Humanists

http://www.humanists.freeserve.co.uk

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Your Questions for Humanists

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List of Questions:

Q. Why do we need an ethical philosophy?

Q. My wife can’t see the point to Humanism, and we have a baby on the way and she would like it christened.

Q. At a Humanist meeting an invited Christian guest asked, “How would the world be different if god did exist?

Q. Wot No Creator?

Q. Does God Give Different Rules to Different Nations?

Q. Do Humanists have badges?

Q. Why did you turn away from Christianity?

Q. Why is Aristotle not included in your Hall of Fame?

Q. What do you think of the social teachings of Jesus?

Q. “What is a Humanist’s belief on life (other than human life). I myself am a VEGAN and hold the life of animals and people hand in hand? Is there no one stand on the subject?”

Why do we need an ethical philosophy?

Q. A correspondent in The Freethinker asked, “Why should a freethinker want to be in an organisation that seeks to create some kind of unified ethical philosophy?”

A. It is always worrying when someone rejects ethical philosophy as a basis for the values on which people should make choices and judge behaviour. It is especially so when a freethinker does it.

Without moral philosophy we are at the mercy of those who say that “might is right”, or that we must accept decisions based on “the survival of the fittest”, or on “the will of the majority”.

Life is only made tolerable by the work of those willing to promote humane behaviour judged according to reasonable guidelines. This is what Humanist societies are there to promote.

What’s The Point of Humanism?

Q. My wife can't see the point to Humanism, and we have a baby on the way and she would like it christened.

A. The point of Humanism is that it makes more sense of the world than any other outlook, and it helps us to lead happy lives. It also helps us evaluate facts, and opinions, we come across for the first time.

I think some people want their babies christened because they want everything that is best for the child, and they think that should include being baptised. However, if they are not religious, they may not know what baptism is about, apart from it being a family ceremony. The ceremony of baptism is one to welcome the person into the "community of Christian believers". This can hardly be a free choice for an infant. The "God Parents'' undertake to bring the child up as a Christian and instruct her or him in the Christian faith. The child is not given any choice in the matter. This is why some Christians reject the doctrine of infant baptism. Those Christians who support it, and take the matter seriously, do so because they believe that if the baby dies unbaptised, partly because of the doctrine of original sin, she or he will be sent to hell.

The Humanist naming ceremony has an entirely different purpose. It is to welcome the child into the family and, if newly born, into the human community, and to present the child to those family and friends present. The supporting adults undertake to do what they feel is best for the child in the circumstances, and to help the baby make appropriate informed choices as she or he grows up, including what outlook on life to adopt.

The Humanist ceremony is tailored according to the personal wishes of the family. Experienced Humanist Officiants can conduct the ceremony and would discuss the arrangements with the family beforehand. It can be held at the family home, instead of having to go somewhere like a church, and brothers, sisters and other children, can take part in the ceremony.

It is best to choose a convenient time, free of stress, to discuss a subject such as Humanism, and to approach it in way to which your wife can relate. This would depend on her background. It is no good comparing Humanism to Christianity with a person is ignorant of both Christianity and Humanism. Start from a point of agreement and take each point of disagreement calmly in turn. I find it best to take things gradually, as few people change their views overnight.

Do Earthquakes Prove There Is Not A Loving God Who Cares About People?

Q. At a Humanist meeting an invited Christian guest asked "How would the world be different if god did exist?

A. A Humanist replied that, although wars and other such miseries might be said to be the result of human wickedness, if a loving god cared about people and the world, there would be no plate tectonics, and continents would not move around the globe, causing earthquakes and killing people including new-born babies.

When we hear news of earthquakes it should act as a reminder to us that this is evidence that the world is not in the care of a loving god. If God designed the world, earthquakes are a design fault.

Wot No Creator?

Q. As a humanist you obviously know a lot about forward thinking and not believing in a creator, should be able to answer a question for me.

Do you believe that the great and wonderful thing that we call life (or to go one step further- sentient life) is the result of a vast series of accidents, progressive changes in a universe ever increasing in complexity?
I find it difficult to believe that this great mystery, existence, could be conjured up out of a sudden emergence of a non-created mathematical formulae.

Created? Or Just happened? Your views please.

A. Thanks for your interesting question. Although you and I may both find it difficult to believe that the wonderful thing we call life, and everything in the universe, is the result of a vast series of chance events, how could it be otherwise?

To assume a creator is to dodge the question. If we assume there is or was one, who created the creator? A previous creator? There's no end to it!

So the answer must be that chance and necessity led to our being here - just as Epicurus said 300 years before there were any Christians.

Q. Does God Give Different Rules to Different Nations?

According to Rev Tony Wilcox in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, God makes his rules to save us from getting hurt.

A. In an unpublished reply Roy Saich said, "As Judaists, Christians, Muslims and others claim to worship the same God why has he set different rules for each faith? Does one sort of food hurt believers of one faith but not another? "Morality belongs to moral philosophies not religious faiths. Unless schools are required to teach the proper foundations of morality, such muddled ethical ideas will continue to flourish."

Q. Is there a badge Humanists wear to recognise each other?

This is the international Humanist symbol which is widely used:-

Many Humanist societies offer badges and t-shirts which display it, which is useful, as you say, to recognise fellow Humanists. There are other versions, like the one below - but don’t confuse them with the logo for Honda cars!

Why did you turn away from Christianity?

Q. You claim to be the descendants of the humanist movement that started in the 14th century with the Italian beginnings of the Renaissance. That movement is simply glorious. But what I want to know is, since the movement then was Christian in character and even resulted in the reformation, where does your branch take another turn? Where was the fork in the road where you turned off that path?

A. There is more than one root of the Humanist tradition. The Christian scholars of the Renaissance, such as Erasmus, are often called humanists. They re-discovered some Greek and Roman classics, most of which pre-date Christianity, and they opened the door to wider studies.

Christianity owes a lot to the Platonic school of philosophy, particularly St. John's gospel, but it is not compatible with the Garden of Epicurus. It is that school which provides the foundation on which subsequent philosophers such as David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell built the Humanist outlook of today.

It is not that we turned off the Christian path, but rather that we went back to an older path.

Q. Why is Aristotle not included in your Hall of Fame?

A. Aristotle is not in the Humanist tradition because in his extant writings, largely surviving in the form of lecture notes made by his students, he held that there exist self-evident changeless principles that form the basis of all knowledge. These are versions of Plato’s ‘Ideas’.

He held that the purpose or function of a thing is primary. The highest good for the individual being ‘rationality’. The notion of the ‘forms’ of Plato, who was his teacher, he transmuted into ‘potential’ or something immanent in matter with no separate existence. He was a Neoplationist and should not be included in any list of people in the Humanist tradition.

Q. What do you think of the social teachings of Jesus?

A. The "secular teachings of Jesus Christ" were based upon, and thoroughly infused with, belief in the supernatural, and were designed to address such mythological concepts as damnation in hell. His "social teachings" only make sense as part of his theological assertions that the world was about to end, and that if people did not immediately repent of their 'sin' they would be sent into the fires of hell for eternity. St Paul amplified these "social teachings" to condemn homosexuality explicitly and to specify an inferior status for women. No one at the time doubted that St. Paul imparted the teachings of Jesus.

If Christians try to dispense with the notion of God's judgement they are left with a ragbag of conflicting values. It is from the notion of 'sin' that any "personal morality" or political system, no matter how harmful, can be, and has been, justified. Any hatred is warranted as 'hatred of sin' and any action to save others from hell.

Q. “What is a Humanist’s belief on life (other than human life). I myself am a VEGAN and hold the life of animals and people hand in hand? Is there no one stand on the subject?”

A. Humanists take different views. All would say that we oppose unnecessary cruelty to other animal life as well as to the human animal. I think all would oppose testing of cosmetic products on animals and oppose religious ritual slaughter.

Many, like me, would not eat veal and some other foods, and support ‘Compassion in World Farming’. Most are not vegetarians, however, but quite a lot are, and some are vegans.

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Thanks to our questioners.

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