The Positive Values of Atheism, Secularism and Secular Humanism

1) The Values   1 & 2

2) Accentuating the Positive   

3) Confusing Argument with Personality

1) The Values 1.

Appendix – The Values of Secular Humanism

Why should Humanism be taught in schools?

Because it is unacceptable that belief in the supernatural  and religions, should be taught (endorsed) in schools without it being balanced with the equal teaching (or endorsement )of the views and values of secular humanism.

The POSITIVE VALUES OF SECULAR HUMANISM (Atheism, secularism and humanism)

·         We value rationalism, scepticism and use of the critical faculty;  (we are against superstition – belief in the supernatural and sectarianism)

·         We value belief in the scientific method and evidence-based decisions making;  

·         We value honesty and objectivity;    

·         We value autonomy, freedom and equality etc.  for men, women and children, within the framework of, and consistent with the needs of the individual and society - 'the public good'.

These are the values, and they apply to every area of human life. They are not specifically or uniquely humanist. Many people strive to measure up to these standards with a greater or lesser degree of success.

But there are many areas in which religious belief and practice distorts these values - creating and maintaining bias, prejudice and discrimination that due to history and their dominant position they have made ‘traditional’.

These are  the policy areas - where these values are not applied e.g.:

·         Education - its institutions and curriculum  - Sectarian Schools, partisan teaching of religion, and the teaching of opinion as fact etc.

·         In the field of Health, Welfare  & bio ethics -Abortion and Contraception, Assisted Dying, Human Fertility and Embryo Research Pressure to prevent Condom Use in HIV/AIDS control programmes, 'faith base' public services.

·         The environment and ecology

·         Religious pressure to prevent UN Population programmes that give abortion and birth control advice.

·         Crime and punishment

·         Prison regimes that give privileges to those who join up to faith based rehabilitation, drugs and alcohol programmes.  Religious oath taking in courts of law.

·         National and international politics

·         Special status of the Vatican in the UN

·         Demand for 'special consultation status' for religions in government and the European Union.

·         The communications industry and the media - print and publishing

·         The blatant bias of BBC radio in refusing to fairly represent atheist and secular humanist opinion, compared with the amount of religious programming. Lack of access to the mass media and ‘right of reply’ when false claims are made.

·         Government and administration

·         Automatic tax exemption for church halls but not village halls. Refusal to extend equal  rights to secular users of church owned premises even though they are effectively subsidised from general taxation.

·         Personal Issues and the rights of women, gays & children.

Aristotle said that there is no point in studying ethics unless it would have some beneficial effect on the way one lived ones life  -   ['Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online Version 2.0]

These are the areas of  practical  applied secular humanism

 

1) The Values 2.

The value of atheism, is that it states quite clearly that its ideology does not accept the existence of any supernatural entity. That solutions to problems have to be negotiated, using  intelligence, knowledge,  rationality and good judgment, without recourse to belief in myth and dogma.

The value of secularism is in its necessary place in politics, social policy, government and administration at local and national level. Ensuring Freedom for Religion, Freedom from Religion within a state that does not give privileges to religions is essential for peace and harmony between people of different beliefs and cultures. It is IMO absolutely central to peaceful human society. Secularism IMO  stands with democracy and liberal political ideologies in the formulation of policies that maximise individual freedom and equality, consistent with community and 'the common good'.

The value of humanism is in helping people to understand that morality is not the province of religion. That morals and ethics are best understood as a function of intelligent thought and judgement and democratic decision making - in the light of knowledge, experience. It is the process by which people learn to live together as a society in the interests of the group in a state of reasonable harmony and co-operation.

These three sets of values together with the freedom of information that is necessary for correct judgment, avoid the stumbling blocks of superstition, sectarianism, oppression of minorities and economic inequality if they are taken in isolation.

*I use the term to differentiate myself from the humanism that is little more than the 'agnostic humanitarianism' that would be at home in a Unitarian Church or Friends Meeting House.

 

2) Accentuate the Positive..

One of the recurring themes in any discussion of secular humanism*, and particularly with people new to the movement, is that 'Atheism is negative', and that what 'we' need to do is to present humanism as a 'positive'. This in turn translates into "we should not attack religion" because it is negative and therefore 'counter productive'. My atheism is far from negative.

In order to present and explain secular humanism as 'a positive', it is essential to say what it is and why it is necessary.  To do this one has  to  explain  what it is about  the status quo that is wrong. 

If one campaigns for Shelter, one highlights the problems of homelessness as well as advocating the solutions.

In campaigning  for peace one exposes the causes of conflict, as well as proposing conflict resolution strategies.

In selling pain killers one points out the aches and pains for which it is used.

So, in promoting humanism, one exposes the evil effects of religion and advocates the alternatives - secular humanism (atheism + secularism + humanism.)

Intelligent humanists must know this, so why the antipathy to criticising and opposing the widespread ill effects of religion? 

There may well be personal, family  and psychological reasons why some humanists do not want to be outspoken in criticising  religion , but there are also those who just prefer the soft option of promoting what they like to call the 'positive humanism' the 'good without god' side of the equation. Then there are those who are blind to the extent of the problem. It is easy to see that this is possible in  this society, where  'religious beliefs', 'culture' and overt criticism of  superstition and sectarianism is still taboo, there are millions of people who believe that religion is 'quite a good thing on the whole'.  It is as if the  religions had nothing to do with the malign effects that appear to some of us to be so obvious.

The lesson of history must be that religion has been a curse on mankind, from constant violence and killing of endless  religious wars; the Crusades; the Christian gold seeking Conquistadors; the  blood thirsty religions of the Incas and Aztecs; the Catholic Inquisitions in Spain and France; the Witch-hunting in Europe, Britain and America, and the systematic suppression of dissent; tyrannical regimes ruling with the collusion of the dominant religions to their mutual advantage; pogroms and massacres and holocaust in  Western Europe, Russia , the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa, all fueled by centuries of sectarian hatred and anti-Semitism. 

Even today, from religious beliefs, be they Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, even Buddhism, and their sects and cults,  come prejudice and discrimination, against women, Jews, and gays; oppressive class ridden political policies; punitive attitudes particularly to women and the poor;  and political activity that distorts democracy. They  actively work against UN health and population programmes in pursuit of dogma against contraception, condom use and abortion, causing suffering and death from starvation and HIV/AIDS.  They still suppress dissent wherever possible, and use their inherited privileges and organisation  to promote their beliefs and insist on indoctrinating children to continue the process.

At every level of life from personal dependency, guilt and fear, through its effects on family, community and society, religions still mark their territory. Nationally and internationally the religions cause violent conflict, directly or indirectly. Their divisiveness prevents co-operation, and their inflexibility prevents rational negotiated, evidence based settlement of what are often disputes over land and resources.

Everywhere one looks one can see the controlling hands of the religions. Their doctrines on marriage and the family evolved specifically to perpetuate the view that women are inferior. This is why they are so vehemently against same sex partnerships, sex and parenthood outside of marriage and divorce.  Prior to secular marriage 'holy wedlock'  was the only way to have legitimate sex (at least for women) and children. This kept a vice like grip on individuals and society, and ensured that children learned this role model.

In the community, the churches used as they still do today, people's communal needs, to make them reliant on the church. Using their inherited privileges and advantages of premises and paid activists they provide many services, but on a sectarian basis. Thus excluding anyone wanting to opt out of the religious community. This social glue kept and still keeps people complaint unable and unwilling to oppose the church.

Perhaps the worst effect of religion has been their attitudes to women, branding them as inferior and relegating them to domesticity and dependency, the stereotypes of temptress, whore, entertainer, handmaiden  and carer  has done immense harm in producing an unbalanced male orientated society. Worse has been the use of their once total control of education and the exclusion of women from higher education, and consequently the professions, government and administration. The effects of this prejudice and discrimination against women is still very much in evidence, even in most western European democracies. It is less than 80 years since women got the vote, and in Britain today, in employment, childcare and carers rights, pension entitlement, the Criminal Justice system and status and  respect for their views, representation and participation women  still suffer substantial disadvantage.

3) Confusing Argument with Personality

An ideology, a set of ideas and values, stands or falls on the quality and intellectual coherence of the ideas and values themselves, and not on the qualities of those who support or promote them.

They should not be judged by the intelligence, education, personality or characteristics of the proponents, but on their consistency, coherence, worth and practicability.

Political ideologies such as Marxism, socialism, fascism or liberalism ; religious beliefs such as Christianity, Islam Spiritualism, or Paganism, or atheist philosophies, secularism or humanism must be judged on their merits. The characters and tactics of their proponents are but a distraction and a diversion.

Examples of this can be seen by looking at the people who support and have supported  these  ideologies &  values - the great figures whose names are bandied about in the propaganda wars between them. There are political, religious and philosophical figures - leaders, statesmen and tyrants whose opinions  are put forward to 'prove' the veracity of ideas. These people share the entire range of human characteristics. Every ideology has its intellectual 'giants; and supporters who have outstanding talents, intellect, education, ability etc..

One of the greatest fallacies that leads us astray in considering the relative merits of ideas, is the temptation to use the human attributes, and not just the relevant expertise of the supporters of a cause, in judging the soundness and value of that cause.

Examples in the area of politics are characters as diverse as Karl Marx, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Nelson Mandella and Adolph Hitler. In religion there are the saints, clerics & icons of the religions, and individuals such as Erasmus, Martin Luther, John & Charles Wesley & the Dali Lama. In the realms of philosophy there has been a continuous stream of great thinkers, Aristotle and Plato and their predecessors  Greece and Rome, the philosophers of the Middle Ages and the enlightenment, Lock, Hulme and Descarte though the later figures such as Kant and Neitzer to Bertrand Russell and John Paul Sartre to today's contenders who may be considered 'great' in the future.

As can be seen from this, men (and I will return to this) of the highest intellectual ability have and do espouse ideologies as diverse as communism and Nazism; fanatical religious sects and cults, spiritualism and the more benign manifestations of belief; and philosophical ideas such as supernaturalism,  existentialism, dialectical materialism, modern rationalism (empiricism) and humanism.

There are many examples of people who have at different times of their lives used their individual abilities to espouse totally contradictory views, such as Malcolm Muggeridge and Annie Bessant. There appear to be few of these people, probably because they are not remembered because their very inconsistency has prevented subsequent proponents of an ideology from using them in support of their cause.

It must be glaringly obvious from the above that almost all of the 'great figures', leaders and thinkers that we know of were men. This simply reflects the way women were systematically excluded from public life and relegated to domesticity and servicing the needs of men.

It must also be obvious by now, at the beginning of the 21st Century, even to the most hidebound misogynist, that women are not inferior to men in any way, least of all intellectually. So where did these ideas of female inferiority, and intellectual weakness come from, and how did they attain such universal acceptance, and how was it accompllised?

Partly no doubt from the legacy of the early advantages of physical strength and the disadvantages of childbearing and child care but more because of the deliberate exclusion of women from almost all areas of public life and decision making by excluding them from education by the desire of men to continue to assert their superiority. This was accomplished by the collusion of the male dominated, monotheistic religions with the other male elites - government and military. The role of religion was clear, Christianity, Islam and Judaism and other religions sects and cults, asserted their control through their control of education. They owned and controlled the institutions, decided who was taught, what they were taught (and not taught) and by whom they were taught. And as in many countries today, since all the jobs and decision making is done by people so schooled in the controlling ethos, it becomes a self perpetuating system.

A system in which women were totally excluded not only from education, but through that, from the professions, administration and government. And we still have substantial remnants of these systems today, in the West, the Old World - Asia, the Middle East and South America and in the developing world. And where religion is strongest, so is the suppression of women's rights.

In the annals of our own infant secularist movement, we have a prime example of the main themes of this paper - the cult of personality on ideology, on feminism, socialism secularism and......... superstition.

Anne Bessant, was a woman of intelligence and education, young and attractive, from a wealthy middle class devoutly religious family, she was feted for the diversity of her interests, intellect, education, effectiveness & achievements in the fields in which she was active. She influenced and was influenced by many of the prominent men of the progressive movements, Sir Edwin Lutchens, G.B Shaw, Willian Morris, Gandi, and Charles Bradlaugh, and was frenetically active in the early emergence of Left/Liberal politics and secularism in Britain and India.

She  was one of the few women to achieve iconic status in the newly emerging world of secularism,  women's rights, and the improvement in working conditions for men and women workers of the 19th & 20th Century. She lent her talents, intellect and drive  to further women's rights - to be educated,  to vote, to have control over their own fertility with contraception and abortion and she campaigned for  rights for both men and women workers, in the coal mines which employed women and children, the East End Matchgirls and Trade Unionists.

In later life however she took up Theosophy and spiritualism and devoted her talents and enthusiasm with equal fervour to indulging her belief in that particular expression of superstition. She took on all manner of weird beliefs and promoted charlatans and tricksters.

So what does this have to say about Annie Bessant? What does it say about human talent and intelligence? What does it say about Education? And what does it say about ideology?

It says that Annie Bessant was an intelligent woman of her time, in a particular social strata. Earlier she would not have been able to do what she did because of greater social restrictions and lack of education or opportunity. Much later she would not have had the advantage of the 'novelty' of being a women active in public life, and would most likely have been told to 'sit down and shut up' and  been denigrated  as a 'lippy lefty feminist' with all  the renewed confidence of modern sexism born of media prejudice against feminism.

It says about human talent, that it is infinitely variable, but is only of value relative to what one does with it. Education, intellect, talent and ambition do not of themselves confirm or deny the veracity of a set of ideas and values.

Education (depending upon how you define it) is not just a value in itself, but a tool that can be used, like human attributes for a range of purposes - good or bad, and only in conjunction with other attributes and human judgements.

On ideology and Values, it says that they are not dependent on the education or human characteristics of those who support or oppose them.

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