My article in Quillette: A rebuttal of John Staddon’s claim that secular...

From the article:

I would agree that this isn’t going to be true for every single moral statement within Christianity, but it is certainly true for some of them.

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Humanism doesn’t base morality on supernatural claims. If humanism gets its basis for morality from the world, then that would be a secular source, not a religious one.

Atheism is a religion like not golfing is a sport. :sunglasses:

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It takes years of effort to be recognized as an outstanding Secular Humanist. You are on your way. Keep up the good work making the world better for humans.

I am in the middle of reading Dan Barker’s new book “Mere Morality”. In it he states that good morals is all about minimizing harm to another person.

I get that. But if one is evaluating whether or not humanism is a religion, and then using morality as a test case, humanism and religion both get their morality from that which their belief system states is the apex of their respective systems. The point I’m making is similar, I believe, to your point about defining religion so loosely that it has no meaning. Stating that this is the big difference between secular human moral systems and religious ones is impertinent, because God doesn’t exist in the humanist version. Isn’t this like stating the differences between apples and oranges are that apples aren’t oranges?

It seems that the morality is more similarly derived than it is different. Furthermore, if you are a secular humanist, you believe that man made up God from whom the morality came. This would also speak to the universality of the morality, would it not?

Maybe I’m making too much of this and have picked the wrong day to start posting more garbage, but it seems like there is more that is similar than there is different. See @patrick 's comment above.

…still applies.

Morality is not a code. Morality is a simple process to minimize harm. Life is messy so it is difficult to put the simple process to minimize harm into practice. Real life morality is situational and conditional. Instinct, reason, and law are guide for minimizing harm and living a good life.

Yes, I have claimed to be a devout atheist mostly to counter the claim that that person over there is more trustworthy because he is a devout Muslim, or devout Christian. Like anyone knows what goes on in the mind of anyone else.

“Minimizing harm” is extremely relative. The aborted fetus that died an agonizing silent death never had a voice. (“Everyone who is pro-abortion has already been born.”)

The law does not originate outside of humanity. Moral decisions require freedom of choice.

The point is that having a moral system is not what makes something religious. The real test is where the morality is coming from. In the case of religious, it is based on supernatural claims. In humanism, it is not. They are derived differently. It’s a bit like saying apples really are oranges because they both grow on trees. You are ignoring what makes an apple an apple and what makes an orange an orange.

Secular humanism does not require the belief that religions are made up.

Secular humanism is also focused on humans, hence the inclusion of humanism. These moral codes only apply to humans and are not considered to be universal. There is no way to speak for all secular humanists, but most seem to view morality as being subjective and the product of being human. If there are other sentient species out in the universe they may very well have different moral codes (e.g. Secular Martianists). As Coyne states:

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Minimizing harm has to be relative. There is no other way around it. The entire point of morality is determining how your actions impact others, so it is relative by definition. If we consider how our actions will harm or help others and adjust our actions in light of that understanding, is that a religion?

I don’t wish to belabor and I do understand what you are saying. Thanks.

But is it a motor?? :rofl:

Okay, I don’t know why you said that it is not a code, but since you did, I disagree. It literally is a code (wherein code means a standard, such as building code.) The building code also keeps people safe by setting forth a standard for construction. Similarly, morality is also. It is a setting of the standards (codes) by which good behavior and bad behavior can be understood / differentiated.

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Yes, morality is very relative to the situation and conditional. You have to use instinct, reason and the law as a guide for minimizing harm. For example, you must take into account the life of the mother, the mother’s choice about wanting to continue with a pregnancy, the viability of the fetus in deciding how to minimize harm.

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Seems as though all decisions require freedom of choice… the more that they are affected by morals, the less choice there may be.

When I said that Morality is not a code, I meant that morality is relative. In religions such as Judiaism, Christianity, and Islam, humanity is judged by the law. In a humanistic society, the law is judged by humanity. Many holier-than-thou Christians like @Greg strongly feel that they are minimizing harm when they fight things like abortions and gay rights. Their church feeds them the dogma that certain things are abominations, not based on any real harm to humans, but on supposedly divinely revealed commandments that declare them to be offensive to the holiness of the creators. Their morality is otherworldly.

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But it is the role of a secular government to keep that freedom of choice at the level of the individual. In the case of abortion, it is role of government to educate and to let an informed woman make the best choice for herself. It is not the role of government to make that choice for her. A healthy functioning society where citizens enjoy the right to the pursuit of happiness is one that bases its law on principles not authority.

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I see. I was not really getting granular or being coy. I was really up at 35,000 feet. Thanks for your comments as always.

The etymology of “religion” shares a root with ligament, ligature and ligand, denoting a binding. An atheist is bound to her worldview, which frontloads into her thinking and excludes the existence of God.

This violates one of my traditional linguistics maxims: etymology is not lexicography. The fact that the word “religion” contains a morpheme with a history related to a ligament or binding does not dictate its meaning.

If a word’s etymological history determined meaning, then the word nice would still mean “a fool; a stupid person” and something that is awful would be “full of awe: having the quality of promoting a sense of awe in the beholder.”

In religious studies, a religion is defined as a reverence for that which is transcendent. In western societies, we tend to assume that that transcendence involves a deity or deities but that is far from a universal. For example, millions of adherents of various East Asian religious traditions are atheists. Anything which is transcendent—in any way beyond, above, or in addition to the natural world—can be the focus of a religion. Enlightenment and a state of oneness with the universe are examples of transcendence which can be the basis of religious devotion.

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