Is Humanism Enough?

My friends divide into two camps: Christians and Humanists. All of them are people of good will—their hearts are sound. But their heads? That is another matter.

Their difference is not merely personal; it is symbolical of a worldwide conflict that shapes our civilization. What we need is a common platform to unite all people of good will, whatever their theoretical commitments.

Consider the motives of each party. Humanists are driven by genuine interest in humanity and by moral will—the desire to do right. To these they add intellectual integrity, which leads them to scepticism about claims they cannot verify.

Christians share the interest in humanity and the moral will, but they add what I shall call "emotional integrity"—the determination to be true to their deepest intuitions, especially those reached through religious experience.

My claim tonight is this: Humanists ignore certain data—facts of experience—which their theory cannot accommodate. They force experience onto a Procrustean bed, cutting off whatever doesn't fit. Meanwhile, Christians claim too much for religious experience as evidence about the structure of the universe.

We might see this as part of a dialectical movement in Western civilization. The thesis was orthodox Christianity, doctrinal theism. The antithesis is humanism and scientific materialism. The synthesis is what we are groping toward.

Let me define my terms. By "theism" I mean the doctrine of a universal being, personal or superpersonal, immanent in all things—not specifically Christian doctrine. By "humanism" I mean the doctrine that the proper concern of humanity is humanity itself.

Theism is a doctrine about the universe. Theists make two kinds of claims. First, that in religious experience they "find God"—or at least a certainty that God exists, or something that impels them toward faith. Second, that observation of the world provides evidence for God's existence.

The essential theistic doctrines: The source of all things is God, personal or superpersonal, eternal or beyond time, immanent in the universe and supporting it at each moment. God is benevolent; his very nature is Love. God is almighty, but he limited his power by creating free spirits—for without freedom, nothing would be worthwhile. (But why so? This is asserted rather than explained.) Therefore individuals can damn themselves, and often do. But God can save them—by special intervention, according to orthodox doctrine.

The obvious difficulty is undeserved suffering—disease, accident, the torture of innocents. Why does a loving, almighty God permit such things? The answers given—"the sins of the fathers," "God moves in a mysterious way"—have never satisfied thoughtful people.

Theists often insist that moral experience demands theistic sanction—that "good" is good because God wills it, that good simply is whatever God wills.

They also claim that without a loving God, life is meaningless—and that without reward in heaven, we could not call God loving. This reasoning ties morality inextricably to supernatural belief.

We should note that the movement for a more humane social order—for justice, for the relief of poverty, for workers' rights—was the moral issue of the nineteenth century. And the Churches largely failed that test.

What caused the decline of Christianity? Whitehead identified two factors. First, bad tactics in the battle with science—specifically, the defense of the literal Bible story of creation, which was never essential to Christianity. When that defense collapsed, men's confidence in the whole edifice was shaken.

Second, the failure to give moral leadership in social conflict. Individual Christians have often been heroic, but the Churches as institutions sided with property against labor. The Labour Movement and even the Russian Revolution were, in a sense, more truly religious than the established Churches.

We must be precise about the conflict between clerics and scientists. Science did not disprove theism. It merely made theism look less plausible, less necessary as an explanation. What science justified was not atheism but agnosticism—the honest admission that we do not know.

But science did produce a new temper: a new loyalty to intellectual integrity, a horror of wishful thinking (sometimes overdone). Russell said it is nobler to doubt than to believe, and many embraced a new will to live without doctrines.

Theism may be true in some sense we cannot articulate—some "Pickwickian" sense. But we cannot know it is true, and in our present condition, insisting on theism is unwholesome because it is so often motivated by wishful thinking.

I would argue that agnosticism is the way of true piety. Confident insistence on theism is actually impious—a naive trust in human thought and language to capture ultimate reality.

The old questions—"Does God exist?", "Do we survive death?"—are probably false questions, like asking "Which came first, the hen or the egg?" or debating geocentrism versus heliocentrism before understanding that both models are partial descriptions.

But agnosticism equally excludes atheism, which is just as doctrinaire. And agnosticism must be agnostic piety—open to wonder, not merely negation. Otherwise it is emotionally lopsided.

Now consider the scientific attitude—the "antithesis" in our dialectic. Three factors in its growth:

First, interest in objectivity rather than subjectivity—respect for what Whitehead called "irreducible and stubborn facts." Science trusts rationality only as a tool for inference to further facts, not as a source of truth in itself. Perhaps this grew from the general effects of material progress, which trained people to attend to the physical world.

Second, trust in analysis into simple elements—this due to spectacular successes. The conviction that wholes are "nothing but" their elements arranged in patterns. But this tendency ignores that parts may not reveal all their nature when separated from the whole.

Third, iconoclasm—debunking established theories. This is connected historically with the rise of the bourgeoisie and their victory over the churches. Laudable in itself, but it may go bad: it becomes a defense mechanism, automatic and obsessive. At that point, we must debunk the debunker!

The scientific attitude has its own religious dimension—taking "religion" to mean an emotional attitude toward the universe as a whole.

Contrast this with the Christian attitude: filial piety toward God, trust, respect for taboo, emotional integrity. The scientific attitude substitutes: self-reliance, independence, intellectual integrity, reverence for inhuman "fate" and chance.

But there is also an egotism of humanity—a self-pity for our species, alone in a cold universe. Compare Russell's "Free Man's Worship": noble in its defiance, but perhaps too focused on our own tragedy.

I should note that individualistic hedonism is implied in materialism—specifically in "mechanical materialism," which reduces everything to physical particles moving according to fixed laws. If consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon, why should I care about anyone's pleasure but my own?

Dialectical materialism, by contrast, could in principle embrace everything I am saying—it recognizes emergence, development, and the reality of higher-level phenomena. But its advocates, committed to their particular dogmas, would not agree.

Humanism is the religion of the scientist. Its doctrine: the proper concern of humanity is humanity—not the individual, but the species. Humanism takes many forms, but this is the common factor.

Humanism ranges between two extremes that are not properly humanism at all. On one side, individualistic hedonism—based on absolute ethical scepticism, the view that only individual pleasure concerns me. Such a person should avoid the "entangling pleasures"—love, and good causes—that might compromise their self-interest.

On the other side stands theism and other religious doctrines like Buddhism—the view that we exist for something above humanity, something supernatural.

All genuine humanism asserts an obligation to transcend individualism for the sake of the species, while rejecting all claims beyond the species.

I distinguish two main types. Simple humanism (utilitarianism) conceives "man" narrowly: existing human beings and their felt needs, plus future generations of the same type, fading into the distance. Evolutionary humanism adds concern for development—for capacities at present embryonic, needs not yet felt.

Simple humanism is at heart hedonistic—utilitarianism. Its standard of value is pleasure and pain of individuals. But it faces three serious difficulties:

First: It fails to explain the leap from individualism to social hedonism. Why bother about the pleasure of others? Perhaps I am conditioned to bother—but what if I don't? Ought I to bother? On purely hedonistic grounds, prudent callousness might serve me best.

Second: The hedonic calculus. How much pleasure comes from each source? How much pleasure of one individual equals how much pleasure of ten others? These questions admit no clear answers.

Third: Are some pleasures qualitatively better? Is pushpin as good as poetry, as Bentham claimed? Is the pleasure of love better than the pleasure of self-regard? If pleasures differ in quality, not just quantity, we need some standard beyond pleasure itself.

The upshot: Either simple humanism is non-ethical and logically sound—saying that by nature we care for humanity, but with no obligation to do so. Or it is ethical and logically unsound—claiming we ought to care for humanity because pleasure is good regardless of whose it is, while simultaneously holding that only my own pleasure can move me.

Emotionally, simple humanism is inadequate. Huxley's Brave New World is not good enough. We feel in our bones that we are for something more than pleasure—that a life of satisfied appetites is not the highest life.

Evolutionary humanism blends important truth with error. It tries to do justice to our feeling that we are instruments for something beyond ourselves. Let me deal first with its valid side.

Its error is deriving good and evil from biology—from something other than our direct experience of good and evil. Its value is using biology to clarify our moral ideas.

The source of evolutionary humanism is interest in "the developed" versus "the less developed." Development is an objective fact, not a subjective whim—as Julian Huxley has argued. A human is more developed than an ape, an ape more than an amoeba—in structure, function, body, and experience.

Human love is more developed than animal mating. This gives us a standard beyond mere pleasure.

But what are the criteria of development? In biology, we might consider: Complexity? Adaptation? Integrative action—sensitivity and response to environment? Specialization? Each criterion captures something important, yet none is sufficient alone.

In psychology: Complexity of mental life? Integrative action—the capacity for unified perception? Sensitivity to fine distinctions of value?

Within our own species, some individuals are clearly more developed than others—but it is difficult to judge. A person highly developed in one respect may be undeveloped in others. The intellectual giant may be an emotional infant; the moral saint may lack aesthetic sensitivity. Therefore it is difficult to apply the standard of development in practice.

But we do try to apply it—and we value development morally. We admire the person who has grown, who has realized their capacities. This gives evolutionary humanism its claim to be more than mere pleasure-seeking.

So what is needed? Neither theism nor atheism nor mere humanism, but a new synthesis incorporating the best of each—the synthesis we are groping toward.

First, intellectual integrity—the scientific temper. We must make no claims that cannot be verified. We must accept agnosticism about ultimate questions.

Second, openness to deeper experience—what I call "cosmical piety." A willingness to be awed, to respect the Other, whatever it may be. Not to claim knowledge of God, but not to close ourselves to experiences that transcend ordinary consciousness.

Third, moral seriousness—genuine dedication to human welfare, but with humility about the limits of our knowledge.

This is not a doctrine but an attitude—an orientation of the whole person toward truth, beauty, and goodness, without pretending to possess them fully. It is what both the best Humanists and the best Christians are groping toward, if only they could recognize each other as allies rather than enemies.