Writer Christopher Benson reviews The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited, by John Carroll, in the Weekly Standard. The book, which I haven’t read, appears to lodge the familiar conservative attack on the alleged pretensions of secular humanism to improve the world without reference to God:
[The] rallying illusion [of humanism], [Carroll writes,] is bred deeply into us by now–that knowledge will make us better and happier, and that we are free, free to improve ourselves.
At the risk of being accused of shallowness, may I suggest that knowledge in fact can make us happier and that more knowledge is always better than less. The Brooklyn Museum contains a painting called Her First Born (1888) by the American Robert Reid. A young woman from the working or agricultural class lays her head and arms over a small draped casket in a simple, white-washed room. Two candles burn next to the casket; a crucifix hangs on the wall between the candles.
This image is no longer a familiar one, but the death of children was once a constant agony of life, as artists from Ben Jonson to Gustav Mahler have memorialized. So, too, was the death of mothers during childbirth. The accomplishments of medical knowledge have all but eliminated these sources of sorrow and suffering from the Western experience, and we are better off—and yes, on average, happier–for it. Of course, children generate many other ways of being miserable for their parents, and perhaps we always define unhappiness up, but I’d rather have the option of being unhappy about more trivial matters than about premature death.
The time of the Black Death was one of impeccable religiosity, untouched by humanist hubris. I doubt whether many critics of the humanist and Enlightenment projects would trade places with 14th century Italians during the plague.
The internet is a happiness-generating device. Faust sold his soul for the knowledge that the internet puts at our fingertips for free; anyone who is not happy with such power—at least every now and then–is insensate.
Carroll writes:
Without God, without a transcendental law, there is only death.
Gee! That seems to be selling human creativity and companionship pretty short.
And I would say that we have “improved ourselves,” as Carroll puts it. We have reined in the human propensity for violence over the centuries, Steven Pinker has shown. Western society is less corrupt and more rule-bound and humane than it ever was.
Yes, yes, I know. There’s the nuclear bomb. But the benefits to human society generated by nuclear physics are enormous, and it’s not clear to me that earlier, religion-saturated societies would have had any more scruples about using it than we do, given the willingness of war-making or heresy-eliminating believers to use all the technology of destruction available to them at the time.
Conservatives who argue that the secular striving for human progress and knowledge is a poor substitute for “the ‘I am’ of Jesus,” as Benson terms it, are making a worthy argument that deserves respect and close attention. Perhaps they are ultimately right. Yet I confess that sometimes they strike me—perhaps unfairly and ignorantly–just a little bit like liberals who rail against corporations, bankers, and entrepreneurs, while benefiting from the risk-taking and drive of such suspect capitalists at every minute of their lives.
I don’t know if you’re aware yet, but the RSS version of this post is littered with spam at the end.
littered with spam
Mmmm…
I haven’t got any, the post ends right at ” every minute of their lives.”
I am using this feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SecularRight
I saw it in my RSS feed as well — it looks like it’s tacked on to the end of the post, actually. There’s a with an encoded style value (display: none?) to hide it. Might want to make sure your version of wordpress is up to date, and any addons are recent, etc.
I got the RSS spam ejaculation too. Lots of links to Cialis, etc.
I don’t see that, frankly. I think the people pulling the strings have changed, and the dance of the marionette has altered. But corruption has increased to grander and grander scales.
Those are flaws, not improvements.
I’m seeing the same thing. It’s in a hidden DIV so it doesn’t show up in most browsers, but if you view source it’s there on this page and in the FeedBurner feed, plus Google Reader shows it.
@John Cain
Jeez, that’s bad. Never seen spam in my feed reader like THAT.
The percentage of GDP spent on military preparedness around the world has declined significantly over the past century. The Christian right likes to believe that if we ditch Christianity, that we will fall into some sort of “Max Mad” like scenario. I see no evidence to believe that their predictions have any validity.
On this post:
Heather, I am continually enchanted by your ability to highlight the power humanist morality and enlightenment progress. This is a beautiful post and it is a delight to read your writings.
It may make you smile to know that several of my friends and I all – independently and without prior collaboration – changed our job title in our fictitious organization to Official Nice Person as a result of your earlier post.
On the feed spam:
xkcd (http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/06/18/security-breach/) reported a similar issue today. It is apparently due to a wordpress plugin that is easily hacked. I don’t think there is a fix available yet.
Kevin Lawrence: That is very Nice of you!
I’ll make two points:
1. For most people, it is reassuring to believe in a loving God. In fact, it seems that people who believe in God are happier.
http://www.ifallsdailyjournal.com/community/forums/worship/study-belief-god-brings-happiness-and-helps-folks-cope
I wholeheartedly agree with Heather Mac Donald that society is much better off now than it was hundreds of years ago, the main reason being our higher standard of living from scientific/technological progress, and a secondary reason being increased freedom from theocratic oppression. Therefore we seem to have a prisoner’s dilemma. As a whole, humanity is better off with humanistic beliefs, but individuals are better off being religious.
2. It is worth noting that someone can believe in science and freedom while also believing in God. Speaking for myself, I was interested in science from pretty much the time I was walking and talking, but I continued to believe in God for a long time after. There are many scientists, now and in the past, who had strong religious beliefs. Therefore, it may be possible to get the societal benefit of good science and the individual benefit of belief in God.
On the other hand, I agree that “more knowledge is always better than less”. Personally, I want to know if God really exists, not just feel better. I God doesn’t exist, I would rather know, even at the cost of not feeling as good.
I find that most Christians I know find happiness in “non-spiritual” pursuits despite claiming to be Christian. They have premarital sex, drink beer, smoke pot and if they’re out too late, even miss church on Sunday. Most people really don’t truly believe in Christianity and you can see this when their loved ones die. I can’t understand why they cry when in a relatively short time (compared to eternity) they’ll eventually be with them(in heaven)? The reason they cry is becuase they know they won’t see their loved ones, therefore they don’t believe in the after life, which makes me conclude that they don’t really believe in Christianity.
Of course, the problem with loosing Christianity is that the Western world has reverted to the Cult of Equality instead. This is even worse in many ways than Christianity was/is. Westerners need a new faith that isn’t as superstitious as Christianity, and not as destructive as the Cult of Equality.
I’m not sure what this could be?
thanks for the spam help guys. i removed the injection of the DB, and am looking to plug the hole.
It shouldn’t have to be said, but the entire argument that life is meaningless without God is putting the cart before the horse.
If God exists, then those who do not know God are missing out on something amazing.
If God does not exist, then the believers aren’t any better off than the rest of us (except to the extent that false faith has benefits).
Are the arguments in favor of God’s existence so weak that proponents should rely on the beneficial aspects of false faith?
I’m all for pushing truth as valuable in itself, but it’s not clear to me that this is what you mean when you say that “more knowledge is always better than less”. You’ve just mentioned knowledge making us happier and you go on to talk about how useful knowledge is.
But it’s clear that not all knowledge is instrumentally valuable. Some is harmful, and some makes us less happy. It’s easy to construct scenarios in which learning something true actually leads to us making worse decisions – some evidence does not necessarily push us in the direction of the decision that we would make with all evidence. And there are all kinds of things that we’re less happy knowing, including some things that even the most truth-valuing philosopher wouldn’t want to know. If I record a baseball game, I prefer not to be told who wins before I get to watch it. The spouses of cheaters are almost certainly happier not knowing.
There’s also not an obvious link between more technology and more happiness. Getting a new toy makes a child happier, but I don’t know that you’d find a significant difference in happiness between a child who’s never heard of a video game and one with a Wii. It’s not clear to me that 18th century people would have reported less average happiness than people now. We wouldn’t trade places with them, but that doesn’t mean we’re happier.
I don’t know what this word “happiness” means here (feeling good? that eudaimonia of this blog’s manifesto?), so I can’t tell whether people are happier now then they were when infant mortality was high. There’s no way even to know whether this “happiness” should be an important good if we don’t know what it is. I do know that anthropologists have often noted a joie de vivre in various societies that have a high infant mortality rate, and that joie de vivre is not something generally associated with prosperous Scandinavia.
By the time you get to “the internet is a happiness-generating device” (OK, well now it’s clear that you don’t mean eudaimonia), I feel like I’m reading Virginia Postrel. Happy happy joy joy! I use the internet because it’s a pleasant way to waste the time I should be spending on other things. I’m one of those hypocrites who complains about modernity, including those corporations, bankers, and entrepreneurs you mentioned, while enjoying its benefits. I’m so awful. I even think we might be better off – happier in one sense of the word – if the automobile had never been invented, but I ain’t gonna give up my car.
“I can’t understand why they cry when in a relatively short time (compared to eternity) they’ll eventually be with them(in heaven)? The reason they cry is becuase they know they won’t see their loved ones, therefore they don’t believe in the after life, which makes me conclude that they don’t really believe in Christianity.”
I understand your argument, but I’ll appeal to biological disposition here. Though logic dictates they should respond in the manner you describe, the mourning of death is so ingrained in our psyche that even intense religious belief can not override it. I imagine in the mourning process, as the intense emotional response tempers, many Christians are able to placate themselves with what you say above.
“Westerners need a new faith that isn’t as superstitious as Christianity, and not as destructive as the Cult of Equality.”
I’d hope that we actually don’t need an overarching “faith” to produce a productive society, but I doubt the masses can be stable without some belief system. As Napoleon said, “Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.” and “Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich.”
The Christian right likes to believe that if we ditch Christianity, that we will fall into some sort of “Max Mad” like scenario. I see no evidence to believe that their predictions have any validity.
Did you miss out on the 20th Century? Knowledge is double-edged blade. Heather likes to thump on about the miseries of the medieval life which were exacerbated by ignorance, and that’s not a bad point, but we should also look at how knowledge was deliberately used to create misery. We have a whole catalog of horror from the last century. Don’t like 14th Century Europe? Okay, how would you like to live in Mao’s China, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia or the Ukraine under Stalin? Pretty miserable times, too, and those were in officially atheistic states.
No, I’m not saying atheism leads to communism. I’m an atheist myself. What I am saying is that we avoid smarmy self-satisfaction. Tearing apart long-standing cultural mores and traditions has consequences. It pays to remember the “RIGHT” in “secular right.” If you want to remove an existing structure, you should have a good idea of what you’re replacing it with.
Oh yeah, another thing on those happiness-generating devices. In my own limited and anecdotal experience, the most effective happiness-generating devices by far are children (one’s own). That’s true for various definitions of “happiness,” very much including that eudaimonia thingie which seems to have been raised and then abandoned at this blog. No other happiness device even comes close to children, but again that’s just anecdotal. (There are other such putative devices which I, as a life-long atheist, have never tried.)
All of which is relevant to Heather Mac Donald’s post. She writes about the death of children, but not about the birth of children. For those who haven’t noticed, it’s in our progressive, internet-accessed, low-mortality modern society that people are deciding to forgo what to me, at least, is the greatest happiness in life. Nobody knows for sure why that’s happening, but all this material progress celebrated here probably has quite a lot to do with it.
My apologies for the HTML screw-up, and a Preview button would be great.
a Preview button would be great.
Yeah but that’s against WordPress “religion”, this has always puzzled me.
(I am not commenting on the substance of your posts because its only related to your agenda, which, BTW, I deem to be trash…)
Tearing apart long-standing cultural mores and traditions has consequences.
This is called the human biodiversity argument against libertarianism and there is truth in it. Most people are too irrational and otherwise emotionally screwed up to handle complete freedom. I think we all agree on this (this blog would not exist if that were not the case).
That is why we create a system for them that is suited for their needs. Perhaps social conservatism is that system. I prefer a hybrid system, social conservatism for the people who need it, libertarianism for the people who do not.
If you want to remove an existing structure, you should have a good idea of what you’re replacing it with.
I’m working on this. I’ll let you know when I’m done.
Is western culture really declining?
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/labels/previous%20generations%20were%20more%20depraved.php
I think not.
For those who haven’t noticed, it’s in our progressive, internet-accessed, low-mortality modern society that people are deciding to forgo what to me, at least, is the greatest happiness in life. Nobody knows for sure why that’s happening, but all this material progress celebrated here probably has quite a lot to do with it.
Perhaps they disagree with you as to what is the greatest happiness in life? Happiness, after all, is a notoriously subjective quality.
I certainly wouldn’t want to trade places with folks in the Middle Ages/black death. However, I think one can make the argument that folks needed religion a lot more back then. If I/we lived during harder times when misery struck more often, I think we’d probably be more religious. Marx was right that religion has an opiate affect on the masses. But Leo Strauss may also have been right that the masses need their opiate. And better religion than actual opiates.
Not saying that’s my personal position, but just something to think about.
I think I understand where you guys are coming from in the whole conservatism vs libertarianism thing. You seem to be primarily focused on the dating game, which is indeed zero-sum. I, of coursed, tend to focus on economic issues as well as bio-medicine, which are positive-sum. Since I have not been in the U.S. dating game since 1990, I don’t think about this so much, let alone a political context (I lived in Asia for 10 years and got married in 2000). Of course, social conservatives tend to be free market oriented on economic issues (Mike Huckabee and Pat Buchanon, not withstanding).
My biggest hangup with the social conservatives these days is that many of them seem to express hostility towards healthy life extension. Leon Kass is the most notable example here. However, this hostility does not seem to be limited to him. Everyone once in a while, the issue of healthy life extension is discussed on a social conservative or religious website and the attitude is always negative.
Given that radical life extension is an existential issue for me, of course I’m going to despise anyone who expresses hostility towards such and will tend to associate their entire worldview with their hostile attitude towards healthy life extension. I actually agree with much of what conservatives have to say on most other issues.
If the conservatives want to win support from people like myself, they need to change their attitude towards healthy life extension and muzzle the people who are hostile towards it. As I said before, this is an existential issue for me and of course existential matters trump political considerations.
kurt9 wrote:
I’m working on this. I’ll let you know when I’m done.
That’s fine, but for now do you acknowledge that religious right has some warrant for concern? Mind you, it’s not just backwoods Baptists voicing these sorts of concerns. A lot of secularists so as well, from Nietzsche to Theodore Dalrymple.
That’s fine, but for now do you acknowledge that religious right has some warrant for concern?
Not at all. Understanding a person’s worldview does not necessarily imply agreement with that worldview.
Paul Kurtz strongly influenced my conversion to atheism but his humanist credo is profoundly liberal and by no means a reliable guide for moral decision-making.What Iam saying is that liberal atheists are the dominant species of moral philosophers today. They deviate from Christian morality very substantially, but they have a following that is snowballing as society creeps further into degeneracy. Heather is right about the positive effects of science and technology, but Obama-like abortion decisions and 3 month murder sentences are not my cup of tea.Liberalism’s innate defects guarantee a moral quagmire in the near future as Christianity continues to melt in modernism’s relentless heat.We, as conservative atheists, are hung out in limbo between crumbling Christianity and totalitarian liberalism.
That’s fine, but for now do you acknowledge that religious right has some warrant for concern?
Recognizing the some people may benefit from the strictures of social conservatism in no way means that I need those strictures as well.