The Joyfully Agnostic Gnostic Opines about (spiritual) Humanism
Thomas Merton astutely observed of himself, “My truth is half poisoned by lies.” The more I meditate on this simple statement the more I see it is true for me - for all of us. Fr. Merton’s observation also sums for me rather succinctly my distrust of those who are always speaking of “my truth,” or denigrating religion by stating they “are not religious; they are spiritual.”
Spiritual people are often the biggest group of self-deceivers in humanity. They will hide behind unexamined beliefs to avoid painful insights into themselves and the human condition. This group often claims their actions bear the mark of a higher and noble purpose. Those who claim faith hold it like an ace hidden up a card sharps sleeve. They often take the buffet approach to religion and take only the beautiful and sweet ideas to heart and disregard those that frighten or offend rather than inquiring as to the potential truth.
Yet faith - the unexamined kind - has been used to justify so many horrible and inhuman actions that if the majority of believers stopped to contemplate them in earnest for half a day they might just walk out on their churches and never look back. Unexamined faith is merely superstition and it shirks the light of reason, and just as often, compassion.
Faith is another way that truth becomes half poisoned with lies. Faith is always claimed when the questions exceed our ability to answer them with the information currently at hand. Faith allows us to put a stop to troublesome questioning and truth questing and continue on blindly, simply so we can hide our anxieties from ourselves about life and our place in this massive universe. Unexamined faith - sometimes falsely praised as “blind faith”- keeps the church in the position of peddling darkness and reinforcing its inherent absurdities even when common sense suggests otherwise.
The trump cards of “faith” and “my truth” are always played by the weakest minds who don’t appreciate being challenged, and it often seems that those who claim the greatest faith often have the least, though they hide behind pious acts and church involvement. These are the sad folks whose world is always teetering like a plate spinning on the end of a stick. It only takes one misstep and the plate hits the ground smashing to smithereens.
Even more interesting is that this fragile faith does not prevent them from being pugnacious and uncharitable when confronted by opposing ideals or systems of thought. They refuse to be challenged, but they will brutally challenge others.
Then we have the unctuous conceit of those who - grasping the problems presented by the quest for truth and the limits of our human knowledge - retreat into a self-imposed nihilism. They simply give up saying that it is impossible to answer these questions and there is no way we can ultimately be sure of the truth - whatever the hell that is - anyway.
Thank God for the Humanists! Humanists often are accused of arrogance by the religious establishment because they eliminate God and his divine providence from the equation. Humanists declare that everything works fine the way it is without adding an unknown and non-provable into the equation. God is an indefinable quantity. God is infinity itself and therefore, in scientific terms at least, indefinable and, thus ineffable.
Humanism, to be fair, can be arrogant. It sees “man as the measure of all things.”[1] The Greek philosopher, Protogoras wrote that “concerning the gods, I have no way of knowing whether they exist or not, or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.”
The materialism of Protorgoras was as offensive to the religious and democratic Athenians as modern secular humanism is to religious authority today. The “book” he wrote containing the above lines suggesting his potential atheism was actually banned and supposedly gathered up and burned. Free inquiry has always come into contact with the brute force of blissful ignorance.
Humanism may, indeed, be arrogant, but it is an arrogance tempered with humility. It simply refuses to cower to an impious and whimsical god who constantly threatens to wreak havoc in their lives. Humanism understands fully, all to well, the limits of human knowledge, and it perceives our smallness when compared to the vastness of the universe. But, it also understands that the many open ended questions (the more answers we obtain the more questions we have) that evade answers and the constraints of the human mind are not proof of god’s existence. They might even be proof of his non-existence.
When I was in middle school I confessed to my mother that I wasn’t really sure I believed in god. I laid out my questions for her, and after a short while of looking at me with concern and smiling unctuously she tossed her hands in the air yelling, “Well then how do you explain how we all got here? Even science can’t do that.”
Being perceptive enough to not test my mother’s patience, which as I was getting older and no longer the cute little guy she doted on, I shrugged my shoulders and conceded the argument to her. She even got our parish pastor to pull me out of CCD in front of my classmates so we could discuss my questions.
Had I been older and more seasoned I would have simply responded to my mother by saying, “I can’t explain it. But that proves nothing except that I don’t have the answers or that I am not smart enough. But it does not prove that God exists. We simply don’t have the information needed to answer.”
Humanism puts faith in the human mind and our capacity to achieve and overcome. It has faith - if I can be permitted the use of the word - that we may just very well puzzle the answers out on our own. But the answers will come from knowledge and not superstitious belief that often makes no sense at all.
Humanism isn’t just cosmology. It is about humanity and our place in the universe. It puts human need first and seeks to find solutions to problems that will allow us to not simply survive as a species, but thrive. Humanism also understands that our technological advancements often outpace our moral capacity to cope with them and that we are quite capable of destroying ourselves as easily as thrive. It accepts the tenacity of life, and its ability to adapt to a whole multitude of scenarios. There is doomsday and hope within humanism.
Unlike religious thinkers, humanists don’t see morality as something divinely created. Evangelist and Inspirational writer Max Lucado proclaims that the stirrings of our conscience is proof that God exists and that he installed in us the knowledge of right and wrong. But again that is no proof. That is a statement of faith, not a fact.
Morality and ethics is the result of our search for meaning and order. An atheist is no more likely to commit heinous crimes such as rape and murder than a religious person. In fact many devout people have been guilty of committing countless atrocities, and sometimes it is their faith or belief in god that seems to support it.
If there is any group of Christians that should have reason to fear the wrath of a vengeful god and the eternal horrors of hell it would be Catholics. But, apparently even the possibility of a permanent fall from grace is not enough to prevent many in a sick priesthood from fondling the genitals of their altar boys.
Humanism accepts the need for humanity to aspire to a higher morality, but notes that it can only happen if we can evolve past our superstitious need for deity and his primitive form of justice. Spiritual Humanism[2] is about finding a balance in the human soul free from superstition and while standing in the light of reason.
Religion has long been the enemy of reason and quick to silence it when its voice starts clamoring above the hellmongers screeching from their pulpits. Modern Christianity claims John 3:16,[3] and quotes pithy sayings from the Sermon on the Mount, such as “turn the other cheek,” all the while clinging stubbornly to the eye for an eye mentality of the Jewish scriptures they so derisively dub the Old Testament.
Spiritual Humanism recognizes man’s dual nature of good and bad, but does not place the blame on god, the devil or the absurdity of original sin. Rather it seeks to find rational answers to these problems.
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[1] “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not" is perhaps the most famous saying of the pre-Socratic sophist Protagoras. It is useful to note that this comes to us as a fragmentation and without context and is therefore open to various interpretations.
[2] Differentiated from Religious Humanism which came from the Unitarian Universalist movement.
[3] For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.