2020-08-14
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I'm reading Harari's "Sapiens - Brief History of Humankind". I can
see why people keep mentioning the book. There are a lot of
valuable "assumption prodding" in it. For example, he explains
why many things that are seen as bad have actually been very
important to get us where we are. Things like empires,
monotheism, money, and so on. The book has a lot of triggering
in it, basically.

One of the triggers that sort of stopped me on my tracks was that
he claims that all forms of humanism are in fact religions. His
definition of religion is that there is a belief in superhuman
order and that this belief sets human norms and values.

His examples of humanism are
   1) evolutionary humanism (nazis)
   2) liberal humanism (individual freedom)
   3) social humanism (socialism)

Basically he says that the "superhuman" thing that we believe in
is the concept of humanity. This concept of humanity is exalted
in all of these "religions". He thinks that if you are to say that
these are not religions you will also have to say that Buddhism
isn't a religion. You could do this by defining religion to mean
something more strange than "belief in superhuman order", for
example belief in gods or magical thinking. Both Buddhism and
Nazism can have magical thinking or not, depending on person.

Personally I would be fine with saying Buddhism isn't a religion
since an atheist buddhist is not an oxymoron while atheist
christian is. I guess this would mean that Judaism fell on both
sides of the fence.

But, I do think that Harari is trying to point out something
important with his definition. There definitely are such fervent
ideologues among the humanists that they have taken themselves
to somewhere unreachable by logic.

I haven't read the whole book yet, so I don't know if he revisits
the subject, but so far it seems that if there is a mistake with
what he is saying, it is that he doesn't widen this concept to
include other ideologies that are easily within reach. Scientism
comes to mind. There are people who think they know enough about
science to use it in places where we actually don't know that
much in. Like using sociology or linguistic deconstruction to
define policy, for example.

I think I would say that any set of beliefs can be taken as a
religion. Like, if you define social norms through statistical
method, you have taken the method to be a "superhuman order".
Conversely you could be a non-religious humanist by recognising
that "humanity" is not some absolute value, but that it happens to
be, on a practical level, the most effective philosophical tool
for allowing us to exist on this planet for more than a couple
centuries.

I have a feeling that Harari will point out that without science's
humility (the understanding that we don't know everything)
humanism is confined to so impractical dogma that it turns into
hindrance. If he was to say so I would agree.

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