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Humanists, the Happy Heathens · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: chalk and cherries here too. And this is stuff you
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: should know about humanism, which I find fairly relatable in
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways and in other ways not necessarily.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Can we we'll get into it.
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  Speaker 3: Can we say Whatlivia titled this one? She's been really
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  Speaker 3: killing it lately.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead.
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  Speaker 2: This is on humanism, the bright side of being a
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  Speaker 2: godless heathen.
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  Speaker 1: That's right.
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  Speaker 3: I was looking for that, aha definition, because that put
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: it about as good as anything in this whole article.
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  Speaker 3: The is it American Humanist Association? Is it an association?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, they are associated.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: They put it like this, It's a progressive philosophy of
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: life that without theism or other supernatural beliefs. Bit of
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  Speaker 3: a dig affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical
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  Speaker 3: lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good.
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  Speaker 3: And of course, if you don't know what theism is,
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  Speaker 3: we're talking about, you know, religion and God. So it's like, hey,
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  Speaker 3: you can be a good person and have a moral
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  Speaker 3: and ethical center and strive to do those things without God.
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  Speaker 3: At the center of it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And most humanists, I yeah, I think
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  Speaker 2: it's fair to say most are atheists or at least agnostic. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: at the very least if they do believe in a God,
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  Speaker 2: he's not an interventionist God. He's not playing our role
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  Speaker 2: in our lives day to day. Maybe you could also
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  Speaker 2: interchange that definition of God with the universe or nature
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  Speaker 2: or something like that, but not God in any religious
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  Speaker 2: way whatsoever.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And in fact, like if you do believe that, a
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  Speaker 2: lot of like like strict humanists will say, well, you
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  Speaker 2: can't really be a humanist because not believing in God
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  Speaker 2: in that sense is a core part of humanism. And
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  Speaker 2: a lot of other people say, hey, you're a humanist.
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  Speaker 2: Who are you to tell me what I believe? Now
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  Speaker 2: the humanist says, you got me.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And as we'll see it, you know, it had kind
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  Speaker 3: of been tangled up with religion here and there until
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: it kind of landed eventually where it did.
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  Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk a little bit about the history though.
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  Speaker 3: That term humanism goes back to at least Cicero in
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: first century BCE, Rome, when that very famous writer and
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: I think lawyer and Statesman use the word humanitis to
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: describe like people developing or the development of these qualities,
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: these virtuous qualities that Chuck will talk about, like a
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: moral and ethical center, compassion, good judgment, like being a
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: good person and doing good things.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we leap frog all the way over
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to the Renaissance. And you'll know that we leapt over
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: what are called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, Medieval era.
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  Speaker 2: The Renaissance humanists are the ones who gave us the
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: term and the idea of the Dark Ages, that there
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: was a part of history where essentially the Church ruled
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  Speaker 2: everything with an iron fist. Corruption was rampant, and people
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  Speaker 2: were removed from their relationship with God and the Church
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  Speaker 2: was inserted. And what these earliest Renaissance humanists did. They
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: were all Christians to a person, most of them Catholics too.
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  Speaker 2: They changed that whole idea and said, what happens if
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: we get the church out from between the individual and God.
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  Speaker 2: You know, there's a connection between you, this person who
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: is important and matters just because you're a person, and
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: God who made you. And this is where the very
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: beginnings of humanism find themselves. Even though no one in
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: the Renaissance would have called themselves a humanist because that
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: concept didn't really exist quite yet. This is the first step.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, looking back, we apply the tag to
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: a lot of different people. We're going to talk about
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: some of them, but yeah, they wouldn't have called themselves that.
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  Speaker 1: Then.
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  Speaker 3: Petrarch was probably looked at as maybe the first humanists
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  Speaker 3: or the first modern man sometimes called. And in the Renaissance,
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  Speaker 3: it was it was a pretty hot ticket depending on
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  Speaker 3: what crowd you ran with. If you were among the
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  Speaker 3: elites in the Renaissance, you might have hired humanist scholars
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  Speaker 3: to come and teach your kids all about like sort
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  Speaker 3: of the moral systems of the classical era to you know,
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  Speaker 3: and very much in the effort, like you were saying,
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  Speaker 3: to bring us out of what they call the dark ages.
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  Speaker 3: And some aspects of this whole movement in the Renaissance
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  Speaker 3: included three things we're gonna kind of touch on here
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  Speaker 3: are realism, dignity of the individual human, and application of learning,
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  Speaker 3: like putting it in to practice.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So humanism contrasted with scholasticism, which had been going
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  Speaker 2: on for hundreds of years. It was essentially the church's
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  Speaker 2: form of teaching and that was basically reconciling the concept
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  Speaker 2: of reality that came from the classical Greeks like Aristotle
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  Speaker 2: with scripture and basically using scripture to explain the world
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  Speaker 2: and reality as it is. And these humanists came along
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  Speaker 2: and they were like, what happens if we stopped doing that?
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  Speaker 2: What happens if we just study the classical Greeks and
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  Speaker 2: just basically also still stay Christians, but stop using this scripture.
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  Speaker 2: This received wisdom that the Church gives us, what if
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  Speaker 2: we study it ourselves instead? And that brings up that
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  Speaker 2: other the second part you mentioned, which is the dignity
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  Speaker 2: of the individual human Up to this point, individuality was
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  Speaker 2: not prized. You were not supposed to look inside yourself.
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  Speaker 2: You're supposed to look outside the glory of God, you yourself.
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  Speaker 2: If you paid too much attention to yourself, that was
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  Speaker 2: a quick one way trip to hell for you when
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  Speaker 2: you died. The humanists were like, no, let's look inside ourselves,
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  Speaker 2: like we're important, you the individual is important.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And also part of that first one with the realism
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  Speaker 3: was that we are flawed. So if we want to
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  Speaker 3: learn about each individual and human the nature, what it
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  Speaker 3: means to be human, we have to look at the
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  Speaker 3: bad stuff too, like the vices and the disorders and
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: things like that. And then that last one that I
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: mentioned was application of learning, like all this stuff is great,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: but it's not naval gazing like or we don't want
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: it to be navel gazing. We want to actually stimulate action.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're not learning just so you can give
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: more money to the church or something like that too.
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  Speaker 2: And if this sounds a little bit like Protestant thought
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  Speaker 2: about the connection between the individual and God, that's exactly right.
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  Speaker 2: These thinkers eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, which basically
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  Speaker 2: pushed the face of the church off to the side
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  Speaker 2: and said you and me God we're connected.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 3: And it'll also tie into the Unitarian Church in a
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: big way later on. A church that has interested me,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, I mean, I like my Sunday's free,
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  Speaker 3: so probably not going to go.
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  Speaker 1: But if any quote unquote church.
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  Speaker 3: Appeals to me at this age and where I am
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  Speaker 3: in life is definitely those guys.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, those people that you see out and about at
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: like ten am on a Sunday. Can give that a
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  Speaker 2: little knowing head nod too.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So something I think is we're pointing out real
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: quick though, to Chuck is everything we're talking about involves God.
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  Speaker 2: Even though the Church has been pushed out of the way,
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  Speaker 2: God has not. Yeah, God is still front and center.
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  Speaker 2: Christianity is still the most important thing around, and that
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  Speaker 2: is this is the cradle of humanism. And one of
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  Speaker 2: the frequent criticisms of modern humanism is that it's never
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: really shaken off its birthright from Catholicism or Christianity, even
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  Speaker 2: though it opposes religion itself. We'll get more into that,
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  Speaker 2: but I just wanted to put that out there for
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  Speaker 2: the moment.
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  Speaker 3: And we're also talking about like coming out of a
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  Speaker 3: time where atheism could get you killed. Yeah, you know,
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  Speaker 3: like saying that there is no God, you know, was
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  Speaker 3: against the law unpunishable by death for sure.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that started to change gradually around beginning in
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  Speaker 2: the seventeenth century. One of the people we have to
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  Speaker 2: thank for that is Francis Bacon. Yeah, known as the
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: father of empiricism. He also invented bacon and he also
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  Speaker 2: had a big hand into coming up with the scientific method.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we talked about him and that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, which has been largely abandoned by science
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  Speaker 2: in the last one hundred years.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he argued for really studying like like what
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: we call social sciences. Now he kind of kicked that
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  Speaker 3: off as well, the systemic study of like the human passions.
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  Speaker 3: But all these people that we're gonna talk about here
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  Speaker 3: in the next little bit, we're Christians. So this is
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  Speaker 3: sort of this is where it was still a time
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  Speaker 3: when it was still tangled up even though they had
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  Speaker 3: these ideas, All of these people, Bacon and this next person,
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  Speaker 3: Thomas Hobbes, were Christian.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fact that there are Christians who identify
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  Speaker 2: themselves as humanists and vice versa, that goes to show you,
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  Speaker 2: like that those two things are not incompatible. Yeah, you
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  Speaker 2: can be religious and care about human beings and like
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  Speaker 2: they don't have to oppose one another, although humanists have
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  Speaker 2: eventually said yes they do.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's the deal, right, I mean, did
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  Speaker 3: I read that correctly? Is that it's the modern humanist
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  Speaker 3: movement was really where they were like, we're really separate
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  Speaker 3: from and congruous with belief in God.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Okay, so we mentioned Bacon. What about Thomas
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  Speaker 2: Hobbes because he came up with the social contract, which
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  Speaker 2: is ba like you and me. We basically allow a
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  Speaker 2: government to rule us in exchange for protecting us from nasty, brutish,
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  Speaker 2: short lives which we would otherwise have without the state
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  Speaker 2: or without society. Right. That doesn't sound very humanist, even
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  Speaker 2: though it's human centered, because he assumed that humans were
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  Speaker 2: essentially bad and we'd club you over the head and
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  Speaker 2: kill you first chance. They got. That's why we need government,
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  Speaker 2: according to Hobbes. But he's considered one of the early
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  Speaker 2: humanists for sure.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was Christian as well, but he did
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  Speaker 3: not write a lot like and his writings didn't write
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  Speaker 3: a lot about God. He kind of put that to
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  Speaker 3: the side and said, you know, if we want to
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  Speaker 3: understand who we are and what it means to be human,
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  Speaker 3: we have to look at it through a just a
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  Speaker 3: very sort of secular and like, very reasoned approach.
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  Speaker 2: Right exactly, so humanist rationalism to understand ourselves in the world.
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  Speaker 2: Thomas Paine was also one. He was probably Yeah, he
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  Speaker 2: was like the first person that you can point to
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  Speaker 2: and be like, the guy's a humanist. He even says
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: so himself in not so many words, or more than
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: those words. He was a pamphleteer who helped get the
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: American Revolution started despite moving to America just two years
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: before the revolution started. That's how effective his pamphlets were.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was very forward thinking. He was arguing very
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: early against slavery. He's had an idea for what we
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: might call universal basic income now, very much believe in
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  Speaker 3: the equality of all humans. And he has this quote
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  Speaker 3: that's really pretty great, like I'm a big pain guy.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: After reading up more on him, Sure, my country is
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: the world that my religion is to do good. Pretty nice.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's pretty much no better way to sum up
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  Speaker 2: the humanist view in a nutshell than that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: The French Revolution also, there's a couple of people who
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: get called out a lot, Jacqui Beart and Twant Francois Momorro,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: because they established the cult of Reason, where they would
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: actually go in and seize churches in France during the
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: revolution and repurposed them. I saw into Temples of Reason.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I read about them on the Collector, which is a
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  Speaker 2: great website that explains all sorts of different philosophies and stuff.
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  Speaker 2: Great website. Anyway, the French Revolution itself basically said Catholic Church,
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  Speaker 2: you're out. And then they were like, okay, well, wait
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: a minute. We're all about reason and enlightenment. What are
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: we going to fill the vacuum left by getting rid
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: of the Catholic Church? And all of these ideas like
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the Cult of Reason kind of came along, which was
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: essentially create humanist temples to logic in humans and humanity,
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  Speaker 2: remove God from the equation altogether.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 3: And buddy, do you think I like Thomas Bain. Don't
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: get me started on Jeremy Bentham, because after reading up
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: on Jeremy Bentham, I wish I had named my daughter
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Jeremy Bentham Bryant.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: That would have been a great name.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: I really missed an opportunity because Jeremy Bentham was a
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: great dude. He was working for welfare, fair programs for
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: the poor early on. He didn't believe in slavery obviously
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: child labor, and this was like decades before anyone else
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: was talking about this stuff. He was into animals. And
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: we'll see. That's some of the criticism from humanists is
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: that they kind of stop at humans. And that's not
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: to say that humanists can't be like pro animal or
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: pro environment, because most of them probably are right but
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: ben them very early on when it talked about like
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: the suffering of animals, he said, the question is not
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: can they reason, because that's what animals were, just animals,
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  Speaker 3: because they can't reason, they have brains like us. He
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  Speaker 3: combatd that with the question is not can they reason
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  Speaker 3: nor can they talk? But can they suffer?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah? What a thing to say in the seventeen hundreds.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you explained what you meant by he
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: was into animals because I was confused at first.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, come on.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: One of the other cool things about Jeremy Bentham is
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: he willed his body to science. He donated to science
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: early on and they used it. They said, thanks a lot, buddy,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: here's your skeleton back. Because as part of his wishes,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: he wanted to remain at University College London, which he helped
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: found as a secular college open to everybody. And he's
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: still under glass at the University of College of London,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: dressed up in his own clothes. He's got wax hands
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: with gloves on, he has a wax head and apparently
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: he originally wanted his head to be part of it. Yeah,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: so they used some I guess some Maori technique of
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: desiccation and it didn't go very well, and his descated
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: head is still around. But they're like, Jeremy, you do
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: not want us to leave this on your body because
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: you look so great with the wax head. We're just
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: going to keep this separate under class itself.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Up with Jeremy Bentham?
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you mentioned the secular college Like he went well
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: beyond like the separation of church and state, where he
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: was like, colleges should have nothing to do.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: There should not be religious colleges.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: He really wanted to draw a strong divide between God
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: and kind of all the institutions.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Right. He was also the father of utilitarianism, which is essentially,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: if at its worst, killing one person saves two people,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: then you kill that person, which gave us things like
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the trolley problem as a utilitarian thought experiment. Essentially, Bentham,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: I think, didn't really think that way, but he was
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: basically like, we want to maximize the most good for
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: the most people. That's the way he developed it.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty cool stuff.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: You want to take a break, Yeah, I think we're
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: off to a hot start, So I'm gonna go take
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: a cold shower and we'll be right back.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, we're back, and we're going to talk about
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: the development of humanism in the way that we know
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: it today, because up to this point we've been talking
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: about a little bits here, little bits there that all
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: together changed the world and essentially took all the power
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: in the West, especially Europe and eventually the United States,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: away from the Church and organized religions in general and said, no,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: there's a way for you to live an upstanding, meaningful,
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: ethical life without even believing that there's a God or
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: in afterlife. And here's how we're going to do it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the idea at the time, and there's
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: still people that believe this in twenty twenty six. Which
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: is pretty scary, is that if you were not religious
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: and devout, then you were a heathen and you were
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: like morally bereft. And those like people very early on
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: stood up and were like that didn't make any sense,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Like why is it I don't believe in God? Like
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: people have feelings in their heart or whatever. And someone realized, like,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: why is it that in my heart? Like I don't
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: believe in a God, but like I believe in doing
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: like really good things, Like why are those tho? Why
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: are those two things have to be tied together. And
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: that was humanism, or if you look at philosopher and
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: theologian from Germany Friedrich Niedhama, the term was HUMANISMUS in
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: eighteen oh eight, and that is he was kind of
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: talking about that Renaissance humanism, those studies that they were
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: doing with the people that are trying to sort of
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: reform education during the Renaissance.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but very quickly people latched onto that. He just
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: kind of came along at the right He was in
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: the right place at the right time, Yeah, which was Germany,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: because Germany eventually became kind of the cradle of modern humanism,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and eventually humanismths what we would call humanism now we
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: just dropped the US or the US And if you
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: kind of subscribe to that, it was way beyond the
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: way that you interpreted scripture. You supported women's equality, You
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: were all about separation of church and state. You had
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: compassion for all people, not just people that looked like
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: you and had the same amount of money as you.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: You cared about actually doing stuff to get the government
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: to take care of poverty and things like that. Like Quakers.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: The conception of Quakers at this time was a really
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: good view of what it meant to be a humanist
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: at the time, because you still believed in God, but
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: you really cared about other people. And this was fairly
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: new for Europe at the time.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you mentioned the French Revolution, but in
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, during the time of all those European revolutions,
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: was it also started to kind of touch on socialism,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: of course, and like this idea of a utopian society
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: that we could strive for. It was starting to become
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: a little more acceptable in the United States at the time,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: where well partially because of German immigration to the United
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: States and you were talking about them being the cradle,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: but also Charles Darwin and just this idea that you
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: don't need these theist beliefs to be a good person,
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: and there's something called free thought that can happen, like
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: prethinking is very much at this time aligne with deism.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And free thought essentially as a concept
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: is it's just questioning everything, Yeah, especially received wisdom. You
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: stop and ask click, well, wait a minute, why do
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I think that? How do I know that? You just
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: challenge all of your own assumptions, and by doing that
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: you can kind of free yourself from being indoctrinated by
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: the man essentially. So this is when it seems to
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: me the progressive movement in the United States really started
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: to come about. Yeah, right, this is the till late
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: nineteenth century. One of the next big things that happened
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: was the establishment of the New York Society for Ethical
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Culture by again named Felix Adler. And this became essentially
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the ethical movement E in capital E, capital M. And
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: they were basically like the very first humanists. They tried
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: to essentially provide the same thing, that's say, moral upstanding
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: structure that the church provides for so many people to
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: people who don't believe in God.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and not more than that. But alongside that, I
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: think they realized that the church had something that people
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: clearly liked in tradition and in ceremony, and they're like, hey,
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: if we're going to be a thing like, maybe we
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: should have some of that stuff too. So they organized
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Sunday services and they said, how about a how about
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: a deist marriage ceremony, like kind of substituting religious ritual
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: for non religious ritual because people like that kind of stuff.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, They're like, how about atheist holy communion, and the
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: humanists are like, how does that work?
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: They're like, oh, we don't know. This is new. We're
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: just throwing everything we can at the wall. See what sticks.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe instead of the blood and body of Jesus,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: it's just crackers and grape juice.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: There you go. And they were like grape juice or flavory,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: and they're like, grape juice.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: We used grape We used grape juice at our church
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: because even the Baptist did not take wine as a communion.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It's kind of funny to think about.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: I remember moving to the South and being like, you
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: don't drink any wine, like even in church because I
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: was raised Catholic.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Welch's baby.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. So this whole kind of evolution is
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: still going on. In the United States in particular, it
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: started to take off. Humanism really is huge today or
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: through the twentieth century in the US and the UK.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: They're kind of like hotbeds for humanist activity. And the
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: people who were attracted to this were very frequently liberal intellectuals, yeah, philosophers, literati,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: intelligentsia like academic elites and people who ran in their circles,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: which included communists at the time in the twenties and thirties,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: like basically super radical liberal thinkers were very much attracted
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: to the early establishment of modern humanist organizations.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That in the United States in particular, the University
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: of Chicago nineteen twenty seven was one place where it
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: really got cooking. There were efforts there by students and
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: so professors who belonged and this is where the Unitarian
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Church comes into play. They were Unitarian Church members, which
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: is technically Protestant denomination. It's very political, has always been
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: very politically progressive. And in this group in Chicago, there
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: were a lot of ministers, even in theologians who had
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: non Christian ideas that they were putting forth, like transcendentalism,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: and they had a magazine. They organized what was called
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: the Humanist Fellowship and put out the New Humanist Magazine.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: It was like all ads though yeah, probably so all
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: ads and perfume samples.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: Well, and at the very end they had the little
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: fold thing like the Mad magazine did.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: It's very popular.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: But they were trying to move Unitarian and as Unitarianism,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: even in nineteen twenty seven, completely away from Theism.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Unitarian Unitarianism as a church was like, yeah,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: let's go and then stop just short. And that's where
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: it stays today. Essentially, they're like, you don't believe in God, Great,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: you can be a member of our church. Do you
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: believe in God? Yeah, great, you can be a member
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: of our church. It's universalist Unitarian. Right.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Should we talk about the manifestos?
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can't have liberal thinkers and communists together
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: and not come up with a manifesto. Right, It's just
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: going to naturally bubble up from those people being together.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: And in nineteen thirty three, I think they drafted the
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: first humanist manifesto and it basically said so and this
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: is where this is one reason why religious people don't
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: like humanists. It took direct aim at religion, right, Yeah,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: and then this is why people who are religious don't
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: like humanists. It also called humanism its own type of religion. Yeah,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: take that, chuck and run with it.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Mixed messages. Can I read this bit from the seventy
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: three manifesto?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Or wait?
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: This was Okay? The seventy three was a manifesto Part two?
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, nineteen thirty thirtight. I believe thirty three was
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: the first one, I think, thank you, we got there.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Okay, thirty three was the first one. Seventy three was
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Manifesto two, and this was from seventy three. Using technology wisely,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduced disease,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: extend our lifespan, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Starting to sound a little bit like scientology there, and
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: meaningful life.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it also smacks of transhumanism too. Oh yeah, it's
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: just denoted by h plus Stellarc. It's a branch. Yeah,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: it's a branch of humanism where you graft a human
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: ear onto your forearm.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Right. Oh boy, man, I can't believe you remembered his name.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: It just came right up.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: If you're a long time listener, you remember when we
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: first talked about Stellarc, the transhumanists who did, in fact,
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: graft a human ear to his arm, complete with a
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: little speaker like it heard and worked, right, Yeah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: I think it. Yeah, I had a Bluetooth speaker which
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: is probably dead by now.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: How many c tips do you think that guy's gone through.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, crisps, he's like got catch up in there again.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: So the reason that they wrote the nineteen seventy three
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Manifesto two was because Manifesto one had a lot of well,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: it was of its time. Yeah, it was very pro
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: communist and socialism, it was anti capitalist. It even said, quote,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: the existing acquisitive and profit motivating society has shown itself
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: to be inadequate. Yeah, it said it was a religion.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: So in nineteen seventy three they're like, let's just kind
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: of get rid of some of this. Let's not call
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: ourselves a religion of any kind. We'll still take aim
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: at religion, but we're not going to call ourselves a religion.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: We're going to drop the whole life communist, capitalist, you know,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: West Coast, East Coast war in our own manifesto.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: And then as time went on, there were more affirmations,
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: there were more manifestos. There was one in nineteen eighty,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, two thousand and three, in two thousand
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: and two, so all these were American, by the way.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: In two thousand and two it finally went international, which
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: what's called the Amsterdam Declaration of Humanism from two thousand
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: and two, and it basically it basically says like, yeah,
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: everything these guys have been saying, but take out the
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: religion stuff and the anti capitalist stuff.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: And they said, we need a word though, if we're
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: going to be consistent, and so instead of religion, let's
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: settle on this word life stance.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: You were like, oh, sure, sure, LifeStance.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Everyone knows what that is. We did a little digging.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: It's a pretty obscure term. I think Wikipedia, which is
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: not a website. We really like to go to a
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: lot for this, but that's kind of the only place
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: we could find anything. But this is how they define
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: it is the relation that one has with what he
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: or she accepts as being of ultimate importance.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: That's a great definition of life stance for sure. Yeah,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: it really gets across. And essentially it's what they use
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: in place of religion, not just what they offer, what
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: humanism offers people, but what people need. And that's one
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: thing that humanism is always basically said, is you need
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: the things that religion give to you, like people need that.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: It's been around for thousands of years for a reason, right, Yeah,
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: And there's all these different ones around the world that
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: billions and billions of people subscribe to because it gives
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: their life meaning, It gives you purpose, it tells you
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: how to be a good person. And humanists were like,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: all we're saying is that you don't need religion. You
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: don't even need to believe in God to have all
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: those same things. And as the world and in particular
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: the United States and the West, has gotten more and
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: more secular and less and less religious, there's this there's
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: a debate that's developed, like, is humanism up to the
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: task of providing meaning in people's lives in the absence
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: of religion, And that definitely remains to be seen, but
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: it seems to be leaning a little more like No, Actually,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: things kind of fall apart when you don't have a
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: lot of people who believe that their lives have meaning
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: because they believe in religion. That seems to be the
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: way things are leaning right now. That's not the endpoint
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: necessarily though.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: No, for sure.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think I'm like you, like, a
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: lot of this stuff seems very appealing to me, a
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: lot of the thoughts. But you know, when I was
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: reading that one thing, I was like, man, this sounds
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: a little scientology like here and there.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Sure, sure, and then let's not like LifeStance.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it just feels like the kind of word where
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: you go to a meeting, like a humanist congregational meeting,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: and they're like, and now Josh would like to rise
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: and share his life stance, and then everyone like clucks
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: and goes LifeStance, LifeStance or something, right, and that's when
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: they and I like back out of the room very slowly.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: You know what LifeStance says to me, It says I
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: don't know what I mean. That's what that word screams.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: If you use a word to describe what you're talking
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: about and no one else knows what that word is.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, it's much more widely understood.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Is the name of an insurance company than then? Yeah,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: then you you kevin't figured out exactly what you're trying
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: to say. That's my take on it. And what the
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: reason they're using life stance is because they can't use
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: the word religion. They're using that in place of the
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: word religion. So a lot of people kind of look
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: at humanism like, man, these guys really tie themselves up
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: into knots to get around this religious thing. They're really
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: preoccupied with religion, despite saying you don't need religion to
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: live a good life. If you don't care about religion,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: stop talking about religion so much. Stop focusing on religion
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: so much. That's a big criticism of humanism that it's
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: just it's like those you know, those hilarious parodies of
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: like Southern preach or whatever, and it's taking aim at
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: hypocrisy and stuff. If you really feel that way about
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: the church or religion or God or whatever, just go
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: your own way, do your own thing. Stop paying attention
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: to it, stop giving it your oxygen. If you really
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: feel that way about it, and if you don't, if
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: you still are focused on it like that, there's something
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: there's some disconnect between what you claim to believe in
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: what you're actually doing.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Brother Josh, I want to thank you for sharing your
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: afflack flat nice.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: That was great, Chuck, that was great. I like that
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: that screed.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Maybe we should take a break and talk about what
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: happened in nineteen forty one right after this.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we're back.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: We're going to talk about what happened in nineteen forty one,
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: not the movie nineteen forty one from Steven Spielberg.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Good one.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I'm talking not really, I'm talking about did you like it?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Hey man, anything has got Bellushi in it? I like,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: all right, Yeah, I don't see what was wrong with it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: It was a notorious bomb. But that's not to say
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: you can't like it.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: No, I do like it. I just have never heard
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: that other people didn't like it.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, it's pretty well regarded as a big plot.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: But I appreciate you sharing your affle, Like once again.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: I had that's my life stance on in nineteen forty one.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: It's a good movie.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: I can't wait to get sued, all right. So in
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: nineteen forty one, there were two Unitarian ministers that form
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: the AHA that we referenced at the very beginning of
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: the American Humanist Association. They, you know, they advocate for
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: humanist causes like separation of church and state of course
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: in schools that is, like, hey, let's legalize birth control,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: things like that. They have about thirty four thousand plus
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: members with two hundred and thirty local chapters, and they're like,
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: you know, their goal is I think not only to
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: spread the word, but I think like you are saying,
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: is to like try and unify into something that's with
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: a coherent message that people can actually say, like, Hey,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: that's a legitimate thing that you can believe in and follow.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like that appeals to me. So I'm going to
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: go find out more about what you guys are saying.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: So there's a guy named Andrew Cops and he's very
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: frequently cited when you're talking about humanism. He's the executive
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: of Chief Chief Executive of Humanists UK, and he basically says,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: here's what humanists are about. One, we use the senses
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: and reasoning when we're seeking out the truth to understand
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: what the world's all about. We are all about rationalism.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: We're all about scientific inquiry. That's what our stuff is
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: based on. It's not based on supernatural beliefs. Again, it's
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: not based on receive wisdom. It's about using rationalism in
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: our own senses to understand the universe for ourselves.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Can I just make a quick comment. I don't want
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: to get too political, but using the sensus and reasoning
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: like that is missing I think a lot today because
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: we're in a world now where they are very powerful
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: people in the world that are literally sort of gaslighting
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: the rest of the world and saying, like what you're
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: seeing and hearing is not the truth, Like even though
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: you're seeing it and hearing it. So to see someone
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: stand up and say, hey, one of our big tenets
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: is going to be the use like to see stuff
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: and hear stuff, and like that's what it is.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I find your reasoning sensible.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, aflack I flic what else?
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Viewing humans as the product of natural biological processes and
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: seeing death is the end of individual consciousness. So you're
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: not going to an afterlife. You're not gonna go hang
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: out with Elvis and Tom Petty. Once you're gone, you're
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: a warm dirt.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing after that. It's a real bummer part
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: of it, for sure.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: But I've always, well I've always in my adult life
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: believe that, and I don't think it's a bummer. That's
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: just yeah, I don't think it's a bummer.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: You know. I believe that for years and years and years,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: and I've just recently kind of started to I don't
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: want to say go back, but just kind of expand
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: the possibilities. Yeah, that's good, more than I used to
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: because I was exactly what you're talking about, like that's it,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Like you're just it's lights out. You don't even know
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: it's lights out because you don't exist anymore. Yeah, just
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: like you didn't exist before you were born. This is
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: exactly the same thing. It's just tacked onto the end
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: of your life, not the beginning of your life.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that you're exploring that.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: I think that's I think I'm not opposed to anyone
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: in their beliefs, So I think it's great, Especially when
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: you get older and you're in the like forties and
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: fifties and you start kind of radically.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Exploring new ideas. I think that's very valuable.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: It's funny. I have been doing that a lot lately.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons why I wanted to do
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: this episode in Humanism. I've been reading a lot of
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: different philosophy and just yeah, yeah, exploring ideas that I
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: hadn't before. And I didn't realize why. Apparently it's because
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: I'm about to be fifty.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, probably, so I've been hurry.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: I got I have to find meaning in life before
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: I die.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I've been watching a lot of Kids in the Hall reruns.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Nice. You can do a lot worse than that.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: And reading rock bios. But that's fine, everyone has their
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: own thing.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: What else, Chuck, How about if you want to live
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: a good life, Yeah, what are you going to do?
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Well?
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: You have to develop yourself personally, like keep striving, sure
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: to be better and do better, try to connect with others,
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: pursue things that are truly meaningful. But you don't necessarily
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: have to believe in the meaning of life to do
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: all that stuff.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: That's not what you're seeking.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, And from my recent exploration, that is essentially the
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: basis of a philosophy called existentialism, which actually, yeah, is
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: born out of nihilism, and it's basically saying, yes, there's
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: no God, there's no meaning to life, we're all a fluke.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean you can't live a great fulfilling life,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: right that has meaning that is meaningful to you. So
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: go figure out what your life is, what you want
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: it to be, and make it meaningful. And I think
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: that's if you do believe that there's no such thing
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: as God, That to me is essentially the best mentality
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: you can take on that if there's no afterlife before
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: all a fluke, then it's up to you pal to
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: go make meaning for your own life.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like live with intention, I think is another good
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: way to say that, to like not just be someone
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: who things happen to.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or live without Netflix. That's another way to put it.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: To What's another one view moral behaviors, like you know,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: consider other people's needs, Like humanism is not a self
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: inward looking thing, like you're looking inward, but you're acting outward.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: If that makes sense, Oh, it does.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: It makes perfect sense. It's not a self centered or.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Self Yeah, self center I was looking for.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not self involved. You care about other people.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: And yeah, by doing that, you're you're you're developing yourself.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: That's part of self personal development. Right. You're also not
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: relying on any doctrine to teach you ethics, although you
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: can go find ethics from like say the great Greek
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: philosophers or Buddha or you know, Taoism or Confucianism, like
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: you can go find these from wherever you want. You
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: can even read the Bible or something and sure, you know,
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: like Thomas Jefferson edited the Bible, he took all the
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: miracles out and just basically made it a really great
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: moral handbook. You could do the same thing. Right and
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: still gain these idea.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: The point is you're not supposed to take anything wholesale,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: including ostensibly humanism. Like you should not just go, okay,
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: I want to be humanists, tell me how to be,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: because they're going to say no, you got to go
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: figure that out.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you should probably start with the New Testament too
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: and just leave it at that.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that Old Testament is grim.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty grim.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: You know, if you're a humanist, you're you're definitely like
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: opposed to war, you value universal rights of all humans,
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: in equality. It's not tied to a political system necessarily.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, I know it has its roots in sort
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: of liberal progressive think, but you don't have to be like, oh,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: I'm a registered Democrat and a humanist. Like you can
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: be anybody. I'd argue, maybe not. You could vote for anybody,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: But as far as political affiliation, it's not tied to
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: anyone thing.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: No, nor should it be.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: We should probably name some famous humanists through the years.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: You could start and end with Albert Einstein, but we're
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: just going to start there. He supported the Capital the
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: E Capital C Ethical culture movement, and was a founding
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: member of the First Humanist Society of New York, and
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty published Essays in Humanism. And he was
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: he was walking the walk.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, he definitely was. He was big time into world
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: peace and civil rights. And he was a pantheist apparently
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: as well. So yeah, he was definitely the real deal
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: as far as humanists are concerned. So too was Isaac
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut. Apparently they were both very much active. Yeah,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: in the American Humanist Association.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: No surprise.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Kurt Vonnegut had a great quote, if you don't mind
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: me taking.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: It, Yeah, do your best Vonnagut. I want to hear this.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: He said that. By the way, Kurt Vonneguet and I
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: are basically voice doubles. Okay, does he have a I've
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: never heard him talk, man. Does he have an unusual.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Or significant Well, I don't know.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Weirdly, the only time I think I've ever heard Kurt
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Bontaguet talk was if I'm not mistaken, He had a
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: cameo and Broughtney Dangerfields back to school. Yeah, because he
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: hired he paid him to tutor him in college.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Well, how about this. You take this quote, but do
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: it as Dangerfield?
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, it said.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: He said, being a humanist means trying to behave decently
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: without expectation of rewards or punishment after you're dead. Yeah,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: that's nice, it's great, great description of it.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: What else, if you're a Star Trek fan, you even
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: if you're not, you're probably not surprised that Jeane Roddenberry
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: was a very big in the humanist movement. He I
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: means Star Trek is a is a great example of
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: just a group of people that are doing humanist things
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: that that's kind of the culture of that show.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: A they're trying to solve.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: Problems peacefully, high tech, but of course it's they're always
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: trying to do the right thing.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: On Star Trek.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: I feel like, yeah, there are a bunch of do gooders. Yeah,
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: they don't want to use their phasers. It's why they
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: always set them to stunt. So there are many critiques
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: to humanism. They get it from all sides, other atheists,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: other philosophers, Christians obviously. Christian thinkers basically are like, dude,
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: you can't have meaning in your life without God. Theology
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: teaches us that God is what gives your life meaning,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: you chump, And that's essentially the most basic criticism of humanism.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: They basically say you can't be ethical or moral or
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: have meaning or value in your life without believing that
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: there is such a thing as God.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Right, you mentioned atheists, there are also atheists that say,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: you know what, a little too much credulity going on
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: about the value of humanity and like that we can
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: all just improve ourselves. And I mean, I think there's
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: some very prominent philosophers from the twentieth century that are
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: very much anti humanist.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they call themselves anti humanists. Apparently the structuralists and
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: post structuralist movements of philosophy that came out of France
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: in the sixties and seventies, I think maybe even into
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: the eighties, they were very much anti humanists, and they
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: were like, the individuals don't matter other than you know,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: we don't go make our own meaning everything we are
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: is basically created by institutions and structures that were born
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: into and there's basically no way out, So stop being
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: silly and naive.
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting to me, not to do an episode
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: on necessarily, but I'd like to poke around the structuralism
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: a little bit more.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I'd never heard of that.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: I have been doing that, and it is very interesting. Essentially,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: what they're saying is like, you are so shaped by
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: institutions that these cool thoughts that you think you have,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: the interactions you have with other people, all of them
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: are shaped by the institutions we're born into. Argue with that, right,
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: but so much so, Chuck, that those cool thoughts, those
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: amazing things that you're saying, those interactions with people, all
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: they're doing is reinforcing those institutions because they're all within
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: that structure. So you're just teaching other people how to
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: be in that structure too by even rebelling against it
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: as a form of reinforcing the structure.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Wow, it's very grim.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Like, it's actually a very grim approach.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: One other thing too that they get held up for
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: a lot is that they that they believe that man
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: is inherently moral, and that a lot of philosophers are like,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: how do you prove that? What are you talking about?
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Where'd you get that from? That's not a universal given,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Like philosophies never turned that up. And did you see
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: that thing that I found from Francisco Jay Eliah? He
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: basically said, so, basically, this guy kind of proves that
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: humans are actually biologically moral, resulting from a consequence of
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: natural selection. Francisco j. Eliah says that one, we have
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: the ability to anticipate consequences of our own actions. Two
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: we have the ability to make value judgments, and three
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: we have the ability to choose between alternative courses of action.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: And so because of our abilities, our natural abilities to
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: do that, we are naturally moral creatures. Which is the
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: only support I've seen for that idea that people are
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: inherently moral. I've only ever seen attack. This guy did
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: a pretty good job of making a case that supports that.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, isn't the idea that humans are inherently
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: evil much more common?
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Like, wasn't that what Hobbes was all about?
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: That's what Hobbes was about Satanists, Yeah, basically, or I
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: think they're like, it's not good or evil, and I
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: think Satanists are really they don't like humanists very much either. Yeah,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: there's a Yeah, there's a lot of it's definitely not
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: settled whether humans are inherently good or bad.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: So we haven't figured that one out.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I guess, not meaning toward the bad lately though.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: I mentioned environmentalists and animal rights activists earlier that sometimes
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: there's they believe there's just a little too much human
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: and humanism, But there are certainly a lot of people
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: and humanists that have kind of worked on the environment
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: and animals and the value of all that stuff into
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: the cause for sure.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Very very Jeremy bentha mask Yeah. Yeah, although if you
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: want to get down to it, I've seen an example
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: given where a genuine humanist if if somebody killing a
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: deer kept a human family alive, they would be like,
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: killed that deer. Dear interesting, that deer is secondary, It's
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: life is secondary to human life. Humanists might be like,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: no way, man, go eat go eat a plant, go
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: eat some lichen.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: I've never been a hunter, but if the zombie apocalypse happened,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: like I could, I could do it.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: You could eat zombie. I think it's if they bite
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: you that you become a zombie. I've never seen any
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: problems with somebody eating them.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: Well, that's true, you definitely need a healthy spice rack though.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that rotted shark they eat in Iceland.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh god, Yeah.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: That's essentially like eating zombie. From what I understand, okay,
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: tastes like zombie. You got anything else?
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: No?
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: I uh, you were right. I didn't.
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: I didn't think I was gonna be able to get
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: through this because it's very petty stuff for me. But
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: you said, settle down, jerk, you'll be fine.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you did great. When when't like a philosophy class
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: one of your favorite classes in college too.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and every time we do anything philosophy related, I
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: get all scared and it always works out.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he did great, man, you always do great.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so do you?
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks well, check and I agree we both did great.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Patting ourselves on the back. He let me pet you
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: on the back, dude, Oh thank you. That means, of
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: course it's time for listener mail.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: All right, this is going to be short and sweet.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: I think I jokingly asked for a haiku as it
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: relates to mcguffins, because many years ago we put out
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: the call for haikus and got hundreds and hundreds of them,
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: to the point where I think we just quit reading them,
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: so and hopes people quit sending them, and time marched on,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: and they did. But David centnasen a haiku about the
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: mcguffin amt coukay man, you ready. The mcguffin lives, critics argue,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: and gnash teeth. The ending still comes wow, and David
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: goes on to say, this great show, guys, y'all create
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: an entire universe of stuff, insider stories and jokes. I
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: hate it when I can't recall one of the callback
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: tangents and you just want to say, lastly.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: The Jackhammer episode. Wasn't that terrible? Guys? It was needed
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: in the world.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Can you read the high cup again? It's still sinking
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: in like the genius of what David did.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty good. The mcguffin lives, critics argue, and
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: nash teeth. The ending still comes, man, pretty good.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: That's a T shirt if I've ever heard one. Aaron Cooper, that's.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: A high quality coup.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Buddy.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like David and well, I'll
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: not send us a high coup, but just write in
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: about something we would be happy to hear from you.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts. I Heart
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Radio Huh.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:48
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• 49:53
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