Eight weeks ago I wrote about False assumptions and how Christians suffered in the past because of them just as atheists suffer today. Atheism doesn’t have a philosophy or principles to counter these false assumptions any more than it has a philosophy or principles to deserve them. Secular humanism does put forward a set of positive traits and promotes a world view. These are:
- Need to test beliefs
- Reason, evidence, scientific method
- Fulfillment, growth, creativity
- Search for truth
- This life
- Ethics
- Building a better world
Ethics - A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
Ethics is a major branch of philosophy. I simply cannot do it credit in a brief summary and so must assume that everyone has some basic idea of what is ethical and what is not. Secular ethics are one particular branch of the larger philosophy. In short the idea of secular ethics is based on a commonality of human experience. Humans, being social animals with the same basic physical and mental processes, have similar needs and desires.
- The pagan tribes of Norway had a greeting ‘Flag, Flax, Fodder and Frigg’ which roughly equates to a blessing for home, clothing, food and love, our basic needs as humans.
- The Christians have the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Which is an essentially reasonable idea also known as the ethic of reciprocity that most religions adhere to in one form or another.
- The Baha’i have “And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself.”
- Confucius said: “Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.” - Analects XV.24. Hindus have “That man who regards all creatures as his own self, and behaves towards them as towards his own self, laying aside the rod of chastisement and completely subjugating his wrath, succeeds in attaining to happiness”,
- Muslims have: “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.”
- Even the famous Satanist Aleister Crowley said “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and places the idea of Sin as a restriction binding people to certain actions. In discarding Sin satanists become free to love without bounds.
There is a commonality of ethics throughout human religion but it is clearly not bound to religion. Secular ethics are obviously not drawn from religion but are drawn from the common idea that religions enjoy. In fact the Dalai Lama said, when discussing human values like affection and compassion “We need these human values. I call these secular ethics, secular beliefs. There’s no relationship with any particular religion. Even without religion, even as nonbelievers, we have the capacity to promote these things.”
Yet some theists like to maintain that belief in gods, whether theirs or another, is a requirement for ethics and for good, moral behaviour. They claim that without heaven as a reward or hell as a punishment there can be no control on the negative actions of people. I have only one thing to say beyond the utter refutation of this: If you need to believe in God to stop you raping, murdering and stealing then I am glad that you have that belief. I do not need it because I, like most people, can act morally without regard to religion.
Beyond this basic idea that humans decide for ourselves what is ethical behaviour those who self define as secular humanists also seek to discover what actions can improve life both for themselves, for society and, by extension, the world. This could be a material improvement through sharing resources, new technology or medicine or an idea. I know it is a bit of a stereotype but we embrace the idea of science being used to make things better for ourselves. For example without agricultural techniques and machines we’d only be able to feed 1% of the current world’s population.
We also follow the very simply idea that what is good feels good to do. Helping others feels good, seeing people benefit from your aid gives us a warm glow of happiness. Doing harm to others or causing suffering feels bad so we seek to avoid it. It is a rare individual who does not have these feelings. Moreover we encourage or reinforce good behaviour in our children and peers and discourage bad behaviour if for no other reason than we want to mix with others who we can trust to help us if we ever need it.
Popularity: 47% [?]
A recent poll from CNN.com reads:
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