Secular Humanism

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Perhaps a more relevant distinction when it comes to beliefs is if you are Secular Humanist.

Wikipedia is a decent place to start reading about it:

There are some people who for some reason can't quite drop the idea of god. I'm quite fine without the belief in a god, but I guess some people just need some sort of god idea. I can bear with that, as long as those people follow the 'tenets' (gah, I hate that word) of Secular Humanism.

Or, as a poster on another forum put it:

Secularism suppresses free speech. Everyone should be able to express themselves in a non harmful way.

I'm afraid you need to elaborate on that one.

Lets put it this way what is secularism to you in your own definition?

Here are a few definitions from dictionary.com.




I don't see how that suppresses free speech.

You have for example school prayers in school. While it's voluntary, it's biased towards Christianity.

I guess this is more or less what shaped my philosophy...

Yeah, we poor foolish secular people must make sure that you religious people are allowed to circumsize children against their will, get away with blowing up abortion clinics because no one dare to question it, throw in gas grenades in girl-schools and alter science to fit in with your psychopathic beliefs.

(And moderators, by "YOU" or "YOUR" i refer to a group, in this case "religious people" which i have clearly referred to earlier in this post, not an invididual. It is basic English.).

By doing all that f--ked up s--t you are damaging OUR beliefs, our heaven is RIGHT HERE on earth and you are throwing dung around in OUR church. So all you religious people out there, stop your sociopathic madness immediately!


History has prooved the following:

Religion is mental terrorism (Belive us or our god, a.k.a. fanatics, will kill you)

Religion is thought control, (Blasphemy, you cannot say "there is no heaven")

Religion is suppression of speech, (Burn Bruno, Burn)

Religion is a proven tool for the "elite" to rule over the illiterate people. (Church and state are now separate for a reason).

Religion is a global thought-disease that has reached pandemic proportions but it can be cured with education, freedom of speech and science.

I am not much of a secular humanist.

To address the tenets:

One, I do not see how all dogmas can be tested. I mean, take: "Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith." How can this dogma/ideology/tradition be weighed and tested? Mustn't it be accepted on some faith as to why it should be done? I suppose we can say it is just necessary to be a secular humanist, and that secular humanists tolerate non-secular humanists, but I do not see how all beliefs can be tested, and thus I do not think that this command is reasonable.

I don't see reasons to discriminate upon different methodologies, only to allow people to go forward using them, and have others free to stop associating with bad methodologies. I mean, scientific method and reason? Sure, those can be nice. However, it is possible for human tradition and oddities that emerge over time to show some benefit to others, even if this benefit does not make sense, and is difficult to quantify. Not only that, but irrationality can benefit human beings in ways that are hard to see, as irrational tendencies are important for human mental stability and for promoting beneficial human actions, which can be seen in the phenomenon of human overconfidence, and how this confidence can create more productive researchers, and more willing entrepreneurial risk-takers.

I am also suspicious of the ethical enterprise. I mean, I get that they are combating religious ethics, but I do not see how a rational ethical effort can be made. I mean, I do not see how utilitarianism MUST BE ethical. I do not see how Kantian moral rationalism is true, much less something that MUST BE ethical. Defining ethical to fit anything other than the moral behavior that an acting individual ought to follow(y'know, by saying it is how to better society and such) is really a dodge, as it is conflating ethics with something that ethics isn't. As is the whole moral-ethics distinction, it is just another dishonesty to redefine terms so that they keep the connotation while having a less important denotation.

I don't believe much in separation of church and state. Technically, there are 2 reasons: 1) I don't think that believers can separate their church and state lives well enough and so church always gets mixed in with the state and the state gets mixed in with the church, 2) I don't believe much in the state, and I see no reason to prevent churches from getting involved with whatever replaces the state as churches are human concerns and I am not big on discriminating against ideas.

Moral education sounds like indoctrination to me.


Because of that, I do not think I'd fit in that well in secular humanism. Perhaps I am misreading secular humanist tenets though.

Unless I am misinterpreting you you seem to claim that there is no sensible logic for humans to act decently to one another and the only way that might be managed is through enforced morality indoctrination on a basis totally lacking in logic and pragmatic experience.

I have a feeling that this sort of sentiment is largely an 'our generation' type thing, its an over correction for issues that seem very directly related to people's beliefs in the existence of a God but when you look at all the things you list off as what you detest about theists and theistic thinking; theism can easily enough live without those things. Its a sense of metaphysics that grows and changes in awareness as new understandings of society, how we as human beings work, how our differences in thinking, etc. all come into play. This is really just a societal structure outrage and demand for change, mainly in how technology has completely changed family structure, labor opportunities, lifestyle, and all of this is 100% inevitable. None of that requires the death of theism - just like our beliefs or lack of beliefs bare no correlation on whether or not there ultimately is or isn't a God. What it does show is that the questions just need to be kept much more intelligent and the junkfood in the equation needs to go out the window (which over time, atheists will run into enough challenges as they get what they want from the world that Maslow's hierarchy of needs will push them to question a lot of their more hammer-headed tenets).

I guess the best I can do is just sit back, eat my popcorn, and watch the world evolve. Just like its of great importance to me to stick to my roots in the specific ways I find make sense, I also find it fascinating to read what people of a completely different psychology on the issue have to say because I can further understand just what's happening. If you read 'The Next 100 Years' by George Friedman of Statfor though he explains this quite well (and it might be surprising to you - he's anything but a social conservative).

Well, the issue with children is that at that age they can't express much of a will to do anything. The same for a number of ages past that. I mean, let's say you talk a 4-year old into getting a circumcision, have you really done *that* much that is good? Not only that, but there are a lot of problematic issues involved here. Why is circumcision that many steps far away from ear piercings? Ear piercings are also done at an early age(to girls and usually not right after leaving the womb) and children usually cannot express agency at that time either. Is that also improper? It has no religious significance, but it is still done to children early on.


You don't need religion to seek to alter or ignore our best information. Some people are allergic to economics studies and seek to undercut the field, such as Marxists and many *very* strong left-wingers. Some groups have attacked evolution for the sake of their dislike of the possibly elitist connotations that could be imposed through this work(such as the communists). Others have overhyped evolution to make it an overly powerful force for eugenics(such as social darwinists). Some people have attempted to dismiss climate research because they see it as a tool for governmental control(such as conservatives and libertarians). Others frequently attack mainstream medicine, such as New-agers, who seek herbal remedies. I mean, the list goes on and on, so I wouldn't blame religious people for anything but being prominent, and for having a problem with having children taught something they think to be wrong. Heck, some reject the existence of significant physiological differences between men and women(you know, differences beyond sex characteristics), despite the best science about this issue.


And in return you want to throw dung onto their church by threatening their worldview without giving them ability to defend it(even if it is poorly through mischaracterization) and by forcing your church upon their children? That's the funny thing about reality, the assertion of one belief is always a challenge to it's opposite, and it isn't as if we can force our beliefs upon others, so instead we are damned to the conflict between ideas, and one that is not so easily solved at that. After all, to the religious folks, you are clearly a psychopath, and some think(although you may argue wrongly) that your beliefs will lead to evil.


History proves nothing. Proofs are matters of math and theory.

As for these traits of religion, well, what about unitarian universalism? What about liberal protestantism? What about Bahai? What about certain forms of Buddhism? What about reform Judaism? I mean, none of those really seems to fit into your train of thought about religion, and you only point to forms of religion that tend to exist in the 3rd world, but that do not have much power in the 1st.

In any case, I don't see much of a case amongst mainstream religion for *any* of those claims you make. Even among conservative Christians in the US, there is usually some level of civility.

Church and state are separate for reasons other than elite control for the most part as far as I can tell, but rather due to the dissolution of a unified church, which leads to conflict if a church and the state are the same.

In any case, I do not see how religion can be "cured" given that there are very intelligent men of religion out there, PhDs of great talent. An example of one would be Alvin Plantinga, who is considered by most to be one of the most intelligent philosophers specializing in epistemology to live, but who is a conservative Christian. Another is Peter Van Inwagen, another philosopher of talent. Heck, Catholic Kenneth Miller is a well-known defender of evolutionary theory. I mean, it is not as if academics with religious tendencies do not exist, and if academia is our intelligentsia then how can we "cure" something like this? It has not even died in the pinnacles of our civilization, amongst men of learning. In any case, most science does not strongly disagree with religion, As well, if the Catholic church is willing to allow for evolution and things like that, and even has strong proponents of evolution in it's boundaries, then how can science solve this issue?

I never said that, but I've already attacked you for a misunderstanding of what "ethics" means. In any case, the logic is pretty simple:
"What do I want? Can pissing these other people off conflict with that?"

This kind of method has nothing to do with ethics though, and is just crass egoism. It can function to some extent, but I wouldn't call it ethical. One could even argue that the enforced morality is necessary though because of the insufficiency of this, as even murder and mass-murder can be justified under this kind of thinking process.

Since I seem to be confused as to the nature of ethics I would much appreciate if you could confirm or deny if ethics is a set of rules for people to interact decently to one another and for society's best interest. I have always taken it for that.

Deny. That is not the definition of ethics. That definition of ethics is completely ignorant about well... the nature of the field of ethics, the possibility of ethical nihilism, etc.

eth-ic (ethik)n. 1. A set of principles of right conduct. A theory or a system of moral values:

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Excerpted from American Heritage Talking Dictionary
Copyright © 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Society's best interest has no necessary rightness or morality, and you have never put forward an argument that there must be rightness or morality to it.

To go forward: how do we define "best interest"? If you define it as a utilitarianism, then you have already claimed that utilitarianism is ethics, despite the existence of other ethical theories. Getting to other issues with "best interest", "best" is usually a subjective value judgment and so if disagreement is possible about this, then the term becomes meaningless as the sociopath may consider it "best" to destroy society. Not only that, but "society's best interest" can conflict with "humanity's best interest", thus making secular humanism potentially unethical and creating a contradiction in it.

Finally, a major issue is that "society's best interest" has no necessary motivational force, thus making moral education a matter of indoctrination if we do take your view, as I could otherwise have a moral intuition that stands against this (deontology, humanity's best interest, the utility of all beings rather than just humans, Objectivist rational self-interest, and so on) or even deny the existence of meaningful ethics and be an ethical nihilist. If the definition of ethics is how I see it, then your definition of ethics would probably be irrational by secular humanist standards given that there are no oughts in science, and Kantian rationalism, as I've said before, seems stupid to me(with good reason but I won't have to get into that).

I do not think "Secular Humanism" means what you think it means.

Simply put, it is the notion that good ethics and morals need not come from divine guidance. Some people do indeed get these things from their religion and claim that if it weren't for the bible or their version of it they themselves would not know right from wrong.

But Secular Humanism says that at least some people are capable of knowing right from wrong without a bible or belief that a deity told them so.

How exactly do you think this concept suppresses free speech?

*edit for spelling. Damn! I can't seem to type this week!*

Last edited by JoJerome on 16 May 2009, 2:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, if a belief cannot be tested, it's not reasonable and doesn't need to be taken into consideration.

If a belief is more on the scale of a hypothesis, it can be tested.

What it means is that things should not simply be taken on faith, that there must be a reason to believe in something in one way or another.


I'm not sure what you mean by this.


Let's say there is a group of people that believe that the digestive system is caused by small elfs jumping around insde the body. Studies show that people who believe in this have a better digestive system than people who don't. Does that mean that this should be taken on faith, even though there is an already functioning model on how the digestive system works?


From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:



You make the following claims:

1. It's important for human mental stability
2. It promotes benificial human actions, which can be seen in human overconfidence, which leads to:
a) More productive researchers
b) More willing entrepreneurial risk-takers

I'd love to see you substantiate those claims.

I'm also uncertain why you think risk-taking is necessarily beneficial. I mean, if I'm in a building experiencing a blackout, a rational, safe reaction would be to walk carefully and use senses such as feeling and sound to try to find a solution to the problem by for example finding a light source or a way out. An irrational, riskful reaction would be to flail around trying to find a solution as quickly as possible - it could work, but could also go horribly wrong.


Again, from Merriam-Webster dictionary:


In short, morals are a set of rules of conduct, and ethics seek to question those morals, thus the morality-ethics distintiction is not 'dishonest' in any way.


That is a poor reason, as it seems that believers can't seperate those precisely because church and state is not seperated. One could make a similar case that in a system where state and population are not seperated (as in a totalitarian system), people can't seperate the state and their own interests.

How would you like living in Saudi Arabia, BTW? It would be superb if you happened to be a muslim.


No state, as in anarchism? Hmm, how would that work out, and if it works, how would it be an improvement?

As of right now, anarchism seems as far-fetched as communism.


Well, telling a child to be careful crossing a street is technically indoctrination...

We get our morals from society, and as society changes, so does morals. That's why it's imperative to be as unbiased as possible.