Atheist? Agnostic? Humanist.

I recently saw a video of Neil deGrasse Tyson, who considers himself an agnostic and prefers to avoid the atheist label, talking about his perspective on religion. This and the ensuing conversation got me thinking, to the point that I decided another long-overdue blog is in order. (if you’re interested, the video is here.

 

As some of you know, I struggled with defining my religion (or lack thereof) for a long time. Starting life as a Lutheran, giving that up post-confirmation, then exploring a lot, mainly other versions of Christianity and many Eastern religions. What they all lacked for me was a rational basis, which is one point of this blog. For me, if you are a person who values rationality and evidence/proof, you are far less likely to have deep, religious convictions that drive your everyday life. You might accept that there is some kind of “god” out there, and maybe even a god that set the universe in motion and then watched what happens. But a god that listens to prayers? A god that intercedes? A god that prefers one sports team or athlete to another? A god who blesses your country and by implication damns others? These all seem unlikely.

What I personally realized about religion, for me, is that I liked a lot of the philosophy and at least some of the symbolism, but these didn’t form a basis for belief in any higher power that deserves to be worshiped. And this realization led me to become an atheist for a short amount of time, and then an agnostic for the majority of my life to this point.

But a few years ago that changed. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and found myself speaking to a Unitarian youth group. Ironically or not, my expertise on some humanitarian issues leads me to spend a lot of time with religious people who want to learn more about these issues, and who are often invaluable in working toward solutions.  I actually think “not” on the ironic side, as you find good people everywhere if you look. But my conversion came during Q&A, when one of the students in the audience asked if my personal religious beliefs were part of what drove me to work on this issue. I had to think for a moment, since I wanted to put it in terms the audience would understand. I also wanted to be truthful, and responded that religiously I’m an agnostic, but I see the problem under discussion as a moral issue that goes beyond religion.

After that speech, I returned to some deep thought about how to best describe myself in these terms. And what I realized is that “agnostic” is almost as bad a label for me as “atheist.” When a non-religious person uses these labels, I think that in many ways they are trying to define themselves in the terms that can be understood by a largely religious world. Thus we find different ways to say “I’m not religious.” Some atheists (far fewer agnostics in my experience) choose to prosthelytize about their lack of religion, in response to a loud minority of religious individuals who preach the other way.  Since I’m not someone who needs to shout my lack of belief from the tree tops, this was often a conundrum for me.

What I realized after the Unitarian youth’s question though was that he wasn’t really asking about my religion. And he didn’t really care that much if I was religious or not – if you’ve ever met a Unitarian, you’ll understand this easily enough. I realized what he was really asking was something like this: where does your morality come from, and what drives you to take action?

For most of us, society and culture have taught us that some amount of morality is given to us by our religious upbringing and beliefs. And I believe that one of the undertones of religion is that if you don’t have it, you are somehow less moral. Actually, for most religions this is more a blatant threat than an undertone – believe or go to hell. My apologies to Christian and Muslim friends who don’t like this picture, but from my reading of your books it is pretty accurate. You may not want to focus on what happens to non-believers, and your personal beliefs may not synch with your holy books and churches, but one side gets to be with God/Allah post-death, and the other doesn’t. Jews don’t have a hell, but they still get to be with g*d. So at some level, a moral judgment is being made, even if you don’t personally choose to follow that.

In defining myself as an atheist or an agnostic, I realized a long time ago that I was creating a definition for the rest of the world, not for myself. If it were just me, I simply don’t care. The idea of a god or gods has no importance to me beyond interesting literature and philosophy. And I see no personal relevance to any supernatural aspects or “answers” to what comes after life. On the latter, I can’t know by definition, and I’m ok with that. (and yes, one day science could come up with an after-life-scope that might provide actual evidence, at which time I’ll be happy to revisit this conversation. Until then, it’s all “what-ifs” that are interesting uses of supposition at best for me.)

But back to my Unitarian acquaintance – that kid made me realize that I was labeling myself incorrectly. When I say I’m an “agnostic,” this only refers to my lack of belief in any given god, combined in my case with openness to review evidence if/when presented and work that into my religious worldview. But the agnostic label said absolutely nothing about my morality.

And it was then that I switched to the “humanist” label. It’s self-explanatory at a simplistic level, and if you want more complex you can ask and I’ll be happy to chat about it. Simply put morally, humanism is the idea that humans are the primary unit of analysis for moral questions, and appropriate behavior can be derived from how human beings should be treated. Effectively humanism is centered around a “do unto others” philosophy, shared with many religions. I prefer to think of it as “if you were in that person’s shoes, how would you want to be treated?” Humans should have food, water, shelter, a decent chance to provide for themselves and their families, etc. etc. etc. And these things should be unhindered by others, including governments – you don’t get to stomp on anyone else’s rights and no one else should stomp on yours.

To me, this is a standard of morality that should be normal human behavior. Note that we all stray from this, but at a basic level these things are derivable from the experience of being a human being. “I want this for myself and my loved ones” should lead to “and it seems reasonable that everyone else wants the same things.” That’s the basis of morality. Beyond that, we move into questions of how far can you go to provide these things for yourself, what/who governs what you can and can’t do, etc. That’s society and government, and that’s also a question for another time.

So to answer the implied question posed in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s video – I think if you just say that you’re a “scientist,” you are not fully answering the issue at hand. Being a scientist actually tells me nothing about your morality. It tells me that you value evidentiary truth and rationality, which is important in defining who you are. But it doesn’t tell me what morals drive your use of that search for truth. So are you one of those scientists who doesn’t care what gets in the way, or one who seeks truth to advance the human condition, and avoids harming humans along the way? (or one of many other options) I think deGrasse Tyson may also be a humanist (as I have defined it) from what I know of him, but I also think he wasn’t answering the real question.