WEBVTT - Humanists, the Happy Heathens 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.960 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.840 --> 0:00:14.280 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.479 chalk and cherries here too. And this is stuff you 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:25.360 should know about humanism, which I find fairly relatable in 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:29.360 a lot of ways and in other ways not necessarily. 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:30.200 Yeah. 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:31.440 Can we we'll get into it. 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:33.959 Can we say Whatlivia titled this one? She's been really 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:34.720 killing it lately. 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:37.600 Yeah, go ahead. 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:41.960 This is on humanism, the bright side of being a 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:42.840 godless heathen. 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:44.639 That's right. 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:48.960 I was looking for that, aha definition, because that put 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:51.519 it about as good as anything in this whole article. 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:56.080 The is it American Humanist Association? Is it an association? 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:58.320 Yes, they are associated. 0:00:58.400 --> 0:00:58.560 Yeah. 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:00.640 They put it like this, It's a progressive philosophy of 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:05.760 life that without theism or other supernatural beliefs. Bit of 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:09.520 a dig affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:12.720 lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good. 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:15.920 And of course, if you don't know what theism is, 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:20.200 we're talking about, you know, religion and God. So it's like, hey, 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.880 you can be a good person and have a moral 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.880 and ethical center and strive to do those things without God. 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:27.720 At the center of it. 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:35.240 Yeah, for sure. And most humanists, I yeah, I think 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.600 it's fair to say most are atheists or at least agnostic. Yeah, 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.400 at the very least if they do believe in a God, 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:46.400 he's not an interventionist God. He's not playing our role 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.600 in our lives day to day. Maybe you could also 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:53.240 interchange that definition of God with the universe or nature 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.240 or something like that, but not God in any religious 0:01:57.280 --> 0:01:58.120 way whatsoever. 0:01:58.280 --> 0:01:58.600 Yeah. 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.200 And in fact, like if you do believe that, a 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:05.240 lot of like like strict humanists will say, well, you 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.400 can't really be a humanist because not believing in God 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:12.640 in that sense is a core part of humanism. And 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.600 a lot of other people say, hey, you're a humanist. 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:18.000 Who are you to tell me what I believe? Now 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.120 the humanist says, you got me. 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:21.679 Yeah, yeah. 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:23.080 And as we'll see it, you know, it had kind 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:27.080 of been tangled up with religion here and there until 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:28.800 it kind of landed eventually where it did. 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:31.320 And we're gonna talk a little bit about the history though. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:36.800 That term humanism goes back to at least Cicero in 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.800 first century BCE, Rome, when that very famous writer and 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:46.679 I think lawyer and Statesman use the word humanitis to 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.320 describe like people developing or the development of these qualities, 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.920 these virtuous qualities that Chuck will talk about, like a 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:57.720 moral and ethical center, compassion, good judgment, like being a 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.480 good person and doing good things. 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.400 Yeah, and then we leap frog all the way over 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.800 to the Renaissance. And you'll know that we leapt over 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.440 what are called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, Medieval era. 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.160 The Renaissance humanists are the ones who gave us the 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:18.480 term and the idea of the Dark Ages, that there 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:23.440 was a part of history where essentially the Church ruled 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:27.120 everything with an iron fist. Corruption was rampant, and people 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:31.520 were removed from their relationship with God and the Church 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:35.640 was inserted. And what these earliest Renaissance humanists did. They 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:40.600 were all Christians to a person, most of them Catholics too. 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:45.400 They changed that whole idea and said, what happens if 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:49.560 we get the church out from between the individual and God. 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:54.080 You know, there's a connection between you, this person who 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:57.440 is important and matters just because you're a person, and 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.440 God who made you. And this is where the very 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.760 beginnings of humanism find themselves. Even though no one in 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.600 the Renaissance would have called themselves a humanist because that 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.600 concept didn't really exist quite yet. This is the first step. 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.480 Yeah, I mean, looking back, we apply the tag to 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:14.920 a lot of different people. We're going to talk about 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:16.919 some of them, but yeah, they wouldn't have called themselves that. 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:17.240 Then. 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.279 Petrarch was probably looked at as maybe the first humanists 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.720 or the first modern man sometimes called. And in the Renaissance, 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:29.400 it was it was a pretty hot ticket depending on 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:31.800 what crowd you ran with. If you were among the 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.680 elites in the Renaissance, you might have hired humanist scholars 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:39.080 to come and teach your kids all about like sort 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:43.040 of the moral systems of the classical era to you know, 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:45.280 and very much in the effort, like you were saying, 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.160 to bring us out of what they call the dark ages. 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.320 And some aspects of this whole movement in the Renaissance 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.640 included three things we're gonna kind of touch on here 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:59.279 are realism, dignity of the individual human, and application of learning, 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:01.800 like putting it in to practice. 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:07.480 Yeah. So humanism contrasted with scholasticism, which had been going 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.840 on for hundreds of years. It was essentially the church's 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:16.960 form of teaching and that was basically reconciling the concept 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.000 of reality that came from the classical Greeks like Aristotle 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:25.360 with scripture and basically using scripture to explain the world 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:28.599 and reality as it is. And these humanists came along 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:31.400 and they were like, what happens if we stopped doing that? 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:35.840 What happens if we just study the classical Greeks and 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:41.440 just basically also still stay Christians, but stop using this scripture. 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.160 This received wisdom that the Church gives us, what if 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:48.080 we study it ourselves instead? And that brings up that 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:51.680 other the second part you mentioned, which is the dignity 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:55.680 of the individual human Up to this point, individuality was 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.599 not prized. You were not supposed to look inside yourself. 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:02.840 You're supposed to look outside the glory of God, you yourself. 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.159 If you paid too much attention to yourself, that was 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.680 a quick one way trip to hell for you when 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:12.279 you died. The humanists were like, no, let's look inside ourselves, 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.159 like we're important, you the individual is important. 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:15.559 Yeah. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:17.560 And also part of that first one with the realism 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.160 was that we are flawed. So if we want to 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:23.479 learn about each individual and human the nature, what it 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:25.599 means to be human, we have to look at the 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.880 bad stuff too, like the vices and the disorders and 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.400 things like that. And then that last one that I 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.400 mentioned was application of learning, like all this stuff is great, 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.240 but it's not naval gazing like or we don't want 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:40.480 it to be navel gazing. We want to actually stimulate action. 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.120 Yeah, and you're not learning just so you can give 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:46.480 more money to the church or something like that too. 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:50.960 And if this sounds a little bit like Protestant thought 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:55.400 about the connection between the individual and God, that's exactly right. 0:06:55.520 --> 0:07:00.480 These thinkers eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, which basically 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:02.640 pushed the face of the church off to the side 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.000 and said you and me God we're connected. 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:06.040 Yeah, for sure. 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.120 And it'll also tie into the Unitarian Church in a 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:14.200 big way later on. A church that has interested me, 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:19.720 oh yeah, yeah, I mean, I like my Sunday's free, 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.200 so probably not going to go. 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:24.760 But if any quote unquote church. 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:26.640 Appeals to me at this age and where I am 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.200 in life is definitely those guys. 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.840 Yeah, those people that you see out and about at 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:33.760 like ten am on a Sunday. Can give that a 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:35.120 little knowing head nod too. 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:35.400 Yeah. 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:39.560 Yeah, So something I think is we're pointing out real 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:44.000 quick though, to Chuck is everything we're talking about involves God. 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:46.200 Even though the Church has been pushed out of the way, 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.400 God has not. Yeah, God is still front and center. 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:53.440 Christianity is still the most important thing around, and that 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.520 is this is the cradle of humanism. And one of 0:07:56.560 --> 0:08:01.240 the frequent criticisms of modern humanism is that it's never 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:06.880 really shaken off its birthright from Catholicism or Christianity, even 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.640 though it opposes religion itself. We'll get more into that, 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:11.400 but I just wanted to put that out there for 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:11.880 the moment. 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:14.000 And we're also talking about like coming out of a 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.720 time where atheism could get you killed. Yeah, you know, 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.960 like saying that there is no God, you know, was 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.880 against the law unpunishable by death for sure. 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:29.200 Yeah, but that started to change gradually around beginning in 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.520 the seventeenth century. One of the people we have to 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:35.440 thank for that is Francis Bacon. Yeah, known as the 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:39.800 father of empiricism. He also invented bacon and he also 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.920 had a big hand into coming up with the scientific method. 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:44.600 Yeah. Yeah, we talked about him and that. 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:48.240 Yeah, for sure, which has been largely abandoned by science 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:49.600 in the last one hundred years. 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:54.280 Yeah, well, he argued for really studying like like what 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.400 we call social sciences. Now he kind of kicked that 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.640 off as well, the systemic study of like the human passions. 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:03.600 But all these people that we're gonna talk about here 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:07.640 in the next little bit, we're Christians. So this is 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.280 sort of this is where it was still a time 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:12.720 when it was still tangled up even though they had 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.520 these ideas, All of these people, Bacon and this next person, 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:19.319 Thomas Hobbes, were Christian. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.360 Yeah, and the fact that there are Christians who identify 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:28.920 themselves as humanists and vice versa, that goes to show you, 0:09:28.960 --> 0:09:32.080 like that those two things are not incompatible. Yeah, you 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:36.520 can be religious and care about human beings and like 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.440 they don't have to oppose one another, although humanists have 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:40.880 eventually said yes they do. 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:43.520 Yeah, I mean that's the deal, right, I mean, did 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.080 I read that correctly? Is that it's the modern humanist 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.160 movement was really where they were like, we're really separate 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:52.480 from and congruous with belief in God. 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:57.160 Yes, yeah, Okay, so we mentioned Bacon. What about Thomas 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.720 Hobbes because he came up with the social contract, which 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.480 is ba like you and me. We basically allow a 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:07.120 government to rule us in exchange for protecting us from nasty, brutish, 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.200 short lives which we would otherwise have without the state 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.839 or without society. Right. That doesn't sound very humanist, even 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.000 though it's human centered, because he assumed that humans were 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.079 essentially bad and we'd club you over the head and 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:23.280 kill you first chance. They got. That's why we need government, 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:26.679 according to Hobbes. But he's considered one of the early 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:27.840 humanists for sure. 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.320 Yeah, and he was Christian as well, but he did 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.840 not write a lot like and his writings didn't write 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:35.480 a lot about God. He kind of put that to 0:10:35.600 --> 0:10:37.559 the side and said, you know, if we want to 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:40.480 understand who we are and what it means to be human, 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:43.079 we have to look at it through a just a 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:47.439 very sort of secular and like, very reasoned approach. 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:55.040 Right exactly, so humanist rationalism to understand ourselves in the world. 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:59.280 Thomas Paine was also one. He was probably Yeah, he 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:01.560 was like the first person that you can point to 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.760 and be like, the guy's a humanist. He even says 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.439 so himself in not so many words, or more than 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.440 those words. He was a pamphleteer who helped get the 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.160 American Revolution started despite moving to America just two years 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.800 before the revolution started. That's how effective his pamphlets were. 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.360 Yeah, he was very forward thinking. He was arguing very 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:26.800 early against slavery. He's had an idea for what we 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.040 might call universal basic income now, very much believe in 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:34.120 the equality of all humans. And he has this quote 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.760 that's really pretty great, like I'm a big pain guy. 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.280 After reading up more on him, Sure, my country is 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:44.679 the world that my religion is to do good. Pretty nice. 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.840 Yeah, there's pretty much no better way to sum up 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:50.800 the humanist view in a nutshell than that. 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:52.960 Yeah. 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.760 The French Revolution also, there's a couple of people who 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:59.720 get called out a lot, Jacqui Beart and Twant Francois Momorro, 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.160 because they established the cult of Reason, where they would 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:06.880 actually go in and seize churches in France during the 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:12.320 revolution and repurposed them. I saw into Temples of Reason. 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:15.520 I read about them on the Collector, which is a 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:19.200 great website that explains all sorts of different philosophies and stuff. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:24.760 Great website. Anyway, the French Revolution itself basically said Catholic Church, 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:27.199 you're out. And then they were like, okay, well, wait 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.640 a minute. We're all about reason and enlightenment. What are 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.120 we going to fill the vacuum left by getting rid 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.840 of the Catholic Church? And all of these ideas like 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.160 the Cult of Reason kind of came along, which was 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:44.959 essentially create humanist temples to logic in humans and humanity, 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:47.000 remove God from the equation altogether. 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:47.880 Yeah, for sure. 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:51.840 And buddy, do you think I like Thomas Bain. Don't 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:55.679 get me started on Jeremy Bentham, because after reading up 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.320 on Jeremy Bentham, I wish I had named my daughter 0:12:58.400 --> 0:12:59.600 Jeremy Bentham Bryant. 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:01.400 That would have been a great name. 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.400 I really missed an opportunity because Jeremy Bentham was a 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.800 great dude. He was working for welfare, fair programs for 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:11.480 the poor early on. He didn't believe in slavery obviously 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:14.920 child labor, and this was like decades before anyone else 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:19.280 was talking about this stuff. He was into animals. And 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.440 we'll see. That's some of the criticism from humanists is 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.040 that they kind of stop at humans. And that's not 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:27.959 to say that humanists can't be like pro animal or 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:30.720 pro environment, because most of them probably are right but 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:33.960 ben them very early on when it talked about like 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.679 the suffering of animals, he said, the question is not 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.439 can they reason, because that's what animals were, just animals, 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:41.720 because they can't reason, they have brains like us. He 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:43.800 combatd that with the question is not can they reason 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:45.800 nor can they talk? But can they suffer? 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.520 Yeah? What a thing to say in the seventeen hundreds. 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:52.839 Yeah, I'm glad you explained what you meant by he 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.199 was into animals because I was confused at first. 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:56.640 Oh, come on. 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:58.840 One of the other cool things about Jeremy Bentham is 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.560 he willed his body to science. He donated to science 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:07.480 early on and they used it. They said, thanks a lot, buddy, 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:11.120 here's your skeleton back. Because as part of his wishes, 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.840 he wanted to remain at University College London, which he helped 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:20.280 found as a secular college open to everybody. And he's 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:23.280 still under glass at the University of College of London, 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.080 dressed up in his own clothes. He's got wax hands 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:29.480 with gloves on, he has a wax head and apparently 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.960 he originally wanted his head to be part of it. Yeah, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.360 so they used some I guess some Maori technique of 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:41.400 desiccation and it didn't go very well, and his descated 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:44.440 head is still around. But they're like, Jeremy, you do 0:14:44.560 --> 0:14:46.320 not want us to leave this on your body because 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.760 you look so great with the wax head. We're just 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.600 going to keep this separate under class itself. 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:54.560 Yeah. Up with Jeremy Bentham? 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.080 Yeah, you mentioned the secular college Like he went well 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.240 beyond like the separation of church and state, where he 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:02.280 was like, colleges should have nothing to do. 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:04.040 There should not be religious colleges. 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:09.320 He really wanted to draw a strong divide between God 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:11.480 and kind of all the institutions. 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:15.960 Right. He was also the father of utilitarianism, which is essentially, 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:22.240 if at its worst, killing one person saves two people, 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:26.120 then you kill that person, which gave us things like 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:31.440 the trolley problem as a utilitarian thought experiment. Essentially, Bentham, 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:33.760 I think, didn't really think that way, but he was 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.680 basically like, we want to maximize the most good for 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:39.360 the most people. That's the way he developed it. 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:40.480 Yeah, pretty cool stuff. 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:43.320 You want to take a break, Yeah, I think we're 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:45.920 off to a hot start, So I'm gonna go take 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:47.320 a cold shower and we'll be right back. 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.640 Okay, Chuck, we're back, and we're going to talk about 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:20.880 the development of humanism in the way that we know 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.000 it today, because up to this point we've been talking 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.440 about a little bits here, little bits there that all 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:30.800 together changed the world and essentially took all the power 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:34.680 in the West, especially Europe and eventually the United States, 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:38.560 away from the Church and organized religions in general and said, no, 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:43.840 there's a way for you to live an upstanding, meaningful, 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.360 ethical life without even believing that there's a God or 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.160 in afterlife. And here's how we're going to do it. 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:52.400 Yeah, I mean the idea at the time, and there's 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:54.960 still people that believe this in twenty twenty six. Which 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.320 is pretty scary, is that if you were not religious 0:16:57.360 --> 0:16:59.680 and devout, then you were a heathen and you were 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:05.239 like morally bereft. And those like people very early on 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:07.440 stood up and were like that didn't make any sense, 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:10.960 Like why is it I don't believe in God? Like 0:17:11.160 --> 0:17:15.080 people have feelings in their heart or whatever. And someone realized, like, 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:16.560 why is it that in my heart? Like I don't 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.160 believe in a God, but like I believe in doing 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:22.000 like really good things, Like why are those tho? Why 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.440 are those two things have to be tied together. And 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.560 that was humanism, or if you look at philosopher and 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:35.520 theologian from Germany Friedrich Niedhama, the term was HUMANISMUS in 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:38.240 eighteen oh eight, and that is he was kind of 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.480 talking about that Renaissance humanism, those studies that they were 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:45.479 doing with the people that are trying to sort of 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.480 reform education during the Renaissance. 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:51.000 Yeah, but very quickly people latched onto that. He just 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:53.280 kind of came along at the right He was in 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:55.520 the right place at the right time, Yeah, which was Germany, 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:59.879 because Germany eventually became kind of the cradle of modern humanism, 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:05.679 and eventually humanismths what we would call humanism now we 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:10.800 just dropped the US or the US And if you 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.840 kind of subscribe to that, it was way beyond the 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:18.359 way that you interpreted scripture. You supported women's equality, You 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:22.520 were all about separation of church and state. You had 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:26.679 compassion for all people, not just people that looked like 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:29.399 you and had the same amount of money as you. 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:33.120 You cared about actually doing stuff to get the government 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:37.919 to take care of poverty and things like that. Like Quakers. 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:40.719 The conception of Quakers at this time was a really 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:46.400 good view of what it meant to be a humanist 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:48.800 at the time, because you still believed in God, but 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.720 you really cared about other people. And this was fairly 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:54.080 new for Europe at the time. 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:57.159 Yeah, for sure, you mentioned the French Revolution, but in 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:01.959 the nineteenth century, during the time of all those European revolutions, 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:06.160 was it also started to kind of touch on socialism, 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.600 of course, and like this idea of a utopian society 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:13.879 that we could strive for. It was starting to become 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:17.960 a little more acceptable in the United States at the time, 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.680 where well partially because of German immigration to the United 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.479 States and you were talking about them being the cradle, 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:30.040 but also Charles Darwin and just this idea that you 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:35.679 don't need these theist beliefs to be a good person, 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:39.800 and there's something called free thought that can happen, like 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:44.440 prethinking is very much at this time aligne with deism. 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:48.760 Yeah for sure. And free thought essentially as a concept 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:53.040 is it's just questioning everything, Yeah, especially received wisdom. You 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:55.199 stop and ask click, well, wait a minute, why do 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:57.919 I think that? How do I know that? You just 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.399 challenge all of your own assumptions, and by doing that 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:03.840 you can kind of free yourself from being indoctrinated by 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.199 the man essentially. So this is when it seems to 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:11.560 me the progressive movement in the United States really started 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:16.120 to come about. Yeah, right, this is the till late 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.040 nineteenth century. One of the next big things that happened 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:22.800 was the establishment of the New York Society for Ethical 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:27.240 Culture by again named Felix Adler. And this became essentially 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:31.959 the ethical movement E in capital E, capital M. And 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:37.560 they were basically like the very first humanists. They tried 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:42.360 to essentially provide the same thing, that's say, moral upstanding 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:46.440 structure that the church provides for so many people to 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:48.119 people who don't believe in God. 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:52.600 Yeah, and not more than that. But alongside that, I 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:55.199 think they realized that the church had something that people 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:02.160 clearly liked in tradition and in ceremony, and they're like, hey, 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:04.879 if we're going to be a thing like, maybe we 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:07.600 should have some of that stuff too. So they organized 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.640 Sunday services and they said, how about a how about 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:17.960 a deist marriage ceremony, like kind of substituting religious ritual 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:22.840 for non religious ritual because people like that kind of stuff. 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:27.960 Yeah, They're like, how about atheist holy communion, and the 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:29.280 humanists are like, how does that work? 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:29.560 Right? 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:31.720 They're like, oh, we don't know. This is new. We're 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:33.960 just throwing everything we can at the wall. See what sticks. 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.399 Yeah, maybe instead of the blood and body of Jesus, 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:37.879 it's just crackers and grape juice. 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:42.160 There you go. And they were like grape juice or flavory, 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:43.240 and they're like, grape juice. 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:45.720 We used grape We used grape juice at our church 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.680 because even the Baptist did not take wine as a communion. 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:51.280 It's kind of funny to think about. 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:53.679 I remember moving to the South and being like, you 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.919 don't drink any wine, like even in church because I 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:57.679 was raised Catholic. 0:21:57.800 --> 0:21:58.760 Welch's baby. 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:03.879 Yeah, that's funny. So this whole kind of evolution is 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:06.399 still going on. In the United States in particular, it 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:12.040 started to take off. Humanism really is huge today or 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:14.880 through the twentieth century in the US and the UK. 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:19.199 They're kind of like hotbeds for humanist activity. And the 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:26.400 people who were attracted to this were very frequently liberal intellectuals, yeah, philosophers, literati, 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:32.720 intelligentsia like academic elites and people who ran in their circles, 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.840 which included communists at the time in the twenties and thirties, 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:42.919 like basically super radical liberal thinkers were very much attracted 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:47.320 to the early establishment of modern humanist organizations. 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:52.280 Yeah. That in the United States in particular, the University 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:55.480