HOW DO HUMANISTS FIND MEANING, PURPOSE, VALUES, AND MORALS IN LIFE

HOW DO HUMANISTS FIND MEANING, PURPOSE, VALUES, AND MORALS IN LIFE?

by

Steven Schafersman

Introduction

How do philosophical naturalists, humanists, atheists, rationalists, freethinkers, and secularists (hereafter called secular humanists) find meaning, purpose, values, and morals (hereafter termed conceptual ideals) for life and behavior since they do not believe in the supernatural, a god, or other higher power to provide these things for us?

Do secular humanists really need conceptual ideals to live a happy, purposeful, and successful life?

Do secular humanists find conceptual ideals in nature, in science, in history, in society, or in ourselves as individuals?

These are philosophical questions that have many answers, and you, dear reader, can provide answers for yourself as well as I can. But let's examine the issues a little more deeply before you make up your mind.

Definitions

First, let's define a few terms so we can understand what we're talking about. It is extremely common for people to talk at cross-purposes with each other because everyone has different understandings of the words and terms we must use to describe what we are talking about. This is especially true of discussions involving religion, humanism, concepts, values, and beliefs.

When I first presented this paper, the title was "How do Freethinkers find meaning, purpose, values, and morals in life." I defined a freethinker as "someone who gains knowledge and forms beliefs by the use of critical inquiry, independently of tradition, authority, and socially-established belief, usually but not exclusively in the context of religion," a fairly well-accepted definition. Critical inquiry, of course, is the combination of critical thinking and free inquiry, something I discuss in other papers (available on my websites). Critical thinking is the combination of empiricism, rationalism, and skepticism in a naturalistic framework to discover reliable knowledge. Free inquiry is the ability and right to find reliable knowledge without obstacle or objection by individuals and society.

I am a freethinker as well as a naturalistic secular humanist. Traditional supernaturalistic and transcendental religions are the antithesis of freethought, since they are classically based on unverifiable revelation, tradition, authority, belief by faith, and most pernicious of all, the indoctrination of children. You would think that the slightest bit of critical inquiry would destroy these religions--Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and many others--but they have been remarkably resistant to critical inquiry for two millennia and more. Why? Because the members of these religions don't practice critical inquiry, they don't teach their children critical inquiry, they resist critical thinking whenever it presents itself. Furthermore, and most tellingly, the intellectuals in these religions--who have the intelligence and education to understand what critical thinking is and practice it if they wanted--instead co-opt it, misrepresent it, deliberately misunderstand it, and confuse others about it--especially members of their religions--by a combination of pseudoscholarship, pseudoscience, and pure, insolent, unadulterated mendacity.

The reasons for such reprehensible behavior are many and varied, but include the fact that these individuals are especially adept at suppressing their egos and consciences to bend to authority, that there are significant monetary and security rewards, plus many sincerely believe that they are working for an ultimately better end by deceiving the mass of people, especially the ones for which they claim to have so much concern. Finally, history has proven that no amount of education or intelligence can prevent any human from engaging in self-deception. Psychologically, the forces of emotion and unreason are usually too strong to prevent self-delusion (there are dozens of stories, for example, of intelligent, highly-educated individuals who believe in all sorts of pseudosciences and paranormal activities, essentially the same sort of beliefs as those of traditional religions).The sad thing, of course, is that the deluded ones now have the emotional strength and desire to pass along their "discoveries" and "wisdom" to others, and thus engage them in mutual deception and delusion. This cycle is hard to break.

But we are more than freethinkers: we are also humanists, so we need to define humanism. Here is my definition of humanism, so you know how I describe ourselves:

Humanism is a philosophy, worldview, or life stance based on naturalism--the conviction that the universe or nature is all that exists or is real. Humanism serves, for many humanists, some of the psychological and social functions of a religion, but without belief in deities, transcendental entities, miracles, life after death, and the supernatural. Humanists seek to understand the universe by using science and its methods of critical inquiry--logical reasoning, empirical evidence, and skeptical evaluation of conjectures and conclusions--to obtain reliable knowledge. Humanists affirm that humans have the freedom to give meaning, value, and purpose to their lives by their own independent thought, free inquiry, and responsible, creative activity. Humanists stand for the building of a more humane, just, compassionate, and democratic society using a realistic ethics based on human reason, experience, and reliable knowledge--an ethics that judges the consequences of human actions by the well-being of all life on Earth.

Please note that our type of humanism is not academic humanism or Renaissance Christian humanism or humanitarianism--it is naturalistic humanism: a life stance that believes in philosophical naturalism and rejects supernaturalism. Thus, atheism and agnosticism are assumed. I constantly meet so-called "humanists" who have some transcendental tendencies, longings, or beliefs, but naturalistic humanism doesn't include anyone with a whiff of pantheism or deism, so give them up. Humanism can be called a worldview, life stance, life philosophy, eupraxsophy, and sometimes even--as I will explain--a religion. It is the philosophy of life by which people such as us live by. Whether you call yourself a freethinker, an atheist, an agnostic, a rationalist, or a secularist, we are all humanists.

The nature of humanism as a philosophy of life is important to understand if we are to judge our need for conceptual ideals compared to the needs of other philosophies. In particular, how is humanism different from a religion? This is a perennial question that has long entranced humanists, especially secular humanists who deny, of course, that humanism is a religion or like a religion. But as we shall see, the answer to this question is really quite simple and not worth all the ink spilled over the subject.

Calling humanism a life stance, a worldview, or a philosophy of life has never met with complete approval by many humanists, because they are clumsy terms, although I don't object to these terms and have used them in my definition. Paul Kurtz tried to remedy this situation by defining a new, simple, and what he hoped would be an elegant term--eupraxsophy--to take the place of the clumsy terms and the term "religion." A eupraxsophy, from the Greek roots, is the true practice of wisdom, so the term encompasses all human efforts to find truth, meaning, value, purpose, and morals in life and then practice them through living. Such efforts would include any life philosophy, including religions. Unfortunately, the term "eupraxsophy" has not met with favor, primarily because it is really a synonym for "religion" in its broadest functional sense.

So let's define religion. Now that's a problem: there are dozens of definitions of "religion." If you define religion narrowly, as devotion to and worship of a supreme supernatural being, then humanism would certainly not be a religion. That definition would exclude such legitimate religions as Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Ethical Culture, Humanistic Judaism, Unitarian Universalism in its modern form, and so forth. So narrow definitions won't work. Broad functional definitions have the opposite problem, making many authoritarian and emotionally-seductive political ideologies, as well as personal philosophies such as humanism, into religions. A functional definition of religion describes a belief system or ideology as a religion if it functions as a traditional religion, i.e. if it provides all the meanings, purposes, and values of ultimate concern, including a meaning of life, a purpose for living, and values that all members are expected to share and express. Communism, Naziism, Stalinism, Maoism, and (in political fiction) Big-Brotherism are all religions by any functional definition of religion. Their purposes, meanings, and values all revolve around the state or a personality figure. Similar, less abhorrent religions exist today, such as football, golf, soccer, capitalism, the Republican party, and almost any ideology or belief system you can think of--including humanism--to which the adherent is totally devoted. I mention soccer because that sport was the religion that stole me away from the UUA and helped me to become a lapsed Unitarian-Universalist (a humanist one, of course); I could either play soccer on Sunday mornings or go to church--which would you choose?

So, is humanism a religion? The answer is simple: yes and no--it depends on how you define religion! As another example, American Atheism was a functional religion when Madalyn Murray O'Hair was in charge: the entire organization was run as a personality cult. It is less so today but still fits a functional definition of religion, since its members talk and act the same way as other traditional religions, but with an opposite viewpoint about the supreme deity. The reason that humanists are so individualistic, and resist authority and cooperation, is because they associate claimed presumed shared characteristics and shared ultimate concerns with the structure of traditional religions, and thus resist even humanist institutions that they should join and support.

A better way to define "religion" is to list all the attributes of a typical religion, and then use those attributes as the definition. So let's do that:

Religions provide the following attributes to their members:

A community of like believers, allowing members to associate with people who share similar beliefs and backgrounds; to enjoy this sense of community and socialize with members away from religious meetings; to allow one to find friends, lovers, and potential mates from within this compatible community.

A source of meanings, values, purposes, and morals for the community to follow; that is, a source that helps members develop a philosophy of life that is appropriate and reasonable to them (often for specific situations, such as raising or disciplining a child, dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, or with marriage, employment, and financial problems).

A way for the members' children to gain a moral education; many parents do not feel capable of doing this themselves (other than providing ethical examples for their children to follow, and they often don't feel capable of doing even this); they want trained "professionals" to do this for them.

A source of answers to ultimate questions, such as:
a. The origin of humanity, the Earth, the stars and planets, the universe.
b. What is right and wrong, good and bad, ethical and evil.
c. How we should live our lives, with rules for correct and wrong living.
d. The meaning of life and existence.

The purpose of this little exercise is to demonstrate that--at heart--all of these religions, personal philosophies, ideologies, and eupraxsophies are basically similar in structure and purpose. Functionally, a eupraxsophy--and in our current example, humanism--is a religion or quasi-religion: it has a community of like-minded adherents who more or less meet occasionally and socialize with each other; it provides a means or mechanism for finding the values, meanings, purposes, and morals one may want; it usually does not provide moral education for humanist children, but would like to; and it agrees that science and philosophy are the source of answers to ultimate questions when such answers are possible. For the most part, we humanists share many structural and functional features with traditional religions.

More specifically, any eupraxsophy, worldview, life stance, or philosophy of life has a community of individual adherents, an important and valued literature, shared beliefs, goals, and values, revered founders and personalities, a desire to impart its beliefs and wisdom to one's children and--for that matter--to all other humans on the planet, a shared social and educational life, shrines and buildings to which the community members travel and meet, etc. The only reason not to call a specific eupraxsophy a religion is to explicitly distinguish it from certain supernaturalistic, authoritarian, and faith-based religions, most of which are traditionally termed "religions" and possess beliefs, values, and goals that are totally inimical and abhorrent to and opposed by that eupraxsophy. This is certainly the case with secular, naturalistic humanism, which does not want to call itself a religion even though it shares many basic structural, functional, and institutional features with all religions and fulfills similar emotional and social needs of members. In fact, there is a continuum between the most extreme faith-based, willfully ignorant supernaturalistic religions and the most rational, empirical, and skeptical beliefs of the purest secular and naturalistic humanism, and there will never be a way to realistically and non-arbitrarily divide this continuum into "religions" on one side and "non-religions" on the other.

The Differences in Philosophy and Method

However, despite sharing many functional, social, emotional, institutional, intellectual, historical, and structural features with traditional organized supernaturalistic and authoritarian religions, because secular naturalistic humanism is so completely opposed to them due to the philosophical attributes that we do not share, humanism does not want to share a category identification with these religions. Such a stance should be acknowledged and accepted by others, so that secular humanists can legitimately reject the appellation of "religion." The best way to approach the problem of category identification is to ignore the many structural and functional similarities between conventional supernaturalistic religions and humanism, such as the features of community, the quest for meanings, values, and morals, the need to answer ultimate questions, the desire for moral education of our children, and the others discussed above, and concentrate instead on the quite different philosophical issues and methods that divide us. Humanists value critical thinking, free inquiry, skepticism, science, and rational non-obscurantist philosophy as the means to find answers to ultimate questions, discover fundamental truths about nature, and create coherent and justifiable ethics and morals. Traditional religionists do not. Perhaps we can say this: As long as any belief system or institution believes in miracles and the supernatural, rejects logic and evidence, remains credulous and unskeptical, operates by revelation and authority, and celebrates mystery, the occult, and willful ignorance calls itself a religion, then humanists do not want humanism to be termed a religion. We can make this claim for ourselves and ask that others respect it, but it is important to emphasize that self-definitions are not automatically acceptable to others and there is no way to compel acceptance, so for a practical matter, religionists will probably continue to describe humanism as an atheist religion or cult, and there is not much we can do about it.

This long-winded discussion of definitions has a purpose: it identifies the methods by which humanists create meanings, purposes, values, and morals and distinguishes them from the methods of traditional religions. Humanist methods include critical thinking, free inquiry, empirical science, rational philosophy, and skepticism. The only difference between discovering reliable knowledge about nature through the methods of critical inquiry--what we could call science--and discovering reliable knowledge about morals, values, meanings, and purposes through critical inquiry--what we might call rational philosophy--is that we cannot test hypotheses of the latter against an objective reality as we can with science. Thus, we can never expect the same degree of reliability for philosophical findings about conceptual ideals as we do for our scientific findings about nature, despite the fact that both methods use critical inquiry to make their discoveries. The claim that the methods of science--critical thinking and free inquiry--can provide answers about conceptual ideals with the same degree of reliability that they can about the natural world is called "scientism," and it is a false claim that must be avoided. Scientism has a number of definitions, some of which would make any scientific conclusion about nature "scientism." Such definitions--frequently indulged by anti-science religionists--are obviously incorrect.

However, this is important to note: humanist methods using critical inquiry to investigate and understand conceptual ideals, despite being ultimately inconclusive, are far superior to and more reliable than the methods used by traditional supernaturalistic religions to perform the same task. Religious methods include scriptural authority, clerical authority, revelation, faith, and prayer; specious arguments, illogical reasoning, obscurantist claims, unreasonable speculation, and other forms of pseudoscholarship, all couched in presumptive, theistic language; willfully ignoring skeptical arguments that conflict and refute their own claims and refusal to consider alternative claims; proselytizing of adults and indoctrination of children; and encouraging and ensuring belief by intimidation, threats, and worse. Although I would characterize such methods as outrageously immoral by any rational standard, in addition to being obviously incompetent and unreliable, such methods are nevertheless commonly used every day by tens of thousands of religious leaders, either because they believe that any deceptive method used to save their followers from hell (or deliver their followers to the love of God) is justified if it works, or because they are so ignorant they really don't understand the difference. Worse, the results of these methods are believed by hundreds of millions of religious followers who lack the ability to judge the reliability of the methods themselves or, even worse, don't care about the methods that underlie such knowledge.

In case one wonders about the reliability of the usual religious arguments to demonstrate the existence of God, to support various religious ethical tenets, and to support various important claims of religions (such as the resurrection of Jesus, the divinity of Jesus, the existence of life after death, etc.), I can assure the reader that these arguments have been laboriously and thoroughly analyzed by skeptical humanist and atheist philosophers over the centuries and all have been completely refuted. In brief, there is no good evidence to support any unique claim of supernaturalistic religion and no good reasons or arguments to support such claims in the absence of such evidence. Much of this analysis is now available on the Web, so no one today can claim that they are unaware of the refutations of their particular religious beliefs. I might add that a wonderful intellectual exercise is to read evangelical arguments for the existence of God, miracles, or the resurrection and then read their analysis and refutation by atheist philosophers.

We can conclude at this point that the overarching difference between secular humanism and traditional religions involves their respective philosophies and methods of discovering knowledge, not their institutional form, structure, or function. When we distinguish humanism from religion in this way, we our pitting our philosophy and method of inquiry against theirs, so it vital that we understand this philosophy and method, and the morals, values, purposes, and meanings that they give us or help us to discover. That's my main subject, so let's turn to it now.

Philosophy and Methods of Inquiry Give Us Morals, Values, Purposes, and Meanings

If you are a human, you are forced to deal with the conceptual ideals we have identified. You may decide to ignore these ideals, or think that they don't really concern you, but if you do, this is itself a moral choice, a value judgment, an act with purpose and meaning, and so you won't be able to escape them. If you think that the issues don't matter or are irrelevant to living your life, you are nevertheless dealing with these issues by treating them negatively or frivolously. Thus, you will inevitably possess either explicit or implicit values, morals, purposes, and meanings. You will either deal with them explicitly by reading, investigating, analyzing, and understanding, or you deal with them implicitly by the simple act of living. Inevitably, humans are obliged to deal with the conceptual ideals that concern us in some way, either by rational thought or by trial and error, and the decision how to do this is yours.

For the sake of argument, let's assume it is better to deal with the conceptual ideals explicitly rather than implicitly. There are various philosophical arguments we could use to justify this decision, but perhaps the best is the one I made above: what distinguishes humanism from other religions or eupraxsophies is its philosophy and methods of inquiry, so it is vital for us to explicitly understand them. Socrates said that, "the unexamined life is not worth living"; I can't take the time to defend this right now, so let's just assume that self-analysis is better than blind acting. (I'm reminded of the corollary to Socrates' dictum that, "the unlived life is not worth examining." Socrates would probably laugh and agree with that idea, but he would reply that a lived life can be lived either for good or ill, lived successfully or not, and it behooves us to attempt to understand the difference and why that is the case.)

So, whether explicitly acknowledged or not, every individual has personal concerns and even theories or ideas about morality, values, and the purpose and meaning of life, and we have chosen to examine the source and characteristics of these concerns and theories. These conceptual ideals largely govern how you will live your life and will affect the course of your life and the lives of everyone else who comes into contact with you. Multiplied innumerable times by the effects of everyone's life on everyone else's, it becomes obvious that society in general and public leaders in particular should be very concerned about these issues, concerns, and theories.

I think that we naturalistic secular humanists would be most interested in contrasting our conceptual ideals with those of supernaturalistic religionists. With them we can agree that morals, values, purposes, and meanings are:

Real • knowledge about these conceptual ideals is possible and can be universally understood, adopted, and applied.
Objective • the ideals can be discussed and evaluated objectively and intelligently by any person without depending on the state of any particular person's mind, even if the source of the ideals is subjective.

Adoptable • any of the ideals can be accepted by any person and explicitly adopted and used to govern or influence one's life so that individuals are accountable for their actions.

So what are the differences? They all involve our differing philosophies!

Source • for humanists, conceptual ideals are usually derived from naturalistic and secular sources, but sometimes from non-naturalistic logical or intuitive sources; for traditional religionists, the ideals are somehow derived supernaturally, through either revelation or authority, and the authority can be scriptural or clerical.
Form • for humanists, our ideals are usually consequentialist, situational, and relativist; for religionists, the ideals are usually formalist, normative, and absolutist.

Justification • humanists justify our ideals by philosophical reasoning and judgment, critical inquiry, shared experience and practice, and community consensus; religionists justify their ideals by presumed command of the deity, authority, and self-justification.

Obviously, the differences between the two philosophies and their methods are quite striking. But at least we have narrowed down the source, form, and justification of the moral and value issues that concern us as humanists, and that's a start. Traditional religious philosophies and ideas about morals, values, purposes, and meanings depend substantially on theistic and supernatural concepts. Secular and humanist philosophies do not. But there is another important difference: humanist philosophies dealing with our issues of interest always emphasize a respect or concern for the welfare and sometimes the rights of individual humans and, increasingly, for the welfare of all life on Earth. Religious philosophies do not; in their case, humans and other organisms are less important than the Deity and Its presumed desires, intentions, and policies. Also, the source of knowledge of theists and supernaturalists about our issues is frequently--almost invariably--the result of authoritarian indoctrination, peer or parental pressure, community conformity, psychological surrender to the fear of death or oblivion, emotional loss of loved ones, or misguided and mistaken philosophies, all hardly sources of reliable knowledge.

The Characteristics of Traditional Religion

Let's look briefly at some of the notable features of traditional religious morality and values and why they fail. Some of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) are unethical. The fourth commandment instructs the faithful to not allow one's "slave or slave-woman" to work on the Sabbath, while the tenth commandment says to not covet your neighbor's "slave or slave-woman." Remember, these commandments are allegedly directly from God. Nowhere in the Bible does God command his followers to end slavery or free one's slaves; instead, God upholds the status quo. (By the way, the Bibles that Christian fundamentalists use deliberately mistranslate these words as "man-servant or woman-servant," and contain other deceptive mistranslations intended to support orthodoxy and fulfillment of revelation.) As regards to women, their subordination and second-class status in the Old Testament is well-known; anyone who has read the Bible knows how women are mistreated, marginalized, and subjugated in that book, without a word of protest by any of God's chosen leaders or prophets, including his supposed son. The New Testament is no better. Jesus' rules for living are arbitrary, and he never condemns slavery or the subordination of women; he challenges the theological status quo to some extent, but emancipating slaves and women from their lower-class status was just too much to ask of his followers. Since Christianity is such an overwhelming influence in Western society, it is no wonder that freeing the slaves and giving women the vote took so long and required such a bitter effort. My point is simple: any moderately intelligent, educated, reasonable human today could come up with better rules for living than are found in the Bible. Any such human is better, more humane, and more ethical than the God of the Bible.

There are other well-known examples of the abject moral failures of the Biblical God: He arbitrarily punished Adam and Eve for eating fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil after commanding them not to do so, when they obviously would have been incapable of knowing that disobeying a divine command was evil since they were perfectly innocent until they ate the fruit. If God had punished them for eating the fruit a second time but not the first time, that would have been reasonable from a moral standpoint (but the point of the myth would not then have been fulfilled). Next, the all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God destroys his self-pronounced "good" creation in a giant flood. All the allegedly evil humans perish, but so do uncounted millions of perfectly innocent plants and animals, an event of untold cruelty and suffering. God should have been able to create a world that was good enough the first time that wouldn't require future destruction. Why did God deliberately overlook this flaw in his creation, especially since he supposedly knew the future? Next, the Christian concept of hell is equally arbitrary and cruel: God creates a hell to punish humans infinitely and eternally for their very finite and temporally-limited acts on Earth. Finally, there is the unexplainable hiddenness of God: a supremely powerful deity that reveals itself only in anecdotal evidence, personal testimony, and subjective revelation, when empirical evidence and logical reasons would obviously be available, is inexplicable--literally beyond comprehension. If God exists, this is a rational and moral failing on God's part; if God does not exist, believing in this God is a rational and moral failing on the human's part.

Theistic religionists in this country, primarily Christians but others also, make two wildly harmful claims about human relationships: First, they maintain that a God exists who is infinitely more powerful, knowing, good, and perfect than humans can ever be. This relationship is overwhelmingly dehumanizing, especially since God is also infinitely more arbitrary than humans can ever be, that no one who really believes it can escape existential despair, making self-actualization of one's life is impossible. But, second, although we can never be like God, we are divinely compensated by being made in the image of God, and given the mandate to subdue the Earth and have dominion over all plants and animals upon it, and being enjoined to go forth and increase our numbers by being "fruitful, and multiply." We are told that we are different from other animals because we possess an immortal soul that they do not possess, so we are different in kind, not just in degree, from the animals we have dominion over. So subduing the Earth and dominating the plants and animals is not only good, it is a divine mandate. These beliefs give humans an exalted, erroneous, and ultimately dangerous view of their position with respect to the biosphere.

Contrary to Christian doctrine, we humans are part of the environment and ecosystem; we are dependent on nature; we are not different in kind from animals, only different in degree, because we all share an evolutionary history and none of us possess a soul. The theistically-inspired elevation of humans above animals and nature is false and will lead to our destruction until we stop believing it. Believing that humans have some divine attributes and divine mandate leads many theists to oppose birth control, environmental protection, and the scaling back of non-sustainable exploitation of natural resources. Christian doctrine thus makes two colossal, complementary errors: it views humans as less than god-like (thereby demeaning the human attributes of empathy, forgiveness, love of goodness and justice, the human potential for moral improvement, and the pleasure, usefulness, and morality of gaining greater knowledge), while simultaneously it views humans as being greater in quality than other organic life (thereby giving humans a dangerously false perspective of humanity's relationship to the natural environment). Both of these errors are outstandingly dehumanizing, making us both less and more than we really are, and belief in both of them is leading us down the path to self-annihilation.

The Characteristics of Humanism

But rather than dwell on the idiocies and evils of traditional religious morals, values, meanings, and purposes, let's concentrate on these conceptual ideals in relation to humanism. Humanists believe in a naturalistic ethics, that humans are the ultimate source of the conceptual ideals. Moral values find their source in human experience; ethics stem from human need and interest; the purpose and meaning of life are what we make it to be. Human ethics and values are an outgrowth of the cooperation necessary for the survival of a social species such as Homo sapiens. Thus, ethics and values can and should be chosen by the application of human reason; they are not handed down to us by a deity from atop a clouded mountain. The dogmatic claims that (1) only supernatural forces can civilize humanity and (2) human thought cannot be the source of morality, are superstitions. To the contrary, we are responsible for our ethics equally as much as for our actions. It is improper to equate values and morals with religion. Estimable values and a personal code of ethics can exist independently of any religious doctrine or creed, and have done so for centuries. Many great historical figures lived moral, happy, and productive lives without religion, and their example is being emulated by innumerable men and women today. More specifically, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle lived moral, self-actualizing lives prior to the existence of Christianity and Islam and without knowledge of Judaism. Humanists recognize this, and state only that since we must choose our values and morals, we base our choices on human reason and experience, not on supernatural authoritarian doctrines. Infinite punishments and rewards for finite acts do not need to be invoked to secure proper moral behavior; ethics can be justified by their ability to promote a happy conscience, a productive and successful life, and the harmonious working of society, that is, the consequences of ethics are their justification.

Another important example is this: the primary reason that ethics and human values--such as self-discipline, honesty, hard work, appreciating the consequences of one's action, taking personal responsibility for one's actions, respecting proper authorities and being able to recognize who those are, being generous and empathetic with others, etc.--have been removed from (or more accurately, greatly attenuated in) the public schools is the ignorance and bigotry of religionists, who insist that character values and morals are inseparable from religion and thus excluded because administratively-controlled religion has been constitutionally excluded. Removing Bible readings and prayer from public schools, while salutatory, should have been the signal to begin including secular character education in the national K-12 curriculum, as is the case in other advanced industrialized countries, but this did not occur due to the objection and resistance of theistic religionists, who insist that secular character education is impossible because secular ethics is impossible. State education officials and school district administrators, both notoriously accommodating to the irrational demands of parents, have largely resisted inclusion of character education. The result is a generation of students who cheat, don't do homework, don't study or take notes, are not worried about failing, who have no love of learning, and who are self-indulgent. In short, these students have been deprived of proper social conditioning and inculcation of secular character attributes that would have made them better students now and better citizens later. Humanists, atheists, and freethinkers have been blamed for the removal of values and morals from the public schools when we effected the removal of state-sponsored religion from these schools, but the blame in truth lies elsewhere: it lies with parents and school officials whose sectarian bigotry obstinately prevents them from recognizing the importance of secular character education and including it in school programs. Humanists actually support teaching conceptual ideals in public schools, as long as they are free of sectarian bias.

The great bulk of humanist thought and literary activity is concerned with examining moral issues. Individual humanists have a tremendous variety of ethical viewpoints within a naturalistic framework. Humanist ethical systems can be pragmatic, consequentialist, utilitarian, Epicurean, and so on. They would reject ethical systems based on theism, revelation, mysticism, obscurantism, clericalism, scholasticism, and so forth, for these are undemocratic, authoritarian, unjustifiable, resistant to change, and profoundly unreliable. Humanists do not believe in scientism, the doctrine that exaggerated trust in the methods of science can answer every question about morality, values, and meaning in the universe, but we do believe that moral solutions can be scientifically informed. If scientists say, for example, that biodiversity should be preserved for a number of scientific reasons to protect the environment, then that must be considered and given great weight. I hope you understand that nature is amoral--not immoral, but amoral. We will not find morals, values, rights, and meanings in nature. To believe that "what is, ought to be" or "what is, is good" is submission to the naturalistic fallacy, an error in reasoning. (This moral principle, by the way--opposing the naturalistic fallacy--is itself a non-naturalistic principle derived from logic.) I will have more to say about this later.

Human ethics can only be the product of human thought; there is no God or Nature's God or Providence or Gaia that will give us ethics. Nevertheless, the study of nature by scientific methods can and should inform all ethical inquiry. For example, scientists have good reasons for condemning pollution, habitat destruction, human population growth, and the unsustainable exploitation of plants and animals, so humanists condemn these things too. Humanists were among the first environmentalists, and environmentalism is one of the most popular concerns of humanists today. Above all, humanists believe that human ethical systems must be based on human needs, experience, and reason, not on the alleged needs, desires, and intentions of supernatural deities.

Let me add that basing ethics on human needs does not mitigate our responsibility to not be cruel to and overly-exploitative of other animals; time does not permit a justification of the extension of concern for human welfare to include animal welfare, but at least let me state that animals don't have rights as humans do. Human rights exist only because of reciprocal sharing of assumed societal obligations with other humans. We are obligated to treat others in society ethically and responsibly as they treat us; this reciprocal and mutual treatment is the basis for human rights. Animals can't participate in this rights sharing because they have no concept of ethics, responsibility, and reciprocity. Although animals have no rights, humans nevertheless have an ethical responsibility to not treat them cruelly, so the end result should be the same as if animals had rights.

One of the central issues in humanism--perhaps the most central--is this: what is the advantage of adopting a humanist philosophy rather than a theistic one within a traditional religion? Here is an answer: Humanists believe that it is better for a human to be free of illusions, and belief in god and the supernatural are illusions. No doubt, theistic and supernaturalistic religions offer their believers emotional supports that enable them to survive and live happily in the world, but similar supports can be found in humanism with the addition of these positive advantages:

Afraid of death? Either believe in an afterlife and immortal soul or live your present life realistically and achieve immortality by the memories and records of your efforts to improve the world for others. One can be happy or unhappy in either situation, but only the latter is authentic and consistent with nature and reality as we know them.

Finding yourself alive, how then do you live? Theistic religions provide the answer of believing in God and following the commandments, while humanism says that humans are responsible for creating their own morals as well as following them. Either can result in both ethical or unethical behavior, but only the latter is realistic, subject to rational analysis, and actually represents the true state of affairs in either case (religionists famously create and follow their own moral codes regardless of what they claim to believe about such codes' origins!).

What is the meaning of life? Most religions are happy to provide a simple, superficial, semi-palatable answer, e.g. serve God on Earth and then in heaven by achieving salvation through some easy or difficult doctrine, while humanists say the meaning of life is found in an individual's relationships with other humans in society. Both have undoubtedly given meaning to humans, but only the latter can be examined rationally, can be accomplished without guilt or fear, and actually promotes better conduct among humans.

While religions have certainly resulted in some good in the world, their misogyny, patriarchy, bigotry, authoritarianism, propagation of nonsense, ignorance, credulity, and cruelty, tolerance of slavery and crimes against humanity, human over-population, environmental destruction, maintaining the status quo at all costs, etc., far outweigh any of the good they do. Contrast that with humanism, which has always promoted the most noble qualities of humanity: reason, empiricism, tolerance, fellowship, compassion, democracy, skepticism, etc. Science is a product of the empirical, rational, and skeptical humanist impulse, and has given humanity unparalleled advances in food, energy, communication, transportation, medicine, etc. Contrast just the fruits of science with those of religion--the comparison is telling.

Transcendental religions offer small good in exchange for much superstition and human debasement, while humanism offers much good in exchange for the effort of critical thinking. Humanism, like religion, can offer love, calm fears, enhance joy, justify anger, and comfort sadness. In short, humanism has all the presumed benefits of traditional theistic-supernaturalistic religions but without the illusions and dysfunctional attributes that accompany them.

The Naturalistic Temptation

Paul Kurtz wrote an entire book on The Transcendental Temptation, explaining the reasons why humans so easily and readily believe in miracles, supernatural entities, and deities, and the dangers that result from this failure to use our critical faculties. Indeed, the transcendental temptation is humanity's greatest weakness, and has led and is currently leading us to horrors of war, suffering, and self-destruction. But there is another temptation that some of us cannot resist: the naturalistic temptation. We naturalistic humanists are especially susceptible to this temptation, but as with the transcendental temptation, it must be resisted and avoided.

The naturalistic temptation is to attempt to find morals, values, meanings, and purposes in nature or natural science, our understanding of nature. The effort to do this is a fallacy known as the "naturalistic fallacy" or the "is-ought fallacy." Educated, informed people who know enough to resist the transcendental lure and avoid adopting morals and values presented to them by traditional religions nevertheless sometimes think that the alternative is to discover these things in the natural world. They think, "what is, ought to be." Sex is almost universal in nature, so sex is good. Nature is beautiful, so everything natural is beautiful and good (and everything unnatural is therefore ugly and bad). Many of our feelings and impulses are derived from our social animal natures, so these universal instinctual impulses should not be denied, but allowed by society and institutionalized in its laws. Ethics should be explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory and ultimately totally naturalized. There are today philosopher-biologists who actually argue this!

There is so much wrong with the naturalistic temptation that I can only begin to explain the issues. First, our understanding of nature by science is incomplete. Second, science has been wrong in the past. Third, while nature is amoral and pre-existent, and therefore nothing in nature can really be ugly or evil or cruel when judged objectively, nevertheless, judged by the standard of human welfare, natural events and effects can be considered harmful, cruel, and ugly (think of parasites, predators, volcano eruptions, giant meteorite impacts, etc.). Scientists are beginning to better understand our human animal natures, which indeed have elements instinctually derived from our primate ancestors and are encoded in our genes, but there is an enormous debate about whether this knowledge should be used to judge or influence our actions today. To be brief, understanding our nature is not the same thing as permitting it to dominate or even influence our lives, depending on circumstances and the degree of influence. Everything from intelligence testing and school spending to criminal punishment and the nature of religion is today being examined from the new perspective of having deep genetic roots in human nature. I think this current scientific program is good, but we must remember that whatever we find doesn't mean it must be adopted as policy or law, as some individuals think it should. I might add that some individuals, notably the late Stephen Jay Gould, actually condemned such research because of what its results might reveal and allow ignorant political leaders to institute in law and policy, but Gould's rejection was extreme and not reflective of most scientists; on the other hand, there are scientists who claim that such results should be instituted in law and policy, so Gould was certainly right to be concerned, as am I.

Remember the specter of scientism, which tells us that our understanding of proper conceptual ideals cannot be as reliable as our understanding of human nature. The naturalistic fallacy forbids us from making our society and moral acts perfectly consistent with nature, although we should be aware of our true relationship to nature and not damage, degrade, and destroy it as we have been doing under the influence of the transcendental temptation. We must steer between the Scylla of transcendentalism and the Charybdis of naturalism when it comes to forming our morals, values, purposes, and meanings.

We humanists believe in plants, animals, humans, mountains, continents, the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. Isn't that enough for any individual person to believe in? Why would anyone want to believe in anything else? How would anybody have the time to believe in more than this? Others, however, do believe in more than this to the exclusion of other real and more important things. Millions of children and adults die from sickness and starvation each year--we grieve for them, but we should be saddened and outraged that political and economic systems exist that produce such conditions. Matters of economics, trade, and public policy are decided in private, far from the ears of those whose quality of life the policies affect. All of our planet's ecosystems are being manipulated, over-exploited, and destroyed. The failings of our institutions are due to the failure to adopt humanistic systems of morals and values, and this occurs because of the overwhelming power of the competing supernaturalistic and transcendental systems of morals and values that largely govern human conduct in this world.

Conclusions

Do we need meanings, values, purposes, and morals to live a happy, successful, self-actualizing life? Of course; we can't avoid them. We need to make these conceptual ideals explicit so that we can evaluate and understand them and the effect they have on us and our society. They must be explicit to be able to explain them to others and to our children, since they can be rationally understood and justified. And they must be explicit to reveal the cruel, harmful, and transcendentally- and religiously-inspired values and morals that underlie our culture and its financial, trade, and political systems (such values include venality and acquisitiveness, base materialism and consumerism, xenophobia and misanthropy, imperialism and absolutism, contempt for nature and fear of wild nature, and so forth).

We should not attempt to find conceptual ideals in either nature or the natural sciences (as even humanists have suggested). Nature and science can only inform or aid our ethical, purposeful quest--not directly provide final and definite answers. Instead, conceptual ideals must be found in scientifically-informed philosophy by the use of critical inquiry.

We humanists find conceptual ideals in society and in ourselves, by our personal interaction with other people. Here, philosophy, history, psychology, and biology are sources of wise and humane ethical precepts that we can rationally evaluate and adopt.

We must use critical inquiry--critical thinking and free inquiry based on empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and skepticism--combined with our highest emotions--compassion, empathy, pity, justice, reconciliation, kindness, caring, and love--to find personal conceptual ideals for ourselves.

We can justifiably reject authority, revelation, tradition, dogma, patriarchy, and other non-empirical, illogical, irrational, and unreliable forms of evidence and arguments as sources. These sources involve uncritical and non-free forms of thinking that history and insight have proven to be cruel, evil, and unjust. We should also reject our basest emotions as sources: anger, revenge, jealousy, envy, bigotry, xenophobia, venality, and hatred.

We must do all of these things explicitly and analytically, with reason and full awareness of the consequences of our actions, and not simply by the command of unreliable authorities.

Finally, if you expected me to provide specific values, purposes, meanings, and morals for you to take with you, you are mistaken. These are for you to discover and learn and adopt for yourselves. This is your job! You have the ability to do this for yourself, with or without the help of others, and certainly without the commands of authoritarian religious institutions. And you are obligated to do this for yourself--since there is no evidence for a god to provide these for you.