The Antichristian Phenomenon
An acquaintance of mine showed me this site, which I initially thought would be atheist propaganda, and I had no idea it was launched by the Humanist movement. When you enter the site, you are prompted to do a test to see how religious you are, so I did. Unfortunately the whole site is in Swedish, for those non-Swedes, but anyway. The test didn’t take long, somewhere between 5-10 minutes, depending on the effort and thinking you put into each answer. I suppose the test itself wasn’t all that bad, although some questions were extreme polarized, where even I, who don’t believe in god at all, found it hard to sometimes answer. For example, one question was formulated such as it asked whether you believed that free will exists, or whether your actions are controlled by something else, god or otherwise. While I do believe in free will as I believe that absolute determinism is flawed, what if you believe free will is an illusion but don’t believe in god? At the start of the test, you also get to fill out what rituals, holidays and other religious celebrations you celebrate with religious origin. Of course, I filled out that I celebrate Easter and Christmas, just like many other people do. But I don’t celebrate out of my belief in Jesus Christ, I celebrate it so I can gather with my family and have some good time together.
Anyway, at the end of the test I received the answer that I was not religious at all, and that religion did not control any part of my everyday life. How the test turned out if you say, believed in god and believed that homosexuals are not allowed to marry I don’t know, but the answer was obvious: either you were religious or you weren’t. And this is where I reacted as well. How can the humanists attack the religious people, and stereotype them to such a degree that they all sound like they were extreme fundamentalists? This was my very first contact with the humanist movement, and it certainly wasn’t all that pleasant, and I got sorely disappointed with their approach.
So, what about the humanist movement? The humanist movement is pro secularism, that is, seperation of church and state, and aggressively work for it to remain so. So far so good, I don’t really see this a bad thing in itself. Humanists also believe in the empowerment of the human being, and that is one of the reasons why I disagree with humanism. It focuses too much on human life, and it puts the human into the center of the universe. While I agree that human empowerment is much better than believing in a skydaddy to rely onto, I can’t quite agree with something that almost sounds derivated from Nietzsche’s idea of the übermensch either, I care too much about the other lifeforms we must co-exist with to say that my human life is more important any other lifeform. Being a humanist implies you believe in the strength of a human being, and while I am sure many people would hate me for using the word faith here, it is irrational faith that make people believe humans are more important than what they are. Nihilistic as I am, I cannot understand how a group of people can forget how little their lives matter to the vast universe, or the earth itself. Another problem I got with the humanist movement is that it’s an organizaton, it’s a group. And it’s becoming almost as bad as the religions they seem to love attacking. Why?
First of all, I will outline the basic definitions of what religion is in an anthropological definition, and even more so fundamentalism, which does not necessarily encompass the belief in a supreme being at all:
- Shared belief system (the belief that the human being is stronger without the belief in god)
- Strict rules or values/dogma (Seperation of church and state, adopted liberalistic ethics. Anyone deviating from these ideas would most likely become ostracized from the group)
- It is an organization with a leader to unite the group members
In addition, to officially be counted as a humanist, you need to pay a fee, just like Christians here in Sweden pay a fee to the Church of Sweden if they are members. Of course, one can be a member without paying a fee, but not officially. Thus far, including propaganda sites like the one I provided at the start of this post and very aggressive methods where they rather seem to be attacking the religious than the religious organizations, it’s as if the humanist movement is becoming a religion itself, and a fundamental one to add. I completely respect their wishes to seperate the church and state in countries where they are not, or to let the church and state remain seperated in countries where they already have been, but when they attack the religious people instead of the religious movements? That’s like shooting themselves in the foot and furthermore, they give atheists bad names! They reinforce the idea that atheists hate religion, and that’s the least rational atheists want.
No, there are many ways you can criticize religion and seperate it from church and state without attacking its believers. Such as stop addressing people personally and address the name of the religious organizations, like the Church of Sweden, or the Pentacostals. It’s really sad, all in all, that they are becoming the thing they so strongly oppose.
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July 3rd, 2009 at 8:29 pm - Edit
The royal opposition has arrived!
It is true humanism places great importance on people, but I always thought this was meant as opposed to (half-)gods; not necessarily as opposed to the other life forms we know to exist. It puts the emphasis on human effort in our pursuits of knowledge and ethics – we can't rely on divine revelation or anything supernatural like that. We are the sentient beings who must deal with the problems we face in daily life, philosophy and science. It does not necessarily say: "Here we are, universe! Get used to us!" because that indeed is silly. I think many humanists realize only too well how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of the universe (as opposed to the religious of the Abrahamic religions, who think they have been given the main role in this universe by the creator god).
And then I don't understand what's so bad about it being a group or organisation. I think you go out on a limb there a bit. A group is defined by the common properties the members have. Humanism is largely a philosophy, but it does have elements of an activist organisation, which due to managerial reasons have a hierarchy (and not unsurprisingly, a membership fee). However, I don't think you can compare a chairman of a humanist organisation to a leader figure like a pope or imam. Unlike religion which is largely based around one "divinely inspired" piece of literature, humanism as a philosophy has many books and articles, none of which enjoy a sanctity or absolute authority like a Bible or Qur'an.
For these reasons, I think its unwarranted to draw a parallel between humanism and the typical religion.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm - Edit
I think I forgot to mention the similarity why I dislike the word "feminist", it implies a similar meaning, as if the woman would be the ruler instead of the man. While I understand that many humanists may very well be nihilistic as well, that's not the impression I got from the site I linked anyway. You have to remember I base most of my impression on that site, and unfortunately I cannot help you since it's in Swedish… but suffice to say, while the site does seem neutral at first, I almost get a fundamental impression by it.
I know what you mean with comparing organizations and religions; the point is that Buddhism is a religion, but it does not focus much on the metaphysical and there is no existence of god, and it supports the idea of environmentalism, you being a part of a greater whole. This is why the idea that religion alone is a religion because of a god-concept is flawed to me, because a lot of religions don't believe in god at all, they are in fact, quite a few once you start counting them and compare them to other religions, worldviews or cosmologies.
Is humanism a worldview? I suppose it is for some, and in that warrant it is SIMILAR to, but not equal to religion. I don't think I ever openly said it is religion, but it is becoming a lot like a FUNDAMNETAL religious group. And this is what I disagree with.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:53 pm - Edit
I see what you're trying to say better now, but indeed, its too bad I can't read Swedish. It would have been easier to see your point, and most probably I would have agreed with you if the website is really as fundamentally dogmatic as your post seems to imply. It just irked me that it seemed you condemned the whole of humanism based on that website. I've visited some humanism websites and read a bit into them, and in my experience they weren't as bad as the website you seem to have found. That's why I objected in my first reply.
I know and agree that religion can't be delineated as belief systems that include gods, but most often they do offer some supernaturalism. Buddhism, for example, has the doctrine of reincarnation. And that's another reason why I do not see humanism as a religion – it has no supernatural precepts that I am aware of. Even though you did not write it explicitly, it did seem like you were condemning humanism on the grounds it was religious. Like I said: things fall under the same definition if they share the same properties; therefore comparing humanism (or this particular website's way of promoting it) to religon (or religion's way of promoting itself) makes them fall under the same moniker.
This is just metalanguage though, and it can be safely ignored on the grounds of it not being very important. Thanks for elaborating, though!
July 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm - Edit
Humanism isn't that easily defined. It's more like a way of thinking about things. In philosophy, humanism describes the homo-centric natural point of view, absolutely banning everything supernatural. Because of that, humanism is loosely connected to the scientific method for resolving philosophical dilemmas. Many humanists are extremely confident in the capabilities of the human race. That's why many leftist philosophers and politicians can be considered humanist.
As I've said, humanism can't be easily defined. The most prominent humanist movement is secular humanism, which I've just described. But during the past few decades a new form of, mostly American, humanism appeared. This new movement describes how people need religious activities, and a new form of humanism could provide these without introducing new supernatural dogma. It's even related to modern Satanism, which incorporates many of it's ideas. Albert Einstein was one of the people behind the new religious humanist movement, the First Humanist Society of New York (I had to look that up), which is still active today for all I know.
As you can see, humanists, just like atheists, can't be grouped together that easily. They share some common ideas, but that's about it.
July 5th, 2009 at 5:12 am - Edit
As a Mormon Christian I would like to ask how you reconcile the Physics Law of Entropy (ie without organized energy everything tends to decay) with your lack of belief in a higher being?
July 5th, 2009 at 8:02 am - Edit
As someone who has actually studied thermodynamics I would like to ask you what you're talking about.
P.S.: You can just call it the second law of thermodynamics. Kthnxbye.
July 5th, 2009 at 10:53 am - Edit
Yeah, what exactly do you mean? You surely do not mean to imply that the earth should decay do you?
July 5th, 2009 at 5:34 pm - Edit
I don't understand what you are trying to say either… And I certainly don't see how it is related to my post
July 5th, 2009 at 5:37 pm - Edit
Yes, I am well-aware that defining religion is tricky
I think it can be argued a bit also whether the idea of the inner human strength is metaphysical in its origin, because where exactly does the strength come from? Sure, we say it comes from the human, but exactly what the "strength" is isn't as easy to define. While I am sure many would disagree with me implying that it may have a metaphysical concept tied to it, I also believe it's a bit intellectually unjust not considering such an origin, since the idea seems to pertain more of say, psychological or mental empowerment, but it is not done through psychology. At least I don't know any humanist that actively use psychological methods to feel mentally stronger. Anyway, I suppose it might be a bit of a nitpicking on definitions there.
EDIT
To clarify, the site is trying to aggressively recruit new members as I understood it, and used a very condescending tone towards religious people, regardless of how religious they were, treating them all like they would be fundamentalists. I don't mind that they are trying to spread information, but it they made it sound like we are being invaded by religious nutcases which is certainly not the case. While it's true that Islam is spreading, Islam is not stronger than Christianity, yet they emphasized Christianity as the biggest threat, or so was in my impression. I would've understand this better if it was an American site, and while I understand that the humanist movement got American roots, Sweden is not USA, yet they sounded like it was.
July 5th, 2009 at 5:40 pm - Edit
Well, this was just the Humanist Movement, the one I believe with American roots. It remains quite unclear though, there's a lot of propaganda on the site but very little explains anything about the actual humanists behind it.
Well, so do Christians, if you get me. The primary common idea is the faith in god and Jesus, at least if you just look at the Christian group as a whole, without starting to look into each subgroup.
Anyway, I still remain my stance that I will not call myself a humanist regardless whether I fit the "criteria", simply because of how I dislike the term
I find it ill-chosen, understandable, just like feminism, but ill-chosen nevertheless.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:40 pm - Edit
If a higher being would be all knowing, the second law of thermodynamics dictates such a being cannot possibly exist. Being all knowing in a physical realm would take an entity larger than everything (see Turing, a.o.), and for it to interact with this universe to be a part of it as well. That's pretty much a paradox. So, I ask you, how do you reconcile your belief in a supreme being with the second law of thermodynamics?
August 8th, 2009 at 1:31 am - Edit
How can us as humans really know what God is really like? If he's really superior then our thoughts or ideas can't really define him, so I find that point somewhat pointless. It would be a paradox in the mind of the created, and not the creator. As for humanism, if they really dnt believe in a God or anything then what's the point in fighting down that idea? It's like something else is going on with all that as far as I know because how come they need to be so passionate to make a stand against a God they don't believe in unless it's some kind of attack against that God himself…Then wouldn't that be like an anti-God movement instead of like a philosophy? That in itself is a religion the way I see it.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am - Edit
It is not fighting against the idea, but fighting the ideas of these people who believe in this idea represent, such as making abortion illegal and that kind of things.