{"id":6235,"date":"2011-08-24T21:48:58","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T21:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=6235"},"modified":"2011-08-25T03:31:31","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T03:31:31","slug":"secular-humanism-trashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/secular-humanism-trashed\/","title":{"rendered":"Secular Humanism, Trashed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/hobbes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/hobbes-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"hobbes\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-6242\" \/><\/a>My thanks to Polichinello for highlighting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/religion\/?story=\/politics\/war_room\/2011\/08\/23\/lind_humanism\">this <\/a>rather good <em>Salon<\/em> article by Michael Lind on secular humanism. I thought it made a useful supplement to an earlier <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/275474\/liberals-science-and-pessimistic-fork-john-derbyshire\">Corner contribution<\/a> by Derb\/Bradlaugh, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/275503\/science-hobbes-derb-andrew-stuttaford\">posted accordingly<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Derb, in some respects Michael Lind\u2019s entertaining demolition of secular humanism in <em>Salon <\/em>echoes a number of your points about the use that our species often makes of, to borrow your phrase, \u201cpretty lies.\u201d Here is an extract: <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The secular humanist movement avoids the difficult question of the coexistence of in-group altruism and inter-group rivalries by imagining, with John Lennon, that conflicts would vanish if only people stopped being religious and patriotic\u2026Unfortunately for Humanist Lennonism, evolutionary biology does not provide much hope for the sort of altruistic personal commitment to planetary solidarity that secular humanists want to encourage\u2026To the extent that natural science can inform the way we think about politics and economics, it undermines the view that human beings are, or could be, rational actors devoted to the common good, rather than emotion-driven, semi-rational cousins of chimps and gorillas. On this point the secular philosophers Hume and Hobbes are more convincing than Bentham, Dewey and Kurtz.<br \/>\nOur simian psychology has obvious implications for naive models of democracy, in which a neutral, rational public listens dispassionately to all sides before making up its hyperlogical collective mind. And it has implications as well for naive models of economics, in which consumers and producers perceive, think and act with computer-like accuracy.<br \/>\nThe skepticism about human rationality that science inspires should not be taken as support for authoritarianism or paternalism\u2026 On the contrary, it should render questionable all claims to wise and disinterested leadership, including those of America\u2019s own altruistic progressive technocrats who propose policies to \u201cnudge\u201d the unenlightened masses into doing the right thing. It makes more sense to think of our leaders and intellectuals as half-crazed hooting howler monkeys \u2014 just like the rest of us.<br \/>\nScience can tell monkeys where they came from, and technology, informed by science, can build a cleaner and safer monkey house. But a knowledge of science cannot turn monkeys into something that we are not.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We are what we are.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My thanks to Polichinello for highlighting this rather good Salon article by Michael Lind on secular humanism. I thought it made a useful supplement to an earlier Corner contribution by Derb\/Bradlaugh, and posted accordingly: Derb, in some respects Michael Lind\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/secular-humanism-trashed\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[241,824],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6235"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6250,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6235\/revisions\/6250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}