I really should like the British Humanist Association. They are, in the main, my kind of people.
…people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs. Our vision is of a world without religious privilege or discrimination. We promote Humanism, campaign for an open society and a secular state, and work with others of different beliefs for the common good.
Humanists are atheists and agnostics who make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values. We take responsibility for our actions and base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfillment. We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together.
That sounds right up my alley. To me Humanism is an essentially optimistic world view. Reality based, it sees people as basically good, sensible and rational. Of course this not always the case, but Humanism is unashamedly pro-people. In this it is very similar to Libertarianism. Libertarians believe that people are essentially sensible and can be broadly relied upon to act with enlightened self interest, or if not to keep it to themselves.
Despite the apparent natural fit between me and the BHA, I frequently find myself at odds with their programmes, which seek to enlist the state to enforce their viewpoint.. Reading this months New Humanist over breakfast this morning I came across just such an idea:
BHA Campaign to make sex education mandatory
Whilst the latter idea, that kids should be taught evolution, is not something I can take fault with, the first has my blood boiling. In it’s quest to make us all free from ignorance and superstition the BHA wants the state to remove the ability of parents to choose how to raise their children. It is seeking to use force to enforce it’s view.
Of course kids are better off with sex education. Of course people who deny this to their children are stupid. But this is their choice. The argument can be made that refusing education to children is abuse, and that they should be protected from this. This is a difficult one to argue though, as it gives the state free reign to interfere as they choose. If applied to matters of conscience, like religion, then it could also be used to justify state action against the children of people who refuse to accept climate change, or who don’t recycle, or think the BBC is wrong or any number of other belief-based ideals.
People have the right to be wrong. To be stupid, and to be mocked for it. The BHA gets this point sometimes, and even makes use of it in this advert from the same magazine (Click to embiggen)
See the critical part? The thuggery espoused by the NutCase?
You’re talking rubbish mate. In fact you’re such a relativist moron that the only thing I can possibly suggest is that you are silenced forcibly by the state to prevent your idiotness from spreading to others
How is that different than mandating sex education against parents wishes? It’s using the violence of the state to make an idea a thought crime. That the idea is stupid and wrong doesn’t matter one iota.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I share your dismay about the propensity of many people to resort to statist force to spread their views. The view that it is acceptable to use force in this way is incredibly common but it strikes me, to steal an excellent expression I saw elsewhere, as like “being at sea without rudder or compass.” Once one accepts that it is moral to use force to change society for good then anything may happen as the definition of what is good is open to change.
I read this article recently, which I think relevant here as schooling is at least partially to blame for this attitude.
It is so annoying that the BHA in particular should resort to this though. It is perhaps not surprising given they have Polly Toynbee as their head, but they really should be above this.
Cheers for the article link, I’ve added it to my instapaper to read later.
I think that the argument for the state to intervene to require sex education is greater than evolution v creation. In the former the state gets to pick up the bill for failure in the latter it makes no difference except in attitudes to the former. I’m happy to mock folk for being creationists or but I don’t want to pay for their kid’s kids.
Sure the state is organised violence, it’s just a question of which choice is less so in the longer term.
The problem here is that one supposed set of morals, that child sex education is good, gets the backing of the state, whilst another, the view of the nutcase in the BHA cartoon, is seen as wrong. I would agree with the assessment of which belief is correct, and which wrong, but I do not think the state, or anyone else, should be able to enforce such views with force. Justifying that by claiming that worse consequences will follow is equally bogus. These consequences only fall on the shoulders of the state, and thus everyone else, because the state decides this shall be so. If people were left to feel the consequences of their actions then there would be a genuine disincentive to act foolishly. As it is…