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The Secular Humanist Prospect: In Historical Perspective
« on: 2003-10-13 16:32:51 » |
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http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz_23_4.htm
Editorial
by Paul Kurtz
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 4.
Paul KurtzSecular humanism holds great promise for the future of humankind. But disturbing changes have occurred in recent years, particularly in the United States, that make its promise harder to fulfill. The cultural wars no doubt will continue to intensify. Though we have made progress—as recent Supreme Court decisions testify—we face unremitting challenges to the secular humanist outlook.
If I can flash back more than half a century, clearly most political and intellectual leaders of that time were sympathetic to scientific naturalism and humanism. I vividly remember John Dewey’s ninetieth birthday celebrations in 1949 (Dewey was then the leading American humanist philosopher). One such event was attended by the president of Columbia University (and future president of the United States), General Dwight D. Eisenhower. I recall Eisenhower declaring in admiration: “Professor Dewey, you are the philosopher of freedom, and I am the soldier of freedom.” Can we even imagine a soon-to-be U.S. president so praising a humanist intellectual today?
In those days, thoughtful Americans had great confidence in the United Nations and its efforts to transcend nationalism and build a world community. We sought to develop institutions of international law and a world court, enhancing our ability to negotiate differences based on collective security. Emerging from the Second World War, Americans displayed a strong desire to go beyond ancient rivalries, accompanied by confidence in the ability of science to understand nature and to solve human problems.
In 1973, I edited a book called The Humanist Alternative: Some Definitions of Humanism.1 In this book I observed that the twentieth century had been proclaimed to be the Humanist Century; many of the then-dominant philosophical schools—naturalism, phenomenology, existentialism, logical positivism, and analytic philosophy—were in a broad sense committed to the humanist outlook. The same was true of humanistic psychology and the social sciences in general. Indeed, I raised this question, “Is everyone a humanist?” For no one wanted to be known as antihumanist. I mean, who wanted to be antihuman? Heady with the momentum of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI even declared that Roman Catholicism was “a Christian humanism.” The only authentic humanism, he proclaimed, “must be Christian.”
Interestingly, it was also in 1973 that John D. Rockefeller, the scion of the Rockefeller family, published a book called The Second American Revolution.2 For Rockefeller, the second American Revolution would be a humanist moral revolution; he declared that capitalism needed to have a human face. Similarly, noted Marxists in Eastern Europe at that time claimed that their Marxism was basically humanist.
In the early 1970s, I was invited to Washington, D.C., on more than one occasion. I recall attending a reception at Mrs. Dean Acheson’s house and meeting, among others, Hubert Humphrey. I had been a strong supporter of Mr. Humphrey. I was the editor of the Humanist magazine at that time; Mr. Humphrey read my nametag and said to me, “Oh, Paul Kurtz! How nice to see you! Ah, the Humanist magazine, what a great magazine! I wish I had time to read it!” Walter Mondale, who was later to become vice president of the United States, and many other people identified approvingly with humanism.3 Indeed, in a very real sense humanism was the dominant intellectual theme on the cultural scene. On another occasion, I was invited to Washington by Senator Edward Kennedy (who was planning to run for the presidency). I spent a weekend at Sargent Shriver’s home. His wife, Eunice Shriver, was one of the Kennedys. I also visited the home of Mrs. Robert Kennedy. Everyone thought that the humanist outlook was important. And indeed, many of that era’s intellectual leaders of thought and action were humanists: B.F. Skinner, Albert Ellis, Herbert Muller, A.H. Maslow, Carl Rogers, Thomas Szasz, Jonas Salk, Joseph Fletcher, Betty Friedan, Sidney Hook, Rudolf Carnap, W.V. Quine, and Ernest Nagel come to mind. Many leaders in the Black community were humanists, not ministers, such as James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and A. Philip Randolph; they worked hard for minority rights. Humanism and modernism were considered synonymous. In one sense the 1970s marked a high point of humanism’s influence—at least in the United States.
Now, I raise these points because there has been a radical shift today, particularly in the United States. Let me focus for a moment on this country, because of its enormous influence in today’s world. America is undergoing a fundamental transformation, one which in my view betrays the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Franklin were humanists and rationalists by the standards of their day, heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. How different is the national tone today. We hear calls for the nation to become more religious; we see unremitting attempts to breach the separation of church and state, such as the financing of faith-based charities. Since the tragedy of 9/11, the momentum of change has accelerated. The so-called PATRIOT Act and the relentless pursuit of “Homeland Security,” I submit, are drastically undermining civil liberties.
The United States is the preeminent scientific, technological, economic, and political power of the world, far outstripping any other nation. Today the military budget of the United States is virtually equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Why has America’s former idealism on behalf of democracy and human rights declined, to be replaced by militant chauvinism? Why has its commitment to humanism, liberal values, and the First Amendment eroded?
These changes began in the late 1970s and gathered force in the 1980s. Because of my role in the humanist movement, I was able to observe closely as the attacks on secular humanism and naturalism intensified. In my view, six factors were responsible for these inauspicious developments.
First, there was a sharp rise in beliefs in the paranormal, pseudoscience, and antiscience in the United States and throughout the world. Claims concerning psychics and astrologers, monsters of the deep, UFOs, and the like dominated the mass media and fascinated the public. Claims were everywhere, but there were virtually no criticisms of them. In 1976, I brought together many of the leading skeptics in the United States and the world and founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). At CSICOP’s founding conference I posed the question: “Should we assume that the scientific enlightenment will continue, and that public support of science will be ongoing?” I answered that question in the negative. We should not assume that science will prevail, I warned, for we may be overwhelmed by irrational forces that will undermine our cherished naturalistic worldview. At that time, very few people questioned scientific culture or the scientific outlook as such—there was of course fear of a possible nuclear confrontation, but science itself was not in question. Gradually, and much to the astonishment of many observers, an antiscientific attitude began to develop. In response the skeptical movement organized itself across the world; there now exist skeptical organizations in some thirty-eight countries, from China to Germany, Argentina to Australia. They publish some sixty magazines and newsletters inspired by CSICOP’s flagship journal, the Skeptical Inquirer.
The second change that began to occur was the growth of fundamentalism and its prominence in American public life. The Moral Majority grew strong from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, in part by targeting secular humanism—not humanism per se, but secular humanism. I defined secular humanism first as “a method of critical inquiry.” Religious Right leaders charged that secular humanism controlled the country. (In one sense they were correct, for as I mentioned above, a generally humanistic viewpoint dominated education, science, and the media at that time.) They called for secular humanism to be overthrown and for a revival of popular piety. Surely they achieved the latter objective. Consider that most intellectuals once thought Protestant fundamentalism to be beyond the pale and Billy Graham a marginal figure. As time went on, Graham would become known as a “statesman” and act as a confidante to several presidents of the United States. America’s religious revival did not benefit only Protestant fundamentalism: conservative Roman Catholicism made great gains, eroding the reforms of Vatican II, and neoconservative Orthodox Judaism mounted an astonishing comeback. By the year 2000, public life in the United States was largely dominated by a theistic outlook. If I had declared the twentieth century the humanist century, respected conservatives such as Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, and writers for Commentary magazine declared it an “anomaly.” They said that the twenty-first century would be a century dominated not by secular humanism, but by religious and spiritual values. For them, the secular humanist outlook could not expire too soon.
The third factor that emerged to challenge freethought and the secular movement was the near-total collapse of Marxism. For a good part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marxist-humanist ideals had influenced intellectuals; with Marxism’s eclipse, anticlericalism and indeed any open criticism of religion have all but disappeared.
The fourth major change that occurred was the growth of postmodernism. Postmodernism stands in opposition to the Enlightenment, humanism, the advancement of science, a concern for human progress, and the emancipation of humanity from the blindfold of authoritarian traditions. Postmodernism questions all these basic premises, especially the ideas of objective science and humanistic values, and it has gravely influenced the academy, not only in the United States, but elsewhere in the world.
The fifth factor that is so important is American triumphalism. Global free-market corporate capitalism now dominates the world. Pax Americana has many of the characteristics of a new kind of imperialism. The latest turn in American foreign policy questions ideas like deterrence and the balance of power. It maintains that American military might will police the world and defeat any “rogue states” that may challenge its hegemony. Unfortunately, this ideological posture has been accompanied by an open alliance with conservative and evangelical religious forces at home. In the best-selling book Mind Siege, Tim LaHaye and David Noebel provide a frightening apocalyptic agenda for evangelicals, admonishing their millions of followers in martial tones to prepare for battle against the secular humanists.4 We had become Public Enemy Number One, though after the emergence of the armies of the jihad we have been temporarily demoted to Public Enemy Number Two.
This brings us to the sixth major change: the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. The War on Terrorism and its associated “conflict of civilizations,” in Samuel Huntington’s phrase, has put all Americans under a heightened sense of threat. But even this must be viewed in the context of a larger movement: an intense Islamic missionary effort, antiscientific at its root, that is sweeping the world. Islam is on the move in Africa, Asia, and all parts of the world. What may be most significant are the fast-growing Islamic minorities in Western Europe—France has five million Muslims, Britain and Germany two million each. And of course the United States and Canada have growing Muslim minorities.
No less portentous is the global rise of militant Christianity. The reality is that there are more missionaries spreading the Christian gospel throughout the world than at any time in history. It is projected that, by the year 2025, 67 percent of Christians will live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China, indeed, will have more Christians than all but six nations. This is occurring at a time when Europe is being secularized, with nonreligious minorities growing sharply and church attendance at record lows. But Christian missionaries are pouring forth from the United States—particularly Pentecostals and evangelicals, carrying with them a literal reading of Scripture that they apply freely to morality and politics.
What we are confronted with is the fact that the third world, which had been so powerfully influenced by Marxism twenty or thirty years ago, now confronts the clash of two powerful missionary forces: Islam and Christianity.
This is the new reality that we in the humanist and rationalist movement have to face. The armies of the faithful are powerful and multiple. We face continued, even escalating conflict between their intolerant religious ideologies and our naturalism.
I have offered a brief overview of a profound reversal in attitudes—from a period thirty years ago when humanism and secularism were in ascendancy, at least in the United States, to one in which they are being challenged at every turn, with vast sums of money and energy being applied to further missionary religiosity. This does not deny the positive developments associated with the triumph of democratic ideals, as Fukuyama has described. But it is the overall secular humanist prospect that I am concerned with.
Thus we have great tasks ahead of us in future decades. But I ask, What should we concentrate upon? I submit that there are three main battles. First is the battle for secularism. I think the first great challenge will be to preserve the secular democracies; namely, we need to make a stronger case for the separation of church (or mosque or temple) and state. The state should be neutral, allowing a plurality of points of view, from religious belief to nonbelief, to coexist. This means that we need to defend democracy and the open society, human rights, and the rule of law. Virtually all of the fifty-four Islamic countries are theocracies, grounded in Sharia as set forth in the Hadith and the Qur’an. Unfortunately, recent efforts by the Bush administration to shatter the wall between church and state in the United States portend great damage for secularism worldwide. They also place the administration in the contradictory position of calling for barriers between church and state in Iraq that it is doggedly dismantling at home.
The second battle will be for naturalism; we are committed to the application of scientific methods in testing truth claims—by the principle of appeal to evidence and reason. Scientific methodology is basic to our industrial-technological societies; therefore, American power is based not on theology, but on naturalistic premises. We are the defenders of critical thinking and skeptical inquiry as part of the process of developing tested knowledge. Leaders of industrial and technological economies understand this full well. No revival of religious fundamentalism must be permitted to erode this dedication.
We are also committed to the naturalistic cosmic outlook—that is, to the scientific perspective drawn from the frontiers of the sciences. Here we have much work to do. We reject the ancient religious ontological views rooted simply in the Bible, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, or Buddhist and Hindu literature. We wish to explain nature in the light of empirical and experimental evidence. That is the key principle that needs to be enunciated: naturalism in contradistinction to supernaturalism. We are predominantly nonreligious nontheistic empiricists and rationalists. We have developed our views of reality by reference to the findings of the sciences. We are skeptical about claims that are untested. Science provides our most reliable knowledge of the universe, even as it leaves room for mystery and awe about areas of the universe not yet probed or explained.
Our third great battle will be for humanistic ethics. We believe that no one can deduce ethical values solely from theological premises. Those who depend on theology for morality often end up in conflict with hatred and intolerance on every side. For example, Muslims believe in polygamy, Protestants and Jews in monogamy and the right of divorce, while Roman Catholics (at least officially) do not accept divorce. The Catholic Church opposes capital punishment; Muslim fundamentalists and Baptists defend it. Thus there is a conflict between humanist ethics and the religious-moral ideologies that so dominate the world today, just as there is conflict among religious ideologies. But all of them are based upon ancient faiths, too often irrelevant to contemporary realities.
Thus, we maintain that a humanist moral revolution offers great promise for the future of humankind; for it allows humans to achieve the good life here and now, without the illusion of salvation or immortality. We wish to test moral values by evidence and reason, and we are willing to modify our ethical values in light of the consequences. Our approach is planetary, as Humanist Manifesto 2000 emphasized—we hold that every person on the planet has equal dignity and value. Our moral commitment is to be concerned with the rights of every person in the global community and to preserve our shared habitat.
Humanistic ethics defends the autonomy of the individual, the right of privacy, human freedom, and social justice. It is concerned with the welfare of humanity as a whole.
In conclusion, I think that secular humanism has lost ground in the last three decades to religious forces, not only in America, but also in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The United States is anomalous in comparison with Europe, which has become increasingly secularized and nonreligious. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are secular; they do not look to the ancient faiths for guidance and believe that anyone can be moral without belief in any religion. The challenge today is especially urgent in the United States, no doubt because of the influence its immense power has given it in the world. Especially disturbing is the fact that the political leadership of the United States has grown fearful of expressing any support for agnosticism, skepticism, secular humanism, or unbelief. Moreover, the current administration uses the White House as a bully pulpit to spread religious gospel. It is possible in European democracies for politicians to publicly express nonreligious, even atheistic viewpoints—but alas, this is virtually impossible in today’s United States.
We have been waging a rear-guard battle in the United States. We need to move to the front lines to defend secular humanism—to convince the public that it’s possible to be a good citizen, contribute to society, be moral, and yet to be nonreligious. We need to defend the Enlightenment—whose agenda still has not been fulfilled, as philosopher Jürgen Habermas has pointed out. We need to encourage our supporters to speak out courageously. We need to engage in debate and dialogue, enunciating and defending secularism, humanism, and naturalism as meaningful alternatives to the irrationalism that increasingly dominates our age and threatens to overwhelm it.
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metahuman
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Re:The Secular Humanist Prospect: In Historical Perspective
« Reply #1 on: 2003-10-13 19:21:47 » |
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After reading several essays and articles on humanism, I can conclude that people have varying definitions of the concept. Poll: Humanism in the MetaVirus?
There is Something Wrong With Humanism
By Jeremy Stangroom
It's not easy to write critically about humanism from a secular perspective. The problem has to do with the fluid nature of the concept "humanism". It has no single, precise meaning and there is little agreement about its constituent elements. As a result, to criticise humanism is to run the risk of being accused of a "straw-man" fallacy; that is, the fallacy of misrepresenting a position or argument in order to make it easier to criticise. It is easy to see how this might happen. Humanism isn't any one particular thing. If a good argument can be made against any one of the things, amongst others, that it might be, then likely you'll find that everyone disavows that particular thing. And then you've got a straw-man. It doesn't take too many repetitions of this pattern of criticism and disavowal before you end up with humanism weakly specified as a kind of rationally inclined, human centred, atheism (or agnosticism).
The problem here for the secular critic of humanism is that there doesn't seem to be much left in this conception to be construed as objectionable. It is possible to imagine a secularist being upset by such things as humanist funerals, but surely not by the thought that humanism is rationally inclined, atheistic and human centred? The humanist church, notwithstanding its godlessness, seems broad, inclusive and inoffensive.
However, things are not quite this straightforward. To understand why, it will help to consider briefly, for reasons that will become clear later, the rise of "Lysenkoism" in the Soviet Union in the middle part of the twentieth century. Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist, came to prominence as the proponent of a theory of heredity that stood in direct opposition to Mendelianism. The details of this theory need not concern us, except to note that it was "Larmarckist" in its contention that it is possible for organisms to inherit acquired characteristics. Lysenkoism dominated Soviet genetics in the 1940s. This was despite its being wrong and the fact that the principles of Mendelianism - the correct theory of heredity - were well understood by then. It came to dominate because it fitted so nicely with Soviet ideology. Particularly, the idea that acquired characteristics could be inherited held out the promise of the perfectibility of mankind. So science followed ideology, and in the Soviet Union, the consequences, certainly for many of the scientists involved and arguably also for its agriculture, were disastrous.
What's this got to do with humanism? At first sight, nothing at all. After all, a tenet of humanism that probably everybody agrees on is that truth claims must be subject to rational scrutiny and investigation. However, then the thought occurs, what happens if science suggests hypotheses that are unpalatable from a humanist perspective? Part of the reason that Lysenkoism gained official support in the Soviet Union was because the Mendelian approach to genetics was not thought to be consistent with Engels's ideas about dialectical materialism. So are humanists immune to this kind of tendency to select between scientific theories on the basis of ideology rather than the balance of evidence?
A way into thinking about this question is to consider some of the objections that might be levelled against it. Two in particular spring to mind. First of all, it might be objected that it isn't possible to draw conclusions about humanism as a set of ideas solely on the basis of the actions or beliefs of individual humanists. So what if some humanists lack impartiality? Nobody is naïve enough to claim that all humanists are perfectly consistent. However, this objection is weak. If nothing else, the actions of individual humanists tell us something about the practice of humanism. But more than this, it just isn't obvious that one cannot learn anything about a set of ideas by looking at how well its adherents live up to them. If it does turn out that there is a tendency for humanists to judge the merits of scientific theories in terms of non-scientific criteria then this might well be indicative of some tension within humanism.
The second objection is related to this thought. If humanists do indeed bring non-scientific criteria to bear when judging scientific theories, it might be objected that they do not do so in the name of humanism. If humanism is nothing more than a rational secularism, then there isn't any extra humanist ingredient against which scientific theories can be judged. However, the difficulty with this objection is precisely that it only works by setting up an equivalence between humanism and rational secularism. It is true that some people see humanism this way, but many people do not.
What then is this possible extra ingredient, properly humanist, against which the merits of scientific theories might be judged? The answer is that it is the constellation of ideas which constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism. These ideas include: that human beings are free, rational agents; that they are, in various ways, the source of morality; that human dignity and flourishing are important; and that there are significant common bonds between people, which unite them across biological, social and geographical boundaries. These ideas - and variations on them - are espoused in numerous humanist writings (just type 'humanism' into Google - and read at your leisure). However, the claim is not that all humanists accept all these ideas. It is rather that they are representative of a discernible and significant thread in humanist thought. Or, more strongly, it is at least arguable that if a person has no sympathy at all with these kinds of ideas, then they are not a humanist. As Kurtz and Wilson put it, in their Humanist Manifesto II: "Views that merely reject theism are not equivalent to humanism. They lack commitment to the positive belief in the possibilities of human progress and to the values central to it."
What evidence is there then that these kinds of ideas might be involved in the judgements that humanists make about scientific theories? Let's take, as an example, the article by Kenan Malik, "Materialism, Mechanism and the Human Mind", which appeared in the Autumn 2001 edition of New Humanist magazine. In this article, Malik argues that human beings are "exceptional" in that they "cannot be understood solely as natural beings". In pursuing his argument, Malik attacks "mechanistic" explanations, which reduce human beings, and the human mind, to the equivalent of sophisticated machines. He argues that this view is flawed in that it fails to recognise that humans are conscious, capable of purpose and agency. According to Malik, human beings are, in a sense, outside nature, able to work out how to overcome the constraints of biological and physical laws. In his words: "Our evolutionary heritage certainly shapes the way that humans approach the world. But it does not limit it, as it does for all other animals."
It is quite hard to make sense of this argument. For starters, the idea that the evolutionary heritage of human beings does not limit the way we approach the world is highly questionable. For example, it's hard to see how we can rule out the possibility that had our brains evolved differently, then puzzles that presently seem intractable (for example, the fact that there seems to be something that it is like to be a human being) would have long ago been solved.
But, more significantly, the whole idea that human beings are somehow outside nature is slightly odd. It seems here to amount to the claim that things like consciousness, agency and free will are real - though non-physical - and that they are, in principle, beyond scientific, or at least mechanistic, explanation. But the trouble is that Malik, in this article at least, does not argue for this position. He merely repeats what everybody already knows - that it certainly seems that we all have inner lives (and everything that entails), and it's a bit of a puzzle.
So what's at stake here? Why not draw less hard and fast conclusions about the proper domain of scientific explanation? Perhaps part of the story has to do with the spectre of anti-humanism, which seems to be in the background of all scientific attempts to get to grips with the stuff of human existence. How this might be so can be illustrated by briefly considering Benjamin Libet's experiments, from the 1960s, on readiness potential. An RP is an electrical change in the brain that precedes a conscious human act - such as waggling a finger. Libet's discovery was that if volunteers are asked to waggle their finger within a 30 second time-frame, the RP that accompanies the waggling begins some 300 to 400 milliseconds before the human subject reports that they have become aware of their intention to waggle the finger. This is disturbing, because, as Libet puts it, the "initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act!"
The anti-humanist threat is obvious. If our conscious acts are unconsciously initiated, then what of free-will and agency? Perhaps we are just sophisticated machines after all. And if we are, what does this mean, for example, for the idea that human beings are the source of morality? It must be said that Libet's work is not uncontroversial, and he himself does not draw particularly radical conclusions. However, in an important sense, this is not the point. Rather, the point is that science is in the business of providing reductive, causal explanations of the phenomena that it investigates. Consequently, when it turns its gaze to the stuff of the inner life of human beings - consciousness, agency, will, sensation, etc. - there is the possibility that these things will turn out just to be physical, or indeed that, in one way or another, they will disappear completely.
Malik seems to recognise this threat when he argues that the attempt to understand human beings in mechanistic terms is motivated by an anti-humanism. But his solution, to deny that reductive, scientific explanations are admissible in the case of the inner life of human beings, is not yet at least rationally justified. It is too early to rule out on a priori or empirical grounds the possibility that science will be as successful in this domain as it is in others. The brain is rapidly giving up its secrets to neuroscientists and there are philosophical theories available - for example, eliminative materialism and epiphenomenalism - which offer a way of dealing with issues of consciousness without denying the explanatory power of a reductive, physicalist approach. To preclude the possibility that science might be successful in this area, on the grounds that it results in theories that are counter-intuitive, is bad science and bad philosophy.
The important point is that Malik is grappling with a tension that lies right at the heart of humanism. If a person is serious about science then they cannot, without fear of contradiction, embrace a doctrine which requires, as humanism might, that human beings have free will or that the stuff of consciousness is non-physical and causally efficacious. To escape the possibility of contradiction by asserting the truth of the kind of science or philosophy which is, in principle, anti-reductionist in its approach to humans is to allow ideology to govern scientific and philosophical commitments.
In an endnote in his book, The Selfish Gene (2nd Edition), Richard Dawkins writes: "If…you are not religious, then face up to the following question. What on earth do you think you are, if not a robot, albeit a very complicated one?" It may be that complicated robots have consciousness, free will and agency; that is, that they have the things which are important to many humanists. Unfortunately, it may also be that they do not, and to deny this possibility requires a leap of faith. What this means is that it is not rationally justified to assert the truth of the constellation of beliefs which constitutes the human-centred aspect of humanism. Rather, one is forced to concur with Kurtz and Wilson's more general verdict on humanist affirmations, that they are "but an expression of a living and growing faith."
Jeremy Stangroom is New Media editor of The Philosophers' Magazine.
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Walter Watts
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Re: virus: The Secular Humanist Prospect: In Historical Perspective
« Reply #2 on: 2003-10-13 19:31:56 » |
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Out-freegin-standing, Kharin.
Thanks.
Walter
Kharin wrote:
> http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz_23_4.htm
>
> Editorial
> by Paul Kurtz
>
> The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 4.
>
> Paul KurtzSecular humanism holds great promise for the future of humankind. But disturbing changes have occurred in recent years, particularly in the United States, that make its promise harder to fulfill. The cultural wars no doubt will continue to intensify. Though we have made progress—as recent Supreme Court decisions testify—we face unremitting challenges to the secular humanist outlook.
>
> If I can flash back more than half a century, clearly most political and intellectual leaders of that time were sympathetic to scientific naturalism and humanism. I vividly remember John Dewey’s ninetieth birthday celebrations in 1949 (Dewey was then the leading American humanist philosopher). One such event was attended by the president of Columbia University (and future president of the United States), General Dwight D. Eisenhower. I recall Eisenhower declaring in admiration: “Professor Dewey, you are the philosopher of freedom, and I am the soldier of freedom.” Can we even imagine a soon-to-be U.S. president so praising a humanist intellectual today?
>
> In those days, thoughtful Americans had great confidence in the United Nations and its efforts to transcend nationalism and build a world community. We sought to develop institutions of international law and a world court, enhancing our ability to negotiate differences based on collective security. Emerging from the Second World War, Americans displayed a strong desire to go beyond ancient rivalries, accompanied by confidence in the ability of science to understand nature and to solve human problems.
>
> In 1973, I edited a book called The Humanist Alternative: Some Definitions of Humanism.1 In this book I observed that the twentieth century had been proclaimed to be the Humanist Century; many of the then-dominant philosophical schools—naturalism, phenomenology, existentialism, logical positivism, and analytic philosophy—were in a broad sense committed to the humanist outlook. The same was true of humanistic psychology and the social sciences in general. Indeed, I raised this question, “Is everyone a humanist?” For no one wanted to be known as antihumanist. I mean, who wanted to be antihuman? Heady with the momentum of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI even declared that Roman Catholicism was “a Christian humanism.” The only authentic humanism, he proclaimed, “must be Christian.”
>
> Interestingly, it was also in 1973 that John D. Rockefeller, the scion of the Rockefeller family, published a book called The Second American Revolution.2 For Rockefeller, the second American Revolution would be a humanist moral revolution; he declared that capitalism needed to have a human face. Similarly, noted Marxists in Eastern Europe at that time claimed that their Marxism was basically humanist.
>
> In the early 1970s, I was invited to Washington, D.C., on more than one occasion. I recall attending a reception at Mrs. Dean Acheson’s house and meeting, among others, Hubert Humphrey. I had been a strong supporter of Mr. Humphrey. I was the editor of the Humanist magazine at that time; Mr. Humphrey read my nametag and said to me, “Oh, Paul Kurtz! How nice to see you! Ah, the Humanist magazine, what a great magazine! I wish I had time to read it!” Walter Mondale, who was later to become vice president of the United States, and many other people identified approvingly with humanism.3 Indeed, in a very real sense humanism was the dominant intellectual theme on the cultural scene. On another occasion, I was invited to Washington by Senator Edward Kennedy (who was planning to run for the presidency). I spent a weekend at Sargent Shriver’s home. His wife, Eunice Shriver, was one of the Kennedys. I also visited the home of Mrs. Robert Kennedy. Everyone thought that the humanist o!
> utlook was important. And indeed, many of that era’s intellectual leaders of thought and action were humanists: B.F. Skinner, Albert Ellis, Herbert Muller, A.H. Maslow, Carl Rogers, Thomas Szasz, Jonas Salk, Joseph Fletcher, Betty Friedan, Sidney Hook, Rudolf Carnap, W.V. Quine, and Ernest Nagel come to mind. Many leaders in the Black community were humanists, not ministers, such as James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, and A. Philip Randolph; they worked hard for minority rights. Humanism and modernism were considered synonymous. In one sense the 1970s marked a high point of humanism’s influence—at least in the United States.
>
> Now, I raise these points because there has been a radical shift today, particularly in the United States. Let me focus for a moment on this country, because of its enormous influence in today’s world. America is undergoing a fundamental transformation, one which in my view betrays the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Franklin were humanists and rationalists by the standards of their day, heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. How different is the national tone today. We hear calls for the nation to become more religious; we see unremitting attempts to breach the separation of church and state, such as the financing of faith-based charities. Since the tragedy of 9/11, the momentum of change has accelerated. The so-called PATRIOT Act and the relentless pursuit of “Homeland Security,” I submit, are drastically undermining civil liberties.
>
> The United States is the preeminent scientific, technological, economic, and political power of the world, far outstripping any other nation. Today the military budget of the United States is virtually equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Why has America’s former idealism on behalf of democracy and human rights declined, to be replaced by militant chauvinism? Why has its commitment to humanism, liberal values, and the First Amendment eroded?
>
> These changes began in the late 1970s and gathered force in the 1980s. Because of my role in the humanist movement, I was able to observe closely as the attacks on secular humanism and naturalism intensified. In my view, six factors were responsible for these inauspicious developments.
>
> First, there was a sharp rise in beliefs in the paranormal, pseudoscience, and antiscience in the United States and throughout the world. Claims concerning psychics and astrologers, monsters of the deep, UFOs, and the like dominated the mass media and fascinated the public. Claims were everywhere, but there were virtually no criticisms of them. In 1976, I brought together many of the leading skeptics in the United States and the world and founded the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). At CSICOP’s founding conference I posed the question: “Should we assume that the scientific enlightenment will continue, and that public support of science will be ongoing?” I answered that question in the negative. We should not assume that science will prevail, I warned, for we may be overwhelmed by irrational forces that will undermine our cherished naturalistic worldview. At that time, very few people questioned scientific culture or the scienti!
> fic outlook as such—there was of course fear of a possible nuclear confrontation, but science itself was not in question. Gradually, and much to the astonishment of many observers, an antiscientific attitude began to develop. In response the skeptical movement organized itself across the world; there now exist skeptical organizations in some thirty-eight countries, from China to Germany, Argentina to Australia. They publish some sixty magazines and newsletters inspired by CSICOP’s flagship journal, the Skeptical Inquirer.
>
> The second change that began to occur was the growth of fundamentalism and its prominence in American public life. The Moral Majority grew strong from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, in part by targeting secular humanism—not humanism per se, but secular humanism. I defined secular humanism first as “a method of critical inquiry.” Religious Right leaders charged that secular humanism controlled the country. (In one sense they were correct, for as I mentioned above, a generally humanistic viewpoint dominated education, science, and the media at that time.) They called for secular humanism to be overthrown and for a revival of popular piety. Surely they achieved the latter objective. Consider that most intellectuals once thought Protestant fundamentalism to be beyond the pale and Billy Graham a marginal figure. As time went on, Graham would become known as a “statesman” and act as a confidante to several presidents of the United States. America’s religious revival did not ben!
> efit only Protestant fundamentalism: conservative Roman Catholicism made great gains, eroding the reforms of Vatican II, and neoconservative Orthodox Judaism mounted an astonishing comeback. By the year 2000, public life in the United States was largely dominated by a theistic outlook. If I had declared the twentieth century the humanist century, respected conservatives such as Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, and writers for Commentary magazine declared it an “anomaly.” They said that the twenty-first century would be a century dominated not by secular humanism, but by religious and spiritual values. For them, the secular humanist outlook could not expire too soon.
>
> The third factor that emerged to challenge freethought and the secular movement was the near-total collapse of Marxism. For a good part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marxist-humanist ideals had influenced intellectuals; with Marxism’s eclipse, anticlericalism and indeed any open criticism of religion have all but disappeared.
>
> The fourth major change that occurred was the growth of postmodernism. Postmodernism stands in opposition to the Enlightenment, humanism, the advancement of science, a concern for human progress, and the emancipation of humanity from the blindfold of authoritarian traditions. Postmodernism questions all these basic premises, especially the ideas of objective science and humanistic values, and it has gravely influenced the academy, not only in the United States, but elsewhere in the world.
>
> The fifth factor that is so important is American triumphalism. Global free-market corporate capitalism now dominates the world. Pax Americana has many of the characteristics of a new kind of imperialism. The latest turn in American foreign policy questions ideas like deterrence and the balance of power. It maintains that American military might will police the world and defeat any “rogue states” that may challenge its hegemony. Unfortunately, this ideological posture has been accompanied by an open alliance with conservative and evangelical religious forces at home. In the best-selling book Mind Siege, Tim LaHaye and David Noebel provide a frightening apocalyptic agenda for evangelicals, admonishing their millions of followers in martial tones to prepare for battle against the secular humanists.4 We had become Public Enemy Number One, though after the emergence of the armies of the jihad we have been temporarily demoted to Public Enemy Number Two.
>
> This brings us to the sixth major change: the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. The War on Terrorism and its associated “conflict of civilizations,” in Samuel Huntington’s phrase, has put all Americans under a heightened sense of threat. But even this must be viewed in the context of a larger movement: an intense Islamic missionary effort, antiscientific at its root, that is sweeping the world. Islam is on the move in Africa, Asia, and all parts of the world. What may be most significant are the fast-growing Islamic minorities in Western Europe—France has five million Muslims, Britain and Germany two million each. And of course the United States and Canada have growing Muslim minorities.
>
> No less portentous is the global rise of militant Christianity. The reality is that there are more missionaries spreading the Christian gospel throughout the world than at any time in history. It is projected that, by the year 2025, 67 percent of Christians will live in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. China, indeed, will have more Christians than all but six nations. This is occurring at a time when Europe is being secularized, with nonreligious minorities growing sharply and church attendance at record lows. But Christian missionaries are pouring forth from the United States—particularly Pentecostals and evangelicals, carrying with them a literal reading of Scripture that they apply freely to morality and politics.
>
> What we are confronted with is the fact that the third world, which had been so powerfully influenced by Marxism twenty or thirty years ago, now confronts the clash of two powerful missionary forces: Islam and Christianity.
>
> This is the new reality that we in the humanist and rationalist movement have to face. The armies of the faithful are powerful and multiple. We face continued, even escalating conflict between their intolerant religious ideologies and our naturalism.
>
> I have offered a brief overview of a profound reversal in attitudes—from a period thirty years ago when humanism and secularism were in ascendancy, at least in the United States, to one in which they are being challenged at every turn, with vast sums of money and energy being applied to further missionary religiosity. This does not deny the positive developments associated with the triumph of democratic ideals, as Fukuyama has described. But it is the overall secular humanist prospect that I am concerned with.
>
> Thus we have great tasks ahead of us in future decades. But I ask, What should we concentrate upon? I submit that there are three main battles. First is the battle for secularism. I think the first great challenge will be to preserve the secular democracies; namely, we need to make a stronger case for the separation of church (or mosque or temple) and state. The state should be neutral, allowing a plurality of points of view, from religious belief to nonbelief, to coexist. This means that we need to defend democracy and the open society, human rights, and the rule of law. Virtually all of the fifty-four Islamic countries are theocracies, grounded in Sharia as set forth in the Hadith and the Qur’an. Unfortunately, recent efforts by the Bush administration to shatter the wall between church and state in the United States portend great damage for secularism worldwide. They also place the administration in the contradictory position of calling for barriers between church and sta!
> te in Iraq that it is doggedly dismantling at home.
>
> The second battle will be for naturalism; we are committed to the application of scientific methods in testing truth claims—by the principle of appeal to evidence and reason. Scientific methodology is basic to our industrial-technological societies; therefore, American power is based not on theology, but on naturalistic premises. We are the defenders of critical thinking and skeptical inquiry as part of the process of developing tested knowledge. Leaders of industrial and technological economies understand this full well. No revival of religious fundamentalism must be permitted to erode this dedication.
>
> We are also committed to the naturalistic cosmic outlook—that is, to the scientific perspective drawn from the frontiers of the sciences. Here we have much work to do. We reject the ancient religious ontological views rooted simply in the Bible, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, or Buddhist and Hindu literature. We wish to explain nature in the light of empirical and experimental evidence. That is the key principle that needs to be enunciated: naturalism in contradistinction to supernaturalism. We are predominantly nonreligious nontheistic empiricists and rationalists. We have developed our views of reality by reference to the findings of the sciences. We are skeptical about claims that are untested. Science provides our most reliable knowledge of the universe, even as it leaves room for mystery and awe about areas of the universe not yet probed or explained.
>
> Our third great battle will be for humanistic ethics. We believe that no one can deduce ethical values solely from theological premises. Those who depend on theology for morality often end up in conflict with hatred and intolerance on every side. For example, Muslims believe in polygamy, Protestants and Jews in monogamy and the right of divorce, while Roman Catholics (at least officially) do not accept divorce. The Catholic Church opposes capital punishment; Muslim fundamentalists and Baptists defend it. Thus there is a conflict between humanist ethics and the religious-moral ideologies that so dominate the world today, just as there is conflict among religious ideologies. But all of them are based upon ancient faiths, too often irrelevant to contemporary realities.
>
> Thus, we maintain that a humanist moral revolution offers great promise for the future of humankind; for it allows humans to achieve the good life here and now, without the illusion of salvation or immortality. We wish to test moral values by evidence and reason, and we are willing to modify our ethical values in light of the consequences. Our approach is planetary, as Humanist Manifesto 2000 emphasized—we hold that every person on the planet has equal dignity and value. Our moral commitment is to be concerned with the rights of every person in the global community and to preserve our shared habitat.
>
> Humanistic ethics defends the autonomy of the individual, the right of privacy, human freedom, and social justice. It is concerned with the welfare of humanity as a whole.
>
> In conclusion, I think that secular humanism has lost ground in the last three decades to religious forces, not only in America, but also in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The United States is anomalous in comparison with Europe, which has become increasingly secularized and nonreligious. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are secular; they do not look to the ancient faiths for guidance and believe that anyone can be moral without belief in any religion. The challenge today is especially urgent in the United States, no doubt because of the influence its immense power has given it in the world. Especially disturbing is the fact that the political leadership of the United States has grown fearful of expressing any support for agnosticism, skepticism, secular humanism, or unbelief. Moreover, the current administration uses the White House as a bully pulpit to spread religious gospel. It is possible in European democracies for politicians to publicly express nonreligious!
> , even atheistic viewpoints—but alas, this is virtually impossible in today’s United States.
>
> We have been waging a rear-guard battle in the United States. We need to move to the front lines to defend secular humanism—to convince the public that it’s possible to be a good citizen, contribute to society, be moral, and yet to be nonreligious. We need to defend the Enlightenment—whose agenda still has not been fulfilled, as philosopher Jürgen Habermas has pointed out. We need to encourage our supporters to speak out courageously. We need to engage in debate and dialogue, enunciating and defending secularism, humanism, and naturalism as meaningful alternatives to the irrationalism that increasingly dominates our age and threatens to overwhelm it.
>
> ----
> This message was posted by Kharin to the Virus 2003 board on Church of Virus BBS.
> <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29513>
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Reminding you to help control the human population. Have your sexual partner spayed or neutered."
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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