Oudheid en Middeleeuwen 1501-1600 1601-1700 1701-1800 1801-1900 1901-2000 2001-nu Filosofisch Sociaal en Cultureel Politiek en Economisch Technisch Stalinisme Maoïsme Neoliberalisme Socialisme Neomarxisme en Kritische theorie Algemeen Complottheorieën Irrationaliteit Irrationaliteit (Bijgeloof en religie) Leugens, desinformatie, propaganda KlokkenluidersDe Britse filosoof Grayling schreef dit boekje om een kort antwoord uit te werken op vragen die hem bezighielden over een ethiek die niet vertrekt vanuit een bovennatuurlijk geloof maar vanuit het humanisme. Het heeft een erg mooie ondertitel, vind ik.
Er komen verschillende thema's aan de orde. Bijvoorbeeld het idee dat we respect zouden moeten hebben voor religieus geloof en het geloof dan wel gelovigen moeten beschermen "as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither."(10-11)
Verder worden weer allerlei smoesjes en drogredenen en discussietruukjes van gelovigen bekritiseerd. Grayling stelt dat we het bovennatuurlijke niet nodig hebben - geen sprookjes, geen astrologie, geen leven na de dood, geen goden - en dat we voldoende hebben aan een humanistische en wetenschappelijke insteek. Ik heb er weinig aan toe te voegen.
A.C. GRAYLINGHij somt de vragen op die hem hier bezig houden.
"And: what is a humanist ethical outlook, apart from being one that does not start from belief in supernatural agencies? I sketch the outlines of this rich, warm and humane view in the concluding essay here, to offer the alternative to a religious outlook, an alternative that comes from the great tradition of Western philosophy."(4)
[Heel mooi gezegd. En alle smoesjes van gelovige mensen komen hier al kort naar voren en worden weerlegd.]
"It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect, and that it should be handled with kid gloves and protected by custom and in some cases law against criticism and ridicule.
It is time to refuse to tiptoe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither.(...)
On the contrary: to believe something in the face of evidence and against reason – to believe something by faith – is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect.
It is time to demand of believers that they take their personal choices and preferences in these non-rational and too often dangerous matters into the private sphere, like their sexual proclivities. Everyone is free to believe what they want, providing they do not bother (or coerce, or kill) others; but no one is entitled to claim privileges merely on the grounds that they are votaries of one or another of the world’s many religions." [mijn nadruk] (10-11)
"These remarks will of course inflame people of religious faith, who take themselves to have an unquestionable right to respect for the faith they adhere to, and a right to advance, if not indeed impose (because they claim to know the truth, remember) their views on others."(12)
Over de uitdrukking 'fundamentalistisch atheïsme'.
"Let us challenge religion to leave children alone until they are adults, whereupon they can be presented with the essentials of religion for mature consideration."(21)
"As it happens, no atheist should call himself or herself one. The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. A more appropriate term is ‘naturalist’, denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature’s laws. This properly implies that there is nothing supernatural in the universe – no fairies or goblins, angels, demons, gods or goddesses." [mijn nadruk] (22)
"In conclusion, it is worth pointing out an allied and characteristic bit of jesuitry employed by folk of faith. This is their attempt to describe naturalism (atheism) as itself a ‘religion’. But by definition a religion is something centred upon belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe ..."(24)
Over de 'tu quoque' dat atheïsme ook een geloof is.
"We understand that the faithful live in an inspissated gloaming of incense and obfuscation, through the swirls of which it is hard to see anything clearly, so a simple lesson in semantics might help to clear the air for them on the meanings of ‘secular’, ‘humanist’ and ‘atheist’. Once they have succeeded in understanding these terms they will grasp that none of them imply ‘faith’ in anything, and that it is not possible to be a ‘fundamentalist’ with respect to any of them."(26)
"Humanism in the modern sense of the term is the view that whatever your ethical system, it derives from your best understanding of human nature and the human condition in the real world. This means that it does not, in its thinking about the good and about our responsibilities to ourselves and one another, premise putative data from astrology, fairy tales, supernaturalistic beliefs, animism, polytheism, or any other inheritances from the ages of humankind’s remote and more ignorant past." [mijn nadruk] (28)
"‘Atheism’ is a word used by religious people to refer to those who do not share their belief in the existence of supernatural entities or agencies. Presumably (as I can never tire of pointing out) believers in fairies would call those who do not share their views ‘a-fairyists’, hence trying to keep the debate on fairy turf, as if it had some sensible content; as if there were something whose existence could be a subject of discussion worth the time. People who do not believe in supernatural entities do not have a ‘faith’ in ‘the non-existence of X’ (where X is ‘fairies’ or ‘goblins’ or ‘gods’); what they have is a reliance on reason and observation, and a concomitant preparedness to accept the judgement of both on the principles and theories which premise their actions. The views they take about things are proportional to the evidence supporting them, and are always subject to change in the light of new or better evidence. ‘Faith’ – specifically and precisely: the commitment to a belief in the absence of evidence supporting that belief, or even (to the greater merit of the believer) in the very teeth of evidence contrary to that belief – is a far different thing, which is why the phrase ‘religious think tank’ has a certain comic quality to it: for faith at its quickly reached limit is the negation of thought." [mijn nadruk] (29)
"An opinionpanel research survey conducted in July 2006 found that more than 30 per cent of UK university students believe in creationism or intelligent design. This raw detail is gasp-inducing enough in its own right, as indication of the effect of the fairy-tales that once served mankind as its primitive science and technology in its intellectual infancy, and continue to assert a grip on too many. But it is even more troubling as a symptom of a wider corrosion, the spread of a more virulent cancer of unreason, which is affecting not just the mental culture of our own country but the fate of the world itself. If that last phrase seems hyperbolic, read on." [mijn nadruk] (34)
"The combined result is that a significant proportion of university entrants today are noticeably different from their average forerunners of a generation ago: measurably less literate, less numerate, less broadly knowledgeable, and sometimes less reflective. At the same time education has been infected by post-modern relativism and the less desirable effects of ‘political correctness’, whose combined effect is to encourage teachers to accept, and even promote as valid alternatives, the various superstitions and antique belief systems constituting the multiplicity of different and generally competing religions represented in our multicultural society." [mijn nadruk] (35)
"I remind those who seek to counter with the tired old canard that Stalinism and Nazism are proof that secular arrangements are worse than religious ones, that fundamentalist religion is the same in its operation and effects as Stalinism and Nazism for the reason that these latter are at base the same thing as religions, viz. monolithic ideologies. Religion is a man-made device, not least of oppression and control (the secret policeman who sees what you do even in the dark on your own), whose techniques and structures were adopted by Stalinism and Nazism, the monolithic salvation faiths of modernity, as the best teachers they could wish for."(40)
"As part of the strategy for countering the pernicious effects that faith and dogma can produce, we need to return religious commitment to the private sphere, stop the folly of promoting superstitions and religious segregation in education, demand that standards of intellectual rigour be upheld at all educational levels, and find major ways of reversing the current trend of falling enrolment in science courses. The alternative is a return to the Dark Ages, the tips of whose shadows are coldly falling upon us even now." [mijn nadruk] (41)
"As Karl Popper pointed out, a theory which explains everything explains nothing – and all the religions, otherwise in fierce competition with one another over the Truth, explain everything. Unless a theory specifies what counter-evidence would refute it, it is worthless. Good science invites rigorous questioning and testing; almost all religions, at least at some time in their history, have killed those who have questioned them. No wars have been fought over theories in botany or meteorology; most wars and conflicts in the world’s history owe themselves directly or indirectly to religion. By their fruits, we are told, we shall know them." [mijn nadruk] (43)
"But I see the same evidence as yielding the opposite conclusion. What we are witnessing is not the resurgence of religion, but its death throes. Two considerations support this claim. One is that there are close and instructive historical precedents for what is happening now. The second comes from an analysis of the nature of contemporary religious politics."(45)
"For, despite all appearances, we are witnessing not the renaissance but the decline of religion."(49)
"In contrast to the utter certainties of faith, a humanist has a humbler conception of the nature and current extent of knowledge. All the enquiries that human intelligence conducts into enlarging knowledge make progress always at the expense of generating new questions. Having the intellectual courage to live with this open-endedness and uncertainty, trusting to reason and experiment to gain us increments of understanding, having the absolute integrity to base one’s theories on rigorous and testable foundations, and being committed to changing one’s mind when shown to be wrong, are the marks of honest minds." [mijn nadruk] (54)
"For that is what humanism is: it is, to repeat and insist, about the value of things human. Its desire to learn from the past, its exhortation to courage in the present, and its espousal of hope for the future, are about real things, real people, real human need and possibility, and the fate of the fragile world we share. It is about human life; it requires no belief in an afterlife. It is about this world; it requires no belief in another world. It requires no commands from divinities, no promises of reward or threats of punishment, no myths and rituals, either to make sense of things or to serve as a prompt to the ethical life. It requires only open eyes, sympathy and the kindness it prompts, and reason."(55)