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Magazines: Free Inquiry touts secular humanism
Thursday, September 23, 1999 By Bill Steigerwald, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Steve Allen has endorsed it, for what that's worth. But so have such great scientific minds as Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Leakey and E.O. Wilson. It is "Humanist Manifesto 2000," described ever-so-humbly by the Free Inquiry magazine as "a plan for peace, dignity and freedom in the global human family."
Free Inquiry, a quarterly, which states on its cover that it celebrates reason and humanity, is a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism, a body of scientists and smart-guys that does not include anyone you've ever heard of before nor anyone with "The Rev." in front of his/her name.
That's because religion -- organized or disorganized, Christian, Muslim or whatever -- is secular humanism's least-favorite force in the whole earthly world. (It was the ultimate slur when secular humanism itself was accused in the '70s of being a religion by Jerry Falwell and his Christian allies, who argue it should not be taught in public schools.)
So what is the nature of this godless secular humanism -- this rough beast that has often been charged with causing the moral disintegration of our society?
The 18-page manifesto drafted by editor Paul Kurtz is not exactly a fun read. But it tells you more than you want to know about what he says is the "ethical, scientific and philosophical outlook" that ripened in the Renaissance and "has changed the world."
According to Kurtz, humanism stresses the obvious Western values -- personal freedom, happiness and responsibility and the importance of markets.
It adores hard science, reason, technology, human ingenuity, and despises all forms of discrimination, censorship and inequality.
Yet it also calls for an international system of taxation to redistribute the wealth of nations and a global regulatory agency to reign in both multinational corporations and state monopolies. It's optimistic about humanity's future, yet is as hysterical (and as unskeptical) as Paul Erlich about the dangers of global warming and natural resource depletion.
Secular humanism, Kurtz says, is critical of religion's "contradictory moral commandments" and the many crimes against humanity that have been committed in various gods' names.
It does not "deny that religionists have done much good; what we deny is that religious piety is the sole guarantee of moral virtue." (The only thing secular humanism seems to believe in as a matter of faith is the United Nations.)
As far as ethics and morals go, the manifesto argues that what religion preaches is largely irrelevant: Humans across time and civilizations have always known what's right, even if they didn't practice it.
In toto, and in short, Kurtz's manifesto is a messy ideological goulash -- a conflicting mess of hard-core individualism, fettered capitalism, left-over socialism, dreamy one-worldism and goofy Al Gore environmentalism.
As for the rest of Free Inquiry's fall contents, it easily betrays the hatred secular humanists feel toward religion. Along with such serious subjects as human genetic engineering and the risks of animal-human transplants, the issue is pockmarked with little cheap shots on religion, and a work of "humanist science fiction" takes delight in mocking the Vatican/Catholic Church.
QUICK READS: The current New Republic has some nice things to say about charter schools and voucher plans (it quotes recent studies saying they don't skim off the best students but they do force public schools to get off their butts and improve). Chronicles, the conservative cultural magazine, presents a package in praise of home-schooling, a rapidly growing alternative method of education in which between 1 million and 1.75 million children now engage.
And Atlantic Monthly's back pages include a slow-moving but favorable piece about Waldorf schools, a "chain" of private schools that have "forged a unique blend of progressive and traditional teaching methods that seem to achieve impressive results -- intellectual, social, even moral."
Bill Steigerwald can be reached by e-mail at: bsteigerwald@post-gazette.com
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