Throughout history, the source of morality has always been God. Maybe it was never a perfect idea but at least it was there. So now, by rejecting God, one is forced to reconsider where morality comes from. In essence, once you do away with God and become an atheist, those are the questions you have to wrestle with. I have done so for a little while during my college days and even tried to conceive of a vague form of secular humanism as objective morality. But of course, somewhere along the line I stopped thinking of it as objective, at least in the sense of it existing independently of human existence, although I'm not convinced any other sense of the term can exist, and eventually, I gave up on it altogether. But the questions remained and, though reluctantly, I now find myself somewhere in the middle of the argument. The concept of God and the idea of religious revelation are not without their own problems but I don't find secular humanism particularly flawless either. At the risk of sounding flippant, secular humanism reminds me of a Jimmy Carr joke that goes – My girlfriend, ladies and gentlemen, is the most beautiful woman... I could get...
My view of atheism is that its logical conclusion is pessimism, and I still hold to that. Others have taken a different view and realized that by rejecting God and religion we need a replacement, and so to avoid pessimism they built secular humanism. But a pervading thought I seem to find throughout is precisely the punchline of that Jimmy Carr joke, that is to say, secular humanism seems to be built on the pessimistic idea that it is by no means perfect, but it is the best we can get. I suppose the idea, as far as I understood, is that while secular humanists believe that the universe is ultimately a cold, dark place, it doesn't have to follow that human life is therefore meaningless. Life can have intrinsic value, perhaps not in and of itself, but it can have value as long as we value it. For that purpose, secular humanists raise the core idea of a human being as the highest value, and the search for well-being as the highest pursuit. We may stumble along the way but no system of morality can be better than one which values all human beings, that is, working under the assumption that religious systems are either immoral or false... I hope this is a decent steelman version of the argument. If not, then please be a good secular humanist and turn the other cheek.
And I ask for that little mercy because this article is being written somewhat impulsively, and the impulse to write it was the debate between David Wood and Matt Dillahunty. And while I admire both men, and while I am not a believer of any god or religion, I actually have to side with David on this one. Though from what I gleaned from the general reception to the debate, I seem to be in the minority here. So be it... There were no knockouts, so if I had to judge that fight, I would have to give David the decision victory. Setting philosophy aside for a moment, Matt seemed initially complacent, then became increasingly frustrated and emotional, even throwing an ad hominem jab by hinting that David is stupid. Maybe atheists will see this in a different light, a light with its own merits, or maybe David's arguments had frustrating mistakes to them. I dunno, I didn't see them that way. But when you consider that the atheist rhetoric style in the days of the new atheism movement was always to stay calm and collected, thereby allowing the believers to get emotional, well... tables seem to have turned.
And the reason for that, in my view, is because the new atheists essentially won. Religion lost a lot of its impact on western society, most people became either vague believers, deists or atheists. In many ways, even believing christians became weak in their faith. The paradigm shifted in favor of atheists but then, as it always happens with paradigms, it began to shift back. I think at some point the atheist fervor dwindled, after all, there is a limit to how many videos of uneducated christians getting owned one can watch until it becomes stale. Eventually, the educated ones begin to return from their wanderings through the desert. And now it's atheists who are on the defensive, for they had to build something to replace God, something which of course is naturally opened for criticism, as all good ideas ought to be.
And that is a big reason why I can no longer see atheism as a mere lack of belief. Perhaps in a strictly epistemological sense it is just that, but in the real world things don't quite work out that way. A person who eats meat can be said to be a meat eater, a person who doesn't can be said to be the negation of that. It may seem weird to say that a negation of something is, in and of itself, something, but in a practical sense it becomes clearer because when you stop eating meat you have to adjust your diet accordingly, and therefore, you become a vegetarian, that is to say, a new positive concept is derived from the negative one. With atheism that same logic has to apply, whether atheists accept it or not, that is unless their goal is to tear down religion and then simply walk away. You either reject God and then, in typical Pontius Pilate fashion, you wash your hands of his blood, or you reject God and then replace what is left lacking in society, which means atheism becomes a philosophy in and of itself, or at the very least, it becomes a gateway to one.
So what is my criticism of secular humanism? I guess if the criticism of religious morality is the circularity of the notion of God, then I'd say I find in secular humanism something similar. It appears that the world has to justify itself, the meaning of life has to be found somewhere in life. On first glance, such a view isn't likely to raise much contention. One ought to live a life of personal fulfillment, one ought to find meaning, well-being and perhaps even pleasure wherever one can, provided that others are not harmed or hindered in the process. A standard of the golden rule would apply, which, as Matt says, can more or less be achieved with a certain selfishness. Now, that's not something you should ever write on your wedding vows, but for the most part I'd agree. A rather crass example that I came up with is that if someone in your home is sick and about to vomit, your instinct will be to help carry him to the toilet, not just because you're a saint full of pure intentions, not just because you don't wanna spend half an hour cleaning vomit off the carpet, but essentially due to a combination of the two. Selfishness and altruism aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. It rather reminds me of when Kutner tells House, as in House MD, that he became a doctor because he wants to help people. And then House corrects him saying he became a doctor because his ego feels good when he helps people. Well... Aren't they the same thing?
If I understand secular humanism correctly then, my points of contention are that, due to that circularity, it lacks two important things – meaning and rationality. The first being something that atheists, to our credit, never claimed to be able to offer with a strong degree of certainty, and the second being something we always, perhaps to a fault, claimed to be great proponents of. With religion, namely christianity, people are given a meaning to life and suffering. Life is seen as a blessing, but each life has its own cross to bear. So there is always faith that whatever happens, happens with a purpose in mind, a purpose that may be hidden or incomprehensible, but it is there for the believers. But with secular humanism, where is that purpose? If your source of meaning has to be yourself, then what happens when you can't find that meaning? Or when your life's circumstances are such that the search for meaning is made increasingly unavailable to you? And by that I don't mean circumstances of personal tragedy, the circumstances I mean are those of people leading quasi-nihilistic lives, that is to say, they wake up, they work, they sleep. Somewhere in between they while away the time with whatever whiles away the time best for them. Maybe it's cozy, maybe it's comforting, maybe it's better than nothing, but is it meaningful? And if not, then where can meaning be found? How confident are secular humanists that, in a world without a good enough reason to believe in a higher existence, can people be shepherded to the second-best thing on the list? And yes, I understand the irony of that term, and will return to it. I guess the question is – how confident are you that most people will strive to live meaningful lives? If a higher purpose than oneself isn't at the top of Maslow's pyramid, then why should you keep climbing? How would you distinguish between a person with depressive feelings and therefore in need of psychological help, from a person whose depressive feelings are a result of such a worldview, and who is therefore incurable by psychology?
The second point of contention, regarding rationality, ties in closer with morality. Because if we assume the basis of the golden rule as a rational reason to be moral, what happens when those rules break down? If the morality of secular humanism can't go beyond humans, what is it that ties humans together closer than their own self-interest? Because there inevitably will be those who, when convenient, will act immorally in accordance with their own self-interest, and the inevitability of such a thing is due to the simple fact that those abstract immoral ones are actually you and me. When given the opportunity to be immoral in a situation where we might get away with it, the temptation often becomes too much. You might say it's not wise to act on it because people can be pretty good at investigating crimes, or that by acting immorally you always harm yourself in the end. But at a certain point, isn't it even more rational to work out the probability of getting caught and act immorally? If you find a wallet full of cash, the golden rule states you ought to return it, but how quickly does the human mind reason that way? I think the quicker reasoning is something along the lines of – If this was my wallet, how many people would return it to me?... It seems that, if the impulse is admittedly self-interest, the morality drawn from there can, and often will, fall by the wayside when more expedient for the individual to do so.
I'm reminded of an instance when Christopher Hitchens, in a debate with Frank Turek, was asked where does an atheist's morality come from, and Christopher answered it by appealing to Socrates' inner daemon, an inner critic who led him towards good. Then he said – Any person of average moral equipment has the same knowledge, I hope you do, if you don't I'm very sorry for you... Well, “sorry” doesn't quite cut it here, Hitch... This kind of thinking is indicative of a trait in atheism that actually makes me feel rather embarrassed for having been a new atheist... Anyway, that reaction on Christopher's part is wholly lost on psychopaths, it's not them who he would need to feel sorry for. I would assume that an average moral equipment would be the kind of common-sense basis that secular humanism stems from, the kind of golden rule standard derived from an understanding of biology and human psychology which is then used to build healthy societies. I have two other points of contention here.
Firstly, I have to somewhat facetiously claim that Christopher took, of all things, a leap of faith. He seemed to assume that most people are simply normal and would behave in decent ways regardless of God, actually, he seemed almost optimistic about it, kind of like when a teacher doesn't feel the need to check whether that overachieving student did his or her homework. Well, considering Christopher's extensive knowledge of history I find this rather perplexing. Even recent history is full of examples whereby seemingly normal people were led to commit vile atrocities, examples that Christopher knew all too well. Are we to believe that so many millions of people just simply lack an average moral equipment? I think not, I think Christopher greatly underestimated just how evil normal people can truly be, something illustrated by the Stanford prison experiment, for example, brilliantly depicted in the 2015 film of the same name. Either Christopher underestimated such a thing or, somewhere along the warpath, he willfully attributed it, somehow, to religion.
The second point would then be this – what about those who indeed lack the average moral equipment?... Funnily enough, it seems that a lot of people in the aforementioned debate were surprised to discover that David is an actual psychopath. Now, atheists often claim that if a person needs religion in order to be a good person then that person is not good at all. Yet, some even claimed that they hope David remains in his religion for that express purpose, for him to remain good. Well then, if atheism or secular humanism were to win out, if religion were to cease to exist, what would you do with men like David? Either you accept that religion serves a necessary purpose and you keep it in society, sort of in a pragmatic way to keep that one black sheep away from the ninety-nine, or you do away with it, assuming you have full confidence in the virtues of secular humanism. But lo and behold, there's a man sitting right next to you who, if he were to return to an atheistic worldview, would bash your brains in for no particular reason. How would you then square that circle? How would you convince such a man that God doesn't exist but that he still has to be moral? You can't appeal to other people because he doesn't care about them, you can't appeal to society because he doesn't care about society, you can't even appeal to his own well-being because he doesn't care about that either. Will you lock him away before he even commits any crime? Very orwellian of you, and Christopher himself was vehemently against the idea of thoughtcrime... Or will you eliminate him before he has a chance to?... I ask with all honesty.
And it's funny because in his debate with Jordan Peterson, Matt asked what would a true atheist be like. Jordan responded with the character of Raskolnikov from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Matt immediately considered that response to be a complete strawman, and I did too, at least at the time. But now it seems that Matt has found David to be his very own Raskolnikov. It would appear, or so it appears to me now, that though religion is not perfect, some men can't be moral except with religion. David might be one of them, but what will you do with other Davids? And how much confidence do you have that the old David's cold, psychotic logic is reserved to a tiny minority of people? I think that, very much like Christopher, Matt grossly underestimates just how many people don't like to play chess. And even more so, I started to think that atheists, though we talked a big game about evil, we were actually wholly blind to it. Our lives, all things considered, were coddled...
Rust Cohle more or less coming to the same conclusion as christians
There is one last thing I can't help but notice about secular humanism, and this I admit to be more personal. I can't help but notice that, though it derides past violence, especially those atrocities committed under a religious banner, it is inevitably built on those sacrifices. Secular humanism seems to require a whole lot of pain and suffering in order to work, something that they admittedly revere with deep empathy. But without a higher plain of existence, all that collective suffering can't be seen as nothing more than a necessary step. If the atrocities of the Old Testament have to be accepted by christians as moral, then the atrocities of human history have to be accepted by secular humanists as mere learning experiences... To illustrate this point I am reminded of a scene from Berserk, one of the greatest stories ever told.
Without adding unnecessary detail, in this scene, one of the main characters is shown a vision of a perfect castle, so imposing, pure white and pristine. Inside its high walls, life is good, it is a pure utopia. That character desperately wants to be king, so he takes a first step towards that castle. But as he does so, he realizes the floor he is walking on is made up of the corpses of all those who died along the way, fighting under his banner. He is then given a choice – he can cut his losses and turn back, calling it quits after all that suffering, or he can reason that since he made it that far he might as well keep going. By turning back there would be no more bodies, but the dead ones won't be raised back to life now, indeed, they would have died for nothing. However, to keep going means he will have to add even more bodies onto the pile until the road to his perfect utopian castle is fully paved.
I find this scene to be a rather poignant depiction of the general idea of striving forward in the midst of all this suffering. As I said before, religion is not without its problems, but what is the secular humanist's answer here? If the goal is well-being then should we even keep procreating? Wouldn't it be better to cease such a thing and cut our losses now? Aren't we ensuring the existence of suffering just because we continue to exist? If not, if we keep building towards that castle, how many people will suffer and die along the way? You may tell me, yeah, they will suffer and die because everyone suffers and dies, but it will be worth it... If so, then I both admire and envy your confidence, but where is the philosophical basis for all that meaning? Again, I ask honestly. I just can't help but notice that behind every human discovery is a story of great human suffering. Indeed, the only reason people make stop signs is because their absence has caused deaths. It seems we just can't learn otherwise. What are we to say to those who died before we figured things out? Thanks for taking one for the team?... It's thin, very thin.
I am yet again reminded of Christopher Hitchens and his strong dislike for the christian notion of soothing a suffering person with vain promises of an afterlife. I suppose it takes a lot of faith to do such a thing and, if you are wrong, you are being immoral. But I can't help to see secular humanism as not entirely different. Their disbelief in the afterlife strongly urges them to bring heaven down, for if we only live once, then heaven needs to be where we are now. But at what point isn't it just better to, as the poem says, go gentle into that good night? That would be my decision, but then again, I'm a pessimist. If I were to write the logical argument for secular humanism I would have to leave the first premise blank. And for that reason, I can't help to see the secular humanist attempt as very commendable but ultimately built on a past of human suffering that it can't quite justify... And its constant attempts to reach that castle appear to require a faith I do not have.
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