Humanist Manifesto III, Article 3 - "Ethical Values"

He can take a punch, which is always the best kind of sparring partner. However, as Con has been exasperated repeatedly by my refusal to answer some of his more shrill complaints, I will clear some of the remaining rebuttals that he has offered, and then present a brief closing statement. Rebuttals Con: “(Quoting me) “I’m fairly sure that if any philosophy or political system had killed 150 million people since WWII, we would have heard about it on the news by now. ” My opponent commits a logical fallacy. Since humanists have not taken responsibility, he assumes theyare not guilty. This is known as an appeal to ignorance. ” (Sic) My Rebuttal: An "Appeal to Ignorance" occurs when an person claims to know how something happened, because they do not understand what happened. A classic appeal to ignorance fallacy reads, “I do not understand how the universe works. Therefore, I know that a specific god made it. ” My statement could have been interpreted as an Appeal to Ridicule, as I am belittling his claim that Humanists have slaughtered 150 million people. Had I been so inclined, I could have framed my response to the idea that Humanists have killed so many innocents like this: Has Humanism really killed more people than Godzilla, NAZIs, UFO invaders andzombies? The picture that Con paints would have us believe that we are in themidst of a great mass extinction, a Humanist (instead of a zombie) apocalypse,and the human race is hanging by a thread. Millions and millions are dead, (150million, in fact) nations are in ruin, and our Humanist United Nationsoverlords are enslaving the survivors. …Or I could just point out that there just aren’t all that many humanists out there, and that killing 150 million people has to be a lot of work. Con: “I don’t need to prove that 150 million deaths can be attributed to humanism because he has yet to prove that 800,000 deaths in Rwanda are not directly resulting from Humanist inaction. ” (Sic) My Rebuttal: I am not certain how to “prove” that machete – wielding zealots were more directly involved in the Rwandan deaths than hippie Humanist girls singing songs in between college classes… if this isn’t a little obvious. Does this proof have to occur before we can address his hyperbolic 150 million murders accusation? Con: “I provided evidence which demonstrated that humanism lacks merit and my opponentdropped all my points. ” My Rebuttal: I actually did address them – and swept them all up as mere appeals to authority. I would have responded more comprehensively if Con had spent as much time describing the arguments that these men produced as he spent describing their degrees. Con might have made an impact with his appeals to the authority of Humanist thinkers – if he had used better-known, and more authoritative, Humanists in his examples. Albert Einstein, for example. Or John Stuart Mill. Or John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Tom Paine… there are any number of well-known thinkers that Con could have mentioned. Instead he chose obscure writers and took statements out of context. Let Gandhi explain why he helped kill 150 million innocent people, or let Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explain why he ‘allowed’ African genocide to occur, and these statements still will not establish that Humanists are to blame for these things more than the authoritarian warlords that ordered these massacres. (No authoritarian Humanist warlord exists that has killed 150 million people. Because Humanism and authoritarianism are mutually exclusive. ) Con: Humanism and Authoritarianism are identical, because the individual is enslaved by the collective. I have addressed this several times, but not directly. Con has invented a thing that he calls “Humanism. ” This invention of his is indeed, authoritarian and oppressive. But this description is a flimsy straw man, wholly unlike the actual thing that is being described by self-indentified Humanists. Only a lunatic would support such a system. Actual, real Humanism seeks to fulfill human potential, not to oppress it, or to destroy our individual rights. Actual, real Humanism is something that supports human achievement, freedom and happiness as a moral virtue – and argues that humans must achieve these things by themselves, without recourse to aliens or spirit guides. All liberty must, by definition, be individualized. The entire concept of liberty is nonsensical on a mass scale. Con: “Humanism absorbs the individual into a collective, stunting, limiting or entirely suppressing liberty and license for the citizen, all in the name of the greater good. Humanism is a fantasy. Humanism is utopian. Humanism is anti-individual. Humanism is anti-human. Humanism is evil and therefore, it is incapable of authoritatively supplying ethics and morals. ” (Sic) My Rebuttal: Where do I start? I am frankly at a loss with this statement. The level of hyperbole on display here recalibrates every standard of rhetoric and debate. Although we do agree on one point: Humanism is incapable of authoritatively supplying ethics and morals. But not because Humanism is “evil;” rather, because it is inanimate. It is human beings who authoritatively provide ethics and morals – Humanists merely recognize this fact. Con: “My Opponent uses Axiomatic logic when he says that humans write, enforce and interpret human standards of conduct. ” My Rebuttal: I can prove it. For evidence, we may look up any law written by the US Congress over the past 100 years or so. Each of these pieces of legislation has the names of the humans who wrote them – directly on the lawitself. Sometimes these laws require judicial review – or interpretation. When this happens, the Judges reviewing the law will identify her or himself. Spoiler: they are all humans. Just like I said they were. So, not axiomatic. (Source: “I am Just a Bill on Capitol Hill” video, Schoolhouse Rock, Youtube 9/4/2012 link- . http://www.youtube.com...) Closing Statement: Humans create human codes of conduct, and despite their best efforts, other humans are still jerks sometimes. My requirement throughout this debate has partially been to rebut the idea that non-humans create human laws, ethical rules, standards of conduct, penalties for violations, etc. This was done very quickly, and so Con and I have been doing a bit of rhetorical MMA to pass the time since then. He has never shown any evidence that those non-human computers, aliens or whatever, “devise, interpret or enforce” human standards of conduct. He has never really challenged the assertion that “Humans interact with each other using agreed upon standards of conduct. ” All other arguments and rebuttals that he has made since I produced this argument have been decorative; he really needed to successfully challenge my claim that humans make human laws, rules, ethics, etc. , but he never did. This failure has to be regarded as conclusive. I was also required to “explain the problem of inaction, indifference, evil and half-measures in the secular context, while still maintaining absolute moral authority. ” The godlike requirement to maintain “absolute moral authority” was retracted in the comments section, graciously. This allowed me to drive home the point that humans are very human. In fact, humans are more human than Con seems to realize – we screw up constantly. We have limitations that prevent us from ending all pain and suffering. We want things that we cannot have. These human shortcomings easily answer this part of my challenge. Humans are not “evil,” just imperfect. Cons' response to this seems to have been that these shortcomings should not be considered to be "human flaws. " This is insufficient, clearly. As I stated earlier, I have greatly enjoyed this debate, and I am aware that I have Con to thank for providing it.