REveritt wrote:
Now it is my belief that Humanianity has much to offer you, and that it does not offer anything that you would consider unacceptable, assuming that you came to understand what it really is. Knowing your values, I would predict that you would even eventually come to advocate for it. What is stopping you is all the negative stuff that you have come to associate with religion, because probably all of them have negative stuff, this being true of humans in general.
I don't have a strongly negative attitude about Humanianity, or I would not be here, but I do not see that it offers me anything that I cannot get elsewhere.
Well actually, that is an interesting issue. Indeed, anything that Humanianity has to offer, if it is good, surely must exist elsewhere also, because Humanianity is all about identifying all the different ways of promoting the REUEP. If only Humanianity had all the answers, then the world would surely be a strange place! Of course the good and helpful things in this world are distributed throughout the world, and replicated many times over. It92s not that the whole world is wrong, with the exception of the tiny island of Humanianity.
But if that is so, then what is the use of Humanianity?
First of all, we have to remember that Humanianity is for everyone. That doesn92t mean that everyone has just found out that they are embedded in Humanianity. It means that Humanianity is there for them if they wish it. And Humanianity is there for those that indeed are Humanian (committed to trying to live according to the REUEP), but also for those that simply find it interesting or helpful in any way.
But what is that help supposed to be?
Humanianity is supposed to be a central, most convenient 93place94 for an individual to do the most profound thinking regarding the central issues in his or her life, the construction of the meaning of the life that he or she will have lived, the answer to who he or she is and who he or she wishes and intends to become. And it is free.
Now I would like to ask you where that is available to you other than at Humanianity? I92m sure it is available, maybe at some religious organizations, but you don92t like them. You could hire a psychotherapist, but I92ll bet you would not be able to talk about the things you can talk about at Humanianity, and it will cost you.
And it could be rather stressful and unrewarding (and even unwise in some cases) to attempt to do this with your primary significant other.
So where can you go for this function within your life?
To be sure, you don92t have to do this in the first place. And no one is going to force you to. Humanianity is there only if you find it useful. I believe that the world would be a better place if everyone had such motivation, but we are young as a species and only some of us will have this kind of motivation until we become much more mature. (That time I refer to as the time of 93Homo rationalis.94)
Again, you are condemning religions because of the archaic function that they retain from before the second exponential change, rather than seeing religion, assuming continuing improvement, as having the potential for helping people to 93think about ethics.94 (I think we think about ethics all the time, almost automatically, but we do not do it effectively, and we are still primarily committed to authoritarian ethics, as I define it, and only beginning to make the major transition to rational ethics, as I define it).
It is my aversion to "authoritarian ethics" that is one of the reasons that I react negatively to your styling Humanianity as a religion.
But hopefully you are beginning to contemplate the possibility of religion based upon rational ethics rather than authoritarian ethics (using my definitions of these terms).
Humanianity seems to be a philosophy (a form of Utilitarianism, as I have said).
Humanianity is a human activity designed to help people choose the answers to the philosophical questions that are important to them. What form of Utilitarianism is it?
Certainly, religions often contain elements of ethics, but they also typically contain other elements, including supernatural beliefs, revealed truth, threat of punishment, and so on. If Humanianity has none of those other elements, then why not simply call it a philosophy?
Well first, I think everything that has been called a religion has ethics as its central feature. None of the 93other elements94 you name are found universally in all things called 93religion.94 Humanianity can contain them, but does not have to. Your Humanianity and mine would be rather similar, I suspect.
Do you call it a religion in the hope of attracting people who think they need religion?
YES! And I believe they are right! We as a species need a religion or religions, but they need to be much better than most that we currently have. As we mature as a species, so will our religions. And our maturing religions will help us to mature. People are not all at the same level of maturity. A good example is that of children and adults. Another is that of the relatively uneducated and educated. Another is that of the relatively emotionally impaired and unimpaired. We humans do best by helping each other to become the best we can become, and to live the best lives of which we are capable.
And the more we do this, the better is life for all of us, now and in the future. By better, I mean only having as much joy, contentment, and appreciation as possible and as little pain, suffering, disability, and early death as possible.