Humanism

By Geoff Skeet

The Humanist Society of Scotland entered my life following the death of Davie Chisholm, our friend and secretary of the local Community Council. His next of kin came up from the South and arranged for the funeral to be conducted by one of the local clergy.

The churches maintain a rota and you get whoever’s name turns up. This Minister was unpleasantly drunk at the start and kept forgetting his words, including the name of the deceased. By the time we had droned out the metrical 23^rd Psalm my wife and I came to a conclusion. None of our near and dear ones were to be put through this sort of thing.

We went home and contacted Age Concern and arranged that when either of us gave up living, our bodies would be dealt with as we desired and we also contacted the Humanists for someone to do the ceremony. We found there were two societies, The Humanist Society and the Humanist Society of Scotland. Not to mention the Secular Society and the Rationalist Press Association. Having found a Humanist Society we joined, as we were that sort of people.

What is Humanism? There are several definitions.

There were a group of thinkers during the Renaissance including Erasmus and Sir (or Saint) Thomas More, who, you may recall wrote “Utopia” and may have been the first Socialist. They believed in “reason” and “humanity” and the Greek and Roman Classics. Most of them were Catholics. However, they never used the word “Humanism”, which was not given them until the 19^th Century.

These days the word Humanism may be described as a belief that the basis for society, ethics, knowledge and so on are based, not on Religion but on human abilities, notably our ability to experience nature and to question this experience. It also means a member of the Humanist Society of Scotland or wherever.

I am a member of the Humanist Society of Scotland and its local group which meets in Inverness and has several members qualified to perform Weddings, Funerals, Naming of Children and so on. Most of these ceremonies don’t need a man in a dog collar; I’ve been to “successful”, moving funerals conducted by family members.  Weddings are somewhat different to the others in that to conduct a legal wedding you have to be licensed by the state. All licence applications from Humanists were refused until last year. This concession has been the result of a long campaign by Humanists. We are not often persecuted in this country, just hindered from doing our thing.

But what do Humanists believe? At a recent meeting, the Highland group debated Atheism versus Agnosticism. A majority turned out to be atheists, but next year it could go the other way. Some members may be Deists or even Theists, as long as we’re still asking the questions. Churches do not hold debates on their beliefs, the Humanist Society does.

Religions often seem attractive, but if I say I’d like to join, the devotees demand that I believe something else. For instance, Christians make a great thing out of the sayings of Jesus and they claim him exclusively for themselves. So, you read the Sermon on the Mount and say you’d like in. Then you are introduced to the small print. The Nicene Creed with all sorts of stuff - you may not understand it but that’s OK just so long as you believe it. Otherwise you are outside in the dark with sinners and evildoers.

By the way, things don’t have to be in the Creed. The creed mentions the Bible (Holy Scriptures). There is periodically a row about homosexuality. Why, when there is no mention of it in the Creeds? Ah! – but there’s a mention of it in a Book of the Bible. Have you read it?

In the past there have been troubles over the shape of the Earth, whether or not stars move, the Sun goes round the Earth or vice versa. All these topics are mentioned somewhere in the Bible. You will have heard of the trouble Christian Bigots have with the facts of Biology and Geology but I’ll leave that to others.

Maybe you believe that the circumference of a circle is 3.1416 etc times the diameter. The Bible says different but Christians have generally preferred to keep quiet about it, as they’re obviously on a loser with this one.

If you join the Humanists, you won’t have this trouble. You won’t be called upon to believe anything you didn’t believe before you came in.

You may be wondering what I believe myself. Do I deny the existence of God? No I don’t! For the last two and a bit millennia the greatest thinkers of Europe and thereabouts have looked for a way of proving or disproving this. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza among others have advanced arguments which have been refuted, usually within a generation. Immanuel Kant, in the 18^th Century noted a batch of questions, including the God one, and proved that these questions could not be decided by human reason. I don’t reckon to argue with Kant about the limits of reason.

If anyone, therefore, tells you that they know there’s a God they are kidding themselves, they only believe it - knowledge requires proof. But what does belief require? Surely anything more than opinion needs commitment. If you really believe in God, then it must make some difference to you.

Jews and Muslims must abstain from eating pork but Christians have no such rules. So what do they do? I know what Jesus advised them to do, but do they do it? Apart from going to Church on Sunday it seems to make little difference. Still, it might be considered rude to call religion a mere opinion like believing that a porcelain teapot is orbiting the Sun. Such a teapot would be impossible to observe (unless something collides with it) and nothing can be done with it. I don’t believe there is a porcelain teapot orbiting the Sun. There don’t seem to be a way of disproving this, but I see no point in believing it.

People call me an atheist, although I think this is odd. We should describe people by what they believe in, not by what they don’t. Nobody calls me an Ateapotist.

You may think this is all very vague, but I am a member of a socialist party. Have we a unified official definition of Socialism? Of course not and at present I don’t recommend us getting one.

As far as what humanists do, it may not seem much, besides conducting ceremonies, our members write letters to the press and conduct small-scale agitation about Education and protest when Christians cross the line between reasonable persuasion and dogmatic interference.

We should do more. Probably a fair proportion of clergymen in Scotland are creationists to one degree or another. Children in many schools, especially “Faith Schools” are taught the time-wasting rigmarole of “intelligent” design, if they are not taught the picturesque fictions of “Creation Science”.

If children are not taught to look at things critically they will not only fall victim to religious frauds but also to economic and political frauds, and don’t tell me there aren’t lots of those.

There is also the business of Hospital Chaplaincy. NHS funds are made available to various denominations to finance religious services in Hospitals and regular tours. On admission to hospital patients are given a large form on which they are persuaded to enter all sorts of personal details including their race and religion. The Humanist Society is applying to join this scheme, it being better to be inside pissing out than outside pissing in. As one who has occupied hospital beds, I can assure you that it is cheering to be visited by a sympathetic person who talks from experience as opposed to doctrine.

Part of the trouble with the Humanist cause is that the Society is numerically small. One reason why the Humanist Society is so small is that so many people who are in agreement with it don’t see the point of joining. After all, they stay away from church on Sunday so that’s it! Unfortunately it’s not enough.

Firstly, religious leaders argue that they command a large majority of the population;   the facts offered as evidence include records of baptisms and other ceremonies.  

Sometimes they quote the results of surveys by blokes in suits and clipboards, and you can get some funny numbers this way. What do you tell clipboard holders? Religionists don’t like quoting headcounts of devotees attending their functions, presumably because it’s smaller than they’d like. However it’s still larger than a headcount at humanist meetings. There’s a saying that God is on the side of the big battalions, certainly democracy is.

Another point is the one we all know. The more manpower you have, the more things you can do. And there’s a lot to be done.

State schools are required by law to teach religion, this teaching is to be informative and indoctrination is not supposed to happen, but what if it does? Who gets action, a lone voice in the wilderness or an organized deputation?

In Calcutta, humanists have organized charity work including refuges for street people. We have heard more about the Roman Catholic institution connected with Mother Theresa, more than they have heard in Calcutta. In other parts of India, Young Humanists combat Hindu Holy Men by putting on shows walking on fire and other stunts, Sometimes they deflate Holy Men who claim to cure snake bites by challenging them to handle poisonous serpents.

In English schools religious education is supervised by Advisory Committees representing all denominations. The Ministry of Education decrees specifically that Humanists must not sit on these committees but humanist parents persuade Local Authorities to ignore this decree. Not only that but the contributions made by Humanist Representatives have earned them considerable respect.

Sometimes I have heard the Humanist Society described as “A church for people who don’t go to Church”. This leads us to the point why believe in anything at all relating to religion or irreligion –if that’s what you’d like to call it. Why do people believe in Religion?

Religions generally have a deity who rewards piety – or is thought to. In addition, clergymen claim morality is derived from their god. I remember being at a meeting where moral precepts were being discussed. A minister who was present spoke up, “What’s wrong with the Ten Commandments?”  Indeed. If they are good, is this because they are commanded by God, or did God ordain them because they were good? Some of us would say that thinking about this question leads us to suspect that moral precepts have nothing to do with religion and, indeed we would all be better people without any such thing.

If this is so, then ethics, or morality (if there’s a difference), should best be dealt with outside the churches, possibly under the auspices of some body like the Humanist Society.