Humanism - what is it good for - 2023-03-20

Speaker 1

This is the BBC.

Speaker 2

Hello, I'm Adam Rutherford and this is Start the Week from BBC Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the show. According to the latest census results, the UK is evolving away from being a Christian nation. That does need a little unpacking. People ticking the no religion box jumped by 8 million to 37% of the population, while those ticking Christian fell to 46%, still the largest single group. But for those of you listening in Wales, more people ticked no religion than Christian. The British Social Astute Survey puts the number of the faithless at 53% – a majority. So what does this mean for the way we live our lives? Sarah Bakewell is no doubt hoping that this is the start of another chapter in the long history of humanism, all 700 years of it so far, which she's explored in her new book Humanly Possible. But if we want to live a good life, whatever that means, maybe it's time to boost our critical faculties, especially in this age of rampant disinformation. Julian Bajini is here to explain how to think like a philosopher, the title of his latest book. And the novelist Leila Aboulele explores not atheism and secularism, but devotion and rebellion in her novel River Spirit, the tale of a cast of characters in a temporarily independent Sudan in the run-up to the British asserting colonial rule in the 19th century. Leila is calling in from Aberdeen. Now before we get cracking on this point of order, the BBC of course has strict impartiality rules. This may have come up in the last few weeks and in discussing humanism we should point out that Julian is a patron of Humanist UK, an organisation of which I am currently the president. Leila is not a humanist and we will get to that soon enough, but I shall do my very best to suppress any evangelical or presidential tendencies for the next 42 minutes. Right, so that disclaimer is out of the way now, Sarah.

Speaker 1

He has this scene where in the school a group of students want to set up a humanist society so they have their inaugural meeting and the first question comes up, what is humanism? One of them says, well it's the Renaissance' attempt to escape from the dark ages and another person says no it's not, it's trying to live your life without supernatural beliefs, it's secularism. Another person says, but it's a philosophical movement that puts human dignity and well-being at the heart of things. Somebody else says, well I thought it was about being nice to people and looking after old people and bandaging sick animals and things, to which another person says that's humanitarianism, that's not humanism. Somebody else says we're wasting time here, to which the humanitarian says are you calling bandaging sick animals a waste of time and it all just degenerates into a total chaos. But my starting point is that it's not a bad thing, I mean it leaves them all chaotic but I think that it's not chaos, what it is is a very pretty accurate description of the many faces of humanism, the great variety that you find in it.

Speaker 1

It's almost never taken, I mean if it is sometimes there have been things that have been found in the Inquisition records by scholars finding people who actually just come right out and say I don't believe there's a God but it doesn't preserve very well in the sort of high culture of or you know most of the records. Really you won't find people saying that, you probably won't find people believing it, I mean I think that they were interested in the human realm which involved setting the realm of theology and the divine kind of often off to one side a bit but it doesn't mean negating that realm doesn't mean saying well that's just you know not true. It means this is where I think the human part of humanist comes from in that historical form as well that the important thing is the human realm. You've got the divine realm which is studied by theology, you've got the physical realm which will be studied by science as it later became called. The human realm is the realm of the humanities, I mean our word the humanities comes from exactly that definition of humanism, it's the human studies. It goes back to ancient Rome, Cicero talked about the studio humanitatis, the great, and that's still the root of our idea of humanities.

Speaker 1

No it definitely doesn't it's it's unthinkingly Eurocentric I mean as was pretty much everything else that was coming out of Europe in those times it's very much a male figure I mean if you think of the classic Vitruvian man as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci that you know is often used as a humanist symbol it's presented as the kind of the great image of human dignity and excellence and beauty and putting the human at the heart of society which is fine but it's very much I mean even the proportions that is meant to illustrate are that that of the male body and and you know a male body in the full flowering of youth or early middle age able bodied it's only the ways that people began to notice some of the exclusions involved in that were various I mean one of the main ones Just the people that were excluded by it so women for example were beginning to say well wait a minute you know there's something missing in this picture this is we need to think differently about so but that's

Speaker 3

Our current thought I mean I think that's true and but as Sarah's also said this is like the same floor you find running through everything and I don't think it undermines the basic tenets if you look back at what people were fundamentally arguing for the criticism from now would be that they were not thoroughgoingly humanist enough it wasn't that humanism inherently contained these flaws but I think you know humanism does have issues you've said how I'm a patron of humanist UK but I'm somewhat of a critical friend I think sometimes they regret having me as a patron because yeah I don't know there are things about it which I think have a tendency to go a bit wrong and I think one one of the I mean Sarah's book is beautiful and wonderful and it's hard to argue with it but the one thing I Think that really struck me a bit was she mentions a few times this quote from Robert Ingersoll because the idea is if you were humanist if there's no God whatever what's what's the purpose of human life and the Ingersoll line is you know happiness is the only good and this is something that contemporary humanists often say so we have that humanist bus campaign a few years ago where posters on the side of buses said there's probably no God you know ten out of ten for saying probably and not being dogmatic stop worrying and enjoy your life and I don't know I think that's a little bit isn't that a bit glib isn't there more to life than just sort of happiness and pleasure always it one of those things whereby we're going to find happiness so broadly that we're going to include lots of other Things too well the

Speaker 1

Connectedness to other people at the very heart of it and there is a more serious aspect to its non western presence today you point out that there are 13 countries that have the death penalty for blasphemy or for apostasy and those are part of the campaigns which are sort of beyond the initial philosophical remit of of humanism being the fulfillment of human potential exactly and I think it there's around 80 countries where being a humanist or an atheist or you know in that post-date in some way being sort of identified as being falling foul of blasphemy for example rules can land you in trouble of one sort another from the relatively mild censure up to the death penalty so I think the humanist organizations humanist international say kind of regard themselves I mean I can't speak for them of course but they kind of regard Themselves as offering support for those who need it because of being persecuted for their humanism more than trying to convert others to humanism I don't really don't think that there's a strong strand of trying to make everybody a humanist still less of trying to make everybody an atheist which is a different thing there's a very big difference between atheism and

Speaker 4

Thing you know with a different name Julian mentioned the bus campaigns and there's a photo in in in the in in the book and Sarah's book about the the campaign where it says there's probably no gods so stop worrying you know and enjoy yourself and the first thing that struck to me was like enjoyment needs money enjoyment needs health and and so what what happens to the to the people who are are are poor they they see an ad like this and it's just another pressure on them so there's the the it's it's it's that's sort of what the impression I get and then you mentioned the inquisition and the inquisition historically also was against Muslims and also killed you know thousands of Muslims and thousands and thousands and thousands of Jews as well so it's it's it's it's not only that you know that

Speaker 2

That that humanists have or atheists have suffered throughout history there's been persecutions of other people's as well Sarah let's let's consider this point because I suppose that one of the charges against humanism is that it is an organization or a set of values that are in opposition to religion but that's not quite correct is it?

Speaker 1

Well it's certainly not the case for me and I think that every humanist probably comes to a different point along that spectrum I am very much of the religion like everything cultural social emotional spiritual in fact is a part of the human condition it's a part of it's a deeply important part of human life and I am very much not of the party if there is one of well there is one I know but there I'm not of the party of trying to somehow bamboozle other people out of their religion I mean the point of that bus campaign as I see it is is meant to be stop worrying I think is the key point there so it's not you must go and enjoy yourself and I think it was enjoy your life actually it was a slightly different tone to it it was stop Worrying I think that's the key thing and that's actually a very old tradition in philosophy going back to Democritus and Lucretius in the ancient world of saying fear can be caused it's one of the causes of fear by the fear of what's going to happen to you in the afterlife or falling foul of the gods having done something wrong the sense of sin don't worry about it we don't know anything about it so given that we don't and we have a short time here on earth let's try not to torture ourselves with these thoughts another

Speaker 3

He is quite unusual actually he didn't support the separation of church and state because he was a very much he was a bit of an old small city conservative you know he kind of thought that having a kind of the the the official church was would be a moderating effect on society and that if you had a like a free for all religions like you get in the United States and in this sense you turned out to be perhaps right about them you tend to get more extremes because it becomes like a market and everyone's competing to be more zealous or whatever it might be so he was a very interesting character he also never described himself as an atheist he thought that was going too far and although in practice he had no room for god you know he he he thought I'm just Agnostic because who knows it's not something I'm going to worry about to use that phrase but I'm not going to define myself by that so I think that if you if you sort of go back again I think a lot of these strongest thinkers they weren't they weren't zealously anti-religious what they were anti was was zeal that was the point I mean what the Hume was against was the sort of dogmatism and superstition and you know when he gets to talk about later I think what's one amazing wonderful things about that book is it shows how religious religion is very very diverse and it's not religion that's the problem it's when religion turns itself into

Speaker 1

I think living a good life would be one way of putting it human flourishing human well-being which is a can be a larger idea than that in the sense that can include art culture spirituality and certainly it includes living in a way that doesn't not only doesn't hurt others but tries to do the opposite of hurting whatever not necessarily helping is not the right word word humanism through the various kinds of humanism there's always a an emphasis on the connection to other people and you get that in not just in the Western tradition but also in the Confucian tradition in Chinese philosophy in southern Africa there's Ubuntu which is a word from Muni Bantu which means well the Archbishop Desmond Tutu defined it wonderfully as meaning we belong in a bundle of life a person is a person through other people and then you get Terrence there's this famous line much quoted in from ancient Rome from the comic playwright Terrence I am human I consider nothing human alien to me funnily enough the line was actually meant as a joke it's a nosy neighbor who's somebody asked him why are you always nosing around over the fence looking at what other people are doing and he says I'm human nothing human nothing human is alien to me I'm interested in everything so it's a joke but it actually goes on to become one of the key lines of humanism I like that aspect that strand in humanism there's many others but I think that strand is so important to

Speaker 3

Well I think today the publishers are very keen I would advocate for why we need it now because we're obsessed by now the point is we always need to think well it's always now that's why we need to think well now and and we need to because without that clear thought we are just we just at the whim of our passions our desires are people who will manipulate us people whose own lies I want to be spread for their own interest people who for whose I have their genuine convictions but they're wrong like the the false Maddy in Leilah's book so you know thinking well it's a kind of a moral obligation as well it's not just a nice thing to do because isn't it isn't it good to be clever whatever it might be because if you don't try your best to think well

Speaker 2

Then you'll probably end up believing some false things and false beliefs have consequences sometimes very very bad ones so I think there's a strong ethical imperative here one of the chapters is called think for yourself but not by yourself and I thought that's a very striking mantra which I I'd never come across phrase like that before but that that feels very pertinent to now when iconoplastic or auto-d didactic thinking results in grand conspiracy theories like COVID vaccines are you know engineered by the

Speaker 3

Of yeah I know well I mean listen I mean I did want the original subtitle to be and when not to the problem is it's not very snappy title to say how to think like a philosopher when philosophers are thinking at their best while avoiding the mistakes of those bad philosophers and when they're not thinking well I've been not a snappy there's a little bit of shorthand in the title yeah but I think one one of the issues here is that one of the ways you don't want to be like philosophers is that sometimes philosophers get too convinced of their own hype if you like because philosophers are I think it's true to say the number one specialists in critical thinking because they don't have anything else to go on you know if you're a scientist you run your experiments you look at your data If you're historian and go through the records if you're a philosopher you do have to sort of pay attention to the facts but they're just the everyday facts everyone else has you don't have any special information so you're especially dependent on your reasoning and I think that sometimes philosophers think because of that they're the smartest people in the room they're the best thinkers in the room and that therefore they jumped the wrong kind of conclusions or they don't realize how much they have to really pay attention to the facts underground how it's not just a conceptual issue so that's where I think you'll be very careful not not to think like a philosopher and it raised one of the main points really is that one of the best thinkers will always slow down you see we're in a hurry these days and a lot of Advice on how to think now I think is trying to give you hacks you know little cognitive shortcuts and and what I want to introduce is cognitive speed bumps because most bad thinking is a consequence of just going that little bit too fast and making that you know jumping to the conclusion when you should be crawling slowly to it on your hands in these yes and

Speaker 2

I like at the end of each chapter you've got a little sort of guidebook of or a list of things to do which include just getting yourself in the right frame of mind before having a think about about something which which seems you know something we don't necessarily do intuitively you've mentioned science and not a number of times now and reading your book there were a number of moments almost all the way through what I was thinking this isn't thinking like a philosopher this is thinking like a scientist be precise in your language look at the evidence be eclectic in your thinking and also it is a collegial thing it comes from your head but we work out what is right or what is correct or what is true by the connections with others which is a very Sarah Sarah Bakewell humanist type fault yeah

Speaker 1

I mean I it's funny you read it thinking this is just like a scientist and I was reading it thinking this is just like a humanist but that struck me too and I think this important point about evidence and about which is so crucial in science there is some kind of importance of a consensus over things I was really struck one of your chapters I think it's the one question everything you start by quoting someone saying you must always think for yourself you must question all the received ideas I can't remember exactly how it's put but and then you reveal that this is the foremost member of the Flat Earth Society speaking there's a reality check point going on because there's a philosophical tangle as well that who decides what's real and

Speaker 4

Think well I mean it's it's I liked it very much I like the idea that that that that one can you know you think logically and it made me realize that that I think like a Muslim I mean that I view things with with with Muslim rationale let's say and that and and actually Julian quoted the number of times the Adeensar dar who is a practicing Muslim and so it's possible to be to be logical and to be philosophical even you know coming from a from a faith based perspective it doesn't it doesn't necessarily mean that that you know that that one has to be an atheist or an agnostic in order to to think like a philosopher and when I was reading I was I was thinking Julian that there was that a few years ago there was when George Bush was interviewed and

Speaker 2

A clever journalist thought he was going to do a gotcha moment by saying who's your favorite philosopher and his answer was do you remember Jesus Christ yes and I thought that's an incredibly clever response not just incredibly clever political response given the environment that he was operating in within but do you consider the teachings of Christ to be

Speaker 4

We're in Sudan in the 1880s the Sudan is ruled by the Ottoman Empire it's on the kind of the edges of the Ottoman Empire and the population are finding the Ottomans very cruel they are imposing you know unjust taxes and they're kind of tyrannical. So people start to feel that you know things are really bad we need a messiah we need a saviour and the idea takes hold that any minute now the expected Mahdi who has been mentioned in the hadith is going to appear and so when a man does come along Muhammad Muhammad Abdullah and claims that he's the Mahdi people do actually believe in him and he gains followers and the government of course sends out an army against him he defeats this army almost miraculously with without any with his followers only carrying you know farming equipment they don't have guns or anything and so the rebellion you know spreads until it reaches the capital and actually they've got the capital under siege and in the capital is Charles Gordon the British Charles Gordon who decides to dig in and you know oppose the Mahdi but he himself Gets defeated and Khartun falls and he's assassinated.

Speaker 4

Yeah he's mentioned in the hadith of the prophet at the end of time as one of the signs of the end of time that there would be a man who is going to be coming to you know to prepare the world for the ending so that the expected Mahdi will come and he will usher in after him will come the second coming of Christ the kind of very end of day science so even the al-Aamah and Khartun the established scholars who were who represented the Turkish Egyptian government when they opposed Muhammad as the Mahdi they didn't oppose him as being you know coming up with a strange idea no they said you are not the right you are not the Mahdi you don't fulfill the signs so they were following a rationale they were looking at all the evidence from the hadith of the characteristics Of the expected Mahdi that he would be have a certain name he would be this he would be that and they tested this man and they said to him no you're not the right man and that's then how the conflict went on.

Speaker 4

Yeah I went to Durham University because that holds the Sudan archives to do the research and then I came upon a bill of sale for a woman and I had known that slavery existed in Sudan but just coming across the bill of sale and seeing her name on it Zam Zam and seeing the amount of money that was exchanged the names of the people involved that kind of like struck me and I began to visualize her life and I knew that Zam Zam was her slave name and that she must have had another name before she was she was enslaved and so I developed the character from that.

Speaker 2

Slavery is now at this point in time has ended in well in the British Empire but it hasn't extended all the way out to the rest of the world so it is still legal in Sudan in this pre-British colonial time.

Speaker 4

Yes so after all these years of the transatlantic slavery Britain did a kind of U-turn and began to sort of launch an attack against the countries which still practice slavery and the Ottomans and the Egyptians and anti-slavery or suppressing slavery became a way of Britain extending its influence into these areas so Charles Gordon was sent to suppress the slave trade this was his remit to go to Sudan and do that so this was the climate at the time.

Speaker 4

Well he was a very devout Christian you know as well and he believed that you know he kind of saw himself as a martyr sort of figure that he would you know fight to fight to the end but his orders were to evacuate the Egyptian garrisons and to leave Khartoum he wasn't really meant to stay and by staying he kind of forced the British government to send in a relief expedition to rescue him but the relief expedition arrived a day or two after he was assassinated so you know it was a complete failure but then after he died he was used as a symbol to rouse public opinion in Britain to support a full-scale invasion of Sudan which took place in 13 years after that so he was very much his death was a trauma for Victorian Britain and you know statues were erected you Know about you know to honor him and his journals were widely published and all of that kind of whipped up a feeling that you know we need to avenge Gordon's death and therefore the Sudan then became part of the British Empire.

Speaker 4

Yeah the first woman that starts off the novel Rhabha is a footnote so she's always mentioned as you know a woman who ran through the night to warn the Mahdi and his followers of an impending attack and therefore she played a role in not having the revolutionaries or the rebels defeated at the very beginning of the movement. So I thought you know oh that's very interesting I could use I could make something out of that instead of just having her as a footnote I could actually have a whole you know chapter about about about her role in this whole story and and after that you know the women are mentioned if you're searching I mean I didn't find any first person narration from a woman's point of view but whenever I would search everything and whenever there's a mention of women or women I would kind of you know pick that up and use my imagination to fill in the gap so I managed then throughout the book to have several points of view from women of various ages.