Has Humanism any Future?

The text of this address was first published in Ethical Record
December 2003.

David Warden, Dorset Humanist Association
Lecture to the Ethical Society 23 November 2003

I'm delighted and honoured to address you this afternoon on the subject has Humanism Any Future? My talk is organised into four parts:

Part One : 6 Propositions
Part Two : 6 Humanist Beliefs
Part Three : 4 Deliberate Omissions
Part Four : Some practical pointers

A few months ago I was rummaging in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye and I came across a first edition Conway Memorial Lecture, published in 1929, and entitled The Religious Advance Towards Rationalism. At the back of the book there are some delightful details about the South Place Ethical Society. The ‘Object of the Society’ is ‘the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment, the study of ethical principles, and the promotion of human welfare, in harmony with advancing knowledge’. It also lists your social activities as ‘social evenings, dances, discussions, play readings, rambles, and co-operative holidays’!

Before I attempt to answer the question Has Humanism Any Future? a little information about me. I was born in the seaside town of Bournemouth and I went to local schools there. As a serious and pious young man I intended to become a Christian minister and I went to study theology at Darwin College in the University of Kent at Canterbury. But calamity struck just three weeks before my final exams: I lost my belief in God. But unlike the poet Shelley, who was expelled from university for his pamphlet on atheism, I took my exams and I graduated with honours. But a degree in theology is not a lot of use once you’ve become an atheist and I eventually found my way into the recruitment and training profession. Over the years I’ve maintained a lively interest in theology and religion and nearly two years ago I decided to join the Dorset Humanist Association. I could have joined them years ago but at 44 I think I’m still their youngest member!

My first proposition is this: Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement. We know this is true because we’ve all met people who are broadly in sympathy with Humanism, and may even call themselves Humanists, but they feel no need to join a Humanist organisation. That’s putting it politely, of course. They may have attended humanist meetings in the past and been so appalled by our introspective approach that they never want to set foot in another humanist meeting ever again. We also know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because so many aspects of our civilization are implicitly humanistic: democracy, human rights, science, education and so on. Thirdly, we know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because the word ‘humanistic’ regularly crops up in psychology, in sociology and in management literature. Recently I have been corresponding with a ‘humanistic counsellor’ in Brighton who informed me that humanistic counselling is the third main school of psychotherapy, following on from psychoanalysis and behaviourism. Humanistic psychology was inspired by American writers such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers and is represented today by the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners.

The word humanism even crops up in theology and some of you may remember the fuss that was made a few years back when an Anglican priest, Anthony Freeman, published a book entitled God in Us: The Case For Christian Humanism Anthony Freeman subsequently gave a talk to this Society (ER Jan 1994). There was nothing new or startling about the book but the Anglican Church seems condemned to fight the same battles over and over again in every generation. The Anglican Church is riddled with humanism just as it is riddled with fundamentalism and this explains why it is finally beginning to break up . My brother, who is a liberal Anglican priest, confided to me only a few weeks ago that he believes the fundamentalist wing of the Church of England is ‘evil’. It’s difficult to see how such an organisation can hold together for very much longer. Furthermore, if statistical trends are to be believed, Christianity will be winding itself up in Britain by about the year 2050. We also know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because, according to the World Christian Encyclopaedia there are 900 million non-religious people in the world, of whom 180 million are explicitly atheist. That’s a tiny proportion of the world population, but much bigger than the number of atheists who have, so far, been gathered into the bosom of organised Humanism.

My second proposition is this: Organised humanism is just the tip of the iceberg. At the visible tip of the iceberg we’ve got the British Humanist Association, the International Humanist and Ethical Union and, of course, the South Place Ethical Society. Below the water level, we’ve got implicit humanism in democracy, human rights, science, human endeavour, humanistic psychology and so on. So what do we know about visible or explicit Humanism? We know that the British Humanist Association has got nearly 4,000 members and we know there are about 50 local groups. We also know that the IHEU has about 100 member groups around the world.

Now let’s do some maths I hope you all brought your calculators. If every humanist group in the world is the same size as the British Humanist Association (a very big assumption obviously), then we’ve got around 400,000 humanists in the world. We already know that there are 180 million atheists in the world, so if we put these two figures together, the total number of known humanists divided by the total number of known atheists, it means that so far, organised humanism has managed to capture less than 0.2% of its hottest market. If, on the other hand, we divide the total number of known humanists by the total number of non-religious people in the world, our hit rate goes down to a rather disappointing 0.04%.

So my third proposition is this: Organised humanism is not doing very well. It’s not doing very well in absolute terms and it’s not doing very well compared to its rivals. Let’s take another look at the British Humanist Association and then compare it to one of its rivals. The BI-IA was founded at the end of the 19th century and its headquarters are here in London. It doesn’t have any formal relationship with its local groups which are autonomous. The local groups meet wherever they can, usually in community centres, and they meet about once a month for talks and discussions. They might occasionally hand out leaflets but probably only in English. This is a very loose, decentralised organisation and today its UK membership is about 4,000.

Let’s compare it to another organisation which seems to be doing rather better. This organisation also started at the end of the 19th century and its headquarters are now in New York. It has a very structured and supportive relationship with its local groups. All the local groups have physically built their own buildings. They meet three times a week for study and they hand out free literature in dozens of different languages. This is a highly disciplined and committed organisation and today its UK membership is about 350,000 members.

Now when I tell you that this organisation is the Watchtower Society, more commonly known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, no doubt you will be horrified that it’s being compared in any way whatsoever to the BHA. But one of my aims is to shock the humanist movement out of its complacency and to raise awareness of what our rivals are doing, how they are operating, and their steady advance across the globe and into the minds of our fellow human beings. Christianity may be on the wane in Britain, but across the world fundamentalists are on the march and they are extremely well organised.

My fourth proposition is this: Organised humanism is not doing very well because it’s fragmented, it lacks clarity, and it lacks confidence. The fragmentation of organised humanism is a legacy of our history. The National Secular Society has its roots in 19th century socialism and the co-operative movement*. {*Although Charles Bradlaugh, its founder, became a Liberal M.P. [Ed.]} The BHA has its roots in the Ethical Movement of which the South Place Ethical Society is a noble remnant.

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association was set up in 1979 and the International Humanist and Ethical Union was set up in 1953 and is a loose coalition of humanist, ethical and secular organisations around the world. If you are a humanist in Britain today, you have the option of joining a local group but not the BHA or you can join the BHA but not a local group or you can join both if you want to. Many people seem to be confused about the relationship between these two things.

If you are an enthusiast, you can subscribe to all of the existing organisations, at a combined annual cost of around £100 and receive 5 periodicals. The Freethinker is an autonomous publication which prides itself on anti-religious aggression. Humanist News describes what the BHA is doing, mostly UK-based campaigns and news about the ceremonies network. International Humanist News is an update on international humanism, focussing in particular on human rights. The Gay and Lesbian Humanist is rather narrowly focused on attacking the church on gay issues. And the New Humanist, published by the Rationalist Press Association, has recently doubled its readership by giving up on humanism altogether.

Now I’m not suggesting that we can or even should merge these organisations and publications but the fragmentation of UK humanism is a severe impediment to our cohesion and our effectiveness. I find it confusing and rather expensive to subscribe to such a plethora of humanist journals, each one focussing rather narrowly and sometimes aggressively on its own concerns. But my main concern is that none of these organisations is nurturing local groups. The BHA prides itself on ‘punching above its weight’. It would have more weight to punch with if local groups were growing and multiplying instead of struggling to exist.

I also said in my fourth proposition that organised Humanism is not doing very well because it lacks clarity. There are too many vague definitions of Humanism floating around. According to the BHA Humanism is an ‘approach to life’. This strikes me as a bit feeble. According to the Humanist Philosophers Group, Humanism is an evolving tradition of thought’ . Well they would say that wouldn’t they but it’s not much use as a soundbite. The International Humanist and Ethical Union is keen for us all to use the word ‘lifestance’ but this word just makes me cringe. I’d like to suggest that the way forward is to clarify what our core beliefs are and then we can market Humanism with a greater sense of confidence as a coherent system of belief. I’m not suggesting of course that a Humanist system of belief should become a rigid orthodoxy, but I think we can fairly easily identify what our core beliefs are.

My fifth proposition is that UK Humanism is lagging far behind its continental counterparts. According to a Dutch humanist website, 25% of the Dutch population explicitly identify themselves as Humanists. No doubt there are historical and cultural reasons why Dutch Humanism is so far ahead of us, but one of the main reasons appears to be that they’ve maintained a strong link between secular humanism and humanistic psychology. In Holland and in Belgium you’ll find humanist counsellors and chaplains working alongside their religious counterparts in schools, hospitals and prisons. It seems that Humanism is widely recognised as an alternative to supernatural religion. In effect, it’s a secular religion.

My sixth proposition is that Humanism should be competing with religion, rather than whingeing about its privileges. Let me try and be clear about this. I don’t particularly want unelected bishops to sit in the House of Lords, I don’t like the fact that the BBC won’t let Humanists anywhere near Thought for the Day, and I certainly don’t like the fact that so few of our children are taught about Humanism in religious studies. But as long our membership continues to languish at around the 4,000 mark we will continue to be sidelined.

So how can Humanism compete effectively with religion? I think that in order to compete, what we need to have is a clearly-defined belief system. What I’d like to do now is sketch out what Humanism as a belief system might look like. So far, I’ve presented you with six propositions. And now I’d like to present you with my six humanist beliefs.

My First Humanist Belief Is This: I Believe In Personal Autonomy
For me, this is the foundation stone of humanism. The belief in autonomy is what marks us out very sharply from traditional religions. Fundamentalist religions are based on what theologians call ‘heteronomy’. Heteros is a Greek word meaning ‘other’. And nomos is a Greek word meaning ‘law’. So heteronomy means being governed by someone other than yourself. And in the case of religion, it means being governed by God. But seeing as God doesn’t really exist, religious heteronomy in effect means being governed by religious authorities who’ve had the audacity to declare themselves the mouthpieces of God. Religious heteronomy is a fundamental attack on what it means to be a human being. To be fully human, we need freedom, independence, to exercise our own initiative; not to have our lives pre-planned be under constant surveillance. So when I say, as a humanist, that I believe in personal autonomy, what I’m saying is that I believe in myself and that I want to learn how to be fully in control of my life. I think this is a very attractive belief so our humanist belief system has got off to a flying start.

My Second Belief Is This: I Believe In Critical Reasoning
Now the distinction between humanism and religion on this front is less clear-cut. I was speaking to a Muslim a couple of weeks ago who told me that the Qu’ran could not have been written by the Prophet Muhammad because Muhammad was illiterate. Therefore the Qu’ran must have been written by Allah. Now the only way I can start to counter this fairly simplistic line of reasoning is by doing some historical research. The point to note is that my Muslim friend doesn’t just believe that the Qu’ran was written by God he is armed with a particular line of reasoning which sounds plausible to him. What humanists need to do is not condemn him for being ‘irrational’ but challenge his belief on historical grounds and this requires patient historical study. It’s not that religious people are against reason. The problem with religion is that its reasoning processes are superficial and therefore potentially very dangerous.

My third belief is this: I believe that morality is a human construction
One of the chief objections to Humanism is that it denies any objective basis for ethics and leaves morality subject to the whims of individual taste. But there's no reason why there should be a perfect system of ethics any more than there should be perfect systems of language or law. All of the things are subject to human debate, historical evolution and social consensus. We can't deduce a perfect system of morality from religion or from utilitarianism or from any other moral theory. Moral theories might help us, but ethical decision making is messy and difficult. Morality is not just an outcome of personal choice. It's a complex system of negotiation between the individual and the communities in which he lives. The advantage of a humanist approach to ethics is that it is not sacrificed to the moral tyranny of the Bible or the Qu'ran.

My Fourth Belief Is This: I believe in Growing To My Full Potential
It's very fashionable these days to talk about personal growth and the book shops are full of self-help books to help you unlimit your life. But this belief is one of the things that clearly differentiates us from our religious competitors. Religion tends to view human nature as intrinsically evil and the purpose of human life as submission to God in the hope of life everlasting. The only type of personal growth recommended by religion is growth in submissiveness. Humanism on the other hand, encourages people to be assertive and to have self respect. It frowns on fatalism , and encourages people to identify and destroy self-limiting beliefs. Now whether you do this through humanistic psychology or neuro-linguistic programming or good old fashioned positive thinking is entirely your own choice. But as humanists, we should be experts in the art and science of helping people to realise their full potential in life. This is one of the most exciting things Humanism can offer and it requires us to re-engage urgently with the Humanist psychology associated with Carl Rogers and other important thinkers.

My Fifth Belief Is This: I Believe in Humanist Spirituality
I didn't really want to use that word spirituality, because of its religious connotations. But I think there is an important dimension in human life to which the word spirituality refers. I'm thinking about primal needs which can't be satisfied by the free-market economy. For instance, during the week I might rely on instant meals from the supermarket but on a Friday or a Saturday night I get pleasure from preparing a meal from scratch, soaking the beans, chopping up the vegetables, frying them gently in olive oil, adding some crushed garlic, cumin seeds and a good splash of red wine. From a purely rational point of view this makes no sense at all. If all I need to do is eat, I might as well carry on eating instant meals. But I recognise that I have primal needs that can't be satisfied by rationality but only by getting in touch with my deepest feelings about things. I have a primal need to cook.

Unfortunately, this is where traditional religion has a distinct advantage over Humanism. Ancient church buildings and religious relics connect with these primal instincts. The slightly musty smell in a village church. The sense of connection with countless generations of worshippers the soaring vaults of Cathedral naves, the penetrating blast of a church organ, the purity of the chorister voices, the soothing effect of flickering candles, the sumptuous costumes of bishops and deans. It's pure theatre. And what have we got? We have Conway Hall. But apart from this we mostly meet in drab community centres. Well, let's set our sights a bit higher. Let's start building humanist buildings that connect in some way with people's deepest values. Humanism is a very young movement. We need to start thinking on a grand scale and start planning for the next thousand years. This belief in a humanist spirituality also presents a challenge to economic assumptions about human well-being. It encourages the recognition that beyond a certain optimal point the accumulation of possessions starts to erode our sense of well-being. A striking example of this is celebrities like Elton John having periodic clear-outs of expensive clutter. On a more realistic level, it might involve spending more time learning a musical instrument and less time listening to CDs, or more time painting and less time worrying about whether you've taken in the latest blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy. 'Humanist' spirituality' means developing some resistance to the over-commodification of life

My Sixth Belief' Is This: I Believe That The Ultimate Meaninglessness Of Life Releases Us From Anxiety Whenever I speak to a general audience about humanism, I inevitably get the question about the meaning of life. Margaret Nelson, an email friend of mine, from the Suffolk Humanist Association insists that the meaning of life is 42, but I think we can improve on this. When I was studying theology at the University of Kent it occurred to me, in a philosophical moment, that if the human brain is programmed to think contextually then Sartre's comment that a 'godless universe is absurd' is a logical and necessary truth. But if you try to solve the problem of absurdity by enclosing the universe in a God-shaped wrapper (that's what I meant by thinking contextually) you're immediately faced with the same problem at one remove. If God is just existing without any explanation then God's existence is equally absurd. So religious people haven't solved the problem of absurdity at all. All they've done is push it beyond their mental horizons. I think we need to accept and even celebrate the absurdity of the universe.

Whenever I start to worry about my mortality and the frustration of unfulfilled dreams, I comfort myself with the thought that, in the end, it doesn't really matter. In rare moments of Buddhist enlightenment, I simply let go. Fortunately, none of these morbid thoughts stop me from getting out of bed in the morning. Humanism is about making plans and 'It's about constructing meaning but it's also about living in and for the moment. Humanism is a form of existentialism.

These six beliefs are my six pillars of humanism. And of course it's a personal selection. You way he surprised at some omissions from my list of beliefs so what I'd like to do now is look at four of the things I've consciously omitted.

Atheism
The last time I explained humanism as a system of belief, a humanist in the audience expressed surprise that I hadn't included atheism. There's a reason for this. I do not happen to be an atheist but atheism is merely a technicality. If God's existence was proved beyond reasonable doubt, it wouldn't make any difference to me. I would still be a humanist because I believe in autonomy. Atheism supports my belief in autonomy, but it's not a necessary precondition.

Secularisation
You might also be surprised that I haven't argued for the secularisation of society or the separation of church and state or the abolition of faith schools. Well, this is because I believe in free-choice rather than social engineering. Secularism is not a neutral position. It's an ideological position. I think there is an element here of state control, of intellectuals knowing what is best for society. Why should we have a secular society if the majority of taxpayers don't want it to be secular? I believe that Humanism should simply compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Morality Without Religion
You may've also noticed that I haven't made any explicit connection between Humanism and morality. This is because I want organised Humanism to give me the opportunity to explore ethics. I don't want organised Humanism to assume that I want to become more moral or more altruistic. I'm trying to achieve a balance in my life between altruism and egoism, between my interests and the interests of others. This is what I meant when I spoke about ethics being a process of negotiation between me and the community in which I live.

Let me give you an example. Four-and-a-half years ago, my father suffered a stroke. My mother was unable to look after him and as a family we faced a difficult dilemma. Should one of us give up our career in order to make his final years as happy as possible or should he go into a nursing home? Now if I were a moral and altruistic person, maybe I would have given up my career without hesitation. A Christian friend of mine has done just that . She sacrificed her life, in order to look after her elderly mother who suffers from multiple sclerosis. But I don't believe in Christian ethics any more than I believe in Christian doctrines. The outcome of this story is that my father spent four years in a nursing home and between us my sister and I saw him virtually every day for those years. I sometimes felt that I'd been sentenced to 1,000 hours of community sentence but I undertook it willingly to bring some relief to my poor father. Through it I often agonised over whether we'd done the right thing despite the protestations of ordinary people who told us how good we were to give my father so much of our time. I don't accept we were good or bad - we simply made a rational calculation and did what we could within those limits, and with the natural compassion felt by most children for their ageing parents.

Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture Movement wanted to 'rescue ... the wisdom and the moral insight that past generations have stored in their religions' . To a large extent, modern Humanism is still based, albeit unconsciously, on Adler's assumption that morality is a good thing and needs to be preserved and promoted. I disagree. And I take comfort in the fact that the German rationalist Ernst Haeckel was bold enough to declare that "The supreme mistake of Christian ethics ... is the exaggeration of love of one's neighbour at the expense of self-love ". That's not to say that we can't learn anything from religious ethics. But as humanists we need to be critical and sceptical in the field of ethics just as we are in every other field. Morality isn't something that can he dished out quantitatively like Christmas presents. Morality is about the quality of our relationships.

Religion Bashing
Earlier in the talk I spoke spoke rather disparagingly about 'anti-religious aggression'. I hope you won't form the impression that I've gone soft on religion. Some Humanists evidently have. Alfred Hlobson and Neil Jenkins in their book Modern Humanism argue that in view of the value of religion to its [followers], the Humanist movement makes no attempt to convert religions people to Humanism". I think this is underselling Humanism. I believe passionaltely that Humanism is a good belief system and that fundamentalism is profoundly bad for individuals and for society. I care passionately about children being given :informed choice between humanism and anti-humanism. Of course I'm fully-signed up to the principles of toleration and respect for individual people, whatever their beliefs, but toleration and respect doesn't mean giving up our critical edge.

Getting the right balance is difficult and my impression is that organised Humanism often gets it wrong. Our arguments against religion are aggressive and unsophisticated and we often use insulting Language. For example, describing religious people as 'bigots' merely demonstrates that we're losing the argument. And let's stop using the word 'religionist'. No-one else uses it. Why should we?
The alternative approach is to use our deadly weapon: well-informed, critical reasoning. We need to sharpen up our act by diligent study of our opponents' arguments and by practising our debating skills. Every good humanist should have a Christian friend, a Muslim friend, a Hindu friend, a Watchtower friend. Not an exclusive list. We need religious friends who are prepared to debate the arguments with us. We may never convert them, but every time we debate the issues with them we are sowing the seeds of doubt. And the seeds of doubt may eventually grow into the fruits of reason.

What Is The Purpose Of Organised Humanism?
Jonathan Miller, a prominent atheist, has recently been quoted as wondering why Humanists need to get together at all. He seems to view us as a peculiar sect . I agree with Jonathan Miller to some extent; I acknowledge that we are a peculiar sect. But the reason why organised Humanism needs to exist is to give people a choice between traditional religion on the one hand and nothingarianism on the other. Nothingarianism equates all too often to limited moral and intellectual horizons and a susceptibility to all sorts of quackery. Humanism is a learning community which gives people the chance to practice their thinking skills and widen their moral horizons. I think the Dorset Humanist Association has got just about the right mix of talks, discussions and social events but we're also trying to establish friendship links with Humanists abroad. We've recently made contact with humanists in India, Nigeria and in Holland and these international links are starting to give us a more 3-dimensional understanding of Humanism. At the moment we have about 60 members but I'd like to see that double on an annual basis until we have to split into a number of satellites. The received wisdom is that 'people don't join groups anymore'. I accept it's a challenge but I don't think we should be too defeatist about this. Many people are looking for something to believe in and belong to beyond the narrow confines of hedonistic individualism. One of the things we'd like to do is offer an educational course in Humanism covering religion, philosophy, psychology and ethics. We'd also like to foster stronger relationships with other UK groups and provide educational services to local schools. You have a wonderful humanist library in Conway Hall. I'd like every humanist group in the country to build up its own Humanist library. So Has Humanism Any Future? I said near the beginning of my talk that humanism is bigger than organised Humanism and I'm confident that even if organised Humanism collapsed, Humanism would still be a powerful and pervasive force in the world. As for organised Humanism, I think it does have a future but whether it continues to exist as a peculiar sect or grows into a thriving belief system is partly up to us. One of my fantasies is that in 100 years' time, a young man will be rummaging in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye and he'll come across a first edition of a Conway lecture entitled 'Has Humanism Any Future?' And by then, he will know the answer.

Ethical Record December 2003,

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