Why I Am Not a Humanist?

“Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.” - The Minimum Statement on Humanism from Humanists International. (Italics mine)

So what could possibly be wrong with this…besides everything? Well, maybe not everything. I can agree that ‘human beings have the right and responsibility to…shape their own lives’, I’m on board with the goal of ‘building a more humane society’ and I embrace ‘an ethic based…on natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry…’, but that’s as far as I can go. 

For example, what does it mean for a ‘life stance’ to be ‘democratic’? To be a citizen of a nation that holds elections periodically? Like Russia? To live in a country that has the word Democratic in its name? Like the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea?

The fact is, defining what it means for a society to be ‘democratic’ is a life’s work in itself and would need to include contributions from Pericles, Aquinas, Luther, Locke, Mill, Rousseau, Jefferson, Prudhomme, Kant, Hegel, Bakunin, Marx, Leo XIII, Lenin, and Abbie Hoffman, to name just a few. 

We throw around the word ‘democratic’ as if we had some shared idea of its meaning. We don’t; and more often than not, the more we talk about democracy, the less we practice it.   

‘Meaning’ is an essential component of a worthwhile life but no one can give ‘meaning’ to herself any more than anyone can give their own meaning to the words in a dictionary. The word ‘meaning’ includes the verb ‘to mean’ and nothing can mean itself. The idea that it can has no meaning!

Archibald MacLeish made the dichotomy clear when he wrote, “A poem should not mean but be.” Meaning transcends being and vice versa; they are mutually exclusive. You cannot mean something and be that thing at the same time. B can mean A only if B ≠ A. 

“Man’s search for meaning” (Viktor Frankl) is precisely why we cannot give meaning to our own lives. ‘Meaning’ must transcend the thing that means. If our lives are to have meaning, that meaning cannot come from our own imaginations. It cannot be purely subjective; it must have an objective component, or it is meaningless. 

Nietzsche weighed in on this: “…It is absurd to want to hand over his (our) nature to some purpose or other. We invented the concept ‘purpose’: in reality, purpose is lacking… There exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” (Twilight of the Idols) 

The ‘God is Dead’ philosopher is clear: without the Transcendent, value and purpose are impossible. I side with Nietzsche on this!

So then, “an ethic based on human values” must be a product of circular reasoning…at best. We are engaged precisely in the quest to define those ‘human values’ – that is the end, not the means! To suggest that we adopt an ethic based on values we have not yet identified or defined is nonsensical. 

On the other hand, I can embrace ‘natural values’. Although we are part of Nature, we are not equivalent to it. We can ‘read nature’ as we would a book; we can identify the values that seem to guide natural processes and, if we choose, we can embrace those values.

The ‘spirit of reason and free inquiry’ is part of the human condition and I celebrate that; but I am not willing to wall myself off from ideas that might originate beyond our merely human capabilities. Natural values (above), for example, refer to the world outside us, and I am willing to accept ideas from AI Bots, from ‘little green men’ (if there are any), and from non-human, terrestrial life forms (my cat).

More controversially, I am open to the idea that humanity’s highest achievements may not be the mere products of our own nature and nurture. Who can listen to Bach or Beethoven and not believe that something transcendent is working through them? Who can believe that that some guy down the street created the Brandenburg Concertos out of whole cloth?

I take special issue, of course, with the final statement. To my ear, it reads like a confession – a confession that this whole elaborate edifice has been constructed merely to rid the world of God. We cannot accept the possibility that homo sapiens might not be ‘Queen of the Hill’. We find the idea of God demeaning.

We have come full circle. Once upon a time, being made in the image and likeness of God was humanity’s proudest boast. Now we resent the idea.

Listen to the language: “It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality”… even if they turn out to be true? The presence or absence of God should be something we arrive at as a consequence of  ‘reason and free inquiry’ but here the absence of God is elevated to the status of an axiom.

It has been said that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” (Samuel Johnson – 1775) During the early days of the Vietnam War, such ‘patriotism’ was embodied in the slogan: “My country right or wrong!” 

Has ‘atheism’ become the new ‘patriotism’? To my ear, the Humanist Statement (above) proclaims, “My atheism, right or wrong! I’d rather be wrong than worship.” One is reminded of Milton (Paradise Lost): “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m only on board with the God Hypothesis as long as it best fits the data. If you have a better idea, bring it! (But spoiler alert: that ‘better idea’ is not Humanism.) For me, ‘God exists’ is not a premise but a conclusion. Therefore, theists are the true empiricists. Atheism, at least as stated above, is dogmatism. 

Finally, the Humanist Statement (above) reads a lot like a schematic for a new configuration of deck chairs on the Titanic. The universe came to be ‘accidentally’ and it will cease to be… ‘not with a bang but a whimper’. (Eliot) Likewise, you came to be through the accidental union of two sex cells, and you will someday come to decorate someone’s mantle…if you’re lucky. Time is the great eraser! There are no more footprints in the sand once the tide has come in…and out again. It is as if the world had never been. 

So that’s why I’m not a humanist! I cannot find value or purpose under such conditions. But, humanists of the world, unite with us; put side your hubris, your prejudices, your dogmas and join in the universal search for truth. “Let’s mix, Max!” (Yellow Submarine) 

Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son (c. 1820–1823), a mixed media mural transferred to canvas and now housed in the Museo del Prado, serves as a stark visual metaphor for the self-consuming nature of humanism: just as Saturn, in a desperate attempt to maintain control, devours his own offspring, so too does humanism, in rejecting transcendence, undermine the very foundations it claims to uphold, resulting in a worldview that ultimately consumes itself.