90sAce
03-26-15, 05:10 AM
http://americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Definitions_of_Humanism
While I agree with a lot of the stated aspects of humanism, there are some key problems I have with it:
*Humanism focuses primarily on 'human experience' as determining ethics, and downplays the role of genetics and biology in species as a whole.
*Humanism has a theme of 'collective social responsibility' which I don't believe is supported by evolutionary biology (in species, social responsibility is selective and localized rather than 'extended' to the entire species).
*My personal experience with debaters on the internet claiming to be 'humanist' or 'secular humanist' is that they lean toward the collectivist and 'bleeding heart idealist' camps of liberalism; they also seem to associate many liberal social and economic policies as synonymous with 'reason'.
*Many of them also falsely argue that social conditioning or 'individuality' is what is primarily responsible for differences in human behavior (ex. innate differences in men and women independent from 'roles' created by society), even though this is more or less dis-proven by biology.
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The problem I have with 'humanism' is that while many of the stated beliefs are true (such as the statement that morality is determined through reason rather than blind faith, similar to deism), the way that humanists put them into practice is more often than not false. In fact 'humanism' may as well be a synonym with modern liberalism or the idealism of the 'peace and love' hippie era - based on the rhetoric I've seen online from self-declared 'humanists'.
While I agree with a lot of the stated aspects of humanism, there are some key problems I have with it:
*Humanism focuses primarily on 'human experience' as determining ethics, and downplays the role of genetics and biology in species as a whole.
*Humanism has a theme of 'collective social responsibility' which I don't believe is supported by evolutionary biology (in species, social responsibility is selective and localized rather than 'extended' to the entire species).
*My personal experience with debaters on the internet claiming to be 'humanist' or 'secular humanist' is that they lean toward the collectivist and 'bleeding heart idealist' camps of liberalism; they also seem to associate many liberal social and economic policies as synonymous with 'reason'.
*Many of them also falsely argue that social conditioning or 'individuality' is what is primarily responsible for differences in human behavior (ex. innate differences in men and women independent from 'roles' created by society), even though this is more or less dis-proven by biology.
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The problem I have with 'humanism' is that while many of the stated beliefs are true (such as the statement that morality is determined through reason rather than blind faith, similar to deism), the way that humanists put them into practice is more often than not false. In fact 'humanism' may as well be a synonym with modern liberalism or the idealism of the 'peace and love' hippie era - based on the rhetoric I've seen online from self-declared 'humanists'.