Introduction to Humanism by Doug Thomas

hello my name is Doug Thomas and I'd like to spend a few minutes talking to you about secular humanism and secular humanist ethics before I do that I really wonder if you might think that you've never met an agnostic or an atheist before well you know 20 to 25 percent of the Canadian population are non-believers so chances are you have met and they agnostic or an atheist maybe even today and just didn't realize it because we're no different from any other people the agnostic philosophy really says three things first of all we agnostic do not accept something as true unless there's empirical evidence so in other words we need to have other scientific evidence for social empirical evidence to consider something to be true the second thing that's true of us agnostic is that we are comfortable not knowing so certainly we're curious about things and we want to learn about science and how to operate the photocopier in the office and those kinds of things but if something is not knowable if there's no available empirical evidence or no way to get that empirical evidence we don't fill up in the blanks with speculation we simply say okay we don't know and carry on the third thing you need to know about us is as I mentioned agnostic the agnostic philosophy is a philosophy about all knowledge so the concept of the idea but whether or not there's a God it's not a very central part of our philosophy we're not concerned about it we just move on when we get to atheists we realize there are two different kinds of atheists the first kind of traditional atheist these are people who say there is no God that's a pretty definite statement and of course they get annoyed with us agnostic because we say to them well if there's no God how do you prove that where's your empirical evidence just as much as we'll say to the theists if there's a God where is the evidence so the traditional atheist has made a definite statement most of the time they carry on with secular humanist philosophy without a problem and in fact our positive contributors to society a very few of them think that religion is a negative thing that cause more harm than good and sometimes they speak out about that the second kind of atheist our mark is more common in Canada they're called postmodern atheists and they will say I don't believe in God now that's an entirely different statement philosophically than the first statement made by the traditional atheist so when they say I don't believe in God what they're likely to say to a theist or a person who does believe with God I don't share your belief and move on from that so with those two kinds of atheism I'd like you to try to connect some dots with me remember I said that agnostic don't accept things without empirical evidence in other words they don't believe things dot number two is that postmodern atheists say I don't believe in God so that brings us to dot number three agnostics are by default postmodern atheists what about secular humanism what is that well secular humanism or just humanism as we call it is a set of philosophies that adopted either actively or passively by non-believers like atheists and agnostics and it's a philosophy that comes out of the natural human condition humanist is a word that's derived from the ancient Greek word poo Manos and that word means man centered profit translated so the humanist philosophy is that what is good is the responsibility of human beings and that we are responsible for what we do and for the consequences of what we do so for example if someone says as Michele Bachmann did after when she retired from the Republican leadership candidate race a few years ago I'm doing this because it's God's plan I'm retiring because it's God's plan he decided this that statement has zero humanism in it because she did not accept in that statement at least any responsibility for her actions other people who are religious say well I tried to do things well I worked in the community because it's part of God's plan and I exercise free will within God's plan that shows some humanism they're accepting some responsibility for their actions fact quite a bit of responsibility and so there's a kind of relative humanism there we secular humanists accept total responsibility because since we don't believe there's a god we can't suggest that we're following any God's plan it is our plan and our plan totally so we must accept total responsibility for the results of that plan so how do human has come up with any set of ethics well first of all humanists do read some of the religious books most Canadian humanists have read the Bible or at least part of it many Canadian humanists have read the Quran a part of it we've read other religious books sometimes some of us have read parts of the Gita's which are the Hindu literature and we do take ideas from those we don't reject them completely it's just that we don't accept that they're the word of some Supreme Being so with that wide range of knowledge plus the knowledge of Greek philosophers and medieval philosophers and Renaissance philosophers and even modern philosophers we can get some ideas about what we want to work on doesn't mean we're going to follow those ideas it means we're going to look at them consider them and use them as touchstones for our own action now what's the basis of the ethics though that's still only as I said a kind of reference point well I like to talk about the tripod of ethics in humanism and that tripod is made up of three legs the first leg is the dopamine response the second leg is the tribal response and we share those two legs with the rest of our fellow primates we're members of a primate family called the hominids which includes the gorillas orangutans chimpanzees and bonobos and we share those characteristics of the dopamine response and the tribal response with those that group of our family the third leg is reason and that's one that we have certainly much more strongly than the other members of the primate family almost be considered unique characters because human beings so what is the dopamine response well very simply when you do something good for someone or that you feel is good for someone you get a little charge of an enzyme called endorphins which make you feel good so when you smile at someone or you compliment them on their with their hairstyle in the morning whatever it is you do one of the positive social actions you get a little charge of that you feel good maybe you let someone into the Tim Hortons ahead of you which makes you feel good at least until you realize they're now ahead of you in line and that means that we can function with each other quite nicely and we do a lot of positive things for each other however the dopamine response has two negative characteristics as well the first one is that it is subjective I may think I'm doing something good for that person that may feel good doing it when in fact I've done something it's hurtful so instead of complimenting them on their hairstyle in the morning I criticize that hairstyle or say you know your hair needs this or your hair needs that I may feel have done a good thing and I mean it feel good about it but in reality it may have been hurtful to you because you spent quite a bit of time on your hair to get it the way you like it okay so it can be negative without me realizing it the second characteristic of the dopamine response is that it can make us a bit naive if we think that what we're doing is good and set aside caution because of that we could put ourselves in danger for example if a child thinks that the right thing to do is to go and help the stranger look for the lost puppy because obviously puppies give them a dopamine response right away just the very thought of a puppy that child is potentially in danger so those are two flaws of dopamine that opening responses the tribal response is a kind of group response that means that we work together to accomplish goals and that can be very very positive for example if you're on a school team the debating team the curling team I know the soccer team whatever you're part of a little tribe and that tribal response leads you to better teamwork you work together you work to solve problems and so on and that's a very positive human characteristics and one of the reasons that we have become the dominant species planet however that tribal response also is I'm pretty sure you've figured out have negative characteristics or negative results as well when in fact the rivalry between two teams get so intense that you get into nastiness on the on the sports field uh that is in fact the negative aspect of tribal response is just that you think your team it's so important that you forget about them that the fellow on the other team is is just as much right to be positive about his team's you do then it's a negative response and of course on the national level we see the tribes that we call nations sometimes going to war and that is a terrible terrible negative response so tribalism is needs some assistance and governance to and that brings in the third leg of the tripod and that leg is as I mentioned before reason we human beings must use reason in order to control the dopamine response and tribal response by considering stopping back stepping back rather and thinking about the consequences of our actions but the consequences of simply the dopamine response with the tribal response and just going within it is that third tripod lake that really balances the first two legs and really makes the humanist philosophy humanist ethics work so we see that we have that tripod it's a very stable structure and we humanists without any belief in God or without any belief in supreme beings can in fact develop a set of ethics and use them for positive community effects now what is humanism and what kind of movement is it well some people say like this sort of like a church but it isn't in the sense that first of all there's no belief in the Supreme Being and secondly there is no top-down leader or Dogma humanist organisations are facilitation groups we facilitate people getting together and working together positively to help each other out we facilitate people coming to get help with personal problems atheists and agnostics have the same daily problems and life problems than anyone else does and it's nice to have someone we can go to with those problems who has a similar philosophy to ours so that's why the human what humanist organisations do and we try to work in cooperation with the rest of the community to ensure that we protect two really important characteristic Canadian rights one is the right to freedom of religion so we do protect the right of religions to exist and to carry on their religious practices as long as they don't do any harm to others on the other hand we also protect the right to freedom from religion and we really feel that we have the right to freedom from religion in public spaces so sometimes we bump elbows with religious people who want to have public prayers and public rituals because we think that it impinges on our right to freedom from religion but again we try to apply reason to come up with compromises and try to participate in the positive aspects of our community so that means that in summary humanism is a set of ethics that's available to non-believers without belief in God it is a human set of ethics that puts the responsibility for social positive social action squarely on the shoulders of humans thank you very much you

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Keywords: Humanism, Humanist, ethics, morality, secular, sofree, non-believers, Intro, Introduction

Id: Iuy53gmVlcU

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 01 2013