Secular Humanism’s Whitewashing of Our Relationship to Nature

Animality, people’s progress, and the humanist manifesto

The secular humanist manifesto is a remarkable document.

Imagine a religion based not on loyalty-testing submission to theological fantasies, but on the most minimal representations of reality, on the observations that science works, that people flourish when they cooperate, that the modern promotion of secular interests has been socially and technologically progressive.

That’s secular humanism, and you could even consult science-fictional conjectures of how far we might progress in the distant future due to humanistic principles. That would be human-made progress, the kind we’ve already seen in history, projected to compound for centuries or even millennia.

The first humanist manifesto, written in 1933, spoke optimistically about humanism as a socialist religion. That was updated in 1973 to reflect the sobering realities of WWII and the Cold War, and a shorter version of the manifesto appeared in 2003.

As commonsensical and encouraging as most of these manifestos may seem to nontheists, there’s a tension in them that bothers me. The tension is perhaps clearest in the third manifesto.

In laying out how our species is natural in that we evolved from other animals, the third manifesto says, “Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.” This rewords a line from the first manifesto: “Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process.”

Yet the thrust of these manifestos is about how we can progress as a species by being, effectively, unnatural, or even anti-natural.

The third manifesto says, “We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity.”

That’s an illusion to the anomaly of personhood, which makes us godlike rather than animalistic. After all, these humanist manifestos don’t talk much about animal rights. On the contrary, they’re explicitly humanistic rather than being about the progress of life in general. They’re about how humans can win, as it were, in the race of life.

How, then, can we be “an integral part of nature,” while also having unique, inherent dignity as godlike persons? What’s so natural about that anomaly?

Again, the third manifesto says, “We aim for our fullest possible development and animate our lives with a deep sense of purpose.”

This alludes to progress by self-assertion, by the application of all our skills and cognitive capacities. Perhaps that line goes as far as to promote neoliberal consumerism, the supposed right to stuff our faces, to “live fully” by sampling the widest possible variety of products and services on offer in free, secular societies.

But how does any of that anthropocentric progress occur naturally, without our literally overriding the wilderness with our artificial domains?

Then there’s this line: “Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. Progressive cultures have worked to free humanity from the brutalities of mere survival and to reduce suffering, improve society, and develop global community.”

The talk of “maximizing happiness” is consistent with consumerism, which is antithetical to viewing our species as wholly natural, or as being just another part of nature. Whether secularists ought to focus on being happy seems to me dubious on other grounds, but it’s that reference to being freed “from the brutalities of mere survival” that’s most relevant here.

That line seems to imply a distinction between animals and people. Animals are stuck with the brutality of merely eking out a living in their niche, which sets them at the mercy of natural selection. By contrast, “progressive cultures” advance precisely beyond that state of animality or that servitude to natural law. We live, rather, by social laws, by the ideals of progress for our species, not by our supposed oneness with nature.

If we wanted to be at one with the universe, we’d drop out of society and meditate on a mountaintop. We’d be Buddhists or Jains, swearing a vow of ahimsa. That’s not the thrust of secular humanism. Humanists want to flourish, not just survive, and the idea is that we can do so without theistic religions, by relying on technoscience to solve our practical problems, and on our enlightened social instincts to facilitate camaraderie and productive collective action.

But how is that freedom from the laws of natural selection that limit the development of species to the options of extinction or adaptation (transitioning into a new species) not at least implicitly anti-natural? How could a species that’s “an integral part of nature” hope to do more than merely survive, given that nature has no favourites? Evidently, we’d have to take the reins, as civilization has in fact done, which has made for an historic rebellion against nature.

Finally, there’s this line, which encapsulates the contradiction: “Thus engaged in the flow of life, we aspire to this vision with the informed conviction that humanity has the ability to progress toward its highest ideals.”

The phrase “engaged in the flow of life” recalls the first line about our being “an integral part of nature.” Supposedly, we’re just another animal species caught up in the continuum of evolving species. That’s fair enough as a matter of biology, but biology doesn’t have the final say about what can evidently emerge from nature. Complexity takes on psychological, sociological, economic, moral, and aesthetic forms, too.

In any case, despite being allegedly confined to that “flow of life,” there’s that conviction that our species can “progress” towards our “highest ideals.” If we’re just part of the flow of life, shouldn’t we be confined to living under the law of the jungle? Whence these “highest ideals” which would provide us with personal and social ambitions found nowhere else in the animal kingdom?

Again, how could that progress be possible if our species weren’t anti-natural, as opposed to being just another part of nature?

I understand why it’s worth saying that we’re fundamentally natural beings rather than supernatural ones. The secular idea is to close the door on theism: we’re not a supernatural species, created by a transcendent deity, and miracles in the religious sense are unlikely.

That’s fine, but the manifesto goes further, I think, in whitewashing our relationship to the universe.

Is a godless universe alright as it stands? If so, why the need for “progress”? Why the celebrations of our deliverance from the Stone Age and of the civilized enterprise? If we ought to be part of nature because nature is perfect despite its lack of intelligent design, why the history of human intelligent designs of artificial alternatives to the natural state of inhuman wildness? Why have we literally walled ourselves off from nature if we’re just an integral part of nature? Why call us people rather than animals? Indeed, outside of a biology class, why is it insulting to call a person an “animal”?

It’s not just because many of us are bamboozled by religious fictions that exaggerate our importance in theological terms. Those fictions resonate because they speak to the historical fact of our species’ anomalous, godlike status in the Anthropocene.

Another reason for this whitewash is to promote environmentalism rather than a blinkered view of progress which would be clearly self-destructive. And that’s fine, too, but it’s political rather than strictly honest. Humanists should be more honest than theists, and indeed the humanist manifestos are generally more truthful than the creed of any theistic religion. Still, this one tension is a sticking point for me. It makes the humanist sound like a salesperson.

The upshot is that these manifestos don’t present the truth of our species’ relationship to nature.