Humanism Now!

I recently posted "An Open Letter to Steven Pinker," in which I complained about his new book Enlightenment Now that it seems — despite its excellent argument for reason, science, humanism, and progress — to plump for atheism as the basis for his argument.

Steven Pinker

I sent the author an e-mail asking him to respond to my open letter — which he so kindly did! (Thank you, Professor Pinker!)

As a result, I have to take back my accusation about atheism. Mr. Pinker said:

I’m actually not a “public advocate for atheism,” though I am a public advocate for humanism, which is not the same thing. (Atheism is simply a failure to believe in a particular proposition, namely the existence of supernatural entities — but there are lots of things lacking evidence that I don’t believe in.)

I thus became intrigued by "humanism," which Wikipedia says is

a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism and empiricism) over acceptance of dogma or superstition.

Wikipedia says, in its article on secular humanism, that it is

a philosophy or life stance that embraces human reason, ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, pseudoscience, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making. Secular humanism posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or a god.

But Professor Pinker's life stance is that of a Jewish Humanist. Humanistic Judaism, says Wikipedia, is

a Jewish movement that offers a nontheistic alternative in contemporary Jewish life. It defines Judaism as the cultural and historical experience of the Jewish people and encourages humanistic and secular Jews to celebrate their Jewish identity by participating in Jewish holidays and lifecycle events (such as weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs) with inspirational ceremonies that draw upon but go beyond traditional literature.

The humanorah,
the primary symbol of the
Society for Humanistic Judaism.

In response to my further questions about Jewish Humanism, Professor Pinker told me:

Yes, it’s absolutely OK for Jewish Humanists to carry out traditional religious practices, and their beliefs are their own business – the main commitment is that morality be grounded in considerations other than divine edict. This perhaps grew more naturally out of Judaism than other major religions because Judaism has always been a matter of practice rather than belief. There is no fixed creed, a lot of vagueness and disputation about fundamental theological issues (such as the nature of the afterlife, and whether hell exists), and a don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude to private belief. What matters is whether you circumcise your sons, light the Sabbath candles, observe the holidays, and so on. So the transition to humanism in the Humanistic, Reform, and Reconstructionist branches was not difficult.

If I were Jewish instead of Catholic, I'd probably be a disciple of Jewish Humanism. I, too, have doubts about some of Catholicism's fundamental theological issues, especially the ones pertaining to moral laws. Yet (beliefs being my own business) I do remain a believer that there is a God above and beyond — and also within — the physical world.

It's important to note that this life stance of mine puts me at odds with many — but by no means all — of my fellow Catholics. Regrettably, it also separates me from what I assume has been the vast majority of God-believers, down through history.

Yet I still think that the Bible and other religious texts — Jewish and Christian, and also Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist — can teach us much, if properly interpreted.

An Ewer without a Handle

I've begun reading David Christian's new book Origin Story: A Big History of Everything. I expect it will furnish a broad overview of cosmic and human history, a good thing. But I also expect I will end up agreeing with what Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson says about it. Gerson's column in today's Post, "This story of everything misses what matters most," congratulates Christian on a fine book:

Christian has achieved something remarkable: an engaging guide to the physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, linguistics and sociology that constitute the story of history itself. The author practices what he calls “Big History” — gathering the Big Bang, the advent of molecules, plate tectonics, eukaryotes, dinosaurs, Homo sapiens, climate dynamics and globalization into one sweeping arc. In roughly 300 pages. With no equations.

Yet:

Christian has written a book that succeeds at everything except its stated purpose. Ultimately he wants to provide a replacement for traditional origin stories that come from religion. These he finds contradictory and outdated. But human beings are wired to need explanatory stories, revealing, as Christian writes, “ This is what you are; this is where you came from.” Without this rooting, people can become victim to a “sense of disorientation, division and directionlessness.”

... Christian ... repeats the defining mistake of scientism: the unquestioned assumption that all rational knowledge is scientific knowledge. This is anything but humble. It is a kind of epistemological imperialism that excludes knowledge coming from moral and philosophical reasoning, from theological argumentation and from historical investigation based on reliable witnesses. Not to mention the kind of knowledge that someone loves us. Christian attempts to increase the certainty of knowledge by limiting it to less consequential things. It makes the Cosmic Egg more like a Faberge egg — ornate, beautiful and, ultimately, useless.

As to God, the claim that modern science can provide no direct evidence for a being apart from the natural world is tautological. Does Christian expect transcendence to be like a gas that glows blue when heated?

Christian is a secular humanist, as he makes clear right away in his book. (Aren't "Christian" and "secular humanist" supposed to be antonyms?) My last post, "An Open Letter to Steven Pinker," was addressed to another secular humanist, Dr. Pinker, author of another recent book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that in today's world a lot of the best minds are those of secular humanists. But not all: Mr. Gerson is a case in point. I side with Mr. Gerson. I think the sum total of our human knowledge that comes only from science, reason, humanism, and progress is like an ewer without a handle. We ultimately need the handle of transcendence beyond the tangible world to overcome our deep “sense of disorientation, division and directionlessness."

An Open Letter to Steven Pinker

Dear Professor Pinker:

I'm reading your new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. I began reading it with the assumption that I would fully agree with its optimism about the future of our species and our admittedly troubled world. And I do agree with many of your arguments stating that most of us tend to be overly pessimistic about the future, for reasons you cogently lay out. I myself find it all too easy to be pessimistic, given what's going on today.

But I find I also have real problems with the general tenor of your arguments and with your basic outlook.

Let me begin stating my objections by discussing how you deal with the subject of climate change. In your chapter on The Environment, you quite correctly tell your readers that human activity has fueled global warming, and that we need to do something about it, soon. I agree with you. I also like how you laud the ideals of the 18th-century Enlightenment: reason, science, humanism, and progress.

But when you dump a copious amount of mud on religion, I have to part company with you.

With respect to climate change in particular, I think you are mistaken about Pope Francis's 2015 encyclical Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home, whose subject is the need for the world to properly address global warming. You write:

Starting in the 1970s, the mainstream environmental movement latched onto a quasi-religious ideology, greenism, which can be found in the manifestoes of activists as diverse as Al Gore, the Unabomber, and Pope Francis. Green ideology begins with an image of the Earth as a pristine ingénue which has been defiled by human rapacity. As Francis put it in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise be to you), “Our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life . . . [who] now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her.” The harm, according to this narrative, has been inexorably worsening: “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” The root cause is the Enlightenment commitment to reason, science, and progress: “Scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history,” wrote Francis. “The way to a better future lies elsewhere,” namely in an appreciation of “the mysterious network of relations between things” and (of course) “the treasure of Christian spiritual experience.” Unless we repent our sins by degrowth, deindustrialization, and a rejection of the false gods of science, technology, and progress, humanity will face a ghastly reckoning in an environmental Judgment Day.

It's a gross misreading of Laudato Sí to compare it with the Unabomber's ramblings or with any "quasi-religious ideology" such as "greenism." The pope's encyclical is not quasi-religious; it is as fully religious as human forms of expression can ever be. And it is a reasoned argument that admittedly proceeds from a different set of foundational assumptions than your own — but it is a reasoned argument. In wholly accepting the findings of climate scientists, it reaches many of the same conclusions as you do. And in underscoring our human responsibility, as we put the brakes on greenhouse emissions, to protect the needs of people living in developing countries with expanding economies, it is magnificently humanistic.

*****

This is why I think your book actually plumps as much for outright atheism as it does for your stated ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress. But religion per se is not inherently and ineluctably at war with those Enlightenment values. In fact, the Catholic Church of which I am a liberal member extols those values.

True, it seeks to balance those values with religious faith and tradition. Pope Francis's basic assumptions see humanism, for example, as flowing directly from the teachings of Jesus. And with respect to science, the conservative Pope John Paul II made it clear that one of your favorite topics, evolution, is perfectly consistent with Catholic belief — as long as scientists don't try to peer back before the creation of the universe at the instant of the big bang, and as long as they don't try to deny the existence of the human soul.

Nor am I aware of any teaching of the church that denies the other two of your "big three" scientific understandings. In addition to Darwinian evolution, they are entropy, or a general tendency toward increased disorder, a fundamental principle of how the universe works; and information, any ingredient of cosmic reality which serves to reduce entropy or disorder.

I think you are wrong in maligning religiosity by picking on its very worst aspects, such as a clinging to superstition, as a springboard to championing outright atheism. Wrong, in at least two ways. One, religion as I personally know it has outgrown erstwhile sins like fostering rank superstition, fighting infidels in crusades, and burning nonbelievers at the stake.

Two, evolution has given us humans an innate tendency to believe in a God or gods. That's not going to change. So when you argue for sensible measures to avert climate change while at the same time crossing swords with Pope Francis, you put the backs up of Catholics like myself who would otherwise hope to agree with you. Not an excellent strategy, in my opinion, in that it does not bespeak a rational appraisal on your part of the actual situation of your audience. It is as though you are saying that if we don't take the Enlightenment ideals to the extreme of casting out all of our human religious beliefs, we face a dark future indeed. Put more tersely: the only true basis for optimism is atheism.

That's at the very least a big tactical mistake, Professor Pinker. You want to enlarge the reason-science-humanism-progress choir, not shrink it!

Yours truly,
Eric Stewart

Roe isn’t just about women’s reproductive rights ...

Nancy Northup
of the Center for
Reproductive Rights

Nancy Northup's op-ed in today's Washington Post gives a good reason why even an abortion opponent ought to withhold support from President Trump's nominee to replace Antonin on the Supreme Court. (Trump is expected to announce the identity of his nominee later today from among four possibilities, all of whom are known to be anti-choice.) Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, makes a convincing case that "everyone’s personal-liberty rights are on the line" with this nomination.

The reason is that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision (as upheld in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey) that held that the government cannot constitutionally interfere with individuals' personal-liberty rights is part of a long line of decisions which do not necessarily affect women's reproductive rights. Northup writes:

Just as Roe rested on past liberty decisions, it became the basis for future ones — including outside the area of women’s reproductive rights. The court cited Roe and Casey’s reasoning in a broad range of subsequent cases. Those include landmark decisions protecting liberty rights, as in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which held that the government cannot criminalize intimate sexual conduct between same-sex partners, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry.

This line of precedent protects us all, and a post-Kennedy Supreme Court could not sever it without threatening to destroy our “realm of personal liberty.”

... In deciding Roe, the court looked to cases in the 1920s on the right of parents to educate their children according to their values and ideas, and the justices drew a line to landmark decisions affirming the right to use contraception and, in 1967’s Loving v. Virginia, the right to marry someone of a different race.

I agree with Northup, even though I am personally not all that happy with Roe-legalized abortion. I think reversing Roe and Casey would undermine too much settled personal-liberty law well outside the sphere of reproductive rights.

Breaking Faith

Todd Gitlin

In today's Washington Post cultural commentator Todd Gitlin says, "This was the most gutting month for liberals in half a century." Gitlin has been a voice for liberal activism for nearly 60 years, since his days as a student at Harvard when he was involved in protesting nuclear armaments.

In his Post article, he's once again rallying the troops of the left:

The challenge for a left that wants to win power is existential as well as strategic and tactical. If you were gobsmacked by Trump’s ascent, the question is whether you can, in the words of the civil rights anthem, “keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.” The prize is not won by wishing, however vehemently. The center is equally challenged: Can it cohabit with the left under a big tent?

Moreover:

Perhaps the evidence that national politics is rigged for the right reinforces the view that America was foredoomed from the days of the slave trade; that racism and nativism are unwavering, foundational, even insuperable; that Barack Obama’s kind of change cannot, in the end, be believed in; that efforts to win over the moderate are silly; that confrontational moves are the only ones that feel authentic. In an emergency, they will say, incrementalism and politics as usual are irrelevant. Be blunt and direct. Denounce the secretary of homeland security at a Mexican restaurant. Ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave.

I disagree. I'm not on board with that view for the reason that it characterizes American politics as being nothing more than a tug of war:

The political right pulls in its own direction as hard as it can. The left does the same in the opposite direction. Since Trump became president, the right has been dominant. Gitlin suggests the left can recoup if it adopts the motto, "Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize." Put slightly differently, the individuals of the American left just need to coordinate with one another more effectively as they tug on the rope.

David Brooks

But that presupposes what this current blog post rues: the idea that our culture is made up of nothing more than an array of "atomic" units, each of us a radically separate, individual person with no hard-and-fast commitments to any particular social institutions that are supposed to furnish the glue that holds us together. As New York Times opinion writer David Brooks tells us in "Anthony Kennedy and the Privatization of Meaning," in our present-day culture of what I'm calling "atomic individualism" we have broken faith with "communal patterns and shared cultural norms and certain enforced guardrails [that] help us restrain our desires and keep us free."

During my own young adulthood in the mid-to-late 1960s, I bought into the notion of atomic individualism without much thinking about it. It was easy. Given that I was against the Vietnam War, I adopted the attitude that each young man of my generation had the "right" to resist the draft. Millions of my male age peers had the same attitude. The idea that we ought to kowtow to the institutional basis of the draft — the Selective Service System, an arm of the U.S. government — was completely foreign to our way of thinking.

We who opposed the draft also supported, by and large, the idea that the government was correct to step in and promote civil rights for African Americans. We felt we could pick and choose. Strong government = civil rights enforcement, yes. Strong government = draft enforcement, no.

That worldview, taken at its most abstract, means that any institution that stands between us as individuals and that which we consider to be "true" — that people of color should be equal to whites, yes, but not that any of us ought to be subject to the military draft — is disposable. The sundry institutional components of the U.S. government are things we can, if we so desire, freely break faith with.

We of my generation have quite selectively exercised our self-appointed options to break faith with not only particular governmental institutions but also "social institutions like family, schools that take morality seriously and a shared civic order," in the words of David Brooks. We have selectively dodged the "roles that define us — father, mother, neighbor, citizen and legislator." We have embraced the worldview that retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy summarized: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

And that notion of radical individualism, all mediating institutions be damned, undergirds rightist thought, not just leftist. Thus does the conservatism of President Ronald Reagan mutate into that of President Donald Trump, according to whom the institutions that duly constitute our government in Washington, DC, have morphed into "the swamp."

Once you've selected which governmental institutions you don't reject, you wind up on one end or the other of the rope, in a neverending tug of war.