TO BE A HUMANIST (or Free at last)

Dr. Newton Joseph

Published on February 13, 2007



In a religious context, the things one "believes in" comprise the articles of one's faith. Here we "belief in" or "have faith in God, or Christ, or the life everlasting", is to place expectation and confidence in these objects. A religious faith involves a strong dependency relation; one senses a relation with God or Christ that banishes loneliness, strengthens morale, enables one to deal with life's vicissitudes, and so on. In its fullest sense, to have a religious faith is to have a life-sustaining dependency relation with some object, usually conceived as a superhuman being. Insofar as this is a correct analysis, then it would be fair to surmise that the more insecure a person feels, the greater the tenacity-and pugnacity-with which he or she will cling to a religious faith, while the that religion has on a person will lesson as that person becomes secure and self-reliant. Thus one might expect to find that Baptists and Methodists are less secure than Presbyterians, and Presbyterians, perhaps, that of Episcopalians. If you think you might be able to kick the habit altogether, then you may be on the way to become a humanist.

It is not surprising that Christians tend to characterize humanism in terms of its negations. A humanist is likely to be thought of by a Christian as a person who does not believe in God, or in Christ, or the Bible, who in short, is possessed of nothing resembling what a Christian would regard as a religious faith. And this perception is, I would say fairly accurate. Must one believe in something? If this means, must one have a dependency relation with some superhuman being, then I think the answer is no. suppose someone were to ask me, "If you dismiss religion from your life, what are you going to put in its place?" I would reply, in the spirit of Voltaire, "It has taken years to get that monkey off my back, and you want to know what I am going to put in its place! To be a humanist is to be self-reliant in the Emersonian sense: a person who in Emerson's words, "will not be hindered by the name of goodness, but will inquire if it be goodness." If you are mature enough, and secure enough, and self-confident enough, that you do not need to purchase your value-judgments ready-made from some authority, but are willing and able to make your own, and if , at that time, you are not pig-headed that you cannot profit from reasoned criticism, and fresh knowledge and experience, then consider yourself lucky. A humanist then is a person, then, who does not need to maintain a strong dependency relation with some outside agency, be it supernatural or otherwise.

Given this degree of self confidence, a humanist will likely suppose that such a condition is not altogether atypical of the human race, that there are others who can also speak for themselves, who can also be independent determiners of value. In short, a humanist is apt to consider personal autonomy as rightful belonging to human nature. We do tend to estimate the nature of humankind on the basis of our own. If I judge the human race to be groveling, subservient, self-seeking, and vainglorious, it is because I am not confident that there are higher qualities in myself Human potential is one thing; human actuality is something else. We are constantly reminded of the fact that very large numbers of people, young and old, have failed in varying degrees to develop the ability to take charge of their own lives. People in that situation look for an opportunity to place themselves in a dependency relationship. People who cannot run their own lives are obliged to find someone who will do it for them