The fourth meeting of the Humanist Small Group drew 9 people to the Harvard Club today. Several were new, so we discussed how we defined Humanism as a non-religious philosophy or life stance.
We talked about the Dawkins/Hitchens view that there is nothing at all good about religion. No one present defended that view. Rather, we pretty much agreed that religion, as a human creation, had produced some worthy ideas along with bad stuff. Rather than try to build Humanism from scratch, it would be a good idea to poach on what is worthwhile.
For instance, religions are very effective at raising children to perpeturate their beliefs, and while we don’t want to indoctrinate kids, it’s important for Humanism to be able to perpetuate and not die out. A resource for this is the book, Parenting Beyond Belief.
While Humanists do not wish to emulate religious claims to have moral rules that are absolutely and unimpeachablely true, Humanists must have moral values, and these values should be thought out in advance of being in the situation where one needs to rely on them. A purely ad hoc approach will likely lead us to choose the most convenient and indulgent option.
We also discussed Dawkins notion in The God Delusion that morality really comes from human intuition and that modern religious people reject slavery not because of their reading of scripture, but because they are reinterpreting scripture after having been influenced by enlighted ideas. Even monkeys tested in labs seem to have a sense of moral fairness. But human morality has evolved far beyond our instincts, which, for instance, might well sanction polygamy like that practiced by alpha males in non-human species.
Actually, we discussed whether Dawkins as a Humanist, and given his promotion of the term bright for unbelievers, our conclusion is that Humanist is not a label he prefers. with. This page confirms our supposition.
We disagreed a bit on our attitude toward liberal religionists. Some of us were just fine with those who don’t believe in the dogmas of the religion they belong to, but attend services anyway because they enjoy the ritual or the community. Others wanted people to live consistently with their (non)belief.
We also discussed the notion that religion was responsible for violence carried out in its name. We agreed that people had a natural trend toward tribalism, and can find other forms of difference, like race, nationality, or even Red Sox vs. Yankees team preference to hate each other. (the Sox and Yankees were playing a rain-delayed game only a few blocks away at Fenway Park). Still, most of us thought that religion was particularly effective at inspiring these kind of hatreds because of its claims to absolute authority.
We also discussed Aristotle, and got some book recommendations
Aristotle by Jonathan Lear
On Virtue Ethics by Rosalind Hursthouse
After Virtue (with reservations) byAlasdair MacIntyre.
[...] Rick Heller has chronicled the last two meetings, the latter of which was this Saturday. As you can see, virtue ethics came up at a few points. As it did earlier this month when I stopped by the University of Chicago and sat in on a seminar by Deirdre McCloskey on virtue ethics, Christianity and capitalism. (Guess there’s more than one way to do it.) [...]
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