Humanism and Secularism: A Critical Analysis of these Ethics

Humanism and Secularism: An Analysis

© 2014 to present by Jensen DG. Mañebog/MyInfoBasket.com

It is often said that millennials are less openly religious than the older generations. Studies show that about one in four millennials are unaffiliated with any religion, which is much more than the older generations when they were the ages of millennials. Especially in dealing with morality, millennials are said to be more likely to advocate secularism and humanism.

Secularism is basically a non-theistic belief system or a worldview which does not acknowledge supernatural or divine views of reality. As such, it includes atheism, agnosticism, naturalism, materialism, scientism, Darwinism, and other ideologies that reject all spiritual explanations of the world.

Humanism,on the other hand, is a system of thought which gives emphasis to the value of human beings and favors man’s thought over faith or religious doctrine. Originally, the term refers to Renaissance cultural and intellectual movement featuring the rediscovery of the arts and philosophies of ancient Greeks and Romans. The word “humanist” is derived from the olden Italian term umanista which pertains to a teacher or scholar of classical Greek and Latin literature. 

Though humanism does not necessarily imply non-theism, before 1800, it began to refer to beliefs centered on humanity without attention to any concepts of the supernatural. Especially nowadays, humanism has become essentially synonymous with secularism. It proposes, among other things, that the universe is a natural phenomenon without supernatural aspect, that this earthly life is the only life we have, and in the absence of an afterlife and any pre-determined purpose to the universe, we can act to give meaning to our respective lives by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.

As an ethical perspective, humanism refers to a belief in human-based morality. Rejecting any supernatural authority, it submits that we can live ethical and fulfilling lives by placing human well-being, interests, and happiness at the center of our moral decision making.

Denying supernatural and religious views as a basis of morality and decision-making, secular humanism affirms some notions of a human nature—human experience, human need, and human reason—as ethical foundations.

1. Human Experience as Moral Basis

Secular humanism explains that moral rules are derived from human experience. For instance, it claims that we do not have to be religious to realize that to live in peace and happiness, we must not assault each other. Through experience, its adherents explain, we understand that though we may want to assault, we do not want to be assaulted. Even if sometimes we are tempted to steal, yet we do not want to be stolen from. And although at times we are enticed to kill, yet we do not want to be murdered.

From experiential knowledge, a rule like this allegedly emerged: “Let no one do these things that we can live in peace and realize the human good we need.” Secular humanists aver that there is every reason people have come up with these rules without having to be told by God that these are legitimate moral laws.

2. Human Need and Reason

Secular humanists admit that Ethics is conventional, but it has a natural basis. For them, its natural basis is not the so-called natural law, nor some law written in man’s heart or in Scriptures. The natural basis of ethics, they assert, is none less than human need and human reason.

To prove this view, they point to things which we hate: we hate to bleed, to be wounded, to be killed, and to be stolen from. It is claimed that we make our laws, using our reason, by considering these things. Thus, it is submitted that the natural basis of morality are the universal human needs such as the need for security, safety, love, and by extension, the need to secure our families and teach our children to fulfill their potentials.

Allegedly, the reason we have reasonable moral rules is that we have these needs. Hence, it is claimed that we do not need rules from God—all we just need is to be human, to have the needs we have, and to have some human intelligence or reason.

3. An Analysis of Secularism and Humanism

By removing God in the picture, secularism and humanism, in effect, affirm that the rules of morality were just fabricated by human beings using human nature as the basis of this fabrication. As their proponents inevitably admit, morality is conventional having human need, experience, and reason as natural foundations.

However, advocating this view amounts to proposing that objective right and wrong does not exist at all. Subscribing to secularism and humanism, it is actually impossible to really condemn maltreatment, cruelty, or corruption as morally wrong.

Some courses of actions, say rape, may not be practically beneficial, and so in the course of human history it has been prohibited. But notice that on secular humanist perspective, there is nothing really wrong about it. If moral rules are nothing but mere conventional rules or customs that people adopt over the course of time, then a freethinker who decides to disobey the conventional rules is not really immoral in the true sense, but is merely ‘unconventional’ or ‘uncultured.’ In fact, if a violator—for instance, a very influential person—can escape the social consequences, then there is nothing really wrong with transgressing ‘conventional’ rules.

Also, we cannot praise brotherhood, equality, or love as really morally good in secular humanism. At best, we can only regard them as ‘practical’ or ‘beneficial’. Thus, in secular humanist worldview, it is hard to have absolute right and wrong that imposes itself on our consciousness or conscience.

Secular humanism cannot also account for the objective morality sensibly established by moral realism and objectivism. In essence, objective morality means that moral rules are non-conventional. Moral rules are not simply based on human convention but they relate to necessary values that stand regardless of whether or not anyone believes in them. If Hitler’s party had conquered the world in the Second World War and eliminated everybody who disagreed with its anti-Semitism, we maintain that anti-Semitism would still be wrong. The attempt to obliterate all the Jews is an example of an objective wrong.

In their attempt to reject God and submit human nature as basis of morality, one may ask the secular humanists, “If there is no God who made humans in His image, then what’s so special about human beings?” Humanists confirm ethical concepts such as moral responsibility, human rights, dignity, and values. But the question is, how did we come to be morally responsible, rights-bearing beings? If humans were just material beings produced by a material universe, as claimed by non-theists, then why think we have moral obligations and dignity?

Non-theism explains that we are products of valueless, physical and chemical processes in a cause-and-effect series from the big bang. However, we know that from nothing, nothing comes, and so from ‘being valueless,’ comes ‘being valueless’. Thus, it’s unexplainable how we progress from a valueless sequence of causes and effects from the big bang onward, finally arriving at valuable, morally accountable, dignity-bearing human beings that we are.

Correspondingly, we may also ask the non-theists, “If nature is all there is, how do we move from the way things are (the descriptive) to the way things ought to be (the prescriptive)?”

In the absence of God, it is so hard to think that human beings have non-material properties such as consciousness, reasoning power, personhood, moral sense, and values. No physical science textbook explains moral value as one of matter’s properties. So again, we ask, how could morally valuable and responsible beings emerge from valueless matter?

In non-theist standpoint like secular humanism, mankind is essentially nothing but just like a cosmic rock lost somewhere in a purposeless universe doomed to perish soon. In this worldview, it’s inexplicable how objective value or goodness can be accounted for.

Understandably, non-theists are typically materialists and naturalists who regard man as a purely animal organism. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his being, then he is not qualitatively different from other animal species. On a materialistic anthropology, there is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more valuable than rats. And it’s hard to imagine how love or justice could exist in an animal world, say, during the Jurassic period.

Suppose one person kills another, the act could never be considered unjust or immoral for it would be just like a predatory bird seizing a fish from the sea. Moral duties, ethical values, and objective right and wrong simply do not exist in this secular humanist philosophy.

We do not in any way discredit the role of human experience and reason in ethics. In fact, we acknowledge that they are necessary in determining which course of actions is morally preferable and in actually performing moral actions. In fact, moral judgments must be supported by good reasons as morality is ideally an effort to guide one’s conduct by reasons—that is, to do what there are the best reasons for doing.

However, to suppose that human reason is never God-given and that it exists with no non-natural property would give us no reason to trust our own reason. As C. S. Lewis puts it:

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that the atoms inside my skull happen for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a bye-product, the sensation I call thought. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It is like upsetting a milk-jug and hoping that the way the splash arranges itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.” (Lewis, 1943, p. 32) … Continue reading

© 2014-present by Jensen DG. Mañebog/MyInfoBasket.com

Also Check Out: From Socrates to Mill: An Analysis of Prominent Ethical Theories, also by author Jensen DG. Mañebog

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