Image from “I, Robot”, 2004, 20th Century Fox

Why is it that people continually point at the inexplicable, the undefinable and the unprovable when talking about the incredible uniqueness that humans hold among the animal kingdom? Any fool can see that humanity has taken a place in the world that no other animal could hold, due to the many seemingly unique qualities we display, and the degree to which we display them; We can communicate in intricate and specific terms, we can manipulate our world to change it to our wants and needs, and we display an unmatched propensity for inventiveness and shared learning. We have built our own world up from the harsh and natural world our forefathers found themselves in many centuries ago, and we continue to build from these meagre beginnings with an aptitude and tenacity unwitnessed in any other species on earth. In this sense, we are a special case, and we are all too aware of this. We know we are special, but we deny what it took to get us here.

We are only as advanced as we are because of the centuries of thought and evolution that have brought to this point, and this point is by no means a “destination” or “end-state”. When describing humanity, many fall into the trap of removing ourselves from the world, a false dichotomy of “the natural world” and “the human world”. This is understandable, given that we do display so many seemingly unique traits as a species, but it is very misguided thinking, and has caused all manner of problems in our current world. Once we remove the veil of our superiority as a species from the picture, once we look inside our own past, once we understand that the journey from “lower animal” to “higher animal” is a long and slow process, then we can understand what it really means to be a human in our current world. When this process is misunderstood, or in some cases, denied, we invent ways to explain our existences, we create extra baggage in the form of invisible and inexplicable phenomena to fill these gaps. Like the opposite of Occam’s Razor, we pile on unnecessary and imaginary complications to explain ourselves, simply because we lack the understanding of who and what we are, needlessly complicating the process of what I see as quite simple. What and who we are is much more simple, and at the same time more complex, than any mystical or superstitious thinking may have you believe.

And it is both beautifully poetic in its simplicity, and amazing in its complexities, but in no way necessitates or implies the need for supernatural intervention.

In order to see this, we need to take a step back, and look forward from the past to where we are now. All aspects of humanity can be explained when we look at where we came from, and it doesn’t require the intervention of an invisible all-powerful agent to help us along. As this is a blog and not a 100,000 word essay, I will only touch on the major ideas in this journey, but as you will see, most if not all of the mystical thinking about humanity’s place in the cosmos can be explained through gradual change, through adaptation, and through a hundred centuries of thinking and discovery. I will start with a common misconception about humanity, then attempt to explain in a way that shows that the supernatural is either unnecessary or absent in the process. The points below are human-centric in nature, and go a long way toward showing us just how selfish humanity is.

Morality

The emergence of the idea of morality is easily explained, if one is willing to accept that people have a want and need to be well. We are intelligent enough to realise that our own well-beings depend on the well-beings of those who surround us. We are social animals, and therefore depend heavily on our societies to thrive and flourish, so it is in our best interest to do what maintains others, not what destroy others. Morality is just a name for treating others in a caring and sufficiently constructive way for the whole of a societal group to perpetuate. However what is known as “morality” is so often bound up with individual judgement that the whole idea of morality today is basically a bankrupt concept. The term has been hijacked and loaded with personal ideals by those who see the actions of others as abhorrent, and could have only ever come to this stage via the guiding hand of religions an personal politics which seek to impose their own ethics and loaded moralities upon others.

Genesis

The idea of “genesis”, or a spontaneous coming into being, is what was used by thinkers of a bygone age to describe where humanity came from. It was the best they could come up with at the time, having limited knowledge and limited access to the world around us. We now know that humanity, or anything else on this planet, didn’t just spring into existence, but is the result of billions of years of gradual change and adaptation.

It is tempting therefore to ask within this framework “When did the first human appear?” assuming again that things just popped, fully formed, into existence. Of course, with gradual change and adaptation, every stage of development is different from the one that precedes it, and the one which follows. The first human therefore, is impossible to identify, because we are still changing and evolving.

In short, there was no genesis, definitely on in the biblical sense, and in an evolutionary sense, humanity emerged slowly and gradually from previous life-forms.

The Soul

Humanity is obsessed with itself. We are self-aware, and able to change and adapt to our surroundings, and also to make changes to our surroundings to suit us. We are also intelligent enough to realise that we will all die, and cease to be among those who love us, and those who we love share the same fate. A combination of our self-obsession, and the obliteration of self due to mortality, leads us to wish for eternal life, because the other option seems so uncomfortable that we’d rather not think about it. To deal with the ultimate futility of life, we have invented the idea of the soul. This soul represents our inner life-force, our uniqueness, and ultimately ourselves, but is intangible and eternal. And people fight tooth and nail to try and prove its existence, even if this “proof” is only wishful thinking.

The idea of soul only emerges because of our inability to deal with our own death, and the deaths of those around us. It is a coping mechanism to deal with the uncomfortable reality of the ultimate fate of all living creatures on this planet, and the food-chain which sustains it. In order for one individual to live, others must die. Once one comes to terms with the realities of life and death on this planet, the idea of the soul is only useful as a way to bend the wills of others to do the bidding of theologians and their mega-corporations, the religions. It is also a political tool which utilises the idea of eternal reward and punishment to motivate people into action against their neighbours.

Without the soul, the Abrahamic idea of heaven and hell falls to pieces. Without an eternal soul, there is nothing within these religions that relate to humans, and little value but a couple of guiding ideas that are of little relevance in a self-aware society like the one we live in today.

Empathy

As witnessed in what we call “upper primates” such as chimpanzees and gorillas, empathy is not unique to humans. Empathy is the ability to sense in others feelings and emotions, as well as the propensity within us to “feel” them also. Pain of others is reflected in our brains as pain to ourselves, therefore we tend to avoid painful situations without having to experience them ourselves. When we see someone stub their toe, our “mirror neurons” kick into play, and we empathise with the person who is in pain. We also comfort them, because in our minds we felt what they felt. Empathy is key to human evolution, because, as social animals, we learn mistakes from others rather than having to go through the learning of pain ourselves. This is a key to human societal evolution, for we have built up societies to best suit the needs of the group, not the self.

Society

Our societies have evolved because of a combination of the above series of human traits. We have constructed our societies in a way that suits the individual within the group, and therefore the group as a whole. Although much of modern society is geared toward the profits of the few, the basis for this society came from an ability to see and assess what is best for a group and work collectively  toward this. Along the way we have developed cultures and religions, specific to our geographical location, and diverse due to the separation of groups to these geographical areas. The evolution of societies, much like the evolution of language, is a good metaphor for the evolution of species in this way.

God

As I have said in the past, the notion of god is simply a way to fill the gaps in our knowledge in a way that satisfies our curiosities, at leas in a superficial way. However, the notion of a god with purpose, a god which oversees our daily toiling, and a god that punishes and rewards us for our actions, is the single most selfish thing humanity has ever devised. It’s easy to plea the case for god once one removes humanity from the context of nature, and even easier when a person claims they have a soul with which god will chose its destiny. Despite the arguments of contingency for god (i.e. that in order for the universe to exist, god is necessary), the arguments for a personal god (i.e. “I know god exists because I can feel his influence” ), or even the human-centric view that god has created the universe specifically for us, there is no evidence for this existence except for ignorance of facts.

With our current knowledge of the universe, and the continual growth and accumulation of evidence about the way the universe works, we see more and more that humanity is just one of many possibilities that the reality of this universe has to offer. We are special, at least insomuch that we are the only acutely self-aware species on this planet, but this self-awareness has had the tendency to centre ourselves as the “purpose” for this world, and with such grandiloquence as to be embarrassing. It’s time we grew up and saw our true place in this universe, one of fragile and fortunate circumstances, not as the spoilt child of an omnipotent all-seeing father figure.

It would seem that those among us human beings who are lucky enough to travel to space, and are able to view the earth from high above the atmosphere, return to us with a profoundly different and new perspective of their home, and the implications of this new view of the world are far from trivial. From that distance, and floating peacefully around the planet, the mind wanders into an almost meditative state, one where the human experience is put into a new and unusual wholistic viewpoint.

It was with this in mind that the group known as “Planetary Collective” put together this stunning mini-documentary, interviewing astronauts about their shift in perception after their individual returns to earth.

One of the quotes from the film puts this into a context, and one which encapsulates the spirit of the whole short film, reads:

Running time 19 minutes.

Planetary Collective are currently running a “kickstarter” account to help fund their next project, a feature length film titled “Continuum“, which you can read more about here.

On Saturday just gone, I had the pleasure of being invited once again onto Jake Farr-Wharton’s podcast, The Imaginary Friends Show Podcast. We were joined by regular guest Pete Darwin, and over the hour we discussed topics including claims that Big-Bang cosmology is consistent with biblical scriptures, miniature aliens, a boycott of Israel by Stephen Hawking, and that crazy country known as Bangladesh, among other things.

So grab a cup of your favourite beverage, turn the lights down low, snuggle under a blanket, and enjoy the dulcet tones of Jake, Pete and myself as we solve all of life’s problems and mysteries. ALL of them.

Or download the mp3 here.

Or subscribe via iTunes.

I have been known in my time to seek out activities that scare me. From high-wall rock climbing to skydiving, the fear that I have felt in these situations is apparent and real, and the threat of death hangs over one’s shoulder like a constant reminder of mortality when taking part in these activities. It is real, it is tangible, and it is a motivator to be on guard against missteps and mistakes. This kind of activity is done for a buzz and an adventure, and in a society where we are wrapped up in our security blankets of employment and secure housing, we sometimes find a need to seek out adventures where we are not in control. In my case, the feeling of overcoming fear has motivated me to do some incredible things. And it’s not until it’s over that it becomes apparent exactly how amazing the experience has been.

I often think of Joe Simpson, mountaineer, climber and author of the real-life drama “Touching The Void“, where, with a horribly shattered leg, Joe was faced with the choice of either both he and Simon (his climbing partner) dying, or the possibility of only Joe perishing and Simon being able to continue down from the mountain.

Ultimately it was fear of death that lead to Joe and Simon both reaching safety, but eventually, in Joe’s case, the fear gave way to an animalistic drive for survival when he found himself 20 metres down in an icy crevasse with a badly shattered leg, the only hope of escape being to somehow clamber out. I have never been in a situation like Joe’s, but I can empathise with the predicament. This is what fear is for, to help us out of a situation that could ultimately lead to our own demise. However in this day and age, fear is used against us, as a tool to make us act in ways we may not otherwise.

There are few better ways to spur a person into action than to present them with something they fear. From the seemingly harmless threats like fear of spiders, where you can send someone jumping into a spasmodic fit at the mere suggestion of the creepy crawlers, to real life-threatening situations, like being held at gunpoint, people do things they wouldn’t otherwise consider when fear is involved. While fear as a survival mechanism is incredibly useful in helping us avoid pain and death, thereby prolonging our longevity on this planet, many in positions of power also recognise that fear can be used as a tool against us, making us do what they want us to do, making pawns or puppets of us in the process.

The origins of the use of fear to control us stems way back farther than me may be aware, to our pre-human ancestors, where, for example, the troupe or tribe leaders of our ancestors would use intimidation tactics to ensure their dominance in any situation, much as gorillas do today. Displays of power and strength served as warnings against others in the troupe, fear of harm to the self minimising the challenge to the “leader” and further concreting his position in the group.

This still holds true in modern society, and though according to Steven Pinker’s book “The Better Angels of Our Nature“, the threat to our personal safety is lessened due to the evolution of societal laws, we still react to fear as pushed upon us by our superiors in the same way as if it were a threat to our lives. Adrenalin rises, hands sweat, the heart races, the body trembles; The “fight or flee” reaction is initiated, and we tense up as if ready for physical battle. Those who hold power over us (the government, the police establishment, our employers, our religious leaders) all employ the use of fear in different ways, and though we are rarely in actual peril, we often react as though it were a threat to our health, our well-being, or our lives.

More often than not, the threats are idle; The police hold authority over us, but only if we “do something wrong”; The government instills fear with rhetoric around national security in the form of the threat of the “xenos“, outsider or foreigner, when in fact the threat is much smaller than presented; Our employers can hold over us the threat of dismissal or missing out on a bonus, and either deliver on their promise or simply use it as a way to keep us in line; And the religious leaders hold the threat of eternal damnation, just as a series of examples. It’s as if these threats are being held above our heads like a boobytrap triggered to go off if we ever “step out of line”.

Whether the threats against us are being carried out or not, the fact remains that those who would like to have control over us are acutely aware that fear is a necessary part of ruling over people. It remains a tool by which  to keep people in a constant state of mild panic which the powers that be can utilize to both placate and motivate people to do things they may not otherwise do.

From an article at Psychology Today about the way marketers use fear to evoke us into buying goods and services:

I notice this more and more often in today’s society: The propensity seems to be to use fear as a way to make us act, and by using this primal urge for acceptance and safety, we have evolved into a fear based culture, where going without, or missing out, or the apparent sense of security of being covered by insurance or having a way to prosecute, is a more compelling reason for acting than motivation to do just for the sake of doing. When you become aware of this, it is acutely apparent that it is not only a falsified social trend, but that the politics, the media and marketers, and the religions that so many subscribe to are geared toward the innate human instinct for safety, and the aversion of fear.

There is a climate of fear in Australia as the result of unrelenting propaganda about the “threat” of being invaded by foreigners. This strong example of fear-based politics is exemplified in the  xenophobic messages we receive daily, which have made their way from the peripheries of our minds to the core of our politics. Not a day goes by where we don’t hear the messages of politicians screaming that we are under threat of invasion from outsiders, the “illegal” asylum-seeking hordes with dark-skin, weird customs and alien languages. This attitude is used as a political tool particularly in Australia, where the threat of “boat-people” is raised in every political conversation. The fear of outsiders is bolstered by the plethora of mixed messages we receive about them from both sides of the political fence, and it will no-doubt be a huge influence on the upcoming federal election later this year.

In America, there is a fear-based culture around the owning and carrying of firearms, as an apparent deterrent against others with the same firearms, the attitude being “better to be able to defend myself than to passively be gunned down by a stranger.” The basis for this attitude comes from the Second Amendment to the constitution, which was written as a fail-safe against a possibly tyrannical government, and was a reaction to the revolutionary war against the British which ended in 1783. The justification for this was the idea that an unarmed public was easier to control than an armed public, and America wanted to change this by becoming a potential militia of their own, in case of the government trying to hurt its people. The amendment reads:

This “freedom” that was once meant to be a comfort for the people of America, a way toward a fearless society, has now become the reason for fear, a polarisation from its original intent. People fear guns in the hands of potential killers, so they arm themselves to be on the same playing field. And the fear just increases, as the American public arms itself to the teeth. In this case, the “cure” for fear has become the reason for fear.

In Europe we see a politicised debate around the influx of Islamic people into France and England. France in particular, whether justified or not, constantly use this influx as tool to motivate people to vote in a particular way. The downside, especially for Islamic people, is a general attitude of fear of their religion and their traditional dress. Based in reality or not, these fears are utilised as a control tool, a way to motivate the masses to move in the direction that the political parties wish them to move.

Abrahamic religions have taken this idea of control by fear from this world into the ultimate extreme, eternity. Christianity and Islam both use stories of damnation against believers and non-believers alike, the threat is to “toe the line” or exist in torment for eternity. Eternity is a very long time, and torment is not something we would wish upon anyone, that is, unless you are from one of these religions. Richard Dawkins, in his book 2006 book “The God Delusion” equates the teaching of damnation to children to child abuse. It is a particularly nasty use of fear to control people, and it shows the degree to which people will go to try to gain this control and influence over people.

The threat of hell is not the nastiest thing religion has up its sleeve. Actual death threats for apostasy and blasphemy are being sent around the world as we speak, and none is best known for this than Islam. Right now, in the predominantly Islamic country of Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of Muslim men are marching on the streets demanding that atheist bloggers, blasphemers and apostates be killed for this purported crime. Their 13 demands read like a shopping list of fears and anxieties about their religion. One wonders how tenuous religions really are if they can be threatened by a whiff of common-sense, or the slightest suggestion of disbelief.

One thing to remember is this: Our fears of the unknown or possible dangers are only ruled by our reactions to situations. It has often been said that it’s not the situations or conversations you have that determine how you feel, but the way you react to them. While we may not have any control over the situations we find ourselves in, we most certainly can change the way we react to them. (I’m aware this flies in the face of  earlier blogs I’ve written about the non-existent nature of free will, but as I said there, we live our lives as if free will exists, so the fact it may not pedantically exist is a moot point.) It is apparent that we can control our reactions, and there are a few things may help us in striving to cope with the stresses that life brings to us.

We are all at the whims of our fears, and they can be so crippling that you may not feel like getting up in the morning. The first key to controlling fear is to recognise the fears. Ask yourself “What am I afraid of?”, “Is the fear justified as something to be afraid of?” and “Do I stand to lose more than I gain if I give in to my fears?” Once you are aware of the fears being deliberately foisted upon you, some of them may lose power over you. Oft quoted from Epictetus “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

Fear can be used against you in just about all aspects of your life; What you think, how you dress, what you eat, what you do, who you sleep with. But if you educate yourself, really look at the threats being aimed at you, and make an evaluation of the efficacy of the fear-based claims, you can make decisions that are not only better for you, but based in truth. It will also make you a stronger person.

I’ll close by quoting Frank Herbert, famous science fiction author of the “Dune” series of books, who wrote a particularly potent piece of prose in the incantation of the Bene Gesserit, which reads:

Historically, humanity has had a very slim understanding of its position in the universe. Ideas and thoughts were limited mostly to the immediately observable, and the ways we used to explain things was confined to this observable universe. A consequence of this limited understanding was a propensity to explain away things and situations in the most convenient way available, and often by the use of “agency”, or “agenticity” as Michael Shermer calls it, being the belief that all things are controlled by a thinking and deciding mind.

As Shermer says in his 2009 piece, as published in Scientific American:

This is understandable, because we can only really ever view the world from within the human context, where everything we do is apparently coming from a viewpoint of humanised determination. We see within ourselves the decisions we make, and we create the world we live in, to a certain extent, but only in the context of things we control. All things that lie outside our control, usually characterised by disasters or unfortunate turns of events, were then left up to immediate human explanation as they lay outside our understanding of the universe. More often than not we would ask not “Why is this happening?”, but rather “What have I done to deserve this?” Of course, the idea of deserving something means that we have created a situation where we have either pleased or annoyed “someone” to get into this situation, and therefore that “someone” has control over our lives. This thinking and controlling “agent” is apparent in all historical worldly dealings, and can be seen in the form of inventing humanised minds which determine the world around us by their will.

Once the best explanation for unexplained events was to ascribe them to invisible presences, usually in forms that we are familiar with as humans. For example, we know that when a man is angry or trying to scare someone, he will yell loudly, stamp his feet and wave his arms about. He may even strike someone, or be impassioned enough to kill for his anger. When, for example, an earthquake strikes a village, or a volcano blows its top, it is much like an angry tyrant, and we treat it as such. For a human, to appease them, we often calm them by giving them gifts, and we used the same logic when dealing with seismological or natural disasters. We treat the volcano as though it is a thinking, decision-making entity.

This tendency expands out all the way from living creatures, to plants and geographical regions such as forests and deserts, to inanimate objects such as bodies of water, stars, the sun and moon, and even the universe around us. The biggest of these tendencies is the deification of the whole universe, where we assign agency to everything, under the banner of a “god”. We attempt to placate the god, make offerings in its name, hoping to get on its good side, by doing “what it wants”. We ask this “larger mind”, or the “Mind of God” as coined by astrophysicist Paul Davies, for forgiveness, for prosperity, and for an end to suffering. And we do all this as if it were truth, as if the larger agency of a universal mind were a matter of cat, and not a matter of fancy. The only problem we have here is, there is no proof of such a thing as a god, regardless of Paul Davies’ conclusions on the matter as a Catholic.

If one looks at it as a series of ever-increasing steps, from the ancient tribes, whose only knowledge of the universe was what they could see immediately around them, and move forward to a civilization whose world-knowledge grows as populations spread out, it makes perfect sense. Starting with a small and localised tribal setting, a rain-dance, asking the local sky god for much needed rain, and moving forward to a larger knowledge of surrounds, making animal sacrifices to vengeful gods, eventually to a world civilization with a greater understanding of our universe, we see the gods absorbed and reabsorbed from many multifaceted demigods and deities, to one large all encompassing deity, or “god” (with the exception of polytheistic religions such as Hinduism).

These “gods” simply fill in gaps in our understanding. As we grow to explain why things happen, as we evolve our understanding of the universe, and as we work to understanding it better, many of these gaps have retreated away to insignificance, or disappeared completely. This “god of the gaps” is often employed as a “gotcha” moment for theists trying to prove the existence of their god or gods. And while the gaps in our knowledge are decreasing in size, each time a gap is filled, it creates 2 smaller gaps on each side, a point which theists have gleefully used to their advantage. Of course, as the gaps get smaller for god to exist within, so too does Occam’s Razor become ever sharper and more precise.

When evaluating our world we can often make mistakes. Shermer calls these “Type 1″ false-positive errors and “Type 2″ false-negative errors, which you can read about at his aforementioned article (which I recommend you do). We can be in states of stress or longing, we can be undernourished, or lacking sufficient water, or overly tired. Our mental state makes all the difference to how we perceive our surroundings, and also the importance we give to the signals in the world around us. Add to this, as Shermer mentions, the idea of “patternicity” or the propensity to find patterns in our environment, either intentional, human-made  patterns such as written language, or patterns in nature, such as the tendency for rain to come from clouds, dune patterns in the sand, or faces in tree stumps. We seek meaning in our environs to help us to survive in a sometimes less than hospitable world. We look for shapes that resemble humans, we look for faces, we look for signs. We try to find markers and signifiers that might point to things to make survival our easier, and we try to establish meaning from these.

“Patternicity” leads to phenomena like pareidolia, where a false-positive evaluation is made when looking at an object, landscape, or even a stain on a urinal. “Agenticity” gives the inanimate and random occurrences in life a human-centric purpose. In combination, this leads to giving these mistakes in identification a mind and will. These misidentifications are tenacious as they pander to our “gut” feelings, and have been backed by established theologies as indisputable truth, which pander to our desires about mortality. And this is where the real complexities around gods and religions start, but that is a subject for another day.

Methodological humanism is an attempt to promote  true humanist cause beyond the various tenets of belief, and the ideas of non-belief, to create a platform from which we can all operate for the betterment of ourselves and the planet, regardless of our standpoints on religion. The main aim of methodological humanism is to create a society where we can all thrive; This is above and beyond the idea of well-being or simply surviving. As I wrote earlier in my piece which first outlined the ideas of methodological humanism:

So what is it about a methodological stance to humanism that sets it apart from “secular humanism”? Firstly, if we use the methodology of humanism, and set the secular nature of the situation aside, it allows for a person of belief to still enact humanist ideals and still hold their religious ideals. This means that everyone from a Muslim to a Zoroastrian, Christian, to Hindu, to Jew, can be humanists without fear of treading on their belief systems.

There is are however some provisos which needs to be satisfied, however, if this idea is ever to make any ground in a contemporary multi-faith/atheist society.

Firstly, the idea of well-being, and what affects our practices as religious and non-religious people have on others’ well-being. This means stepping back from our traditions and religious practices, looking at them from an outside perspective, and really attempting to see what they signify, whether they are truly a part of a belief system or simply the way it’s “always been done”, and then evaluate whether these practices are helpful to people or communities, or hurtful. This can be a difficult thing, even in secular situations, for there is a lot of string to unwind to find the core, and the older the tradition (religious or otherwise) the more difficult this core is to identify. For instance, the oft-cited traditional practice of female genital circumcision in Middle-Eastern and African nations is not only tied very deeply in the cultures of those practicing it, but is also used as an excuse to extol the tenets of Islam in those nations. Without getting into a discussion about who within a religion or culture backs such practices (I’ve heard both reports of pressuring from imams and clerics from Islam, and also cultural pressures from the women within the communities), a practice like this results in more harm than good, and should therefore be left outside the spectrum of humanism. In fact, any practice, traditional, cultural or religious, which causes more harm than good to the well-being of an individual fall outside of the spectrum of the humanist methodology. I am aware that most religious people do not stone their “adulterous” daughters to death for the “crime” of being raped, nor do they withhold medical treatment in favour of prayer, but some do, and these practices need to be addressed for what they are – harmful.

Secondly, we must recognise that the human basis for well-being is practically the same thing for each of us. As I have pointed out, beyond the needs each of us have for basic survival (i.e. living, breathing, not starving), well-being means both health in body and mind. Simply surviving is not enough for us as thinking and emotional creatures capable of evaluating our own pleasure or suffering. This means that the basis for well-being is the same for a man as for a woman or child, the same for a Muslim or Hindu, and the same for a king or homeless person. Religious ideology does not play a part in basic well-being at this level, although it can give comfort to some in times of need. Well-being means, as far as is possible, having the basics covered, access to food, water and health services, and living in a safe and comfortable environment It’s not buying a second car or flat-screen TV. It’s not about excess, it’s about basics. Having said this, I understand the concept of special-needs, and for those who require special medical treatment, ramps for access, carers etc., these aspects must also be taken into consideration for well-being to be truly met. Some people do require more to simply reach the level of well-being most of us take for granted.

Thirdly, we must have a want, and actual want, for those around us to enjoy the same basics as us in order to reach this base level of well-being. This is more difficult than it may sound. Many of us love our comforts, particularly those of us who are fortunate enough to have been born into a relatively stable society, one where we have more than we actually need. To some, these comforts, such as a bidet or a gigantic flat-screen TV, or an extra donut after dinner, are things they see as their “right”, but sneer at the homeless guy in the city for being a “lazy bum”. This has more to do with an attitude of entitlement and the culture of consumption than to do with one’s rights. As I have shown, the basics of well-being are much simpler than this, and needs to be something we are all willing to ensure all people have.

This may all sound so simple as to be infantile, but few people recognise the importance of these 3 points when talking of humanity striving together as whole for the betterment of all people. It is not about the impossible task of letting every person live in luxury, nor the undesirable (yet much more likely scenario) of everyone except for the extremely elite being dragged down into a situation where we cannot afford the basics.

My main objective here is to point out that, within a methodological framework of humanism, we are not ignoring the tenets of religious belief, cultural practices or traditions, only choosing to identify and leave out any aspects of belief that may cause harm to other people. Sounds simple, but with so many various practices, doctrines and dogmas entrenched within religion, these evaluations would have to be made on a case by case basis. As we encounter them, we evaluate the advantages against the disadvantages, and come to a conclusion about each one. By this I hope to be more inclusive in humanism than secular humanism tends to be, because it is not foregoing religion all together, rather recognising that it is a part of humanity that needs to be addressed and including it within the framework of the humanist ideal.

I’m interested in your feedback on this idea, what you identify as its strengths and weaknesses, and whether you think it is any different from anything proposed before. Please feel free to leave your comments below. Don;t be scared to voice your opinion either, as the only thing I ever censor is abusive activity, and I’m sure you’re all above such behaviour.

As I touched on in my recent article “Methodological Humanism“, there are many aspects within the humanist stance which should be included within the this humanist label. The idea of “well-being” is not something that should only be enjoyed by those fortunate enough to have been born in western cultures, or male white middle-class heterosexuals. To make such a claim would be ludicrous, for that would be an exclusionist idea, overlooking a large majority of humanity. From the article:

How does feminism figure into this equation?

For me, feminism is a label that ought not exist. In a perfect world, there would be no need to single out the troubles of women, for in a perfect world, these troubles should not exist. However, this world is far from perfect, therefore feminism is something that must exist. The goals that feminism strives for, such as gender pay equality, bodily autonomy, and safety in public places, are not issues that should only supported by women; We should all support them. Why? In my article “Why I Am A Feminist” from August last year, with a particular focus on education for women in poorer countries, I wrote:

Women, if allowed to grow past infancy, represent more than half of the world’s population. Human equality, one of the guiding principles of  of humanism, if it ignores more than half the population, is in no way “equality”. But there’s more to the picture than these stats and studies might show.

Sexism, in its many forms, rears its ugly head all over the world and in many guises. From the Rape Blame Game (where women are blamed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time for men raping them), to everyday inequalities such as job security, pay discrepancies, and issues of bodily autonomy, women are subjected to a world that no man can fully understand. The rights to education for girls in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan is under constant threat, as we are reminded by stories like that of Malala, who was shot in the head by a man for promoting just such an education. Traditions in some countries uphold an idea of women as chattels, or part of a spoils of a marriage agreement. Other traditions see the testimony of a woman as worth half that of a man.Traditions, be they religious or secular, if harmful to women in any way, go against the humanist stance.

The fact that feminine hygiene products are called a “luxury item” in Australia (therefore subjected to GST as with condoms and cigarettes), or the fact that building regulations stipulate that a women’s toilet should have the same amount of cubicles as the men’s, ignoring the fact that men’s also have an added urinal, may give a clue to just how little thought is given at a governmental level to women. Open this type of thinking up to the wider community, and we have a big problem.

The inequality that has been dealt to women is so deeply seeded within our cultures that we often fail to acknowledge it. The “Everyday Sexism” project seeks to gather stories from women (and men) and catalogue instances of sexism within our societies. One glance at this site is enough to bring to the fore some of the things we might take for granted in our daily lives as “sexism”, and it is worth a look through the archives, if your stomach can handle it.

But you don’t need me to point this all out. It’s all around us, and it’s damaging.

As I have written in my article “Expanding on the Definition of Humanism“:

It only stands to reason then, given just how skewed the world is against women, that a major focus of humanism should be on gender equality, and within that, a subset focused on righting the wrongs of cultures and traditions that specifically harm women, i.e. feminism. This in no way dilutes specific feminist movements, in fact one should see it as complimentary to feminist movements.

Apart from the aspects of sexism that relate to human rights, equality and the bolstering of the status of women in the world can only be a beneficial for the well-being of humanity as a whole. Education is a key part of this, including educating men (and women) on the right and wrong ways to perceive and treat women within their own societies. However, a specific focus on the education of women in poorer countries may actually be the solution to population problems, financial hardships within communities, and an increase in the well-being of whole cultures. From this UN article, written by Hoon Eng Khoo, Acting Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the Asian University for Women, Bangladesh in 2010:

So often, and more frequently these days, I see an argument against feminism as an attempt to “bring down” the males to a perceived lower level of status. This is not how it works, however. The aim of equality is to “bring-up” those on the bottom floor of humanity to a level that their well-being is not only catered for, but exceeded. So many mistake feminism as an attempt to destroy the rights of men, and take away the privilege they enjoy on a daily basis. The way I see it, we need to smash the privilege by allowing all people the same rights and opportunities, autonomy, and self-rule. The privilege then simply vanishes, as there is no longer a privileged position to be had. Nobody loses in a situation where we all gain.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be a woman, nor should I. My viewpoint on this issue can only come from my own experience, as a man, for that is the only one I have. I can, however, use my position as a platform from which to observe, empathise, sympathise and act from. I have no doubt that, on top of the benefits of gender equality for women, the whole of humanity will benefit by becoming a more balanced, educated and equitable society. The bottom-line is, humanism strives for the well-being of humanity, and any structure or system that helps achieve this. Anything that is harmful to the well-being of humanity is anti-humanist. Gender inequality is harmful to us all, and is therefore an issue that humanism needs to have at the forefront of its agendas.

A couple of years ago I attended a funeral of a friend of mine’s father, who passed away after a long battle with cancer. The attendees were mostly of Italian backgrounds, and mostly Roman Catholic, and I stood at the back, a lone atheist in a sea of belief, mostly there in support of my friend during a difficult and sad time in his life. A larger than life-sized Jesus hung next to the altar, seemingly magically suspended about a half a metre away from a giant metal cross which was suspended from the wall, blood dripping from his hands, feet and head. Prayers were spoken, hail Mary’s and the like, and the departed was sent off to heaven by the will of God. As with all good Catholic ceremonies, the time  eventually came for The Eucharist, where the faithful are given a chance to drink and eat the body of their saviour, Jesus, in the form of stale crackers and red wine. Of course, the body and blood of Christ have not existed since he was alive some 2000 years ago, but some claim, that by some magical incantations and some closed-eyed head bowing, the cracker and the wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, and that what they are consuming is the living flesh of an actual, albeit supernatural, human being. This is a process known as transubstantiation, and it is taught that these magical words somehow channel the living essence of the long-dead Christ into these foods, redeeming the consumer for his or her apparent sins.

From CARM, the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry, paragraph 1376 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states,

While CARM denies any actual transformation has taken place from these incantations, it is the view of the Catholic Church that these foodstuffs actually become the flesh and blood of Christ. But this is all really just semantics, for in the mind of the Catholic partaking in the ritual, the bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Jesus, incarnate. According to this belief, the rigourous nature of scientific testing cannot help us to understand the “miracle” of transubstantiation, as is backed up by this forum answer from Friar Vincent Serpa at the Catholic Answers Forum “… science doesn’t have the tools to determine theological matters… The substance or essence (that which makes a thing what it is) of the bread and wine changes, while the accidents or non-essentials (the appearance and all that is physically measurable) remain the same. There is no physical way of determining the change.

… They couldn’t prove that a change would take place that couldn’t be verified by physical examination. Nor can we. The question remains, do we love Him enough to trust Him in this.”

So the change is untestable, unobservable, and unfalsifiable, much like most religious claims of the supernatural. This is all part and parcel of the Catholic, and much of Christian belief; Belief and faith are the two tools used by religions to reinforce belief and faith, in an unending example of circular logic.

Apart from the ritualistic and token consumption of Christ through magically converting an ordinary cracker and some cheap wine into magical foodstuffs, the church also claim that by the use of salt and some more magical incantations, ordinary (tainted) water can have the evil spirits exorcised from it making it pure and holy. Once this transformation has been made, the water can be used for Baptisms and exorcisms, among other things.

Outside of Christianity, ordinary foodstuffs for daily consumption need to be prepared in a certain way, or blessed, to become suitable for eating or drinking. In Islam it is necessary for for to be halal or “permissible”, or the person eating it is not following the word of Allah. The practice of eating non-halal food is called haram, which means “forbidden”. Halal is most important to an Islamic person when talking about meats, and the animal must be slaughtered in a certain fashion and in certain steps in order to make it permissible. These steps include:

• Allah’s (God’s) name must be pronounced during slaughter.
• The instrument must be very sharp to ensure humane slaughter. The animal must be slit at the throat.
• The animal must not be unconscious
• The animal must be hung upside down and allowed to bleed dry. Eating blood is not halal.

It is also done under the supervision of an Imam, or Islamic priest, and any meats that don’t meet these criteria are haram. Islam also forbids the consumption of pork or any pork products. On a topical note, yesterday I was alerted to a news article outlining the fact that Cadbury, a company mostly known for its production of chocolate goods, are claiming the label “halal” on their Easter eggs in order to assure the Islamic community that their products are safe to eat under sharia law. In Victoria, in order for a product which doesn’t contain any forbidden food to be labels as “certified halal”, they simply need to pay a fee to Co-Ordination Council of Victoria (ICCV). Since chocolate products do not contain any of the forbidden foodstuffs under the law, it seems that the certification process is simply a way to make money. The article also notes that Purina cat food now has halal certification, meaning that an Islamic cat, if such a thing can exist, will not eat haram food, thereby following the laws of Allah. I’m still waiting to see if there is such thing as halal dog food, since dogs are considered filthy beasts in Islam. This aside, the fact that Easter eggs are a pagan symbol co-opted by the Christian church to represent the rebirth of Jesus on Easter Sunday, something that most Islamic people probably would rather not celebrate, points out that this is simply a money-grabbing scheme by the certification board.

In the Jewish faith, one that also forbids the consumption of pork products, the allowed foods are called kosher. It is very similar to the Islamic halal in that foods need to be prepared in a certain way and under the guidance of a rabbi, or Jewish priest. In kosher food laws, banned foods include meat that has been “torn by beasts” and carrion, and require that the animal be killed by slashing of the throat with a razor sharp knife. The animal must be free of disease and “glatt”, or “smooth”  in Yiddish. Pork is also considered to be forbidden, as is any meat not slaughtered under the strict rules of Judaism. Like with Halal, there is a certification board which determines whether the kosher standard is met. There is also a fee which needs to be paid in order to reach certification.

Many of the foods banned under Islamic sharia law, and under Judaism, may have their roots in the fact that these teachings were there to stop people from getting ill by making the wrong food choices. The ingestion of carrion, shellfish and pork, when done in the wrong manner can lead to disease and death, as there are many potential parasites within foods of this nature. But the ritualistic nature of the slaughter, that the food is somehow magically transformed from a lump of flesh into a blessed meal by the incantations and prayers of holymen, is an untestable, unfalsifiable and unobservable claim made by the religious to further exclude themselves from the non-believers (that’s non-believers in their particular faith). The fact that something can be labeled “kosher” or “halal” by simply paying a fee might give some clue as the the efficacy of the claims of a blessing.

Image: Gustave Doré – The Holy Bible – Plate I, The Deluge – Via Wikipedia

One of the world’s most striking features, and the largest living mass on the planet, is the Great Barrier Reef in northeastern Australia, up to 200 km off the coast of the state of Queensland. Home to over 14,000 individual species of plants and animals, it is one of the richest marine environments on earth, stretching over a distance of 2,600 km long and covering an area of over 344,400 square kilometers. It is ancient and glorious, and to anyone fortunate enough to have visited, surely is a place one will remember for a lifetime.

In the scale of human time, however, the Great Barrier Reef is a reasonably recent addition to the Australian coastline. Around 20,000 years ago the coastline of Queensland was dramatically different, and the area now occupied by the reef was low-lying coastal eucalypt and paperbark forests. During a dramatic shift in the planet’s global climate, around the end of the last Holocene Glacial Retreat, much of the planets glaciers melted into the sea, causing the coastline in these low areas to be overtaken by the ocean. Over time, due to the formation of sandbars and other existing geological structures in the landscape, the Great Barrier Reef formed, one polyp at a time, and became the magnificent structure we see before us today. The reef has changed and developed a lot since then, and the reef’s current structure is only about 8,000 years old.

While this is all very interesting, and while I suggest anyone who has the means to visit the reef should do so, what this illustrates is the possibility for the landscape of the world to be changed suddenly. This has happened numerous times in the earth’s history, and continues to happen to this day. For instance, due to a geological upheaval, the entire Mediterranean sea which was once above water, became a sea when some 5.3 million years ago, a flood lasting up to two years occurred when a breach in the mountains between Spain and Morocco allowed the inundation of the low-lying land between modern Europe and Africa. This deluge may have lasted up to two years, and caused the death of innumerable animal and plant species. It also caused a great physical and unassailable rift between Africa and Europe of the time. Of course this is long before the time if humans, yet we can still see the scarring on rocks caused by the flow of water over many months.

The indigenous Aborigines of Australia, who have called Australia home for over 60,000 years, have a legend of a great flood in which much of the land along the coastline was swallowed up by the sea. In it, a a gigantic frog, sometimes known as Tidalik, was hording all the water from the sky and rivers in his great belly, and was coaxed to release the water by being persuaded to laugh by his fellow bush-inhabitants. Of course we take the legends of the Australian Aborigines for what they are, teachings of events they didn’t understand, or passed on as word of mouth getting distorted and exaggerated as time and generations pass. But to put zero credence into the myths of tribal cultures is to miss the point; Many of the events described in the stories of the Australian Aborigines happened, only with actual physical causes, rather than at the whim of mystical spirit creatures.

Stories of a great flood are pervasive in many cultures. In fact, there are thousands of stories from around the world all detailing a great flood that took land away from people, drowned and killed whole villages, and turned the earth into a gigantic sea. We generally discount these stories as mythological fancy, as they depend upon the existences of gods, spirit animals and the supernatural. One story in particular however, the story of Noah in the biblical Old Testament, is still seen by many as a true story; That a man can build a boat large enough to fit 2 of every animal in it to save them from the 40 days and 40 nights of rain induced flood is farcical at best, and yet it is the tenacity of this story which lends it credence to many.

Let’s take a step back for a moment, and ask a question: What would an ancient human of, say, 20,000 years ago know of the world?

Firstly, an ancient human from this time would probably have little knowledge of agriculture, but he may have a domesticated dog or two. His interactions between people would be mostly confined to his immediate family or tribe, and his hunting and foraging grounds would be limited to a space of tens of kilometers in each direction. To the ancient man, the earth was as far as he could see, which even if perched on a high mountaintop, would only be a dozen or so kilometers to the horizon. Given this view of the world, not the world we now know to by huge, expansive and round, what would it take for a person to believe that the whole world were flooded? To put it another way, if all you’ve known is a single room, that room is your world; If the room is filled with water, your world is flooded.

The world to an ancient human being would consist of few people, short distances and a distorted view of space. All the news a human of this time received would be word of mouth, and as we know, word of mouth can distort quickly from a fact to something only vaguely resembling a fact in very few steps. We have evolved to only understand within these kinds of limitations, and are only now beginning to see how huge the universe actually is, and how insignificant an individual is in the grand scheme of things. This is precisely why people have difficulty understanding distances between planets and stars, and why we have difficulty with keeping over 150 people as friends, family and acquaintances within our spectrum of caring. We had no need to evolve an understanding of larger spaces, and would rarely meet more than 150 people in a lifetime.

Let’s for a moment think back to the flood myth of the Australian Aborigines. If, for example, their flood myth, though not caused by a frog, maintains an element of truth about a sudden or gradual loss of land to the ocean, can the same be said of the biblical accounts of a great flood?

Working backwards it goes like this: Man, limited in scope of the world, witnesses a terrible flood which wipes out an entire valley, including all the people he ever knew, except for his dogs which he manages to haul onto a small boat he had in the nearby river. This is the world to him, destroyed by a flood. He tells the story to a stranger 10 years later, where the details of the account may have changed over time in his own mind. The stranger takes this great tale to his local village, and tells it to some others. As it is a tale of woe that we can all relate to, this story gains tenacity, and becomes legend in the local population. Along comes a scribe many generations later, and finally captures all this on paper. Fast forward 6,000 years, and the loss of many languages and civilisations, suddenly we have something resembling the biblical story of Noah, or the legends of Gilgamesh. With each passing generation and subsequent retelling of the story, it becomes embellished, and the story reaches legendary proportions.

We are creatures limited by our own facilities. Our evolution to modern man is that from ancient man, and before that, ancient pre-human. Our physical world is the same all over the planet, in that it is effected by wind, rain, seismological activities, droughts, plagues and floods. Disasters such as floods and volcanoes are going to be the things we remember the most, as they can threaten our very lives, and given that historically we were at a loss to explain how and why these things happen, they are easily distorted into a story of legend. Given this, I have no doubt that the mythological stories of great floods hold some kind of credence. Floods happen, this we know, and the great flood of the Old Testament could be just a bad retelling of a story from the life of one man whose village was engulfed by a river or sea. Alternatively, it could just be a story using props from our collective imagination to back up a baseless assertion about how a god would want us to act.

If we keep this in mind, we can see how the mythical accounts of the Bible may have arisen. Hallucinations caused by ergot in wheat, seizures like that in Paul of Tarsus, sun-induced visions of gods, the thundering boom of a volcano misheard as the voice of Zeus, misremembered and distorted stories, even the odd fable or fairytale misconstrued as fact, these kinds of things, because misunderstood or misrepresented, create the mythology that is now seen on today’s major religions. And we can use our newly gained knowledge of humanity and the universe to see these mistakes for what they are.

I GOT MAIL! Yeah, I get mail all the time, but this one caught my eye. It came from James Morrison, who writes:

Firstly I’d like to thank James for alerting me to this site, and because of the great content and unique position he is in, being a religious education teacher who teaches even and considered information about religion, I’d suggest you all have a look at his site. His approach, from what I can see is what we need more of in this world, and educating kids about what religion is, rather than what it is presented as by most people.

An extract from his “About” page reads:

The site covers many interesting topics, not just James’ observations from his teaching, but also some other topics around his own views on religion, culture and teaching. It’s very refreshing to see that there are those willing to respect the separation of church and state, while educating young minds to be critical in their thought.