Secular Humanist Thoughts:

A Letter to the Brainerd Daily Dispatch

By Sally Morem

[Note to readers: On June 7 of 2001, Humanists of Minnesota's own

intrepid secular humanist, Rod Sheffer, had a letter to the editor published
in the Brainerd Daily Dispatch, defending secular humanism. On June
17, a reader from Deerwood, MN, responded with some outrageous
attacks on secular humanism, including the charge that it sponsors or
sanctions genocide. I wrote a reply, which was published in the same
paper.]

Reader Ralph Kant dropped a bundle of hot potatoes dealing with

human meaning and morality at our feet--almost as much as a noted
philosopher used to ponder, the philosopher with whom he shares a
surname.

Unfortunately Kant lacks his predecessor's finesse with problems of

logic such as making the correct inference based on sufficient data and
accurately classifying like with like. He also has problems sorting out
the proper relationship between purported causes and effects.

For instance, he claims that the source of totalitarian thought and action
in the 20th century to be secular humanism--a rather chancy assertion
considering that secular humanism was a philosophical and social
movement that responded to the perceived shortcomings in theology in
Great Britain and America just after the First World War. If humanism
had inspired Hitler and Stalin with lustful thoughts of oppression and
conquest, it would have had to do so quickly! Systems of thought
generally take generations or centuries to germinate as full-fledged
political movements.
Also considering the fact that secular humanists have always been
adamant about upholding democracy as humanity's supreme historical
achievement and challenge for future betterment, I doubt if the thought
of becoming charter members of their local secular humanist club
would have ever entered those tyrants' minds.

As far as mandatory atheism under Communism is concerned, I've

always considered that to be one among a very large number of
grotesque errors of that deservedly discredited ideology.' If you think
you can command millions of your fellow humans to hold a certain
metaphysical belief in order to achieve some sort of paradise on Earth,
well, just call yourself what you are--a theocrat.' Go ahead. You might
as well join the Taliban.

For those still worried about humanism, consider this: a secular

humanist society would look a lot like our very own turn-of-the
millennium American society--only with less religion.' But this more
secular, more worldly, if you will, America, this secular humanist society
which I believe we're already well on the way to achieving, will develop
wholly without coercion.

As a libertarian secular humanist I could never countenance, let alone

cooperate with, anything else but the gradual and wholly voluntary
individual by individual abandonment of religious dogma. Ever.

A young person might, as part of this process, say, "Religious claims

about the nature of the world make no sense to me. I guess that makes
me a secular humanist.” Period. No political mandate. No command
from on high. No physical or mental coercion. Nothing but freethought
freely acted upon. And certainly, Mr. Kant, no genocide.

Kant clearly has no notion of the nature or origin of morality. Morality

is not a list of commandments nor is it legal code. These are merely
codified morals. Morality is the gut sense of the rightness or wrongness
that we feel in response to any given action.

The fact that human life grew in complexity, intelligence, and power
through millions of years of naturalistic evolutionary processes does not
mean we can do anything we want without thought or consequence. To
the contrary, the harsh demands of life lived in small, intimate hunter-
gatherer bands of humans put a premium on the development and
preservation of such characteristics as truth-telling, helpfulness,
bravery, and fellow-feeling among hundreds of thousands of generations
of our successful ancestors. They were the survivors. And we are their
biological and cultural heirs. As a result, we cannot be amoral
(although we may try). Moral thoughts and acts are bred into our
limbic systems and our brains. So deeply has our moral sense sunk in
that it may very well be preserved within the human genome itself.

It certainly is preserved in human language with reams of synonyms for

good and evil, right and wrong, righteous and unrighteous. There may
be a few secular humanists who have mistakenly come to believe that
humanity has evolved beyond morality. If so, they haven't skimmed a
copy of Webster's dictionary or Roget's thesaurus recently.

And finally, the fact that secular humanists deny theological assertions
that a powerful deity slapped metaphorical price stickers on our
foreheads and called us His creatures does not mean that humanists
believe our lives are without value. WE value our lives. WE give them
value. Appreciating existence is inherently a do-it-yourself job. No one
else can do it for you, not your priest, your rabbi, your minister, or your
god. If you do not value your life, it is not valued.

This at its core is the message secular humanism offers to an

increasingly secular age: We humans are at once responsible for our
own happiness and achievements and the beneficiaries of our own well
chosen actions. We will make mistakes--sometimes big ones. But on the
whole, we're good at inventing, creating, and living. Even after
accounting for all the unintended consequences of our actions (the
unavoidable detritus of the endless experiments and explorations of
finite, mortal beings) we accept as a given that our lives are not the
playthings of supernatural beings. Our future is up to us. All of it.