Open letter to Ludwig Feuerbach
Secular Humanism, people humans are capable of personal fulfillment, while living a meaningful and an ethical life without a higher power, or a supernatural God.
Philosophical Materialism states everything in the universe can be understood in terms of mater in motion. The universe, Nature and human communities are natural, thus a part of a tangible process continually unfolding in a never-ending course of natural transformation.
The external world is the source of our reflection, understanding and thinking. We often confuse our interpretations of reality for reality. What we know is ultimately through our sensual experiences of material Nature. In the last explication of what we know we are both biological and interpretive creatures. Through our interpretations of Nature, Nature becomes God. People create God out of their imaginations. In our psychological reflection God now is the creator of Nature, and with it people. Thus, we turn the world upside down. (Preface).
Humanism and its twin materialism replace God with Nature as the center of our awe. Because Nature creates humans, humans are animals within a natural environment; human behavior has natural consequences humanism is naturalism. The essence of God is the essence of our cultural definition of our own humanity in a form more perfect than any human can attain. The trinity is a human creation. The rational and analytic side of human reason is God the father. The son is the passionate side capable of love and empathy for others. Reason and passion interact to give us the will to live. Material Nature is dispassionate and real, the father; our shared common humanity is founded on compassion, emotional identification and deep sense of other, the son. Human communities are an interactive part of material Nature. People create the trinity, which in our imaginations become independent of their creators, existing out side of time. We worship our creations as if they created us. Our imaginary creations now have power over us in our fantasy. The clergy gain control over these collective artistic creations and become the political oppressors of the rest of us (1 - 12).
God is our own construction, and has only such power as we assume God to have. We then create a God that is believed to be eternal, all-powerful and flawless. God is fully human, yet everything a human is not, God is a perfect human. Humans are mortal, weak, and we are always making mistakes. Through our imagination we create a God that transcends our flaws. Fear makes God necessary. Fear of death, pain, and stupidity haunts us throughout our lives. We escape fear through faith in God. Fear limits us, and our imagination frees us from these limitations. We can confront and overcome these fears by accepting death, life and uncertainty, or we create an imaginary supernatural being who can do it for us. By accepting life without God, then Nature and our shared humanity becomes the core that welcomes a decisive embrace of life. Through God we transcend the limits of life, and even life itself. We must choose life or God (13 - 15).
The Humanist embraces human life in Nature, without God. The believer in God gains meaning in life through the love of a supreme being that is a perfect realization of their truth and love. This God lifts the disciple out of the everyday life of pain and disappointment. In Christianity wisdom, love and goodness are poised in opposition to pain and death. The perfect virtues of God are logical extensions of our cultural human values. These shared values are part of the cultural views of society and thus help us as a species to survive. The individual can endure only through the consolidated attempt of the public. Even here the uncertain still must be dealt with.
In mistrust God becomes the source of morals. Because any effort, individual or collective, failure is always possible, God is created to guarantee what cannot be guaranteed. We create a God to become not only the creator of our imaginary universe, but the power behind the universe. God is defined as knowing our every need even before we do, and change natural events if we only ask. Our God can correct our mistakes to make sure we continue. Extinction now becomes impossible as long as God wills it. God the creator of a vast universe has no other concern than our individual and collective salvation. To the Humanist, then God becomes the supreme form of Narcissism (16 -32).
People are able to abstract from real experience to develop generalized concepts use to explain experiences. From what was learned from these experiences futures are predicted. Reason and logic learned in the past helps us cope with the future. This is the rational frame of reference we all life with. In our imagination, our God becomes the sources of what we already know from observation and reason. This fantasy becomes the objective frame of reference to replace Nature. The world of mater in motion, stimulus response and learning becomes illusion, and creative illusions become real. Through a belief in God we become separated from ourselves. Our creation creates us, our illusions become real, and the real universe becomes an illusion in our worldview. The life of each individual will someday come to and end, the life of the human species will end, the world will come to an end and even the universe someday will end. The God of our dreams will never end. What is real becomes unreal, and the unreal become real, and eternally perfect. With God we lose sight of the flow of life, and miss the joy of our life as it passes by us (33 – 43).
Everything we love in God, we love in ourselves. Even when I die Nature continues. My passing makes little difference, living on a smaller planet in a remote unspectacular solar system in a minor galaxy in the broad cosmos. God only exists in a personal obsession with my personal existence. God’s one purpose is being consumed with loving thoughts about me as a human. Through God the universe was created only for we humans, me as an individual. My imperfection becomes perfect, I live forever, and I am the center of the universe. “To the Humanist, God becomes the supreme form of Narcissism” (46 – 49).
God is the law, and the law is too rigorous to live by. Thus, we are all lost in sin. Through Grace we are saved. Without God there is no law, no Redemption or Salvation. Without God there is no Law, and thus no need for Redemption or Salvation. To the Humanist ethics is our collective attempt to adapt to our environment. We can learn from our mistakes and try to do better, sin is unnecessary.
Objectivity, reason, logic and science are intellectual tools to understand the external world. Imagination is the creative force of the intellect. Imagination is as important in reason and science as it is in art. Reason stands between stimulus and response. Reason is the fuel of imagination. Reason is the source of understanding. Reason is the raw material for both science and religion. Reason is the origin of our creation of God. God becomes in our imagination reason in its most perfect form. This perfect God is imperfect; we cannot love a God who does not love us. Love and compassion are emotions and not rational thought. We need a second manifestation of God, one of irrational love, mercy, and compassion. We cannot have empathy unless we also know pain. Love requires God to become human to suffer and to die to fully cherish our pain and our fear. God now suffers, and must be unable to escape the fate of humanity, death. The God who is perfect reason abandons the God love. God dies making God imperfect for the sake of imperfect humans. Suffering for others becomes the ultimate in self-denial. God dies for me, which is the ultimate self-manifestation of my self-importance. Yet God does not die and cannot die because in imperfection is perfect. God lives that I may live. What was gained was eternal life the ultimate in the denial of death.
This is where the Humanist takes issue with the Christian, the Christian denial of Nature. Death is natural. I have to come to terms with my own mortality and no longer fear my final death. Death is the final celebration of life, and the Humanist does not need life after death.
What of the Savior being able to forgive us from our sins? However, if the law is no longer unattainable but a modest codes to live by. If the Law is designed to be a way to be the best person I know how, to better than I would be without it, to be a little better tomorrow than I was yesterday. There are errors in judgement, behavior unworthy of me, but there is no sin to be forgiven of. I can learn from my mistakes. That which God does for others and me, now we can learn to do for ourselves. God’s reason is my reason, and God’s love is my love both created by me out of my imagination (50 – 64).
God becomes a reality as a mirror to our own imagination. The mind, reason, emotion are all part of our every day lives. Yet this material of our intellect is what is the true origin of God. We think rational thoughts even when we are alone. We take our experience of the external world and think about them. In thinking we turn inward. The world we create in our minds appears as real as the world the remains independent of our lives. The Jew has a special personal relationship with Yahweh the God of the chosen. Yahweh talks to the Jews on a personal horizon. The Christian has only the God of everyone. God the father is a hard God to love. He is cold and distant. He is rational and uncaring. He can offer me nothing I already except what I already have. Reason from my intellect and life from Nature. What I need is love. Christ becomes necessary to express love in its perfect form. Love is irrational passion. Emotion focused on another. Christ because he loves is alive in human affairs. Christ cares deeply about people. The relation between Father and Son is understood through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost remains the abstract, and the three Gods are reduced to one God the Trinity.
Love is coming to terms with our isolation in the Universe. Nature exists before I was born, outside of me and thus seems too remote and uncaring. Nature like the Father is not accessible to personal appeals. Humanity is too abstract. Love can watch over me personally, protect me personally, and give me as an individual strength to deal with my problems. This love is Christ. Christ is born of woman, and thus is born of Nature. Christ is connecting to us through his Human Mother. Our Humanity is our nurturing Mother, the Mother of God. The Mother Son relationship becomes the model for our higher values of compassion. Mary the Mother was at Christ’s birth, his death and his Resurrection. Christ love, he is also nurturing and forgiving. He is more “Woman” than he is Man. “The Father Created Christ through Mary”. The Father can relate to humanity only through the Mother. The Father creates through Magic; the Mother creates through Nature. Humans are Nature and not magic. Magic is imagination, the creative side of reason. Love is a Natural instinct; love is biological part of our lives. Love is part of Nature. Humans are a part of Nature, with reason and imagination. We are Christ and Mary. Like the Father the Mother and the Son are our creations (60-69).
The Humanist position is we create God in our own image. God is the perfection of humanity, what no one human can ever hope to be. God has two Natures. The remote God of perfection of is the soul of reason, logic, math and science. The Law of perfection is beyond the reach of any human. The Law gives us certainty in the uncertainty of Nature, but leaves failing to obey a Law beyond our reach. The Human God can share our weakness, and our failure in the face of uncertainty. This contradiction is the Godhead, united through the obscure Holy Ghost.
Nature has no consciousness, Nature is and beyond that does not care if I live or die. Nature is Humility. The Godhead exists only for humans. In the vast universe in which our galaxy, solar system, and planet are buried in remoteness. God is obsessed with me alone. Of all the species that have become extinct God only is concerns with humans on the isolated corner of nothingness. My prayers are more important than the explosion of suns. God is the ultimate expression of the narcissistic ego. Through God all things are possible, we need not take responsibility for our survival as a species. The individual does not need the community of shared humanity, nor Nature. Collectively humans through science gains are deeper understanding of Nature. As long as we fear death, we need God. When we lose our fear of death we can embrace Nature and truly celebrate life (85).
The intelligent design says the entire universe was created to meet the needs of humans. Animism and the Pantheist say the Gods were created out of Nature, the Humanist all there is Nature. The Christian says God created the Universe and all of Nature. Humanist say Humans are special to Humans as a part if a Human community. We are the social creation of our society, just as we are the physical creation of Nature (87-90).
In Nature we drawn if we cannot swim, with God through faith we walk on the water. Nature will not rescue us from the ravages of Nature we must take precautions. In Nature we must work to provide ourselves with food, clothing and shelter. With God who creates Nature can amend Nature by the whim of faith. God creates the laws of Nature and as a matter of course breaks them to answer prayers. To the Humanist humans are but one animal among many. This means humans live in Nature as a part of Nature. Nature becomes to the Humanist the focal point of their reverence (104).
Like the pantheist and the animist, the Humanist finds life, as part of Nature is all that is required to have happiness in life. Unlike the pantheist or animist the Humanist has no personal need to transcend material Nature for the spiritual. God adds nothing to the life of the Humanist. Her life is complete without religion. Because the Humanist embraces her social humanity, she is capable of living an ethical life of empathy and compassion. Her social humanity is inseparable from material Nature (105).
If God has created all of Nature for humanity, then God must need humanity more than humans need God. If God died for the benefit of humans, than this need is deep. If the only for me to attain salvation is by believing in this God who died for me, than Gods need of humans is complete. God became man to save humans. God did not become a dog to save dogs. God is a personal companion of humans; God loves humans with a deep passion. The Humanist neither needs nor wants God or his love. The Humanist is the ultimate subversive. God offers nothing the Humanist recognizes. She faces mortality as a natural part of life. Her humanity is special because she is human. Wild animals far isolated from human settlement find things other than people important. The Humanist does not need the Universe to be created for her special need to feel important. She finds happiness in the far off corner of a modest insignificant galaxy, in a irrelevant solar system on one the smaller planets as member of a species that one may find the choice to evolve or become extinct (110 –111).
There is no godly champion to save you, you must save yourself. Sartre was right, life flicks you a lot of shit and that happens no matter what, but what you do with that shit you are always free to choose.
Secular Humanism is also can be defined as Non-clerical Humanism the individual can enjoy life happily in a secular and worldly narrative existence in which truth and a strong special meaning can be found through affective atheism. However an agonistic is a humanist if the agonistic is one who lives as if god or a higher power was not necessary to truly meaningful life. Because any secular humanist lives in a Non-religious Humanism life, humans are capable of personal fulfillment and an ethical life without a higher power, or a supernatural god.
Dialectical Materialism states everything in the universe can be understood in terms of mater in motion. The universe, nature and human communities are natural, thus a part of a tangible process continually unfolding in a never-ending course of transformance. The materialist is a mortal in the full celebration of the human animal’s never ending interaction with nature, and as always becoming and being a part of nature.
These two taken together becomes the celebration of that ceremony called life, each day indulged to it’s fullest. Biography of the individual is never a burden to be endured.
We as humans are an on going part of a global history of human evolution. An animal species in a global ecosystem defines that history. We live on a tiny planet, in a remote solar system in the corner of our galaxy and lost in a labyrinth of galaxy clusters. All of which is created of matter in motion in-between the void. Substance is existence composed of physical occurrences resulting of material interactions.
The ethic derived from being human is built on compassion in turn built on understanding, identification and empathy because humans are defined by our are ability to have an imagination.
We can learn to put human beings at the cornerstone of our morality.
By seeing the world as a single natural ecosystem we can use the best of science to rationally make sense of our lives on this planet.
Endorsing and reinforcing the human thriving throughout all boundaries, borders and nations while defending human rights for all people everywhere is embedded deep within our set of ethics. We then expand this concern for the existence and dignity of all life on earth along with the global environment.
Originated and rooted in the intensely wonderful view that there are millions of solar systems in our galaxy. There are millions of galaxies in our galaxy cluster, and millions of galaxy clusters in our universe isn’t all of this just to awesome for words.
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