The British Humanist Association is currently running a campaign against religious faith. It has bought advertising space on our city buses, which now patrol the streets declaring that "There probably is no God; so stop worrying and enjoy life." My parents would have been appalled at such a declaration. From a true premise, they would have said, it derives a false and pernicious conclusion. Had they wished to announce their beliefs—and it was part of their humanism to think that you don't announce your beliefs but live them—they would have expressed them thus: "There probably is no God; so start worrying, and remember that self-discipline is up to you." The British Humanist Association sees nothing wrong with the reference to enjoyment; it seems to have no consciousness of what is clearly announced between the lines of the text, namely that there are no ideals higher than pleasure. Its publications imply that there is only one thing that stands between man and his happiness, and that is the belief in God. Take that belief away, and we can run out into the garden of permissions, picking the fruit that we wrongly thought to have been forbidden. The humanists I knew as a young man would have reacted with disgust at this hedonistic message, and at a philosophy that aims to dispense with God without also aiming to replace Him. Roger Scruton
The old school humanists always had a problem. They didn't have a tangible answer to why make sacrifices when things get hard. Because of this they didn't have staying power. The old school humanists were depending on a residual Christian morality that the next generation is not going have. The humanist movement will always eventually drift to be hedonists.
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3 comments:
my religious friends often asserts that they derive pleasure from worshipping god, now, according to your logic, i would contend that the religious are no different from the distorted humanists you are trying to present.
now, now, i can identify a straw man fallacy when i see one.
now, i'll give u a hint to help you along, u have a good chance to defend your point, which is to to define pleasure and hedonism.
differentiate pleasure of the religious kind n pleasure of the humanist kind, then define if religion is compatible with pleasure, reconcile any contradictions and u have a good defence.
but i would suggest you not try, as the results will prove to be "inconvenient" for a catholic.
most religion corrupts morality, in making it self seeking - to appease a god up in the sky or to earn a place in heaven after death. Certainly religious morality has little time for the well being of people purely for their own sake. You have to be a humanist to do good only for the sake of other people with no ulterior motive. It is good that this is being increasingly recognised.
religious linked charity work's will always be subordinated to preaching and soul saving, when i see christian missionaries in african giving bread to the children, it is so sad, they are essentially preying on intellectually defenceless children, n offering them a "deal" where the poor children give up their freedom to belief in exchange for food. what a shameless deal it is.
they only seek to indoctrinate children in pretense of giving food & shelter, they had never really want good for these ppl from the bottom of their own hearts, they merely wish to earn "credits" for themselves in a selfish motivation that these "religious credits" would earn them a ticket to go through the imaginary gates of heaven.
in truth, for all the rhetorical posturing of religious morals, theses religious ppl essentially have self serving motivations towards themselves, the what they fear and the greed to gain entry to an imaginary place.
the world will be a more moral and better place when the myth of religion is eventually dispelled.
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