Just visiting and asking. What does a Humanist believe about...

Humanism
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It may be helpful if you would please suggest a philosophical underpinning that was new and original developed in the last 300 years. -- clhjr
The science of geography began as a way to prove the age of the earth matched the Bible, but they were very good at following the data and ended up showing the opposite.

Electricity was worked out about 200 years ago, showing there are forces in the air that we can’t see but affect us all the time.

Aquinas built on the works of Averroes to attempt to meld the teachings of Jesus with those of the Greeks. While he was alive he was condemned, but just a generation, he was made a saint. Religious Deviant: The Common Era - Toward Western Europe

Erasmus helped bring Christendom out of the dark ages with his humanistic analysis of Jesus, embracing belief in an individual’s capacity for self-improvement and education.

But I was really thinking about people like Hume, who said you can’t derive an is from an ought, and that we need to be skeptical of everything. He looked to our feelings and physical reactions to stimuli as the basis for our moral judgments, not some external indescribable force.

There are so many more answers to this, but it’s hard see any chance you will seriously consider them.

Science influences the terms we use to discuss philosophy, but does not give us the moral categories to discuss. -- c
Is that what you want? Someone to hand you moral categories? Those categories existed long before the prophets wrote about them. Thou shalt not kill was not a new idea from Moses. I don’t see what advantage you think religion has, other than easy answers.
We still drink and eat. -- c
Yeah, just not getting much from reading your long posts.
And, we still talk of a designer God that exist outside our reality. --c
That is the worst logic I have ever seen for an argument for god. We still eat, and we still talk about God.
I do not think you can say any better or clearer than the OT prophets…2,500 years ago. --c
That’s a good point. People have known for a long time that religious leaders are corrupt. I don’t think that helps your case.
that all they were doing was in direct violation of all that their God had called them to do. --c
And the next generation said those guys were in violation, and so on and so on
You were addressing an aberration. --c
I can never win this argument, or make progress in this discussion of any kind. Anything I point to, you can say it’s not the correct religion, but you somehow have the correct one. But you will never describe or draw clear lines between these aberrations and you correct version. If you were to attempt to do that, I promise you, you would end up with humanism.

I tried reading your whole post, but couldn’t quite do it.

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@clhjr Take your time. That’s quite a bit to read.

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Not only a lot to read, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

C, what is the point you are trying to make? Can you boil it down to a focused paragraph or two?

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clhjr, when you used the word “materialist” I thought you meant it in its usual meaning, which refers to people who love money and things.

In that definition, humanists tend not to be materialists, at least not philosophically.

Of course, many believe as I do, that our physical reality is all there is. IOW, nothing supernatural.

I guess you are gone now. Maybe your inner desire for intellectual integrity will lead you back to this forum, someday. Hasta la vista.

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@timb

I am not gone for good. I did try to turn off all notifications so I would not be seduced back in over the next week or so.

Just too busy right now to give the proper attention and time.

But, some are still leaking through to my email. And I clicked on yours.

 

Thank you. I thought you took that question about materialistic in the wrong sense. So, I was glad to clear that up.

I don’t think that term is as much in vogue today as it was a couple of decades ago to describe philosopical positions that are built solely on what belongs to our set of observable, reachable reality. All, everything belongs to, is birthed in, and owes everything without remainder to the samemsame. whatever that is.

I will drop back in. And, btw, intellectual honesty pushed me to where I am now.

I remember when I was in about the 9th grade, a teacher made it clear that all was relative and unfolding. That we had accidental 2.5 lb brains and we were in no way above any other species.

I knew right then…I could see clearly that there was no ground or source for her authority over me except might and force of law. Kids see that today.

I probably would have joined today’s anarchists back then. I was a bit of a rebel and still am.

Somehow, I sensed how we be human and ask the question “why” or say that is wrong or I am right or you are a hater unless there is a Tao. A standard. A plum line.

We can make up standards. We are driven to. We do not want to live without them. We need them to form communities. But who declared that this one or yours or hers is better than the tribal leader, the Hitler’s of the world. Did you know that Hitler thought his campaign was supported by science. The first copies of Darwin’s origins said there were races that were more evolved and Hitler knew his was superior.

Today, some who see man as a plague and with no more rights as a virus has to survive, the planet would be better off with half the human population removed.

 

most of us.believe that whatever maximizes the great benefit for the greatest number of people is the highest ethic. I agree that is a good one. I believe it is superior.

 

But, where do we find the right to declare it is absolute and fight to employ it or protect it?

Is it simply sheer numbers and power of the herd? Is that what determines right?

Where do the questions of right and wrong come from? Why do they nag us? Why do they drive us. Why do we lose sleep over it? Or, some do.

I know your answer is nature. That is not what I mean. I am asking where in nature do you find the right to select one answer from nature and human behavior. And then call it right with so much fervor that we consider others, who also belong to nature, wrong. In your scenario, nature alone is producing all the choices and then setting them at war without even caring who wins.

Thanks again. Thanks for the hospitality.

Think and reason.

Your friend in inquiry.

This has been written with my thumbs sitting in a MCD, please excuse typos.

 

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Did you know that Hitler thought his campaign was supported by science.
It's easy to bastardize the science if you want. Hitler's campaign wasn't any more supported by science than it was by god.

{Like saying science can be used to deny Anthropogenic Global Warming, when it’s only fraud that can be used to pull off that trick.}

 

Hitler was supported by the “military industrial complex” and who were driven by lust for treasure and disregard for humanity or moral standards.

We always watch the movies of the leaders and never pay attention to what’s actually going on in the offices below the ball rooms.

 

Regarding Darwin, it’s more nuanced than that gloss.

 

Evolution myths: Evolutionary theory leads to racism and genocide

LIFE 16 April 2008
By Michael Le Page

Darwin’s ideas have been invoked as justification for all sorts of policies, including some very unpleasant ones. But evolutionary theory is a descriptive science. It cannot tell us what is right and wrong. …


It’s an interesting read if you want more background on that.

Are you familiar with Herbert Spencer?

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/post-darwin-social-darwinism-degeneration-eugenics#
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It clearly says I did not want to know what you believe, but why do you you believe what you do.
I can answer that. In my youth my parents took me to the Pentecostal church and I was into it. I bought the lot of it. But there were things tugging at my mind which didn't make sense. For one, the pastor's son at 16 years old did not know that there were dinosaur skeletons in museums. He thought dinosaurs were made up by "scientists" who were, for some reason, evil and hated God. One of the big things was a flyer circulating around the church which claimed that Proctor and Gamble's new logo at the time was the mark of the beast. When I was at the store I looked at the logo. It looked nothing like what I saw on the flyer. So I went back to double check and couldn't find the flyer. I asked the pastor's son, by best friend at the time, where it was. He responded that they had to stop circulating it or Proctor and Gamble were going to sue.

That was a HUGE wake up call. You’re either fighting evil or you’re not. You’re either the good guys or you’re not. I found it really, really hard after that to believe that these were the good guys fighting Satan himself if Satan could make the fight go away with a lawsuit. Either the flyer was a lie gleefully spread without concern for the truth or money meant more to the church than God’s work. Either way, my mind found it more and more difficult to see these people as the one and only true men and women of God.

I eventually left the church, but not my belief. I spent a couple of years trying to “find God”. I had chosen the first religion on “faith” and found that to be the absolute stupidest way to choose a religion. When you choose a religion on faith, the way they ALL want you to do it, you start with the assumption that you’re right and then you learn in what way you’re right. Faith is moronic. But the Bible says that if you look, you WILL find him. All I found was a bunch of petty assholes who all thought that they, alone, were right and were all too anxious to take petty jabs at the others when they talked to me, supposedly about “their” religion, like an old nag chewing a piece of juicy gossip.

So, I believe what I believe because I searched for God with an open mind, truly searching for, specifically, the Christian God. I found nothing, so I concluded there was nothing to find.

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...most of us.believe that whatever maximizes the great benefit for the greatest number of people is the highest ethic. I agree that is a good one. I believe it is superior.
Yep. That it is.

As to whether other belief systems contribute to that it is difficult to say. But I have come to the point that I am tired of fiction parading as truth. Truth is under severe attack in today’s world. Religious ideas are most often fiction masquerading as truth. I don’t think that helps in the overall battle to save Truth.

So if I disparage the erroneous belief systems, so what? The believers of crap can continue to believe as much crap and spread it around as they want. It is a country free of laws regarding the establishment of religion. But my confrontation of their lies may help others recognize the fallacies.

 

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There are many websites that explain the scientific method but I’m not sure I can explain reason and logic. You use them all the time but then you question how we know stuff.

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I should have included this earlier. Especially the philosophy of this

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I probably would have joined today’s anarchists back then. I was a bit of a rebel and still am.
Allow me to pronounce that "anarchy" is stupid.
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Allow me to pronounce that “anarchy” is stupid.
Not to mention detrimental to groups survival and wellbeing.
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… and it doesn’t do the individual much good either.