tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post8405575328979390232..comments2024-03-28T12:34:14.649-07:00Comments on dangerous idea: The humanist delusion: denying the catVictor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-57959438225415259362014-09-22T10:12:56.132-07:002014-09-22T10:12:56.132-07:00"People often maintain that atheists are nece..."<i>People often maintain that atheists are necessarily going to be humanists. Atheist Luke Muehlhauser disagrees, but his complaint seems to be about the implied speciesism.</i>"<br /><br />The funny thing about humanism is that it started as a revolt against the "indignity" of the Judeo-Christian conception of man as created in the image of God and being "a little lower than the angels", and ends with a revolt against the very concept that humans have any inherent dignity. So, from being "a little lower than the angels", we made out to be "quite a bit lower than the animals".Ilíonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15339406092961816142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-17177619919810000882014-09-22T10:05:05.810-07:002014-09-22T10:05:05.810-07:00Chesterton: "If it be true (as it certainly i...<b>Chesterton:</b> "<i>If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.</i>"<br /><br />I take "denying the cat" to mean denying that there is something morally untoward about a man feeling exquisite happiness in skinning a cat (presumably while it is still alive). In that light, it seems to me that "the atheist" *also* denies the cat. For, after all, how can there be anything morally untoward about a man feeling exquisite happiness in skinning a (living) cat if that man has no transcendent moral obligations in the first place?Ilíonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15339406092961816142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-77879364513090687312014-09-21T05:17:56.697-07:002014-09-21T05:17:56.697-07:00" I think that, historically, when people cea..."<i> I think that, historically, when people cease to believe in God, they often come to accept a kind of unjustified confidence in humans and human nature. The best example I can think of is Marx. Marx somehow thought that, in a godless world, the"dialectic of matter" would lead naturally, without divine interference, to the human race evolving a perfect classless and stateless society. It was like a replacement for the Christian Kingdom of God, but with no God to bring it in.</i>" ... You're forgetting about a historical philosophy which was decisively atheistic <i>and</i> anti-humanistic. The philosophies of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Foucault were all incredibly mistrustful of humanism. Your philosophical history ignores important minority voices.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12030785676230758243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-37983035518106490712014-09-21T04:12:31.124-07:002014-09-21T04:12:31.124-07:00I know of a (quite pretty) song by John Lennon the...I know of a (quite pretty) song by John Lennon they can play in the background while reciting their manifesto.B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.com