Two kinds of Humanist

I’ve written of two kinds of atheist and two kinds of Christian. Belief systems are a somewhat tangled web, but I have noticed that nonetheless a rough distinction may also be made between two kinds of Humanist currently out there:

Soft

These are left-wing liberal idealists. You will often see them smoking, with piercings etc., protesting about something or other (it hardly seems to matter what). It’s hard to tell what they think because they generally refrain from making any value judgements, except that one must not make value judgements, and they rarely articulate themselves clearly. But they seem to be motivated by ideas such as:

• Religion is first and foremost bad because it is a control system
• Everyone is good really if only given the chance
• Capitalism is bad
• Everybody should be free to behave however they like (possible addition: as long as they are not affecting others)
• We shouldn’t dismiss foreign cultures just because they are foreign – they have a lot to teach us
• Cultural objectivists are racist (well, anyone is racist who doesn’t agree with us)
• The police are largely racist and oppressive
• We should feel guilty about all the bad things people from our country have done in the past
• Islam is not really harmful – moderate Muslims especially are fine

A lot of people go through this phase: it’s called teenage idealism and rebellion. But sadly these people seem to remain perpetual teenagers. They are naïve and not very helpful in the Humanist movement. Actually they’re not really Humanists at all.

Hard

These are social conservatives and realists, concerned about the disintegration of society and the decline of values. They are not afraid to make judgements and defend them. They are motivated by ideas such as:

• Religion is first and foremost bad because it encourages automatic belief of claims which are more than likely false
• There are dangerous people who want to kill us all (or at the least fail to integrate) because this is clearly written into books which they believe to be the word of God
• Religion is a mental virus
• Checked capitalism is the only viable way for an economy to operate
• Cultural relativism is bad, naïve and dangerous. Some cultural values can be shown to be more likely to lead to a happy life than others
• Faith schools are divisive, lie to pupils, and should be banned
• We can perfectly capably create our own value systems with reason, compassion, and a realistic awareness of dangerous threats
• Some liberties need sacrificing for the sake of security
• The police do an extremely difficult, unenviable job, and are vital to civilised society: without them society would descend into anarchy
• We are not the slightest bit accountable for bad things our ancestors have done, any more than we can take credit for them. And in any case, they weren’t all bad.
• Islam is an imperialist ideology, the Qur’an a book of hate, and “moderate” Muslims (who are essentially not Muslims at all), with their two masters, only serve to lend credibility to fundamentalists