tcpip | Atheist and Religous Meetings, Work-Related Activities

Last Tuesday went to the Melbourne Atheist Society to hear Alex McCullie talk on "Progessive Christianity: A Secular Response". Alex claimed the theoretical and practical elements of progressive Christianity is really little different to an active secular humanist with the exception that they have a sense of a personal religious experience; so in other words he didn't have much of a response to offer! This Tuesday the Melbourne University Secular Society is holding an excellent forum on The Problem of Evil, with so absolutely top quality local speakers on the subject. Next month I am presenting at the Melbourne Atheist Society on "Atheist Support for Religious Freedom?" and this Sunday coming I am speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on "The Other Half: The Universalist Tradition" (the Melbourne Church, coming from an English rather than American Unitarian tradition doesn't really have much Universalist influence). Last Sunday week at the same organisation I gave the service for Denis Fitzgerald, executive director of Catholic Social Services; I cited Óscar Romero and Populorum progressio.

Lateline reported last Thursday that Australian scientists are developing a new chemotherapy treatment, using a diamond-encrusted skin patch which slowly releases drugs into the body. Yes, that is me showing Dr. Amanda Barndard from CSIRO around the VPAC machine room. Have almost finished by first MBA assignment; a 3,000 word document on how VPAC is going to provide high-performance computing services in the future (actually, not that easy given item 2 of the organisation's constitutional objectives). Next assignment, due on Wednesday, is a Financial Management analysis. Apropos to this is an excellent article gaining wider circulation on how to manage IT staff; it's all about respect (hat-tip to

certifiedwaif). The analogy with medical staff was particularly well put.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well you will note when I listed the classical sources I didn't include Plato. There's good reason for that.

I hope you won't cite Heraclitus, or the people who killed Socrates, either.

I can't say I see much similarity between paganism and secular humanism, but I can see a lot between it and liberal Judeo-Christianity.

To see secular humanism as an outgrowth of Christianity requires far too much cherry-picking for my liking. For starters one would have to dispense with the entire 'secular' component. The loathing of worldly knowledge by pious Christianity was a famous and consistent part of the post-classical mind.

As examples, one can St Jerome's terrible nightmare that the Almighty condemned him for being a Ciceronian, not a Christian (leaving him to abandon secular texts for 15 years and only then to take them up under the caveat of Deuteronomy XXI 11-13, a position followed by Augstine and St Peter Damian in the 11th century, and the abbot Hildershiem who compared natural studies as being a spy in the camp of the enemy. The earth indeed was the Devil's garden.

The second set of cherry-picking involved the profound anti-humanism prevalent in Christian action and thought. From Clovis' famous utterance "With this cross I conquer", Charlemagne's execution of thousands of pagans (and others e.g., Hypatia), the doctrines and practice in the Malleus Maleficarum, and the use of Christian doctrine to protect the institution of slavery. Heck, all the way up to you-know-who with ""I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."

No religion, monotheism nor pagan, has any particular claim on secular humanism. There have been elements of it found in all, but it belongs to none.

I think that Hegel himself provides the most prescient response to your objections in the way he describes the gradual process of secularization in the West. All of Western history, for him, is the way in which this process of secularization takes place - which is also why Nietzsche makes the same kinds of observations, but in a negative, critical sense. Rather than being opposed to Judeo-Christianity in some deep way, secular humanism is its ultimate development and natural outgrowth; the cat growing from the kitten.

The moral self-righteousness of the humanists is, for me, indistinguishable from that of "fundamentalists."

I refer to my earlier comments that this really comes down to improvements in communication technology. It wasn't until the breakup of the monotheistic power structures and the dead-hand that they exerted on worldly knowledge was there even the opportunity for political and investigative freedom. That instance occurred in Europe for a variety of factors (the combination of movable type plus alphabetic script). But it's too a stretch to suggest that these were a result of a Christian tradition, or even a rediscovery of the pagan classics. It could have just as easily happened elsewhere.

Sometimes the most profound changes in history have the origins of the right people and right things being present at the right time. Modernity for Europe is one of those.

People still feel guilty, and with the same degree of shame, but it's about other things than they used to. Now, they feel guilty for being racist, sexist, or homophobic. This is the process of the secularization of Judeo-Christian values. It's not hard to see these "crimes against humanism" proceeding from "the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love." A Christian-derived humanism can make universal human rights appeals in ways a parochial paganism never could and never wanted to.

Even Bush didn't justify his war in Iraq as a "crusade" but appealed to instead, to secular humanism's "human rights." Condi compared it to MLK's Civil Rights movement. In the end, liberal human rights humanists can be just as bent on domination and suppression as the Christians they came from. And, like the Christians, it's always for 'the best possible and most noble reasons."

Even Bush didn't justify his war in Iraq as a "crusade"

"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."
George W. Bush, September 2001
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html

“We must never, ever,” she declared, “indulge in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they’re culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren’t ready for freedom’s responsibilities. We’ve heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East.” - Condi here.

Atheist and Religous Meetings, Work-Related Activities

Re: ?

?

Re: ?

...

Re: ...

?

Re: ?

Re: ?