Joss Whedon and Humanism: Repost

A Question from Emily

Emily:

This is Joss Whedon talking about Humanism.  I really liked getting to hearwhat he believes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTY8-XPhTzQjavascript:; your thoughts please.  Also what, precisely, is humanism? I've got a rough idea, I think. But how would you describe it. Andy:      First on the question of what is humanism. Humanism in its broadest definition is a focus on humanity and the human experience. Most often when we talk of humanism, we are speaking of secular humanism, which is the rejection of religion to focus on man, basically saying "There is no god, and I am he." In focusing on the human condition many secular humanists actually move worship to themselves. It is possible to be a Christian humanist, or a Buddhist humanist or a -fill in the blank- humanist of almost any religious or philosophical stripe. This would mean that the human aspect and what the belief system means to humanity and how we relate to each other takes precedence over the divine aspects of the faith. I would go so far as to say that the Deism held by a few of our most prominent founding fathers (Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson particularly) could easily be seen as a form of Christian humanism, in that God does not interfere with man's day to day affairs and we must therefore stand up for ourselves. I would also say that the "social gospel" presented by many liberal religious figures today, such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and to a lesser extent Barack Obama and his mentor Jeremiah Wright , moves dangerously close to being humanism as well.     As to Joss Wedon's comments, I must say that I take offense to his view that education is the answer to religious belief. This is actually a Marxist view ( Karl Marx is quite popular in liberal circles these days) that religion is the "opiate of the masses", a tool used by the corrupt and affluent to keep the poor ignorant and dependant upon them. Atheism and agnosticism has become quite a fad in the intellectual world over the past hundred years since Charles Darwin made it "cool", kind of the intellectual equivalent of bell-bottomed pants in  my personal opinion. If you look back a little farther than the modern age you will find that the vast majority of the great thinkers of western civilization were all devout believers. These are the guys who set the building blocks in place for modern philosophy, mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, and medicine. For people like Galileo, Copernicus, Issac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Leonardo Davinci, Renee Descartes and Joseph Mendel, their personal belief in God was pivotal to their thought processes. They believed that the universe could be catalogued and understood because it had a Creator who used an understandable process. To make religion something for the simple, stupid people is an insult to these fine men. We achieve what we can today only because we stand on the back of their discoveries. It's like somebody using paint by numbers calling Leonardo Davinci incompetent. Even Aristotle, one of the two most influential Greek thinkers (the other being Plato), though not a Christian, had his philosophy rooted in the search for the divine. One of the four classical argument for the existence of God (the Unmoved Mover) comes from him. Also many of the most brilliant people I have met in my life are deeply devout Christians, many with multiple doctorates in both theology and everything from English to mathematics and biochemistry. There are as many simple minded atheists as there are simple minded Christians, and perhaps more so.