Why? “I think the answer must be, because we have won … unbelief in religion, in both its fundamental tenets and in its institutions, is the order of the day.” 3 And in New Zealand, the local humanist organization felt the need to defend itself from the charge that in criticizing religion it was “flogging a dead horse.” 4 Yet in a way many humanists of the 1960s and 1970s could not have predicted, religion proved itself far more resilient than they supposed. She spoke of the secular responsibility to build a new society. In 1967, novelist and critic Marghanita Laski gave the Conway Hall Memorial Lecture, which traditionally centers on humanist concerns. While American humanism was casting the struggle in Manichean terms as a contest in which pessimistic thoughts bore the hallmarks of evil, in Britain the contest was thought effectively to be over. We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and rationality rather than blind faith or irrationality. In 1933, as Adolf Hitler was about to transform his country along the lines of tribalism and hatred, the Humanist Manifesto (now known as Humanist Manifesto I, because it had multiple successors) felt confident enough to declare: “In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of a candid and explicit humanism.” 1 Nearer the end of the twentieth century, the theme continued when the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH), now the Council for Secular Humanism, released what it called “The Affirmations of Humanism.” Among them was this expression of optimism: How well situated is humanism to face the challenges of the twenty-first century? In particular, what solutions can humanism contribute to the global ecological crisis from which the climate emergency is emerging as the defining crisis of our times? The omens don’t look good, because for a long time, humanism has associated itself with a sanguine optimism centered on progress.
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