Why is humanism bad

Rationalism readily accepts that not all scientific questions yet have satisfactory, explanatory answers. But it at least resists answers which are logically unsound or contrary to scientific evidence. Rationalism does not imply that any one is capable of being rational all the time in everything they do.

Nor does it imply that every proposition worth stating must have a logical basis or that logic and evidence are the only ways we interact with the world. Rationalism does mean that humanists tend to be suspicious of any claim to grand truths based more on myth than on evidence.

Rationalism does mean that humanists are likely to reject any attempt to limit free inquiry by invoking ineffable mysteries. We give our lives meaning and purpose. Living a good life is not the same as unrestrained hedonism, or living a life of unadulterated pleasure or self-interest. Rather, it may mean living in community, helping others, flourishing at what we are good at, contributing to our global society, and exploring and marveling at the world we find ourselves in. Why not?

Meanings and purposes do not always have to be inherited from some higher meaning or purpose. Sometimes they arise from people setting themselves goals, imagining new courses of action, or working together for some common goal. Human beings were not suddenly blessed with love and reason at some point in the past by an external power! Rather, our nature as deliberating, social beings evolved over time.

No, this is not at all the same as the moral relativist position that all human behaviors are equally moral or equally amoral. Compare to the situation with language. Like morality, human language — a combination of written, verbal, signed and gestural communication — is a complex phenomenon that evolved over time. It maps our needs and capabilities, but was not fundamentally designed or enforced from the outside.

It varies significantly from place to place but is near-universal in some of its broadest features. Nevertheless, there are still better or worse expressions of language: expressions that are well-formed or badly formed, expressions that communicate as intended or which miscommunicate, which are clear or ambiguous, some that are true, some that are false.

Morality, likewise, is a complex, evolved set of thoughts and behaviours, but particular actions can be just or unjust, fair or unfair, beneficial or detrimental, ethical or unethical, moral or immoral.

In other words: we can hinder or help others, make people sad or happy, we can impoverish the lives of others or enrich them, live life with dreary fatalism or with human flourishing. The answers to moral questions are here in the world, in ourselves, others, and our relationships, not in some mystical beyond.

We need make no reference to some absolute law-giver or a designer outside space and time to understand the basis of morality: that some of our actions detract from, and others promote, the welfare of living things, or the advancement of society, or the fulfillment of ourselves and others.

Humanism puts the human moral agent at the centre, because we are the only or at least, by far the most sophisticated moral decision-makers that we know of. Humanism does not deny that there are other objects of moral consideration, such as non-human animals.

For humanists, moral considerations may include human beings, other animals, our environment, as well as ethical principles, the health of society, and the future we are creating through our actions. Humanists Logo Toggle Navigation Join Be a part of the humanist movement — as an individual or an organization. The democratic, defining statement of world humanism, from Humanists International.

Our answers to your frequently asked questions about the humanist worldview. Are you a humanist? Learn more about the rational, ethical worldview that is humanism. Discover a world of humanism: find your nearest group or national organization. Meet the staff, representatives and Board of Humanists International. Young Humanists International is our youth section, for 18 to year-olds. Humanist International has a strategic focus on a range of issues in our advocacy and campaigns work.

We defend human rights and promote rational, democratic international law. Read more about the projects supported by Humanists International. I call myself a humanist with a small h in recognition that humans have inherent sacred worth as created in the Image of God.

Nihilism at least is logically consistent. Thank you for this post. For example, I teach world history in a public high school. Yet I invariably correct this by informing my students that the idea really describes an innate moral sense implanted in man by virtue of his bearing the image of God and hence had its roots in the Christian faith at least in Europe.

This is a very interesting post. I think it is best to consider humanism, epecially the Christian humanism, as a method rather than a school or doctrine that is necessarily opposed to Christianity.

In general, these thinkers were concerned to give greater attention to real human experience instead of or in addition to abstract deductions. Hence the focus on languages, history, the Bible, classical resources, et cetera. For example, Calvin appropriated and used certain elements of stoic philosophy in his exposition of Christian religion. Similarly they tended to be concerned with real, experienced human problems.

The pastoral impetus of many of the Reformers is closely related to this emphasis. There is nothing objectionable from a Christian point of view from an anthropological emphasis—a study of the imago Dei—as long as it points beyond itself to God. Now it seems largely quaint. The idea of Christendom has certainly been marginalised within the main Christian denominations, who are all painfully aware of their status as largely decorative.

Christianity is not, of course, the only religion against which the BHA campaigns. The press release that sparked these reflections was directed against ritual slaughter. But it has been the main enemy for most of the lifetime of the modern humanist movement, since about Campaigns around bishops in the House of Lords , or "faith schools" are just mopping up operations for a battle that has been strategically long won.

But suppose this definition of religion is in fact quite wrong. Suppose Christendom is not the ideal form of religion, and neither is Saudi Arabia. The sociology of religion, or its scientific study, has grown up at around the same time as the BHA's humanism. Right from the beginning, it has understood religion as a much wider, more diffuse concept than Christianity, and certainly more so than institutionalised Christianity. The series I wrote on Robert Bellah shows some of this complexity, I hope.

Very roughly, you could define the religion that scientists study as "the stories and practices that individuals and societies use to explain and create their relation to each other and their meaning in the world".

This is a deeply unsatisfactory definition, but it's still better than any less vague alternative. Simply as a matter of empirical fact, any narrow definition fails to capture a lot of the behaviour that is obviously religious, or, if you like, faith-based.