First, give me your definitions of “secular humanism” and “love”.
Second, realize that it is possible to care about people without loving them, unless your definition of love is so broad as to be essentially worthless.
Secular humanism: An outlook or philosophy that advocates human rather than religious values.
Love: Charity.
Actually this does make sense to me. If God exists, then I would have to say he has not chosen me to be one of his followers. It’s not like I’ve heard the word of God, accepted the word of God, and then rejected the word of God. It’s more like the word of God has no meaning to me.
If that is His will, I cannot say that I’ve suffered for it. I have a good job, a good wife, a lovely daughter, a nice house, etc. I don’t feel like I’m lacking any meaning in my life. Perhaps my non-belief will affect my post-life experience (if there is any). I guess I’ll have to wait to see.
Mmm…won’t there be scads of loyal Christians (at the very least) who love him? Or were you commanded, “love your neighbor as youself, unless he doesn’t love enough people, then let him die alone”?
His statement that he doesn’t want to love does not mean that he doesn’t want to love.
My pity is false, and my love self serving.
Ok Czar. Not much point in going any further down this path.
Tris
Gaudere,
It is hard to be loved, when you do not love. Many Christians will love him, but their love cannot overcome his denial. Many non Christians will love him, as well. God Himself will love him, but in the end, he chooses whether he will love. He says he chooses not to. The barrier is his.
My faith in the Lord makes me believe that He has infinite love, and infinite time. For anyone who will be loved, that will suffice to bring them into His glory. Many disagree with me.
Tris
Tris, Czar, could y’all please step back a few paces? This is looking to me like an instance of electronic communication difficulty, and I don’t think it’s worth getting upset over.
So he will be loved by many people, but he will die unloved, alone, and despised. I think perhaps you are using the word “unloved” in a manner unfamilar to me.
andros, if Speaker A says to Speaker B, “I pity you because you do no believe as I do.”, can you imagine any other reaction than, “I don’t want your pity.”?
Triskadecamus, again, not wanting to love everybody is not the same as not wanting to love anybody. He did NOT say that he chooses not to love.
Perhaps I am, Gaudere.
Let me explain. Love is not a one way thing. It is a relationship between two beings. Love your fellow man means to open that relationship with each person, individually when you meet them. It doesn’t mean “think highly of them” or “admire them” or “give them stuff” or even “take care of them.” It means put yourself into their heart, and take their heart into yourself.
You can’t do that, if someone denies it. When I say unloved and alone, I mean that you have to love to be loved. But you can be despised quite well, whatever you do. That you will have, in this life, no matter what you do. I too will die despised. But I will die with the love of every soul that has allowed me to share love with them. (OK, not all of them, because I fail in my desire to be Christ like in my love. I am not able to love every soul. That failure is another whole thread.)
The simple statement that “We don’t want to love our fellow man.” seems to me to be a bleak and lonely view of the world. It also seems to be a denial of the value of love. I don’t deny that many of my fellow men are jerks. I am a jerk too. Jerkdom is very common. It is not cause to give up love, to me.
Perhaps that explains it, I don’t know.
Tris
This space intentionally left blank, barren, bleak, and empty.
I must not have much appetite for melodrama this morning. If you mean that one person probably will be despised by one other person for at least one second of their life, you are most likely correct…but it sounds much less dramatic that way, doesn’t it? 
If you mean that someone will be secretely despising both of us with a burning passion while we lie on our deathbed, I’m not so sure. I doubt most people can muster up more than tired irritation regarding me. 
I do understand your point that if you love in return you get full benefit from love. But you way of phrasing it struck me as odd. Actually, it sounded more like a fit of pique from a dumped teenager. “So you don’t want me? Well, no one else is ever going to love you. You’ll die cold and alone. I feel sorry for you.” It’s not the reaction I would expect from you, which is why I commented; it almost sounded like a veiled threat. He just said “I think most people are jerks”, not “I hate everyone and wish horrible suffering upon them.” He said he didn’t want to love everyone; well, I think many of us would say we don’t want to love Hitler. I’m betting he didn’t mean “I want to hate everyone” when he said “I don’t want to love everyone”.
OK.
I don’t intend to wish ill, or predict sorrow for anyone.
The premise that love of fellow man is undesirable seems bleak to me. The emotion that that elicits in me is what I call pity. It isn’t a gloating exultation in someone’s deserved suffering. It is pity. A sorrow over someone else’s suffering. I don’t want them to suffer, and their suffering does not comfort me, or make me feel justified, or superior.
I ache at times because of the love I cannot feel for some people in my life. I am not immune to the things that make us hate. Nor do I despise Bryan for his feelings, or his beliefs. But I find it sad. As I said in my original response to him, that feeling exists quite aside from belief in God. I find it sad even without the existence of God. And even more than I would want to witness to him of the existence of God, I would speak to him of the love of our fellow man. To me, it is that important.
Tris
Lib: I’m having kids, so it isn’t good enough for me to wait for what might be around the corner. I need a peek around the corner now.
Where do you think the mass in the Big Bang came from? God is traditionally what isn’t already explained by science, so maybe God is The Big Bang. That certainly would’ve made a short Bible. “And on the first day, God said ‘let there be matter and laws of physics’. The end.”
Maybe God is trying to trick you into not believing in Him so that He can send you to hell:
“For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
– 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12
I’ve delighted in some forms of wickedness in my day…
—Secular humanism: An outlook or philosophy that advocates human rather than religious values.—
This is an extremely problematic definition, at least concerning the secular humanists I know.
First of all, religious values ARE human values in every sense that matters to secular humanists. Second of all, many secular humanists consider secular humanism to be itself a religion, and the values of secular humanism to be religious values. Third of all, many secular humanists are ALSO Christians, Buddhists, pagans, etc.
—The premise that love of fellow man is undesirable seems bleak to me.—
The problem with the discussion of “love” here is that many different senses of the word are being used. Some regard it as the actual human emotion: love, while others seem to be lumping it in with concern or compassion for others. The latter is clearly quite possible even when the former is not present. Triskadecamus has an entire explication of what he thinks everyone should mean by “love.” But when talking about definitions, there is no “should mean.” What matters is simply that people convey what they mean as clearly as possible, no matter what words they use.
To avoid rancor, people need to be distinct about exactly what they mean by “love.”
I usually use that term to describe the sort of bond I form with a person over a long period of time, trust, and friendship. I don’t generally use that word to describe my commitments and concerns about the welfare of others, which I do seek to make as all-encompassing as possible. Maybe that usage is inconsistent with how some here use the word “love” but that is entirely beside the point: what I actually MEAN seems very similar regardless of whether or not we agree that it is called “love.”
—When I say unloved and alone, I mean that you have to love to be loved.—
From reading your other statements, I have to doubt that you actually mean the plain meaning of this. Clearly, one CAN be loved without loving in return, no matter what sense of the word “love” is being used. Indeed, this idea seems central to Christian teachings in particular, because it is exactly this that God is supposed to do even for those who do not love him back (for god so loved the world…). Certainly a mutualy loving relationship is better than a one-sided one, but that does nto negate the fact that it is possible to love someone who does not return your love.
Certainly. I think it’s fair to say that secular humanists, rejecting the supernatural, would have to say religious values are human values. (Of course, not all human values are good.)
These points are, I believe, inaccurate. Humanism, without any modifiers, is a broad term, used in lots of ways, including by people who would identify as “Christian humanists”. There is also a movement, which we’ll call Humanism with a capital-H, which is non-theistic and is variously described as a non-theistic religion, or a non-theistic alternative to religions. The most prominent organization in the U.S. for Humanists of the sort who would identify their belief as a “religion” is the American Humanist Association; here is the AHA’s Definitions of Humanism.
Secular Humanism is the wing of the Humanist movement which eschews the label of “religion” for what they (or rather, we) believe, saying instead that Secular Humanism is an alternative to religion. The leading American organization for Secular Humanists is the Council for Secular Humanism; here is what CSH has to say about the question What is Secular Humanism?
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread already in progress.
—The reason I believe in all that is because when I hear the scientific explanations, I think “Wow. My understanding of everything has become a little clearer.” But when I hear stories about God, I think, “Hmmm… That doesn’t really make sense to me.”—
To take this thought seriously, I would suggest that, for the moment not considering directly the value of the explanations themselves, the difference in SCOPE of the explanations matters. To say that the Big Bang happened adds to our knowledge about the universe, but as anyone familiar with the theory should know, the theory has a limited scope. You can say for sure what it’s claims imply, and what they don’t, and they clearly only explain certain limited things, and you can clearly point to where those limits are. To say, however, that God simply exists, the end, and created the universe, explains less because its scope is much much more ambitious. It’s not at all clear what has happened, how, or what knowledge this claim adds to our understanding of anything.
Theists are often unsatisfied with the answer “maybe the universe just exists,” and I think they’re quite right: that is a very unsatisfying answer for any curious human mind. But adding another step beyond it with the same unsatisfying end doesn’t really seem to help matters any.
However, it IS important to realize that the Big Bang is a theory with a lesser scope than the theist hypothesis. And of course is not at all in mutually exclusive competition with it.
—I have heard that if I open my heart to God, I will believe.—
This one puzzles me as well. It seems to be a means which is supiciously exaclty like the end its claiming to achieve: that is: belief in god. This is often stated in a way in which someone is told that they will believe if they will just have faith. Whereas it seems almost exactly the same to say that one will have faith as soon as they believe: “faith” in this sense really is just belief by another name, and the means IS the end.
—So for those of you who believe in God, how am I able not to believe?—
Some people actually term this as the “argument from atheists.” It is not really a conclusive or rigourous argument, more of a quandry, but essentially it asks what possible reason would a particular god (usually the Christian one) have for not having its existence be a matter of inherent belief? That is, why is the question of god’s empirical existence on the table at all? Many theists would of course argue that it is NOT on the table, but this is a little presumptive: it would involve denying that there are sincere atheists out there.
The problem is that it seems that no one who actually knew that, for instance, the Christian god existed would ever have cause to deny it. They wouldn’t even have cause to delude themselves of it now for the purposes of future sin. Even the rabidly self-interested seem to have little cause: they are facing the ultimate punishment for denial, and the ultimate bribe for proclamaition: no other selfish reason can even come close. The only way would be simply for them to be honestly mistaken, in which case it hardly seems right to fault them.
—These points are, I believe, inaccurate.—
No. The problem is that there is an extremely wide range of people who call themselves humanists and secular humanists. Secular Humanism has appeared as a movement not only in one instance or council, but many times in many places, sometimes even sprouting up from isolated individuals.
First of all, go read the “What is Secular Humanism” on that page bit again. What I want to point out is these principles/elements can only be seen as being in inherent conflict with, say, Christianity, paganism, or Buddhism if one holds a very narrow view of what Christianity, paganism, or Buddhism constitute. Certainly none of these elements rules out one being both a secular humanist and a theist, or agreeing to all those principles and ALSO having religious convictions (as long as these convictions are not faith based truth claims). In fact, they make a damning error by contrasting “secular” with “religious” as if these two things were oil and water. Religion, while admitting to many vague definitions, often does deal with the supernatural, mystical and transcendent. But to limit it to that is highly, highly presumptive. I have a friend named Eljay who is a passionately religious theist, who nevertheless is not in the least involved, in his worship or religious practices, with supernaturalism, mysticism, or transcedence in anything but a human emotional sense.
But even that is not the point, because this Council is not the whole of modern Secular Humanism. It speaks for itself and any who happen to wish it to speak for them. Even Marx could not control what Marxism was to the various and diverse Marxists that sprouted up after him.
I’ve met, personally, people who claim to be secular humanists and who make the statements I noted. Just as I refuse to play the True Scotsman game and tell Christians what a “real” Christian must be to qualify (since the definition itself would presume the limits of the gruop that gets to define what it is!), or to buy the pronouncements of Atheists of America as to what an atheist must “believe,” I see no reason to buy the opinion of any organization claiming to speak for an entire, vaugely concieved philosophy or definition. Arising out of freethought, secular humanists do the tradition of their ancestors a great disservice by trying to pigeonhole all descendants of the tradition who claim that name and tradition into their personal convictions of appropriate qualifications.