THE BOULDER SUNDAY CAMERA - Guest Opinion
March 29, 1987
Although it gives me pain to dispute a fellow humanist, particularly a good friend like Bill Cans (Open Forum March 16), I must register a complaint that, in the view of most humanists, secular humanism is not a religion. Rather. it is in the narrow sense an ethical philosophy of liberal scope, and in the broader sense it is the summation of all rational human knowledge.
Despite the latter broad interpretation, it is interesting that the ideology has attracted so few who would accept its label.
No doubt the general perception of what secular humanism is all about is so fuzzy that even people dedicated to many of its ideals cannot seem to agree on any clear definition. This condition continues to persist even though philosophers like Paul Kurtz of the State University of New York have taken great pains to elucidate the humanistic philosophy of the twentieth century Western mind.
It seems to me to be only fair to accept the definition of secular humanism as propounded by secular humanists themselves. It is not a religion by any stretch of the imagination. Huston Smith, author of "The Religions of Man" observes that "Six aspects of religion appear so regularly as to suggest that the need is rooted in man's very makeup."
He identifies these as the indisputable authority of the church; religious ritual; speculation on the origin of the cosmos and man; tradition; the sovereignty and grace of God (all things exist and are sustained through God's will); and the mysteries and supernatural trappings of each individual faith. (Gautama Buddha categorically rejected all of these; however, in time, true to Smith's analysis, each has in some form quietly entered into that faith.)
Will Durant, author of "The History of Civilization," had this to say about man's affinity for religious belief: "The soul of the simple man can be moved only through the senses and the imagination by ceremony and miracle, by myth and fear and hope; he will reject or transform any religion that does not give him these, ... (he will) find refuge and solace in chapels, churches and cathedrals, in mystic lights and rejoicing bells, in processions, festivals and colorful ritual."
Humanism contains none of the categorical elements of religion described by Huston Smith nor the tender predisposition of man towards religion described by Will Durant.
Humanism simply accepts the world for what it is and makes no effort to transform it into what men's vivid imaginations have created in miracle and myth. Neither does it invent other worlds beyond the pale of understanding that provide a final residence for men's continued existence after physical death.
Although humanism claims no religious status, it has borrowed heavily from the wisdom of many religious philosophers. Humanism, like science, is not rigidly attached to a single doctrine. It is willing to accept the best that any sector of human understanding has to offer.
William of Ockham, Wyclif, More, Erasmus, Bruno, Kepler, Nicholas of Cusa, Mendel and many others were Christian clerics of greater or lesser religious dedication belonging mostly to the Renaissance and Reformation periods who contributed (perhaps unknowingly) to secular as well as ecclesiastical thought. They were basically humanists of that age with a deep reverence for God.
If secular humanism can be described in a single word, it would be eclectic. Its roots penetrate the ethos of virtually every great thinker this planet ever produced. If there is a single charismatic figure to whom secular humanism owes a particular gratitude it would be Socrates who wrote nothing and claimed ignorance of the imponderables of life and death, not only because he was essentially the first humanist, but also because he inspired the chain of rational thought that even today prevails in some sectors of our generally superstitious and spiritualistic society. Happily, the age of enlightenment overlapped with the eighteenth century when our nation was formed. Happily, too, the men who wrote our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution embraced the humanism of the age and conceived our nation in a brilliant burst of reason.
Unhappily, though, the barbed arrow of biologic evolution does not extend to governments of men. Unhappily, too, in 1987 we are now led by men at the pinnacle of our national government for whom reason has been replaced by doctrinaire ideology.
We still have a need for Socratic thinking to deflate the bombast and puncture the dogma which seem to pervade every niche of our existence. Unfortunately, those traits, too, seem to be "rooted in man's very makeup."
Howard A. Garcia is a physicist in Boulder