Humanism

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Leela said:
Hi Kimmie,

Humanists believe that there are objective moral truths to be known. Catholics and Humanists do not disagree in that regard, but they do disgaree as to what some of these moral truths are. The good news is that they agree about most things.

The other issue here seems to be about the incentive of Heaven that is missing in Humanism. I think that is what you are saying anyway. Can you explain in more detail what you mean about that?

Best,
Leela
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Hiyas Leela:)

What I’m attempting to say is Religious law AND secular law provide me fiber. But secular laws don’t always align to what I know as morally and ethically wrong. Example: The fiber of Religious law tells me: Abortion / euthanasia isn’t a sport…but secular law wants me to view it as such.

We can not be deniers of the realities that; what is good for me at this point of time here and now ] is based on my perceptions… AT that point of time.

I hope this helps
 
Humanism and Catholicism seem to agree that “Love your neighbor” is what life is about.
I had a beer once with a humanist friend. I asked him about Jesus. He responded that Jesus was a good person.
 
I don’t think you can really say that Jesus was a good person unless you believe he was Lord. If he was not God incarnate then he was a blasphemous, evil, lying fool who deserved to be run out of town. He told people he was God and that he was the source of their salvation. Anyone who said this today would be seen as a total nut, no one would say they were a good person. They would be either very evil or not sane.

So why do so many people who aren’t Christian say Jesus was a “good man”? I see this as evidence of his divinity.
 
noi4noi4 said:
Humanism and Catholicism seem to agree that “Love your neighbor” is what life is about.
I had a beer once with a humanist friend. I asked him about Jesus. He responded that Jesus was a good person.
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“Love your neighbor” or the Golden Rule is the most commonly known (in the US anyway) articulation of an ethic that has been articulated by just about every civilization and religion in history. It is an ethical teaching that may predate Christianity by 2000 years. For example, an ancient Egyptian inscription was translated to mean “Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do.” Confucianism taught “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” In Hinduism we find “This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.” These are all religions that predate the birth of Jesus.

Many other examples can be found here:
religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm

It is no surprise to me that your humanist friend considers Jesus to have been good, since a humanist is likely to sympathize with anyone who teaches the ethics of reciprocity. The Golden Rule is a good example of what the humanists mean when they say that we can try to learn moral truths through rational means rather as opposed to social revelation. What could be a more rational approach to ethics than the ethics of reciprocity? Who would ever take my wished seriously if I do to them what I ask them not to do to me?

There seems to be a frequent misconception that Christianity is the origin of this ethic or that Christianity must be true since its Golden Rule is true.

Best,
Leela
 
kib said:
I don’t think you can really say that Jesus was a good person unless you believe he was Lord. If he was not God incarnate then he was a blasphemous, evil, lying fool who deserved to be run out of town. He told people he was God and that he was the source of their salvation. Anyone who said this today would be seen as a total nut, no one would say they were a good person. They would be either very evil or not sane.

So why do so many people who aren’t Christian say Jesus was a “good man”? I see this as evidence of his divinity.
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A secular humanist would hold blasphemy to be an imaginary crime, so committing this sin would not cause a humanist to doubt Jesus’s goodness. Also, many people doubt that Jesus actually said all the things that the gospels claim he said. The humanist friend in question is likely to be thinking of the portrayal of the Jesus in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus never claims to be God compared to the other synoptic Gospels where the divinity of Jesus is treated as a secret shared only with the Twelve rather than the Gospel of John where you are right to say that if this is an accurate portrayal, Jesus would have surely been run out of town as a lunatic. On the other hand, he was crucified, wasn’t he?

At any rate, humanists are likely to believe that the gospels did not give accurate accounts not necessarily out of deliberate attempt to deceive but more likely that they simply wrote down the stories that they were told decades after the fact after the stories had already been embellished. Or they may believe that Jesus’s claims to divinity were added later like the final verses of Mark (The earliest manuscripts end with the crucifixion and the business about snake handling was surely added later.) or the story of the stoning of the adulterer in John which is absent in the earliest manuscripts.

So there are many other possibilities other than those Lewis posed in his famous “lunatic, liar, Lord” trilemma. Lewis’s arguments tended to be of the form “the truth must be either A or B” where B is favorable to Christianity. He would then go on to show how stupid A is and announce “it must be B!” I’m always left wondering, “yeah, but what about C,D,E,…?”

Best,
Leela
 
Agreed. Jesus does say the Golden Rule is equal to loving God (nothing else). One is public the other private.
 
kimmielittle said:
Hiyas Leela:)

What I’m attempting to say is Religious law AND secular law provide me fiber. But secular laws don’t always align to what I know as morally and ethically wrong. Example: The fiber of Religious law tells me: Abortion / euthanasia isn’t a sport…but secular law wants me to view it as such.

We can not be deniers of the realities that; what is good for me at this point of time here and now ] is based on my perceptions… AT that point of time.

I hope this helps
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I think what you are dealing with here is the fact that we are historically situated human beings whose values are often culturally derived. We have no way to stand outside of this context to access moral truths for which, if truth is truth, must not be depend on any particular culture’s prejudices.

Moral reasoning always starts with basic premises. What if our culture has made false assumptions to start with? Then the conclusions we draw will also be false.

Catholics believe that they have found a way out of this problem through divine revelation. Humanists believe that the Catholic perspective itself is just one more example of a cultural phenomenon since so many other divergent religions also believe that they possess the one true special divine revelation of moral truth.

Though humanists can see no way for us to stand outside of out epistemic context to gain special access to the truth of the fundamental assumptions from which we can reliably reason to determine other truths, we still have the ability to hold our own assumptions in question. Our beliefs are not so culturally derived that we cannot question the assumptions our own cultures. It is by always questioning our own assumptions rather than holding these assumptions as unchallengeable dogmas that we will make the most moral progress. So humanists believe that they are following a path that is more likely to lead to moral truth than that of the believers in special revelation.

Best,
Leela
 
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