you have to choose…

Following on from Ian’s post I’d like to quote Mae West (I think):

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”

I feel the same about “I’m an atheist, but” comments. It’s not like anything I say or do represents any other atheist. If they want to spend their time apologising for what other individuals are doing out of their own conscience then let them, but I really resent the attempts to drag the rest of us down into self-loathing and bowing and scraping before this nebulous notion of ‘respect for religious beliefs’. You don’t achieve change by sitting in the corner and saying nothing.

“But they were reluctant to deprive other human beings of a moral prop that they seemed to need.”

He seems to be saying, “I don’t need religion to keep me moral, but the unwashed masses are too stupid to be moral without the threat of eternal damnation.”

I think that’s awfully condescending. I don’t need god to be a good person, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

I hope you enjoy the view from your high horse, buddy.

He seems to be confused in a few ways. He’s holding his parents beliefs up as ideals, he’s criticizing humanists for beliefs that have nothing to do with humanism (man as the “ideal”?). He sounds, by mindset, to have very conservative Christian leanings wrapped up with a humanists shell.

Stogoe, wow! You’ve convinced me! Thanks for your fantastic contribution to the discussion! You didn’t even need to provide anything constructive like an argument or support, just needed to attack me in order to feel validated!

Similarly, your complaint is noted and pointless. I think I WILL sod off, then.

Yeah, what a terrible essay.

It seems there was an entire generation of intellectual atheists between between Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins. Who could tell?

Seriously. It seems their entire modus was to retreat to a walled garden and try to live as religious a life as possible without actually believing, and without fundamentally communicating with the outside world.

I understand the red scare drove many of them underground. But honestly, our forbears (pun intended) have much to answer for. What a hostile environment to nonbelief we arrived in. Where was the assertion of equality? Where was the outreach from the walled garden? For all of the exhaulting of humanity at Cambridge, where, at all, was the actual ENGAGEMENT with the rest of humanity?

You know, the non-stiff-upper-lip high-minded?

What of the rest of actual humanity? Well, for them (those stupid, muddy working-class shlubs), they can use the crutch — the “moral prop”. If you ain’t good enough to read Milton, Blake, and Lawrence, well, we aren’t going to dumb it down for you.

Isn’t that the antithesis of “exhaulting humanity”?

And by the way, what’s so great about humanity to begin with? Shouldn’t that very notion of an absolute perfectable nature be examined with extreme skepticism?

So much about what Scruton holds up as the virtues of Humanism strike me as nothing more than arbitrarily chosen ideals. Or rather ideals chosen because they had counterparts within Christianity. Ethical system, check. Sexual restraint, check. Faith (even), check. Even patriotism. Why should patriotism flow naturally from Humanism? I cannot think of a notion more antithetical to Humanism than patriotism. My allegiance is to the IDEALS of America, and if the country departs from those ideals, I do not cleave to the country and forget the ideals.

Humanism *must demand* that we consider ourselves humans before nationalists. What use, then is “Patriotism” as an end or a virtue in and of itself? Suppose we are humanist citizens of a corrupt regime, subjects of Saddam, for example. Is patriotism really a humanist value in that instance?

Everyone reading this is well aware of the open hostility to atheists that exists in America, from the shameless attacks by elected officials, to the silencing by the media, to the outright calls for us to voluntarily silence ourselves from the pundit class (now including Scruton).

This is where Old Humanism brought us. All that bowing and scraping. All of that exhaulting the Human as a pinnacle. All of the toiling in the walled garden while treating the masses as lesser intelectuals not ready to lose their moral prop.

Old Humanism removed themselves from the discussion, retreated to the halls of the intelligencia, ceded their position and abdicated their role within the general public. Where, half a century earlier, Robert Ingersoll, the great agnostic, packed lecture halls and spoke directly to the masses. Where among the Old Humanists is his kind today? Nowhere. I submit to you that we have had no such voice until Richard Dawkins.

It’s the Old Humanism which brought us to be the most distrusted minority in America, and allowed religious authoritarianism to ravage the masses unchecked by any contrary voices. Perhaps it IS time to stop sneaking around, talking in whispers and keeping to our walled gardens.

Time to come into the light, and re-engage the conversation.

Richard,

Thanks for your reply.

Honestly, I prefer “Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone.” When they decided on the other one for my home of Toronto, I really wish we took that instead. It is outreach instead of starting a fight that doesn’t exist here.

Honestly, I like the slogan, I think it’s funny and gets the point across that there is no reason to spend our lives worrying about what some higher power may or may not want, etc. But Hemant said this:

“Those bus ads — which are not antagonistic at all to me — are a way of letting other atheists know they are not alone. It’s a “bat signal” of sorts, calling out to other non-theists. It says there is nothing to be ashamed of and we ought to be proud of our lack of religious beliefs.”

So why don’t we just say that? Why are we trying to intentionally demean those who DO believe in a God in order to reach out to those who don’t? I’m sorry if I read to much into it, but since a big criticism that most atheists make is “Christians keep trying to shove their religion down our throats,” we’re not doing a very good job of taking a high road in this case.

We’ll get criticism regardless, I’m pretty sure all the vitriol against the TTC for the announcement that the ads were going to run would happen either way. I would just rather be proud that we’re reaching out to each other with kindness, rather than doing so with sarcasm. Isn’t that what friendly atheists do?

theShaggy,
I am all for taking the high road whenever possible, and I’m known around here for taking pains to keep dialogues respectful. I’m just not yet convinced that the “Now relax..” statement is either intensionally or inadvertently demeaning, incendiary or offensive to strongly believing theists. We should not assume that without checking.

I see the two ads as being two different steps, and they don’t necessarily have to appear in order. The “You are not alone” ad is for finding and encouraging each other to support each other. The “Probably no God” ad is the second step, to supportively challenge those people who are sitting on the fence, whose commitment to religion is rudimentary and perhaps only from inertia or a kind of default social compliance. Only those people would be likely to reconsider their passively held beliefs by such an ad. The actively devout will be impervious to it and so are not the target audience.

So I disagree with Hemant that the “Probably” ad is just a call-out for hidden atheists, but I am not yet convinced by your argument that the second part of it is by implication insulting to theists.

I don’t think it is intended to get in the face of true believers, or to imply that they are unhappy worry-warts. Maybe we should ask them about their feelings when reading it, rather than assuming it is “demeaning” to them. So far, all the objections I have heard from theists focus on the “Probably no God” sentence, rather than the “relax and enjoy life” sentence. They seem to be ignoring that part, at least from what I have read and heard so far. If you have evidence to the contrary, please let me know.