Strawmen slouching towards Bethlehem, film at 11
That link will take you to an article, reprinted at Richarddawkins.net, that just…just…sigh. I’m…gad. Sigh. Walk around in flustery circles and swear. Take a deep breath.
There. I can talk now.
Mr Scruton apparently knows exactly everything about that “New Humanism.” Yep, cuz that’s what us modern humanists think like. Get rid of God, have orgies with puppies and babies! Pleasure pleasure pleasure! No self-discipline!
Okay, I can’t talk. I’m seeing red. I mean, really? Really? Where to begin –
The strawman caricature? That’s a good one. That description he gives of “New Humanists”? Pretty much full of shit. I love when people tell me what I believe. Since I happily accept the label of “atheist,” I’m a bit used to it at this point. Everyone thinks they know what atheists think. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone would set up a cartoon villain version of humanism to beat down, too.
How about the false dichotomy? Yeah, that’s another good one. He is really down on the emphasis on pleasure. Why? Pleasure is good. Pleasure is wonderful. Pleasure and joy are things to be pursued in life. What Scruton can’t seem to realize, though, is that pleasure is not the opposite of self-discipline. These things may sometimes come into conflict — but nothing makes that necessarily so, and they certainly aren’t diametric opposites. Unless you subscribe to some medieval notion of things.
Oh, but look at his paradise:
The family in which I was raised was, in the matter of religion, typical of postwar England. There was no objection to the children receiving Christian instruction at school, and performing there a daily act of worship. There was no objection to chapel and Sunday school—indeed, provided these institutions were gloomy enough, my parents thought, their children could only be improved by them. But the home was a religion-free zone: no grace before meals, no prayers at bedtime, and the Bible wedged firmly on the shelf between the Oxford Dictionary and Winston Churchill’s History of the Second World War. Our parents called themselves humanists. They had been raised as Christians, but had lived through the Second World War and lost faith in the God who permitted it. They regarded humanism as a residual option, once faith had dissolved. It was not something to make a song and dance about, still less something to impose on others, but simply the best they could manage in the absence of God.
“The best they could manage”? That’s a positive philosophy? That sounds down right dreary to me, the desperate clinging to something in the face of creeping nihilism.It certainly does nothing new. Stiff upper lip nonsense, is what it is.
Well, Mr. Scruton, we humanists today aren’t about doing “the best [we] can manage.” We’re about being fabulous, darling.
Humanism is a positive worldview. Yes, it firmly rejects religion, and has no truck with the God hypothesis. But while there is some focus on the troubles with religion, the philosophies of humanism have moved way past simple rejection of supernatural belief. Humanism isn’t just Christianity in rationalist drag. It’s new and wonderful, built on good ideas from the past, and new ones we’re busy coming up with now. We’ve gotten rid of outdated notions, replaced them with better ones. We ground ourselves in humanity — not in the beat yourself up way of Scruton’s dreary remembrances, but in a true sense of who and what we are. One ideal that comes out of that, amidst a whole sea of ideals that emphasize community and love and kindness and tirelessly working to better ourselves, is a simple, radical idea:
It’s okay to be happy.
Really, honestly. It’s okay. And guess what? You can be happy, AND you can have self-discipline and work to better yourself and humanity and generally move our species closer to the ideal of our better angels. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time. You can still be happy. You can still have a good time. You can still have rollickin’ good sex with other consenting adults, and still work on leaving the world a better place.
Or you can put on a hair shirt like Scruton. Your pick.
