Towards
a More Authentic and Coherent Understanding of Atheism and Organised Secular
Humanism: By Donovan Reynolds.
Professor
Richard Dawkins turned spirituality upside down when he wrote the book “The God
Delusion”. Before that I had read other books but none had ever shaken up my
world for the better. It gave me a bedrock of understanding who I was and
unravelled the mystery of human secularism as a decent and credible system of
belief. Prior to that, I had grown up in a Jamaican religious conservative
society and my religious curiosity was tamed by rapture hungry evangelist
conjuring up a constant died of vengeful death by fire in an eternal hell furnace.
However my discursive spirit spurred on my stubborn curiosity about the
mismatched chronological world of creationism and evolutionary biology. But I
was repeatedly tamed by religious hocks persistence of smothering me with the
trenchant idea of believing by faith in a blinkered way.
Professor Richard Dawkins is an atheist and he
is a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the
Brights movement. The Brights movement is a social movement that aims to
promote public understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview,
including equal civil rights and acceptance for people who hold a naturalistic
worldview .He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent
design.
In
his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argues against the watchmaker analogy,
an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the
complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as
analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science
books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly
discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends
that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious
faith is a delusion he describes it as "a fixed false belief". As of
January 2010, the English-language version has sold more than two million
copies and had been translated into 31 languages. It has been a centre piece of
literature on the bookshelf of a number of Humanist globally like me as a
source of comfort and a buffer against the argument of the religious right and
the venom of hatred and scaremongering that they often spew out.
Atheists, like me are a misunderstood breed .We
face moralistic prejudice verbal and in extreme cases physical assault and
imprisonment but we are not alone in our viewpoint of a godless world. The
propaganda of us being arrogant devil worshippers is wearing thin and
unwarranted. I have embraced my faith identity as an atheist but persons who
question religion spawn a variety of other terms or identities, including,
humanist, secular humanist, freethinker, objectivist, rationalist, naturalist,
materialist, agnostic, sceptic, apathies, or even naturalistic pantheists or
classical deists, and so on. In fact I use the term humanist to introduce
myself usually in a hostile dialectic setting in order to maintain the shape of
my face.
Humanist
similar to myself belief that this world
is the only one we have and that human problems can only be solved by humans,
humanists have often been very active social reformers. Compassion and a sense
of justice are not unique to religious people. Most humanists embrace the philosophy
that identifies pollution, militarism, nationalism, sexism, poverty and
corruption as being persistent and addressable human character issues that is
incompatible with the interests of our species. Most humanists believe in democracy, open
government and human rights, and support action on world poverty and the
environment. The basic and most credible
tenet of secular humanism is the focus is on doing good and living well in the here
and now, and leaving the world a better place for those who come after.
At the core of our belief we promote public
understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview, which is free
of supernatural and mystical elements? We fail to gain public recognition that those
of us who hold such a worldview can bring principled actions to bear on matters
of civic importance on a global scale. The humanitarian appeal that we raise
along with our charitable work often goes unnoticed. It’s been an up hill
struggle to educate society toward accepting the full and equitable civic
participation of the difficult humanitarian appeals that others shy away from
in order to preserve the moral integrity of their religious faith. Our members have
gone into the trenches on their own raise a number of humanitarian concerns
globally about Aids, Famine and social deprivation, poverty, religious hatred,
homophobia, sexism, racism etc. We are found in every social organization
globally from Green Peace, Amnesty International and the Red Cross without
drawing attention to ourselves or being self congratulatory.
It’s not all been rosy as an Atheist as we face
criticisms internally and externally and we expect to be held up to scrutiny.
At a presentation at the atheist Alliance International Convention in 2007
journalist and noted atheist the late Christopher Hitchens likewise found it a
"cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate
themselves to be called “brights.”
Anti-humanists, such as Jean-François Lyotard
and Michel Foucault, have asserted that humanism posits an overarching and
excessively abstract notion of humanity or universal human nature, which can
then be used as a pretext for imperialism and domination of those deemed
somehow less than human. Philosopher Kate Soper notes that by faulting humanism
for falling short of its own benevolent ideals, anti-humanism thus frequently
"secretes a humanist rhetoric”. Rapture hungry evangelist from the pulpits
of the religious right make a more scathing attack on us by spewing
condemnation and aggressive hate laced
generalizations that are unfounded and stomach churning we are branded as false
profits, the devil incarnate, fitting only for the everlasting furnace of hell.
It’s a good thing that we neither believe in heaven or hell or we would have
been frightened into heaven condemned to a life of a boring and unhealthy diet
of milk and honey.
I hope this article has garnered some new understanding and debunk some of
the silly myths around Secular humanism. It is a heady concoction but I have
tried to simplify its core tenets. Like the philosopher Dwight Gilbert Jones I
am a crazy romantic and quasi idealist. I believe like him that Humanism may be
the only philosophy likely to be adopted by our species as a whole. He however
cautions that “it is thus incumbent on inclusive Humanists to not place
unwarranted or self-interested conditions on its prospective adherents, nor
associate it with religious acrimony”.
Donovan Reynolds is British
Based Social Worker and a Human Rights Campaigner with an interest in Politics,
Culture and International Development issues. Readers are invited to give a
feedback on this blog at the space provided below or to e-mail him at
Dannygerm63@hotmail.co.uk.You may also give your feedback on the Facebook or
twitter link on this blog.
