Human Touch:Busting the Myths about Humanism.

"You might need somethin' to hold on to when all the answers, they don't amount to much. Somebody that you could just to talk to - and a little of that human touch" - Human Touch, Bruce Springsteen

I'd seen Andrew Copson speak at Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub before. In May 2016, he delivered an Introduction to Humanism at the then Star & Garter pub. That pub has now been renamed The Star of Greenwich (though not much else has changed except they now accept cards as well as cash) and, last night, Copson - the Chief Executive of Humanists UK - was back to deliver a new speech, Myth-busting:What is Humanism?

Although it would tread some of the same ground as 2016's talk there was enough new stuff in it to qualify it for the EIAPOE treatment and I found it an engaging, easy to follow, and agreeable talk. It was bound to be agreeable as a Skeptics audience, myself included, are unlikely to get overly aggravated by suggestions that atheism, secularism, and, ultimately, humanism are the most decent, and most honest, ways to live your life.

Copson outlined a series of objections, many that he had heard personally while speaking at schools and other events, to humanism and then he debunked them. As kindly as he could. He comes across as a nice bloke does Andrew Copson and he would even take time out, occasionally, from the talk to stroke a couple of friendly dogs whose constant tail wagging suggested they were enjoying the talk, or perhaps just the warm - it was a bitterly cold evening, as much as the rest of us.

Objection one is the idea that humanism diminishes the dignity of humanity. The belief that, surely, we're better than the other animals. Some people take serious umbrage at the idea that they're, in some way, related to monkeys and some still trot out that boring old argument that if we are descended from monkeys then why are there still monkeys out there?

Spoiler alert:we're not descended from monkeys. Both monkeys and ourselves are descended from a common ancestor. The American palaentologist Stephen Jay Gould, once wrote:- "We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher' answer - but none exists".

Before adding that "this explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers ourselves - from our own wisdom and ethical sense. There is no other way". Gould is trying to show us that evolution and belief in it does not diminish dignity but, instead, makes it stronger.

Stronger because it's something we have control over, not something we have outsourced to a higher, and non-existent, power. The British anarchist and atheist activist Nicolas Walter believed that though we, like the animals - the beasts, had sex for procreation we were also able to experience love. Both as part of sex and separately from sex. This, Walter held, lifted us above the beasts and made us human. Not some divine masterplan.

Another common objection, and one I've heard, is that humanists can't have any morals. This one really peeves me as it supposes that morality is something sent down from on high rather than something we have the ability to create and define ourselves. The idea that lack of belief in a supreme being means you lack morality is something that really does diminish the dignity of humanity.

Some people take this argument so far that Copson recounted being asked, on the way back from a conference, by a religious person why, if he didn't believe in God, he wasn't a rapist. That says more about the question setter than it does about the subject. It suggests a belief that, without divine guidance, human instinct is base, amoral, and self-serving and there's plenty of evidence that that is not the case.

Yes, humans do base and amoral things and often for self-serving reasons but humans also, far more often, do kind and generous things. We are, as a species - by nature, social creatures. We form families, we look after our children, we make friends, we visit people in hospital, we care - basically. The philosopher A.J. Ayer posited that it was purely selfish behaviour that was, in fact, not natural and when the psychologist Margaret K. Knight suggested, in the 1950s, that schools teach that morality is possible without religion she was damned as a Satanist!

Not exactly a dry or a rational response from the Christian establishment. But then they don't pride themselves on rationality. In fact, a further objection to humanism is that it is too rational, that it is too dry. That you can't explain something as complicated as love with science - even though you can.

There are, of course, certain things that science cannot explain (yet) but that doesn't mean that gap should be filled with supernatural beliefs. The author E.M. Forster is best known these days for the Merchant Ivory film adaptations of his books (A Room With A View, Howards End) but was, during his life (1879-1970), a firm advocate of a kind of humanist atheism. He wrote that he did not "believe in belief" and that "tolerance, good temper, and sympathy" are what really mattered and that they were vital for the human race to prosper. Religion, to Forster, was not vital.

Another rather boring jibe you receive from religious people if you're an atheist or a humanist is that humanism is just another religion and that the pope of that religion is Richard Dawkins. He isn't. It's David Hume. Though, on a more serious note, this is an incredibly lame argument. Religions, and certainly the violent Abrahamic faiths, have beliefs that are set in stone, that are immutable. Humanism adapts with the facts and changes as the science develops.

As an aside, is it really the best argument a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew can make, to say "you're just as bad as us"? Then there are two popular objections/criticisms that completely contradict each other. First of all, the idea that humanists are too optimistic, that they hold dear to hopelessly utopian beliefs while ignoring the huge number of tragedies that have scarred, and continue to scar, the world. Plenty of them to point to right now.

Why believe in progress when the Israeli army are killing Palestinian children in their thousands, when Hamas are butchering and beheading innocent Israelis, when Putin's forces are bombing Ukrainian cities - and people - into smithereens, and when Donald Trump looks likely to return to power?

There is certainly some truth in this argument. Things, right now, feel more dangerous and fractious than they have done for a very long time. The future is uncertain (though the future is always uncertain, that's what makes it the future) and bad things are sure to happen soon enough. But, as humanists as myself would have it, progress is possible and progress is something we should aim for.

Whilst remaining grounded in realism. When Philip Pulman was asked if he was an optimist or a pessimist, he replied by saying he's "51% optimist". Which, to me, sounds a very good answer. Modern critics of Enlightenment values, of which there are many, often overlook the fact that without the Enlightenment values they rally against they would not even have their platform. Or as the poet Stevie Smith (1902-1971) put it in her poem The Past from 1962:-

"People who are always praising the past and especially the times of faith at best, ought to go and live in the Middle Ages and be burnt at the stake as witches and sages"

Andrew Copson was eager to clarify to he did not advocate burning anyone at the stake before bringing us to the final objection - and one that goes directly against the previous one. While some claim humanism is too positive, others claim it is too negative. They say a humanist mindset renders life totally meaningless. Many years ago I befriended some Catholics in Basingstoke and one of them would often ask "is this all there is?".

The idea being that there must be more. But the "all" of which she spoke is a huge all. Just on this planet alone there are over two million species of animal, hundreds of thousands of plants, and there are countries and cities we will never visit, rivers we will never see, mountains we will never climb, and billions of people we will never meet. Then there's the huge, unknowable, universe that dwarves even our huge planet. How much "all" do you want and do you really think there's more all in a book like, for instance, the Bible, where every single story is set in a fairly small geographical area and a fairly brief era of time?

Humanism isn't, as some critics argue, nihilism. It is religion, not atheism, that is built on fear and terror. It is Christianity that threatens you with eternal damnation in Hell, and it is Islam and Judaism (in their basest forms) that are fighting each other to the death in the Middle East right now. Religion regularly denies people the pleasure of living in the moment and often forces them into hurting themselves and others in order to reap rewards in future worlds that have never been proven to exist.

This hurting can come in the form of asceticism, cult membership (which often means estrangement from family members and friends), or, in the most extreme cases, suicide bombing or putting to death others with different belief systems, or sexual preferences, to your own. The 19c poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold wrote that "it is no small thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done".

Arnold was saying we should enjoy ourselves while we're here, share our love and enjoyment of life with others, for none of us - atheists or believers - have any idea what, if anything, awaits us afterwards. We have been presented with heaven on Earth yet some of us choose to turn it into Hell. Often in the belief that another, better, Heaven awaits. I don't believe it does. I believe that in life, the meaning comes in living it.

Thanks to Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub, Professor Chris French (for hosting), Paula Dempsey (for saying hello to me), Andrew Copson (for a great talk), and to Goddard's Pie & Mash Shop (for absolutely delicious, and - vitally - warming, food beforehand) for a great evening that included quotes from, as well as those already mentioned, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, and Richard Dawkins and a Q&A session that took in Thomas More, Erasmus, Karl Popper, Rowan Williams (the former Archbishop of Canterbury and renowned Incredible String Band fan), ontology, post-modernism, the writer Tom Holland (who Copson insisted is NOT a historian), the Third Reich, and Joachim Karl's fascinating book The Misery of Christianity (which sounds like it needs a whole evening devoted to it some time soon). Even a mobile phone interruption from Spongebob Squarepants couldn't ruin things. My final advice (for what it's worth):- don't damn with faint praise, praise with faint damns, avoid falling into theology, and, as I ended the previous paragraph, find your own meaning in life. Don't let others decide it for you.