Summary of My Understanding of Humanism
I believe that error always does harm and when it doesn’t it will in the long
run. Too much error is definitely very dangerous. Errors slander and cause
bother those who try to expose them for it accuses them of being wrong and doing
a bad thing and they have to go to the trouble of counteracting it when they
could be doing other things such as helping people. Goodness is doing what is
best and you need to know what is real to the best of your ability and to keep
thinking and searching and doubting in order to be really serious about being
good.
I believe that comfort from supernatural beliefs and belief in medicine that has
not been scientifically or satisfactorily proven is no excuse for letting such
beliefs thrive or adopting them. Would you recommend alcohol to help a
vulnerable person? The beliefs cause division and bother and resentment. The
person is better knowing right now that they have been lied to. Don't let them
wait until later when they could find out at a really difficult point in their
lives. The problem would abate if people just made decisions based on natural
grounds and kept religious or political dogma (that which you are “obligated” to
believe) out of the equation.
I believe that nobody has the right to make up my mind for me. That is, I should
not be doing things just because the Bible or God or whatever tells me to but
because my reason and experience and effort to learn the truth tell me. I must
put the needs on the material level first for the rules of the world I see come
before the rules of the world I do not see, the spirit world which may not even
exist for at least I am positive that the real world is there. If I believe in
religious dogmas there are people out there who have dogmas that contradict mine
who believe just as strongly if not more so I have no right to act as if I am
sure I am right in my dogmas.
I believe I should work out my own right and wrong by thinking, avoiding
contradictory thinking and testing and should not let myself be influenced by
the rules of any religion or God. When I have to think of something as plausible
anyway before I can accept it and this happens even when I claim that God tells
me what to think and do, I might as well do it independently and do all I can to
help others.
I define love as not voluntary sacrifice but as liking. Liking is selfish for it
is me feeling pleasure in the wellbeing of myself and others. Those who say love
is not liking are fooling us because you have to at least like a person a tiny
hardly detectable bit to be willing to help them in any way. Love is liking and
when you like a person you mean you are after them for the pleasure they give
you and nothing else. Liking is what we mean by selfishness or egoism for liking
means you feel fulfilled by the person so it is all about yourself and not them
even though they may benefit. Egotism which is selfishness that relishes hurting
others is totally opposed by Humanistic atheism.
I believe that because what I do this minute is caused by what I felt a moment
ago that I cannot have free will because I cannot change what I feel be it in
the past or the present. Feelings and genes control me. Belief in free will is
useless for whether we have it or we don’t, the important thing is motivating
people to do good. Belief in free will is believing in hate because you cannot
hate a person unless you think they did wrong of their own free will so it is an
accessory that leads to hate. It is hate to even have such an accessory. The
only way I can love a person and hate the evil they do is by denying free will
which means I see the evil as sickness not as sin. If I tell John I hate his
essay I am saying I hate what is in him that made him write it which is the same
as hating him. To reduce the chances of hating, it is vital that we have no
belief in free will.
I believe all love is just an expansion of the love I have for myself so I
should love myself in being kind to my neighbour. I’m not saying I should abuse
other people, I should not. What I am saying is that I am just doing whatever
everybody else does all the time, look out for number one. I am doing that even
if I give all my money to the poor and I am doing it for me because I want to do
it. But I am not pretending this is unselfish like altruists do. Selfish means
you care for yourself – there are good and bad varieties.
I must love myself alone – God does not come first in my life as the doctrine
that God deserves all love implies but me. I cannot love others for their own
sake but mine so strictly speaking I love only myself for everything I do is to
satisfy some desire in me. When I give all I consider dear away to help another
person I do it because I want to despite it being hard. Want means I am after MY
fulfillment. The reason I am doing it is for me and not for the other person
though the other person benefits. There is nothing bad about this for we want
others to enjoy helping us, and get as much out of it for themselves as we get
out of them.
In summary, altruism is impossible but I practice everything the altruists
practice except their lies.
I believe that all devotion to God and his miracles is hypocrisy because there
is only one God for each human being which is herself or himself. Why? For she
or he does all she or he does for self-gratification. To claim to have no
self-interest so that one can be devoted to something other than one’s own needs
is pretending. Religion is intrinsically deceitful and any good that comes from
an unneeded deception does so not because of it but despite it. What is real is
good for us if we are not afraid of it.
I believe that there are only two emotions in the final analysis: love and fear.
When I follow reason as best I can and bless others with my compassion and warm
feeling I am a disciple of love. To put God or religion first is a sign of fear
and fear is the root of all evil.
I believe that prayer is wicked because it is trying to get help from a
supernatural source when the truth is that you are your own God and it is all in
your hands to make yourself accept and cherish your life even with all its
problems. To need prayer is a sign of mild mental illness. If you want to help
others, roll your sleeves up. You see the natural world is there but to pray is
asking a world of spirit that may not be there at all to help and it is wrong.
What you see comes first.
I believe that miracles – alleged events like Jesus rising from the dead - if
they happen, speak against the existence of God.
Are miracles violations to the law of nature?
Believers say they are not violations of nature for God set up natural law and
will not change his mind about it for he is always right. If miracles violate
nature then they mean that God is not God but stupid and incompetent and mad. He
has to force natural law to go against itself as if he is not in control.
When a miracle report is judged credible, believers only assume it is not a
violation of nature. They assume so they don’t believe it is a non-violation
though they lie saying they do. They are only guessing. When we have to guess
that so-called miracles are not anti-nature what is the point of any God doing
them for they are just left guessing? They would prove his stupidity which
amounts to disproving God! Miracles still may be a violation of nature which
means that their assuming is as reckless as assuming that triggering a nuclear
bomb won’t make it go off. It is less serious to trigger the bomb than it is to
question that natural law is free from supernatural interference because it is
our belief in nature that enables us to have a life at all. Belief in nature is
our basic need. It is absolutely necessary to hold that the supernatural has a
natural explanation for holding to anything else is evil.
Are miracles exceptions to the law of nature?
This does away with the idea of God having to fight the laws he created.
Exceptions must prove the rule. They can only do that if you clearly prove the
reasons for the exception. In other words, the rule might be that your charity
does not pay out money to drunks. That's the rule. But there might be a very
unusual and extreme case where you might have to pay the money out to a drunk.
This is not contradicting the rule for it means you have no choice but to give
the money. No rule can be kept at all costs. An exception will be allowed to the
rule IN CASES WHEN IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KEEPING THE RULE. We need to see
the reasons and prove them before we can consider any miracle to be an
exception. Religion replies that God knows these reasons and that is enough. But
what if evidence appeared that some priest was turned into a frog? Religion
universally says miracles like that are nonsense no matter what evidence is
produced. It can only say that if it can come up with reasons why such miracles
didn't happen. The Catholic Church refuses to investigate miracles and
apparitions that contradict Catholic doctrine for it says regardless of the
evidence they were not real or from God when they contradict the Church. Suppose you
say that dead people stay dead. Suppose the Christian says that Jesus was an
exception. The burden of proof then is on both of you as it is with anybody making a claim. But your burden is sorted. So the Christian has to deal with theirs. They need to know why
the exception had to be made but they cannot and they don't claim to. They need
to know how it was made as well. Because if there is no question of how then
there is no question of why either for how matters more than why.
If you start saying that bad people are not really bad but just making
exceptions to ethical obligations when you don't know what the exceptions are
that is bad and so is saying miracles have happened when you don't know what
justification there is for the exceptions.
If you need very strong evidence that will fill books that somebody committed
murder imagine how much evidence you need to prove that Jesus rose from the
dead. Religion's evidence for the resurrection isn't that good. It is always
more likely that the witnesses of miracles are lying or mistaken or both than
that any miracle they report must happened.
To say, "this miracle really happened because it was an exception to the law of
nature and it was an exception because it really happened" is circular reasoning
and is no good. You may as well argue, "This miracle didn't really happen for it
was an exception to the law of nature and such exceptions do not happen." In
fact, if there is a circle to choose from it should be the latter for the latter
respects nature and what we can see. It doesn't look for unnatural explanations.
Remember, if we start looking for unnatural explanations or far fetched ones we
will soon become total nuts and incompetents.
Exceptions to the rule are bad. They are necessary evils. To say that God needs
to make exceptions to his laws means he can't run the universe and has to fix
his mistakes by suspending or changing the way nature works.
Are miracles just religiously significant coincidences, eg a prediction of the
future coming true despite the odds being nearly 100% against this?
That means miracles are natural. But if miracles are natural then it follows
that we should always assume that there is a natural explanation for them even
if we don’t have one yet which means they are not miracles!
Miracles are not evidence for God. Miracles are blasphemy. Miracles do not give
us any reason to take any religion to be true.
I believe that since I am surer people suffer than they have free will, that is,
are not programmed to do what they do but do it without anything determining
them to do what they do. I know people suffer but I only guess that they and
myself have free will. Therefore I have no right to believe in God because that
implies that suffering is our fault for abusing free will and not his. Hate is
wrong for it is based on the idea of free will and it wants to hurt people. It
is promoting hate to advocate the free will teaching. How can we reward if we
don't believe in free will? Reward only to encourage, not to acknowledge free
will and do not punish but simply regard jailing and fining as ways to protect
people from themselves and to reform them. To punish without putting the attempt
to reform first and making it the main motivation is really just to take
revenge.
I believe marriage is evil and should not be sanctioned by the state. Religion
should not tell the state what to do – and marriage, being unnecessary if the
law is set up right, is nothing more than a religious superstition for it claims
that it can make a man and woman belong to each other even they hate one
another. Whether a couple are committed or not, then marriage will make no
difference. If one is sure of the partner's devotion then marriage wouldn't even
be important or necessary and getting married expresses a desire for control
over the other person usually the woman.
I believe in the absolute value of human life. It is ridiculous to say persons
should be happy for happiness matters more than persons so human life is
intrinsically valuable no matter what the quality of that life is. A single life
is so valuable that you don’t take it away even to please the entire world. That
is why books like the Bible which claim to be the word of God though they
command killing, eg of adulterers and apostates, are evil and have no authority
and whatever wrote them it was not God so the miracles, eg the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, that testify to them are worthless and of no evidential value and
testify that no miracle comes from an honest source.
I believe that if I really accept that I will never be perfectly happy I will
cherish this life more and it will mean more to me. When we are content with
life being imperfect and a challenge a lot of the time we can be like that all
the time if we train ourselves. I will settle for what I have got and love it. I
will not need a life after death to believe in and needing it is a sign of
immaturity and underdevelopment.
I believe that if anything does not do any harm or does the least possible harm
to myself or others that that is what I must do.
I believe that Atheism is love. Love is simply being happy and allowing yourself
to be infected by the love you rouse in other people. This is loving yourself
and it is the only way you can love others for happiness is infectious and makes
you want to help yourself and others. That is all. I say my Amen to Atheism.