Humanism as a Positive End

In my previous post, I outlined a basis for moral action, based on a rather simplified alteration of Kant's first formulation.  I believe something similar happens to us all on an unconscious level.  We may return a lost item because it feels right to make the world a better place.  Like I've stated, I also believe that feeling comes from our evolution as a species and is codified in our DNA.  And yet, clearly there are still fundamental differences between what different people see as right and wrong in so many ways.

Take, for example, some of the issues relevant to our time: abortion and homosexuality.  I pick these to because 1) as previously mentioned, Ratzinger sees them both as morally wrong, 2) Western countries see them as largely morally defensible, and 3) science has, at least in part, been responsible for a shift in these values.  I will explore both of them in more detail later, but in the meantime I use them to illustrate how differing moral viewpoints can come about even in response to our gut instincts about what feels right.

What feels right is only a starting point.  Our DNA, our bestial natures, and our historical legacies are also only starting points.  Again, we have to consider that reshaping our attitudes is necessary when we have access to new information.  We also have to consider that we may still have immoral or amoral instincts, muscles that feel a need to flex even if we no longer (currently) need them.  Just because we have a gene for cannibalism, it doesn't mean we need to resort to it unless we are truly pressed for survival.

By contrast, no self-respecting deity would throw human beings into a world where adaptive nature is important, but restrict us from making necessary adaptations through difficult, if not impossible, sets of rules.  The food taboos of Kashrut or haram / halal, for instance, would suddenly cease to become relevant if pork were all that we had available to eat.  Conversely, if pork were all we had available to eat for a while, then other food resources were made available again, some people would choose to revert to the old taboos while others would retain it in their diet.  Some of the ones who had chosen to revert to the old taboos may even retain a feeling of guilt or shame for that period of time.

The tenets of Secular Humanism include:

• Building a better world.
• Fulfillment, growth, and creativity.
• A search for an objective truth.
• A commitment to ethics.
• Focus on this life as an immediate primary concern, not on an afterlife.
• Scientific method, observation, and empirical facts triumph over beliefs and gut feelings.

These principles that can be upheld independent of ones own personal religious or spiritual stance, without requiring any surrender or change of belief.  We all have gut feelings.  Even scientific method is useless without the ability to formulate a hypothesis--hypotheses can only be formed from a place of curiosity, creativity, and intuition.  Conversely, any religious stance can be pro-human or anti-human.  Today, fundamentalist Islam, Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, and many other major world religions are on a precipice, having taken a decidedly anti-humanist stance.  In Western culture, capitalism has become the wolf that is devouring its own young.  It is time to adopt our values to a pro-human agenda, lest we perpetuate the suffering that exists today.