Jan 2008 Meeting and Speaker

Report and commentary by Grant Rogerson

On Saturday January 12, the Humanist Association of Manitoba held both its AGM and its regular January meeting at the Viscount Gort Hotel. The result of the AGM will be covered in the February newsletter.

The regular meeting was attended by 30 people, including existing members, some walk-ins and potentional new members, and our guest speaker Jim Clark, Professor of Psychology at the University of Winnipeg. His topic was Cultural Threats to a Rational Worldview.

Jim gave us a talk and presentation that was not just about the topic itself, but what humanists and humanistic views themselves are going to be facing in the coming years. The rational worldview is narrower than humanist worldviews. To quote, the rational worldview is "beliefs and actions based on reason and science, rather than religion, tradition, (irrational) authority, and the like."

The humanist worldview is larger, and includes things like equality and ethics, and other things that are more culture than science. He pointed out that equality could be construed by others as equality of all cultures and traditions, and so be a point where a wedge might be driven into humanistic values, subverting the intent. Indeed that is what some have already argued to an extent and some people with supernatural beliefs call themselves humanists, despite another base value that humanists do not subscribe to supernatural beliefs.

The stumbling block becomes the concept known as relativism, and Jim talked about relativism at length. The condensed version: relativists believe all ways of knowng the world are equally valid, be they spiritual, scientific, cultural or just made up on the spot. They would also have us believe that science, coming from (generally) white European males, is intrinisically bad and therefore anything coming from any other source is good. So, homeopathy, therapeutic touch, astrology, and other things Penn and Teller call Bullshit are somehow above reproach. And relativism includes cultural elements so other "good" equally valid ways of being include female genitial mutilation and when it comes right down to it the cultural creation of the mid 20th century known as Nazism.

We can call relativists a bunch of nutters who should clue into reality (scientific and humanistic reality), but this changes nothing. As Jim points out, the numbers are on their side. He showed us a sampling of the numbers. Tt turns out that belief in evolution over creation is vanishingly small in most parts of the world. And even in countries like China who have few theists, strong cultural traditions are very prevalent despite no evidence of efficacy. Bear gonads, anyone?

And how do we deal with that fact that the citizenry of one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, America, has almost the same level of religiosity as Turkey – a Muslim country? It strikes me as bizarre that religion can be so strong in a country whose contributions to medicine, physics and space travel are unparalleled – and these achievements require evolution, an ancient universe and the scientific method. And religious belief and unsupportable traditions in the US, Canada and parts of Europe are on the upswing.

Jim pointed out that many immmigrants bring the trappings of their homeland with them (not all, as many come here to escape that). With our birthrates at lower than replacement levels, it could be that immigration alone is bring up the numbers. I personally think that the complexity of the modern world drives at least some people to go for the easy answers – god, mysticism, traditions and unquestioning belief – but this was not discussed.

Immigration and immigrants are not our enemy. Irrational and superstitious beliefs are, and these must be fought lest we decline into theocracy and tribalism. Being able to communicate to newcomers the value of what we have achieved in our societies through secularism and science is the challenge. Make no mistake, the people who believe that theocracy, tribalism and supernaturalism are more correct ways of living are the majority in this world.

One of the risks Jim pointed out is that traditionally antagonistic fundamentalists are already feeding off of each other. One Harun Yahya produces large numbers of books and tracts (and a website) primarily for an Islamic audience. According to Jim, much of the material is copied from material written by the American creationist organization Institute for Creation Reasearch.

A nice set of answers to creationist claims are at Jim Meritt's The General Anti-Creationism FAQ.

But again, with humanists and like people in the minority, are we doomed to living in a society where the belief that the world is carried on the back of a turtle is held as equal to the demonstrated orbit of the earth around the sun, sans turtle? That is the challenge.

We can thank Jeff Olsson for contacting Jim Clark and convincing him to come talk to us. Jim has given us a lot to think about, and came to us as someone with a rational worldview.

I am pleased to see the caliber of people speaking at our meetings remains top notch.

At the end of his talk, Jim answered questions and socialized with the attendees.

Note: this page subject to a few revisions to grind out errors and omissions - gr.