Humanism

[Enkidu Warrior]

These parts:

As long as religion and racial divisions exist, nations will exist. In other words, nations will always exist. Not just racial and religious, but all other kinds of divisions. Language, ideological differences, etcetera. Also, dictators don't willingly give up power for the sake of the people. So if you got a dictatorship, you got a nation.

If you've wasted enough of your life on this forum like I have, you will have seen plenty of American citizens who think war is a great means to accomplish goals. Also, there are plenty users on this forum that support tyrants and oppression.

Now that's just plain crazy. It's not going to happen. Cooperation for limited resources is crazy talk. Nations fight to take resources for themselves. On the individual level, people exploit resources for their own benefit. This also seems like the Prisoner's Dilemma. To put it simply, if everyone cooperated, then everyone gets a small benefit. If one guy decides to not cooperate, he can get a great benefit for himself and everyone else is hurt. I think I got it right.

John Bolton is basically the human incarnation of every generic Hollywood movie villain. You all know his stance on the UN. He also said, "Only one nation should be allowed to have nuclear weapons." Imagine guys like him cooperating for limited resources. Nope. Not gonna happen. (Cue the morons who will defend John Bolton with endless nitpicking.)

I'm not as pessimistic as you, though probably not that far off. Such a future will certainly be impossible if even the people who believe in its virtue dismiss it as fanciful. I think it's important to know what you want before you start making bargains for what you can realistically achieve, and in that spirit at least this document does have relevance. It is after all a set of principles rather than a program of government, and all principles tend to be tempered by what is possible. Even if we never rid the world of nations, wars and John Boltons, the world would still be a better place for having people committed to these Humanistic aims. There's a big difference between actually ending competition over limited resources and acting pragmatically with this goal as a guiding principle (by which I don't mean ignoring it while paying it lip service).

 

[Kerozine]

Grievances

We are living in an increasingly globalized world.

 

[MobBoss]

The Unitarians and Deist ones obviously. Not exotic maybe, but they don't belive that one Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, which I'm pretty sure disqualifies them. To list them:

Spoiler :

Thomas Jefferson. (You may remeber him as the publisher of the Jefferson Bible, which "fixed" the original version by removing all references to the supernatural from the Gospels.) The UU church didn't exist in his day, but shortly before dying, he said that the beliefs of Joseph Priestly (Who went on to found the UUs) were his own.

John Quincy Adams. He was pretty religious, and a proper Christian in his youth, but became a UU later on. Not a fan of Joseph Priestly's more radical views, but hardly a proper Christian.

Abe Lincoln. An outspoken deist in his youth, he toned things down for the political world, and started attending church. Still, while a fan of the Bible as literature, he didn't reference Jesus often, and his friends insisted that he was either a Deist or an Atheist, though they weren't quite sure which.

Rutherford B. Hayes. may or may not have been a Christian, probably changed his mind a few times. Statements from his personal files go both ways.

William Taft. Turned down presidency of Yale on the grounds that he wasn't a christian, but publicly denied Atheism. The truth is anyone's guess.

Lincoln wasnt a deist.

 

[Miles Teg]

Lincoln wasnt a deist.

Okay, he was an Atheist then. I'm not attached to him having been a Deist, and it's the only other position that makes sense given available records.

 

[El_Machinae]

Phlegmak: despite being unrealistic, though, do you have a problem with its moral stance? Is it acceptable to work towards it? I mean, the Christian ethic is also not realistic (Love God & the Golden Rule), but it's a perfectly acceptable standard to strive for.

 

[Phlegmak]

Phlegmak: despite being unrealistic, though, do you have a problem with its moral stance? Is it acceptable to work towards it? I mean, the Christian ethic is also not realistic (Love God & the Golden Rule), but it's a perfectly acceptable standard to strive for.

I have no problem with the morals except for abortion, but I don't feel like talking about abortion. Other than abortion, the whole seems worth asymptotically* aiming for. I like most of it.

* asymptotically = Math concept. Approaching but never actually reaching.

 

[civ_king]

I have no problem with the morals except for abortion, but I don't feel like talking about abortion. Other than abortion, the whole seems worth asymptotically* aiming for. I like most of it.

* asymptotically = Math concept. Approaching but never actually reaching.

so we seem to have a consensus that humanism is good, it also has the benefit that it won't have sectarian conflicts because of scripture/junk differences

Any comments by some of our more conservative posters?

 

[Huayna Capac357]

I suppose humanism is good. I'm still reluctant to denounce religion, especially in the same paragraph as Nazism.

 

[Cutlass]

Humanism is good. And it is not inherently incomparable with religion. Not the way sectarianism is with humanism. People who believe in god can be humanists. In fact, most are.

 

[civ_king]

Humanism is good. And it is not inherently incomparable with religion. Not the way sectarianism is with humanism. People who believe in god can be humanists. In fact, most are.

agreed!

 

[classical_hero]

An organism is a person when it is conscious, self-aware, and capable of feeling pain.

If you seriously want to understand these issues, read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or something. Just because it's hard doesn't mean you can dismiss it as philosophical mumbo-jumbo.

According to that, then a human in a coma, is not a person, since they do not display any of these characteristics.

Also how do you know that a foetus in the womb does not feel any pain?

 

[Camikaze]

According to that, then a human in a coma, is not a person, since they do not display any of these characteristics.

And? A quite valid argument could be made, and frequently is made, for that view. You know, the euthanasia debate? Is existence based on the corporeal or is it based on the health of the conscious mind?

 

[REDY]

I have to quote excellent post by Israeli poster Sh3kel in one of earlier threads:

Humanism, like pacifism, is one of the manifestations of cancer of modern society, not because it is ill-oriented or was created with malice, but like a functional cell it has lost complete control over its mechanism of reproduction and cellular division.

I consider Humanism to be flawed at the very basic level. No one can consider all humans to be created equal, not all humans are created with the same clean slate. And this doesn't necessarily mean I consider myself to be the upper part of the human society, all it means is that factually speaking, our current cultural division as well as our common heritage makes human life valuable only when it suits our needs, never asolutely. Absolute caring for human life is impossible - we can never care 100% for 100% of those who are suffering, we would be unable to function in a normal society if we were to be entirely concentrated in altruistic means.
The idea of humanism considers the human being, his life and liberty, to be the center piece of existance. While the human being is indeed a marvellous creature to behold when it isn't trying to kill itself off using several different methods of fission and fusion, stating it is the center of modern life is overestimating our value. The Earth as a planet and the Earth as a habitat was here before us and thriving with life, and it will be inhabitated by species long after we finally succeed in killing ourselves off - we are under no circumstances any different than any other species for the mere fact we walk upright and have the audacity to declare ourselves "moral".

The Humanist view as an ideal is one of the most pure and perfect concepts ever thought of, a brilliant conclusion resulting in years of thinking. But like cancerous cells, it has lost the balancing system which keeps it at check and prevents it from becoming a dangerous tumor in human society. To be a true humanist, one must consider any and all life equally sacred - this means no one human should be favoured over the other, no one human should be discriminated against by another. While this is a marvellously utopian ideal upon which to live in, I'm constantly stunned to learn humanism is tossed around as more of a battering ram than its original intent - to fulfil a certain political agenda rather than utopian unity. Humanist views undertaken by certain political elemnts often overlook the suffering of the society from which they come from in their attempt to maintain the human values of the society which is jeopardizing or attacking them, often losing the perfect and very delicate balance between absolute human values and suicidial tendencies.
Humanist values are possible in nations without existential problems, countries which have the enormous luck to exist in an environemnt in which they don't have to look over their shoulder and wonder wether that funny-looking man is just a random passerby or carrying a suitcase bomb, countries in which the army is not a necessity but a carreer option. Humanism unchecked is nothing short of a cancerous tumour in the heart of human society, a blind philosophy chanted by mindless zealots without close inspection and consideration of the full extent of the situation. Humanism, like any other concepts in human history, can and has been taken too far.

It is my personal feeling that the ideology of humanism has failed not as a theory, but in its implementation at the human level, much like communism failed colossally. Human values cannot be imposed on other societies on the simple account they are human societies, some forms of existance can never and should never be imposed on other societies, they must come from within. And my main quarrel with humanism is not with its existance as in ideology, but its warped use of a blunt political weapon, another perfectly good concept turned into a volatile tool of some politician's whims.

 

[Smellincoffee]

According to that, then a human in a coma, is not a person, since they do not display any of these characteristics.

Also how do you know that a foetus in the womb does not feel any pain?

If the central nervous system hasn't developed yet, you can safely bet that no pain is felt. As far as I know, the brain and nervous system begin to develop around the three week to one month mark.

 

[Miles Teg]

According to that, then a human in a coma, is not a person, since they do not display any of these characteristics.

As long as the coma is permanent, I've got no problems with that.

Also how do you know that a foetus in the womb does not feel any pain?

Because it doesn't have a central nervous system until the second trimester. It's physically impossible for it to feel pain or any sort of displeasure.

Anyways, I'm going to start a personhood thread, since this keep creeping into conversation.