March 24, 2003
PEOPLE OF FAITH:
The answers to the great questions of life are not found in religious texts. (Rosslyn Ives, 3/3/03, Online Opinion)The ethics and values we try to live by are an extension of the way we understand the world and our place in it. The humanist recognition that humans have evolved naturally, are all of the same species, and will live only once, gives rise to the ethics and values of equality, fairness and justice. Instead of trying to lead a good life to appease an imagined God, or get to heaven, a growing number of people try to lead a good life by recognising our responsibility for the wellbeing of all humanity and of other life forms. These people draw on human wisdom which shows that acting with compassion, empathy and tolerance, settling disputes by talk rather than violence, and being prudent and restrained will lead to the most peaceful, just and socially productive outcomes.It is those who cling to the certainties of established religion that cause the most havoc in today's troubled world: the Catholic and Islamic resistance to family-planning programs, the Palestinian/Israel conflict, terrorism inspired by fundamentalist beliefs, religion-based conflict, and the US belief that god is on their side. In contrast, modern humanism rests on the open-mindedness of science and the desire to use human capabilities to develop a more just and equitable world.
One could hardly caricature rationalist secular humanism as effectively as she defends it. The idea that because humans were created by nature, share a species, and are mortal necessarily leads to an ethos of equality, fairness and justice is nothing but a mystical assertion of faith. The same can be said for every species yet none practice that ethos, why should humans? Why should humans not accept the limitations of that ethos in their interactions with other species? How explain that those states which have been based on secular rationalism and have sought equality--Revolutionary France, the USSR, Nazi Germany, Maoist China, Cambodia, etc.--have been the most murderous in human history? Doesn't human wisdom thus teach us that secular rationalism leads to genocide? If the fact that you only live once is of such importance, how can family planning/abortion be justified--by what right can we terminate those lives? And note that her insistence on access to abortion is just one more example of the genoicidal nature of secular rationalism.
None of these questions can be answered except by a blind assertion of faith in the ethos she's plucked from thin air--and so we see, once again, the delightful irony that none are so constricted by a close-minded faith as those who deny it.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2003 7:56 PMYou keep saying the polities you don't like were the most muderous, but it isn't so.
How many Cathars survived the Albigensian Crusade? Not many.
How many residents of Samarkand survived the Muslim reformist Tamerlane? Almost none.
You call the 20th the most murderous century. I have tried several times to add up the violent deaths between 1900 and 2000, and I come up with a minimum of 200 million and a probable upper limit of maybe 250 million.
Of course, there were three to five times as many people living as ever before, so proportionately, we would look to another recent century in which about 50 million were killed.
Has there been such a century? Well, there was such a decade in China, in which about 50 million died in the name of Christianity.
As we work our way back, adjusting for population, we find that the level of mayhem has always been high, with no secular trend before around 1800.
The trend has been down in N. and S. America, India (but not the rest of South Asia).
The extermination of the Cathars killed what, about 1 in 20?
Pol Pot killed what, one in four?
Isn't it a question not so much of faith, but how one uses that faith?
And for the agnostic, isn't it a question not so much of morality, but how one applies it?
For the believer, might it not be fair to say that faith is not sufficient (even though one may hold it to be necessary)? (Look at all the atrocities committed in the name of, or the approval of, God.)
And, similarly, for the non-believer, ethics is necessary but not sufficient; its application is, though.
Well, Toulouse was laid waste and has never recovered. Christians can be quietly proud that their work has endured so long.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 25, 2003 3:51 AMBarry:
The problem is there can be no morality without God.
Harry:
Yes, let us hope we are as successful against the Islamicist heresy as we were against the Catharian.
I think you mischaracterize communism as "secular." Communist belief is as sectarian as any religion ever heard of. Rather, their problem was in imposing an ethos that was somewhere between antagonistic and irrelevant to human nature. Kind of like sharia law, maybe.
Also, it isn't fair comparing the Communism's butcher's bill with religion's. I'm certain the latter would have had an even more impressive tally had they industrial methods of slaughter at their disposal.
The "no morality without God" assertion is getting a bit tiresome. Do you ever intend to prove this assertion? It is not self-proving, you know.
Posted by: Robert D at March 25, 2003 1:44 PMRobertD:
Propose a basis for one. I'm aware of no philosopher whose claims to have found one are accepted.
Jeff:
Your dislike for your soulmates is admirable, but does not make Communism any less a rationalist philosophy.