[SEQ RERUN] Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute?

[MinibearRex]

Today’s post, Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute? was originally published on 26 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Trying to replace religion with humanism, atheism, or transhumanism doesn’t work. If you try to write a hymn to the nonexistence of god, it will fail, because you are simply trying to imitate something that we don’t really need to imitate. But that doesn’t mean that the feeling of transcendence is something we should always avoid. After all, in a world in which religion never existed, people would still feel that same way.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Amazing Breakthrough Day: April 1st, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

[fburnaby]

There was so much talk of “religion-shaped holes” in the brain in those comments! Shouldn’t it be pretty obvious to people who are aware of the “meme” concept that religions are brain-hole shaped and not the other way around?

Of course it’s ok if a rocket-ship fills a certain brain-hole in a similar way the religion does—rocket ships are benign. It’s naming one or several of those holes “religion-shaped” that seems to have a dark-artsy kind of effect and turn us all stupid.

[advancedatheist]

Actually we have theory-of-mind shaped holes in the brain. I don’t have an iPhone, and I haven’t seen a live demonstration of the Siri app yet, but the commercials and videos about Siri I’ve seen on YouTube show that it doesn’t take much to trick the theory of mind into treating Siri as a person.

Gods make me think of Siri-like apps. People attribute the theory of mind to their “god apps,” and they try to communicate with these apps through worship, prayer, the study of obscure scriptures and the infliction of self-harm, as David Hume describes in my post below.

[fburnaby]

I believe that and agree that it’s gotta be a major factor in driving god-belief and other types of animism (it’s one of the brain-holes I’m talking about). Yet, religion seems to be a superset—and sometimes a large one—of god-belief. There’s seemingly more to explain. There are likely several other brain-holes involved here.

[buybuydandavis]

You have to decide what is and is not going to count as a religion, where religion is a concept that makes a meaningful distinction.

The article says that just because your brain lights up when you watch a space shuttle launch like a christian’s brain lights up watching a nativity scene, that doesn’t mean that you’re having a religious experience. Fair enough. On the other hand, I’d say it certainly doesn’t mean you’re not having a religious experience.

Stirner maintained that Feuerbach’s Humanism was just another religion, and rightly so. Similarly with Marx’s Communism. For me, and I think for Stirner, the religious outlook is characterized by the intellectual mistake of belief in Objective Value. In both cases, people tied their minds up in knots to where they believed they had discovered Objective Values. Not the values that you objectively actually have, but the values that you should have, must have, have a duty to have, etc.

God exists, or he doesn’t. One believes in God as a matter of religion not when you believe he exists, but when you believe that one must serve him, in some peculiar, insane, gibberistic sense of must. When you believe that God sets your “True” values, instead of you.

The same goes for Humanism. If you actually do value the wonders of Humanity, you are not necessarily religious—you just have a preference for what Humanity brings. But if you believe that Humanity is your Objective Value whether or not you subjectively value it in actual fact, then you have a religious outlook with respect to Humanity.

Search for the “Wheels in the Head” section of Stirner’s The Ego and His Own for a concise elaboration. http://​​www.lsr-projekt.de/​​poly/​​enee.html

[advancedatheist]

David Hume, although he doesn’t phrase it this way, argues that people become religious zealots because the ordinary duties of morality enjoined by plain-vanilla theism don’t stimulate them enough. They want to show off to their deity by doing useless but painful things to themselves to overcome the boredom of a normal ethical life:

http://​​oll.libertyfund.org/​​?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=340&chapter=44360&layout=html&Itemid=27

Perhaps the following account may be received as a true solution of the difficulty. The duties which a man performs as a friend or parent seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance. A sentiment of order and moral beauty joins its force to these natural ties; and the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues which are more austere, and more founded on reflection, such as public spirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity, the moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretence to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this a superstitious man finds nothing which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some more immediate service of the supreme being, in order to allay those terrors with which he is haunted. And any practice recommended to him which either serves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations, that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of those very circumstances which should make him absolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or consideration. And if, for its sake, he sacrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears still to rise upon him in proportion to the zeal and devotion which he discovers. In restoring a loan or paying a debt his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed were there no God in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping, this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities. By these distinguished marks of devotion he has now acquired the divine favor; and may expect, in recompense, protection and safety in this world and eternal happiness in the next.

So I have to wonder about the humanist analogs to this behavior to gain favor with some abstract Humanity in lieu of a god. Unlike traditional theist zealots, humanists generally don’t signal their virtue through sexual self-denial, interestingly enough—in fact they tend to go to the opposite extreme and practically want to fit adolescent girls with Malthusian belts like Lenina Crowne in Brave New World, along with giving them the vaccine against cervical cancer. But some of them signal virtue through forms of consumption-denial, like veganism, voluntary simplicity,”low carbon footprints,” buy-nothing observances and so forth. And then, after they’ve established their superior virtue in their own minds, they want to inflict it upon the rest of society by scolding us about our diets, our childrearing practices, our consumption habits and other aspects of our lives. This tendency bears more than a little resemblance to overtly religious behavior which makes little practical sense.