The New Humanism

....That noble form of humanism has its roots in the Enlightenment, in Kant's defense of the moral law, and in the progressivism of well-meaning Victorian sages. And the memory of it leads me to take an interest in something that calls itself "humanism," and is now beginning to announce itself in Britain. This humanism is self-consciously "new," like New Labour; it has its own journal, the New Humanist, and its own sages, the most prominent of whom is Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and vice-president of the British Humanist Association. It runs advertising campaigns and letter-writing campaigns and is militant in asserting the truth of its vision and its right to make converts. But the vision is not that of my parents. The new humanism spends little time exalting man as an ideal. It says nothing, or next to nothing, about faith, hope, and charity; is scathing about patriotism; and is dismissive of those rearguard actions in defense of the family, public spirit, and sexual restraint that animated my parents. Instead of idealizing man, the new humanism denigrates God and attacks the belief in God as a human weakness.

Just Do It.

Don’t question whether it is right or wrong.

Don’t bother to consider the consequences.

Just do what you want, right now, and think only about satisfying yourself for the moment.

Because, if it feels good, do it.

I was thinking some similar thoughts this morning. Zeitgeist. It’s in the air.

One thought . . . the ancient pagans had their household and cultures gods . . . and when they stepped away from them there was in the Platonic philosophies an idea of an immutable truth, eternal forms, that is ignored by the modern relativists, sophists and hedonists. I won’t give them the dignity of calling them pagans. Too many noble pagans.

FTA: "I never thought, when I finally put the old humanism behind me, that I would ever feel nostalgia over its loss. But now I recognize that it was not only noble in itself, but was also a serious attempt to retain the belief in nobility without the theological vision on which that belief had once depended."

It's the old story of the "cut flower" effect. When you cut morality off from its root, religion, eventually what you will have left is just an ugly flower. Old humanism lived on a Christian memory. That memory is quickly fading and we are now being left with the ugly results. Humanism, based on atheistic evolution, can't justify good morality. Natural Law and our conscience tell us that there is right and wrong, but the philosophy of atheistic humanism can't give morality a necessary foundation. It was a good article.

THE OBAMA GOVERNMENT CREED

1. Victimization is our basic belief by which we blame and find others responsible for all of government’s failures. Government’s duty is to A) cause victims, B) play victim, C) commiserate over victims, or D) create new classes of victims to bleed over.

2. We expect taxpayers, deep-pocketed individuals, and the courts to bail government out of every failure.

3. It’s government’s duty to treat taxpayers kinda like raising mushrooms-—keep them in the dark and feed them lots of horse manure.

4. Capitalism creates oppression; government creates opportunity.

5. The traditional family is archaic and constricting, with no redeeming value. Government must change all that. Homosexuality, transgenderism, group sex, child sex and bestiality are constitutionally-protected lifestyles.

6. Self-esteem is paramount; government must undertake to guarantee each citizen-victim self-esteem, no matter the cost.

7. Those who disagree are racists; everybody knows people can’t make it on their own without big-buck government projects.

8. The ACLU is good, because destroying religion and silencing believers are protected by the Constitution and the First Amendment.

9. The NRA is bad because it defends the Constitution.

10. Feeling good about ourselves is paramount.

Chesterton wrote about naturalism. This is a paraphrase: Nature worship starts as the worship of spring, of growth, beauty, freshness. Then as it goes on, there is no reason to not worship the night as well as the day, the side of nature that is red in tooth and claw. Nature worship ends badly.

Not Paraphrased:

All the same, it will be as well if Jones does not worship the sun and moon. If he does, there is a tendency for him to imitate them; to say, that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn insects alive. He thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give his neighbour measles. He thinks that because the moon is said to drive men mad, he may drive his wife mad. This ugly side of mere external optimism had also shown itself in the ancient world. About the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of pessimism, the old nature worship of the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses of optimism. Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan. But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull’s blood, as did Julian the Apostate. The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously. If they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended. Because the earth is kind, we can imitate all her cruelties. Because sexuality is sane, we can all go mad about sexuality. Mere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination. The theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything that was bad.
Orthodoxy, Flag of the World Chapter

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