Why should you beware secular humanism?

If you have been hanging on to your religious beliefs by clinging to the impotence of the so called “atheist movement,” secular humanism is the cure to that impotence.

Secular humanism can actually replace faith.

So many of my theist friends will cite how religion provides values and an ethical compass as they navigate through life. Indeed, for many this is exactly what religion does.

Many clever, moderate, religious people will state: “If there is no God then life is meaningless, we are alive only a short time, and even the sun will die. What can there be if all the love I feel, all the relationships I build are for no greater purpose?”

Atheist will often deal with these claims by pointing out how important truth is or how exciting science is, as Richard Dawkins does , without realizing that what it sounds like to thoughtful religious ears a lot like:

“Yeah life really is bullshit, deal with it! And if that makes you depressed, pull out your highschool biology homework, that will make you feel better!”

Good grief!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Richard Dawkins and I owe it to him that I broke free from religion, but his book gave no comfort as I abandoned the comfort of religion.

In fact I was seriously depressed for months.

Dawkins book worked on me because I was already undergoing studies in neuroscience, and had accepted science as the best way of knowing what is true, and I was won on Dawkins’s appeal to scientific reasoning.

But as much as I love science, in of itself it gives me little existential comfort.

I need to feel good in my own skin, after all, and religion provided that for me as it does for so many.

It wasn’t until I read “The Birth of Tragedy” by Nietzsche that I got some relief. “The Birth of Tragedy” essentially argues that art is the meaning of life.

This may sound as appealing as Dawkins “biology homework” cure for existential crisis at first but bare with me.

I draw, have been known to dabble with music, and love performance art. I have felt some of my greatest highs, philosophical and otherwise while engaged in the artistic endaevour. It is a form of self-exploration so furious, so lustful, so powerful. It is inquiry at its rawest, and I did not decide to seriously pursue science until I saw this link between it and art.

For me to do anything it has to be art.

Art is simply pregnant with meaning and power, a virtual positive feedback loop of passion.

What “The Birth of Tragedy” got me thinking was first, “life is art,” and then progressively “life is an art.” That is, there is an art to living life.

When I finally began to read the Secular Humanist ethics of Paul Kurtz, it was in this vein that I embraced it. Kurtz provides beautiful reasoning for the values of acts, behaviors and other ethical questions, but he also emphasizes the raw lust for life, the wanton embrace of the time you have in this world. And it is precisely because the time you have in this world is so rare, so fleeting, that you should live with lust, exuberance, and great joy. Even purpose as Kurtz says that the good life requires a beloved cause.

As I began the Secular Humanist process in my life I found something that I never expected as an atheist, sense of meaning, purpose, and joy that outdistances that which I experienced as a religious person.

So many of the people I have met through secular activism seem to have been atheist since the earliest days of their lives.

Many of you, my beloved life-long atheists, fail to understand why people fall for religion. I fell for it because it enriched my life, and having my life enriched was worth not deeply questioning the truth of it all. I passively accepted bold claims because the package came with meaning, power, and purpose.

But I have found this great thing, collecting the dust of disuse, that has real competitive power against the utility of religious faith: secular humanism.