Has the west forgotten what civic virtue is? No, say humanists
Wed 28 Jul 2010 12:09 • ethics,linklog,media,philosophy,society
BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson and Humanist Philosophers member Simon Blackburn debate Richard Harries on Encounter for ABC Radio National (Australia). The question posed by Wendy Barnaby is whether the West has lost its idea of civic virtue. It’s an interesting debate which gets to the heart of much of the tension between conservative and progressive visions of social morality today.
Andrew Copson: It’s not true that society has forgotten, that politicians have forgotten, that individual citizens have forgotten how to think about things in a moral way, how to think about things in a values-rich way. … You cannot sit through a debate, certainly in the Westminster Parliament, on any subject and not hear ethical questions being addressed-implicitly almost all the time, and explicitly more often than you think. So it isn’t true that some rampant commercialist, materialist, individualist, economy-centred secularism has shrivelled and wizened our public space down to some sort of valueless prune and that we need to pump it up with all the good juices again of old-time religion. It’s just not true. It’s not true that we need religion to revive public values, and in part one of the reasons that it’s not true is that there hasn’t been a decline in public values in the way that propagandists for a reintroduction of religion into public life like to claim.
You can listen and read a full transcript at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/2951160.htm
Well done Andrew;
let it not be said that any sense of valour or chivalry is the private reserve of the religionist. Indeed I would think the very opposite to be the case. The religionists assume they are good because they are religious, where as non-believers are good because they do good. In this respect religion is the lazy approach to being treated as good because it requires only the basic gesticulations of faithfulness, where as to actually be good requires so much more.
This is not to deny that some religionists do good in their own way, but how many of them do so out of fear, out of guilt, out of coercion? Some might argue that the good consequences are the only real factor here, that the ends justify the means. But surely a god who sees all and knows all should weigh the hearts of those who are intrinsically good with greater favour than those who are merely superficially good?
Should not every act of Christian charity be laden with guilt in the certain knowledge that said charity is a mere supplication to God Almighty, in the hope that He might grant one’s passage to heaven? Whereas when I give to charity I think only that, were our situations reversed I would wish others to give unto me as I – and many other non-believers – give unto them. This may seem self-serving, but only in theory, for I am so blessed – by fortune – as to be born in an affluent country to a family of means, however modest; to grant me the opportunity to be charitable to my fellow human beings, in practical terms.
Humanists and non-believers do not pray for people, they help people; and only an ingrate would favour the former for the latter. For what is prayer but a masturbatory act in which one “feels” the illusory gratification of doing good when one has in fact done nothing at all to help one’s fellows?
Materialism as desire for money and possessions has no link with humanism and atheism (though philosophical materialism is relevant). Civic virtue usually doesn’t match up to requirements (present and past, Western and other), but now so many in power – politicians, royalty, celebrities, evangelists, bankers, and all the other examples for our aspirations – are clearly shown mired in greed. It may shock all the ordinary decent folk, but such individuals go on unrebuked and unhampered.
The stock villains of our society are obese benefit scroungers and teenage hoodies on drugs. But these symptons of relative deprivation and ignorance are harmless compared to the wealth stolen by tax evasion and the careless industrial pollution of the world for profit (as in the current scandalous oil leak).
So do we claim that all’s okay? The alternative would be to attribute such defects fully to selfish values, which often find religious support. International comparison clearly correlates virtue with less, not more, religion. There is need for a reasoned, compassionate ethics. Rather than deny a problem perhaps we should insist that humanism is the best solution.