Agnostic Guide Chapter 6 - Humanist

Humanism

According to the American Humanist Association, Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity. The Humanist Manifesto III (2003) expands on this statement:

The lifestance of Humanism—guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience—encourages us to live life well and fully. It evolved through the ages and continues to develop through the efforts of thoughtful people who recognize that values and ideals, however carefully wrought, are subject to change as our knowledge and understandings advance.

This document is part of an ongoing effort to manifest in clear and positive terms the conceptual boundaries of Humanism, not what we must believe but a consensus of what we do believe. It is in this sense that we affirm the following:

Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. Humanists find that science is the best method for determining this knowledge as well as for solving problems and developing beneficial technologies. We also recognize the value of new departures in thought, the arts, and inner experience—each subject to analysis by critical intelligence.

Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change. Humanists recognize nature as self-existing. We accept our life as all and enough, distinguishing things as they are from things as we might wish or imagine them to be. We welcome the challenges of the future, and are drawn to and undaunted by the yet to be known.

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

Life's fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals. We aim for our fullest possible development and animate our lives with a deep sense of purpose, finding wonder and awe in the joys and beauties of human existence, its challenges and tragedies, and even in the inevitability and finality of death. Humanists rely on the rich heritage of human culture and the lifestance of Humanism to provide comfort in times of want and encouragement in times of plenty.

Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships. Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence. The joining of individuality with interdependence enriches our lives, encourages us to enrich the lives of others, and inspires hope of attaining peace, justice, and opportunity for all.

Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. Progressive cultures have worked to free humanity from the brutalities of mere survival and to reduce suffering, improve society, and develop global community. We seek to minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability, and we support a just distribution of nature's resources and the fruits of human effort so that as many as possible can enjoy a good life.

Humanists are concerned for the well-being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views. We work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature's integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner.

Thus engaged in the flow of life, we aspire to this vision with the informed conviction that humanity has the ability to progress toward its highest ideals. The responsibility for our lives and the kind of world in which we live is ours and ours alone.

Being a Humanist

I’m not the type of person who needs a defined structure for philosophy and morality provided to me by an organization. I don’t want to simply follow any organization without question. I need my own deeper understanding for what I do. Freethinkers shouldn’t advocate for following an organized philosophy since following the whims of a group is counter to the ideals of being an independent freethinker.

However, humanism is unique with their manifesto stating humanism isn’t what we must believe, but is an attempt to reach a consensus of what we do believe. Just as humans are evolving beings, humanism appears to be an evolving philosophy. This is a good approach as long as it never reaches a final stage of dogma with rigid or absolute views of what humanism and morality must be.

I wouldn’t consider myself a humanist no matter how much I may personally engage with or support a humanist association. This isn’t necessarily done as a criticism of humanism, but the definition of a humanist is to be a proponent or practitioner of humanism. This puts the humanist in the same category as any other -ists I avoid.

The -ist suffix means a person follows a principle or system of beliefs. In general, it isn’t a good idea to be a devoted follower of anything or anyone. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t associate with compatible groups similar to our own principles and beliefs, but we shouldn’t blindly follow any of these groups when we participate in them.

I just can’t imagine being a person who would embrace the humanist label to describe myself because I want to avoid the pitfall of automatically assuming my associated group is right in everything they say and do. It tends to go that way when you adopt a group label with a strong identity and start following that herd. I don’t want to be just one of the sheep in any flock.

Humanism as a Guide

I’m not defining myself as a humanist because I want to remain free to use it as a guide without myself or anyone else assuming everything said by humanists is something I believe. The American Humanist Association website has a summary of humanism and at the end it asks if you’re a humanist based on what was presented. It says you needn’t answer “yes” or “no” because it isn’t an either-or proposition. They present humanism as something to adopt or simply draw from and we can take a little or a lot of it.

I would modify that guidance to state it's only something to draw form and it isn’t something anyone should completely adopt. It's also something we can all help influence and improve as active participants in humanity. Adopting humanism is to continue to be a follower in life and society instead of being an equal participant or possibly even a leader.

I would never suggest anyone strictly follow this book you're reading. You should be able to do much better for your own life than what I could ever think to tell you about how to live. This book is for me and I’m just sharing a window into my thoughts.

Here is the summary the American Humanist Association provides for the basic ideas held by humanists. They’re good ideas, but as with everything else in this book I wouldn’t advise for anyone to adopt it as a complete philosophy to follow in every circumstance:

1. Humanism is one of those philosophies for people who think for themselves. There is no area of thought that a Humanist is afraid to challenge and explore.

2. Humanism is a philosophy focused upon human means for comprehending reality. Humanists make no claims to possess or have access to supposed transcendent knowledge.

3. Humanism is a philosophy of reason and science in the pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, when it comes to the question of the most valid means for acquiring knowledge of the world, Humanists reject arbitrary faith, authority, revelation, and altered states of consciousness.

4. Humanism is a philosophy of imagination. Humanists recognize that intuitive feelings, hunches, speculation, flashes of inspiration, emotion, altered states of consciousness, and even religious experience, while not valid means to acquire knowledge, remain useful sources of ideas that can lead us to new ways of looking at the world. These ideas, after they have been assessed rationally for their usefulness, can then be put to work, often as alternative approaches for solving problems.

5. Humanism is a philosophy for the here and now. Humanists regard human values as making sense only in the context of human life rather than in the promise of a supposed life after death.

6. Humanism is a philosophy of compassion. Humanist ethics is solely concerned with meeting human needs and answering human problems-for both the individual and society-and devotes no attention to the satisfaction of the desires of supposed theological entities.

7. Humanism is a realistic philosophy. Humanists recognize the existence of moral dilemmas and the need for careful consideration of immediate and future consequences in moral decision making.

8. Humanism is in tune with the science of today. Humanists therefore recognize that we live in a natural universe of great size and age, that we evolved on this planet over a long period of time, that there is no compelling evidence for a separable "soul," and that human beings have certain built-in needs that effectively form the basis for any human-oriented value system.

9. Humanism is in tune with today's enlightened social thought. Humanists are committed to civil liberties, human rights, church-state separation, the extension of participatory democracy not only in government but in the workplace and education, an expansion of global consciousness and exchange of products and ideas internationally, and an open-ended approach to solving social problems, an approach that allows for the testing of new alternatives.

10. Humanism is in tune with new technological developments. Humanists are willing to take part in emerging scientific and technological discoveries in order to exercise their moral influence on these revolutions as they come about, especially in the interest of protecting the environment.

11. Humanism is, in sum, a philosophy for those in love with life. Humanists take responsibility for their own lives and relish the adventure of being part of new discoveries, seeking new knowledge, exploring new options. Instead of finding solace in prefabricated answers to the great questions of life, humanists enjoy the open-endedness of a quest and the freedom of discovery that this entails.

Human Libraries

If everyone participated in humanism then it could become representative of our collective knowledge and wisdom as a species. Humanists are currently a small group sharing human-centered goals. The Humanist Manifesto doesn’t sum up humanity any more or less than the world’s religions since it doesn’t embody our collective knowledge.

There is one very large body of work which does document the knowledge of humanity. Our libraries and how they’re organized say a lot about us. The classification systems show some areas where we have consensus about how we view our collective knowledge.

Libraries are often broken down into fiction and nonfiction. The Dewey, Universal, and Library of Congress classification systems don’t explicitly mark the various classes with those labels but each class of books falls into those categories.

I remember being a child and going to the public and school libraries. The major areas were clearly marked as fiction, nonfiction, and a curious middle ground of books about religion. This is where I got my first look at the idea there were beliefs outside of my family’s Christianity and none of the religious beliefs were sitting in the non-fiction category.

The Dewey and Universal classification systems clearly set aside religion into its own distinct class. It’s not a part of science and knowledge which are obviously non-fiction. Religious holy books aren’t sitting in the history section which is another non-fiction area. Religion is in a special class of its own.

The Library of Congress system puts religion in a broader class with philosophy and psychology. This says we view religion as related to the human mind instead of a non-fiction body of work related to physical science or history. There’s a specific subclass (BL) including religions, mythology, and rationalism. It’s telling that we always put mythologies and religions together in our libraries. It’s obvious to me mythologies are just old religions lacking current believers. Our societies must see that connection since our libraries lump these together in the same section of god beliefs.

Think: Why isn’t there a specific holy book in the history section of your local library?

Rationalism is another interesting thing the Library of Congress files with religions. Rationalism regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. Rationalism says the criterion for truth is intellectual and deductive instead of sensory. Immanuel Kant saw knowledge coming from experience and the reason to process experiences into coherent thought. However, I don’t see why a belief in reason alone would be in the same category as religions.

We see mind related stuff as something outside of both hard physical sciences and fictional literature. It’s sometimes physically situated in our libraries as something in between. Descartes showed reason alone can define our existence with the “I think, therefore I am” conclusion of knowledge prior to any kind of experience on the matter. Doubting your existence proves you exist to do the thinking. Everything after that is tainted by experiences and possibly flawed reasoning on its own or in interpreting experiences.

Rationalism doesn’t strike me as being related to religion so I don’t understand this strange bedfellow of rationalism and religion in the Library of Congress. I found a reference for rationalism being socially conflated with atheism during the 17th and 18th centuries. People referred to free thinkers with an anti-religious outlook as rationalists so at the time it might have been a way to describe anti-religion for the same subclass. The subjects informing humanism are also related in the larger class B of Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion. Looking at all of these together provides a library classification basis for saying our society views religion as something existing only in our minds.

The Future of Religion

Frederick Harrison published an essay way back in 1907 about The Future of Agnosticism which predicted the need for something like humanism. The essay digs into a human need for religion and how agnosticism doesn’t just reject religion, but helps evolve our views of things beyond the physical world. Here are some excerpts from that essay:

Agnosticism is consequently a mere step, an indispensable step, in the evolution of religion, though, by its very nature, a step on which it is impossible to rest. Intellectually it is quite as impossible to remain an agnostic as politically it would be to remain an anarchist. And for precisely the same reason. Society is such that only the most vapid and uneasy spirit can permanently acquiesce in the negation of all government. And society is likewise such that only a dry, mechanical soul can permanently rest in the negation of all religion. A thousand commonplaces have shown that unless the first place in the imagination and the heart be duly filled, the mind and character are perpetually prone to improvise worthless ideals of love and reverence, under the force of which mind and character are liable to be violently carried away.

The orthodox and the Agnostic view of religion are not at all the true antithesis one of the other. The only true antithesis to a religion of figments is a religion of realities, not a denial of the figments. The Agnostic reply to the theologians is but half a reply, and a reply to the least important half. Orthodox theology asserts, first, the paramount need for religion, and next it asserts that this need is met by a particular creed and a specific object of worship. To the first of these assertions Agnosticism has no reply at all; to the second it replies “Not proven.” The question is a double one, and no single answer can at all cover the ground. It is quite possible that the orthodox view might be partly right and partly wrong, and the Agnostic view may be partly right and partly a mere blank. And this is just what has happened. The theologian is on ground unshaken whilst he contends that true religion is the sole guide of human life. The Agnostic is on ground as firm when he contends that theology concerns itself with a world where knowledge is impossible to man. But the Agnostic has yet to carry the argument to a world where knowledge is possible to man.

The more universally we apply agnostic logic and the scientific method, then the more rare agnosticism will be looked on as a specific creed. This may be why some atheists contend agnosticism is a useless term regarding disbelief. Agnostic logic can appear to be synonymous with common sense among those already lacking religion. However, agnosticism is very much needed by those who continue to cloud their minds and logic with dogma instead of unbiased knowledge. I continue to feel the need to point out what should be considered common sense to those kinds of people. The simple truth of agnosticism can help us evolve away from the religions of mythology to a possible religion of humanity for those who need humanism or something like it.

Agnosticism is a stage in the evolution of religion, an entirely negative stage, the point reached by physicists, a purely mental conclusion with no relation to things social at all. It is a stage as impossible for a social philosophy to rest in as it is for a statesman to proclaim his policy to be “no law” and “no government.” But if Agnosticism cannot rest as it is, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that it can go back. Agnosticism represents the general conclusion of minds profoundly imbued with the laws of physical nature, minds which find the sum of the physical laws to be incompatible with the central dogmas of theology. And since the physical laws rest on an enormous mass of experimental demonstration, and the dogmas of theology upon the unsupported asseverations of theologians, the Agnostic, as at present advised, holds by the former, and, without denying the latter, treats them as “not proven.” But the laws of physical nature show no signs of becoming less definite, less consistent, or less popular as time goes on. Everything combines to show that natural knowledge is growing wider, more consolidated, more dominant year by year; that the Reign of Law becomes more truly universal, more indefeasible, more familiar to all, just as the reign of supernatural hypotheses retreats into regions where the light of science fails to penetrate.

Whatever, therefore, has fostered the Agnostic habit of mind in the past seems destined to extend it enormously in the future. And, when the entire public are completely trained in a sense of physical law, the Agnostic habit of mind must become the mental state, not of isolated students and thinkers, but of the general body which forms public opinion. There is no weak spot about the Agnostic position per se, no sign of doubt or rift in its armour, as a logical instrument. All that is objected to is, that it is simply one syllogism in a very long and complex process of reasoning, not that the syllogism itself has any vestige of error. The result is that the Agnostic logic shows every sign not of failure, but of ultimately becoming an axiom of ordinary thought, almost a truism or a commonplace, as minds are more commonly imbued with the sense of physical law. But to accept the Agnostic logic is not to be an Agnostic, any more than to accept the protest against the Papal infallibility or the Council of Trent is to be a Protestant. Hence, the more universal becomes the adoption of the Agnostic position, the more rare will Agnostics pure and simple become, and the less will Agnosticism be looked on as a creed. When Agnostic logic is simply one of the canons of thought, Agnosticism, as a distinctive faith, will have spontaneously disappeared.

As social science and the laws of social evolution more and more engross the higher minds, and become the true centre of public interest, Agnosticism, the mere negation of the physicists, will have left the ground clear for the rise of a definite belief. That belief, of course, like everything destined to have a practical influence over men, must be positive, not negative. It must also be scientific, not traditional or fictitious. And it must further be human, in the sense of being sympathetic and congener to man, not materialist and homogeneous with the physical world. Its main basis obviously must be social science, the larger, more noble, and dominant part of science in the sum. And its main instrument and guide will be the history of human evolution, which is to physical evolution all that man himself is to the animal series. To collect these suggestions in one, what we have is this. Agnosticism must be absorbed in a religious belief, for which it will have cleared the ground. That belief will necessarily have these characters. It will be at once positive, scientific, human, sociologic, and evolutionary or historical.

The future of agnosticism isn’t a permanent mindset of agnosticism but is instead something akin to modern humanism. I’m assuming the ideals of humanism aren’t perfected but are something which must continue to evolve as humanity continues to change and evolve. This is something the mythological religions aren’t designed to do.

Agnosticism, indeed, has no future, unless it will carry out its scientific principles to their legitimate conclusion. It offers no locus standi by itself. As Charles Darwin so pathetically tells us in his diary, it affords no permanent consolation to the mind, and is continually melting away under the stress of powerful sympathies. It destroys but it does not replace.

That which alone can take the place of the mighty mysteries and the grand moral drama created by the imagination of the prophets and priests of old is the final scheme of moral and social life which social science shall finally elaborate for man, which shall be the fruit of science as a whole, with physical science for its foundation and social science for its main gospel, a scheme which shall be entirely positive and entirely human; and its main characteristic will be, that it explains the history of humanity as a whole and points to the future of humanity as the inevitable sequel of its history. In whatever form such a view of religion may approve itself to the ages to come, it will only be Agnostic in the sense that it is ready with the Agnostic answer to all idle and irrelevant questions.

This essay aligned fairly well with my own move away from Christianity. I first embraced atheism as a specific rejection of the religion of my ancestors. All atheism tells me is that I shouldn’t believe in the unproven using only the blind faith given to me by my ancestors. Christianity is clearly a product of primitive people instead of the divine word of a jealous god demanding my worship. It was easy to reject such a being filled with human flaws when I actually thought about it all.

I next embraced agnosticism as the only apparent grand truth. The truth is we don’t really know anything beyond the physical world concerning where it all came from or why it all came to be. My answer is an honest "I don't know" to any questions about what I really know in place of those rejected religious beliefs. Unknown is the answer.

Finally, I have looked at humanism as possibly becoming that “final scheme of moral and social life which social science shall finally elaborate for man.” This essay predicts for the future of religions something like humanism to replace the mythologies some people cling to for comfort and guidance.

Atheism and agnosticism can’t serve as guides for moral and social life, so I agree something else must fill the void when primitive religions lose their hold on superstitious minds. Atheism simply describes disbelief, agnosticism is the touchstone for seeking honest truth, and humanism could be the better destination for our collective morality. Agnosticism and humanism might be the natural future of religion. They'd certainly be morally superior to the religions which is discussed in the next few chapters.