Manifestos and Freethought

Humanist Manifesto II
Humanist Manifesto III

This is my first post weighing in on In Ratione Speramus; I'll try to be concise as I make sense of what I've read.

Although he drops the issue of atheists' capacity to carry out moral reasoning (to focus on their ability to live fulfilled lives and initiate collective action), I like Michael Fitzpatrick's Good Without God and the responses it generated. I think Michael's column duplicated here is the first concrete stab at what I personally find to be the most interesting and compelling duty of Brown Freethought - our job to provide a careful, constructive, and positive articulation of humanism in the Brown community. We considered this important when we founded the group two years ago and should remember to continue doing so. Our sustained focus on promoting critical inquiry and the scientific method is ultimately grounded, I think, in our shared ethical concerns that should be made clear and explicit.

Anish Mitra's response to Michael raised issue with the atheist movement's need to evangelize. Atheism, he observes, is a logical (or empirical) conclusion an individual comes to accept after he has satisfied himself of its reasonableness. As a bare proposition alone it holds little internal moral import and Mitra consequently puzzles over some atheists' "undying need to tell you about why they feel the way they do. . ." He doesn't think we can explain this away by our advocacy of science. He also claims we're digging ourselves into hypocrisy by harping through slogan-based media on the immanent reality of the godless world we've discovered. Why bother? Mitra doesn't spend his spare time declaring the non-existence of unicorns.

Michael responded that we have incentive for establishing a social presence because there are "common principles" guiding our interest... this is true! And Mitra is well-justified in his failure to preach Unicorns Are Dead, but unicorns have never held a fraction of the political and psychological importance of gods or been prominent in our assessment of human destiny and metaphysical reality. What I think is pertinent is unpacking these shared principles of ours - it is sloppy and dangerous to assume prima facie that the ethics of the academy or values we've adopted in the maintenance of science are a sufficient basis for thinking about the moral impetus behind socially involved atheism.

I'm not suggesting we all become ethicists or philosophers, but if we think contemporary humanism emerges from a rational dialogue about history, materialism, and human nature then we should do what we can to share this. When a believer claims that ethical order is entailed by divine order this sets up debate in their terms and it isn't obvious to many people that there are non-theistic alternatives. I've included links to the second and third humanist manifestos for the purpose of instigating more discussion of humanism even if we find these versions of it inadequate. We've stated our interest in supporting civil freedoms that are denied in irrational religious practices, but there's more to the story than just negating religion and keeping what we find ourselves with after.