Humanists, the Happy Heathens

Guarantee human.

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“Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.”

William, welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know about humanism, which I find fairly relatable in a lot of ways and in other ways, not necessarily. Yeah. Can we say what Livia, titled this one, she's been really killing it lately.

See, that's, go ahead. This is on humanism, the bright side of being a godless heathen. That's right, I was looking for that AHA definition because that put it about as good as anything in this whole article. The American Humanist Association, is it an association?

Yes. They are associated. Yeah, they put it like this. It's a progressive philosophy of life that without theism, or other supernatural beliefs, Epidig, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives, a personal fulfillment

that aspire to the greater good. And of course, if you don't know what theism is, we're talking about religion and God. So it's like, hey, you can be a good person and have a moral and ethical center and strive to do those things without God at the center of it. Yeah, for sure.

And most humanists, yeah, I think it's fair to say, most are atheists, or at least agnostic. At the very least, if they do believe in a God, he's not an interventionist God. He's not playing a role in our lives day to day. Maybe you could also interchange that definition of God with the universe or nature or something like that, but not God in any religious way whatsoever.

And in fact, if you do believe that, a lot of strict humanists will say, well, you can't really be a humanist because not believing in God in that sense is a core part of humanism.

“And a lot of other people say, hey, you're a humanist, who are you to tell me what I believe?”

And the humanist says, you got me. Yeah, and this will see it, you know, had kind of been tangled up with religion here and there until it kind of landed, eventually where it did. And we're going to talk a little bit about the history, though. That term humanism goes back to at least Cicero in 1st century BCE Rome when that very

famous writer, and I think lawyer and statesmen use the word humanitists to describe like people developing or the development of these qualities, these virtuous qualities that Chuck will talk about, like a moral and ethical center, compassion, good judgment, like being a good person and doing good things. Yeah.

And then we leapfrog all the way over to the Renaissance, and you'll note that we let over what are called the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, medieval era, the Renaissance, humanists are the ones who gave us the term and the idea of the Dark Ages that there was a part of history where essentially the church ruled everything with an ironed fist, corruption

What these earliest Renaissance humanists did, they were all Christians to a person, most of them Catholics too. They changed that whole idea and said, what happens if we get the church out from between

“the individual and God, there's a connection between you, this person who is important”

and matters just because you're a person and God who made you, and this is where the very beginnings of humanism find themselves, even though no one in the Renaissance would have called themselves a humanist because that concept didn't really exist quite yet. This is the first step. Yeah.

I mean, looking back, we apply the tag to a lot of different people. We're going to talk about some of them, but yeah, they wouldn't have called themselves that then.

Petrarch was probably looked at as maybe the first humanist or the first modern man, sometimes

called. In the Renaissance, it was a pretty hot ticket depending on what crowd you ran with. If you were among the elites, in the Renaissance, you might have hired humanist scholars to come and teach your kids all about the moral systems of the classical era and very much in the effort like you were saying to bring us out of what they call the dark ages.

And some aspects of this whole movement in the Renaissance included three things we're going to kind of touch on here, a realism, dignity of the individual human and application of learning, like putting it into practice. Yeah. So, humanism contrasted with scholasticism, which had been going on for hundreds of years.

It was essentially the churches form of teaching and that was basically reconciling the concept of reality that came from the classical Greeks like Aristotle with scripture and basically using scripture to explain the world and reality as it is.

“And these humanists came along and they were like, what happens if we stop doing that?”

What happens if we just study the classical Greeks and just basically also still stay

Christians, but stop using this scripture, this received wisdom that the church gives us. What if we study it ourselves instead? And that brings up the second part you mentioned, which is the dignity of the individual human. Up to this point, individuality was not prized.

You were not supposed to look inside yourself, you're supposed to look outside at the glory of God. You yourself, if you paid too much attention to yourself, that was a quick one way trip to help for you when you died, the humanists were like, no, let's look inside ourselves. Like, we're important, you with the individuals important.

Yeah, and also part of that first one with the realism was that we are flawed. So if we want to learn about each individual and human, the nature of what it means to be human, we have to look at the bad stuff too, like the vices and the disorders and things like that. And then that last one that I mentioned was application of learning, like all the stuff is

great, but it's not naval gazing or we don't want it to be naval gazing. We want to actually stimulate action. Yeah, and you're not learning just so you can give more money to the church or something like that too. And if this sounds a little bit like Protestant thought about the connection between the

individual and God, that's exactly right. These thinkers eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, which basically pushed the face of the church off to the side and said, you and me, God, were connected. Yeah, for sure. And it'll also tie into the unitarian church in a big way, later on, a church that

is interested me. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I like my Sunday's free, so probably not going to go, but if any quote unquote church appeals to me at this age and where I am in life, it's definitely those guys.

Yeah. Those people that you see out in about it like 10 a.m. on a Sunday and give that little knowing head nod to. Yeah. Yeah.

“So something I think is reporting out real quick though, too, Chuck, is everything we're”

talking about involves God, even though the church has been pushed out of the way, God has not. Yeah.

God is still front and center, Christianity is still the most important thing around.

And that is, this is the cradle of humanism and one of the frequent criticisms of modern humanism is that it's never really shaken off the it's birthright from Catholicism or Christianity, even though it opposes religion itself. We'll get more into that, but let's find a put that out there for the moment. And we're also talking about like coming out of a time where atheism, like, could get

you killed. Yeah. You know, like saying that there is no God was was, you know, was against the law and punishable by death. Yeah, but that started to change gradually around beginning in the 17th century.

empiricism.

“He also invented Bacon and he also had a big hand into coming up with the scientific”

method. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about him and that. Yeah.

For sure, which has been largely abandoned by science in the last hundred years. Yeah. He argued for really studying like like what we call social social sciences now. He kind of kicked that off as well, the systemic study of like the human passions. But all these people that we're going to talk about here in the next little bit were, were

Christians. So this is sort of, this is where it was still time when it was still tangled up. Even though they had these ideas, all of these people, Bacon and this next person, Thomas Hobbes were Christian. Yeah.

Yeah. And the fact that there are Christians who identify themselves as humanists in vice versa,

“goes to show you like that those two things are not incompatible.”

Yeah. You can be religious and care about human beings and like they don't have to oppose one another. Although humanists have eventually said, yes, they do. Yeah.

I mean, that's the deal, right? I mean, did I read that correctly? Is the modern humanist movement was really where they were like, we're really separate from and can grew us with belief in God. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. So we mentioned Bacon. What about Thomas Hobbes?

Because he came up with the social contract, which was basically like, you and me, we

basically allow a government to rule us in exchange for protecting us from nasty, brutish short lives, which we would otherwise have without the state or without society, right? That doesn't sound very humanist, even though it's human-centered, because he assumed that humans were essentially bad and would club you over the head and kill you first chance they got.

“That's why we need government according to Hobbes, but he's considered one of the early”

humanists for sure. Yeah. And he was Christian as well. But he did not write a lot like in his writings, didn't write a lot about God. He kind of put that to the side and said, you know, if we want to understand who we are and

what it means to be human, we have to look at it through just a very sort of secular, and like very reason to approach. Right exactly. So humanist, rationalism to understand ourselves in the world.

Thomas Payne was also one, he was probably, yeah, he was like the first person that you

can point to him be like, the guy as a humanist, he even says so himself and not so many words, or more than those words. He was a pamphleteer who helped get the American Revolution started, despite moving to America just two years before the Revolution started. Yeah.

That's how effective his pamphlets were. Yeah, he was very forward thinking, he was arguing very early against slavery. He, you know, had an idea for what we might call universal basic income now, very much believe in the equality of all humans, and he has this quote that's, that's really pretty great.

Like I'm a big pain guy after reading up more on him. Sure. The country is the world that my religion is to do good, pretty pretty nice. Yeah, there's pretty much no better way to sum up the humanist view in, in, in, in, a nutshell than that.

Yeah. Yeah. The French Revolution also, there's a couple of people who get called out a lot, Jockey Bear and, and Juan, Francois Memoro, because they established the cult of reason where they would actually go in and seize churches in France during the Revolution and repurpose

them. I saw into temples of reason, I read about them on the collector, which is a great website that explains all sorts of different philosophies and stuff, great website.

Anyway, the French Revolution itself basically said Catholic Church, you're out, and then

they were like, okay, well, wait a minute, we're all about reason and enlightenment. We're going to fill the vacuum left by getting rid of the Catholic Church and all of these ideas like the cult of reason kind of came along, which was essentially create humanist temples to logic and in humans and humanity, remove God from the equation altogether. Yeah, for sure.

And buddy, do you think I like Thomas Payne? Don't get me started on Jeremy Bentham, because after reading up on Jeremy Bentham, I wish I had named my daughter Jeremy Bentham Bryant. That would have been a great name. I really miss an opportunity, because Jeremy Bentham was a great dude.

He was working for welfare programs for the poor early on. He didn't believe in slavery, obviously child labor, and this was like decades for anyone else was talking about this stuff. He was in two animals, and we'll see that's some of the criticism from humanists is that they kind of stop at humans, and that's not to say that humans can't be like pro-animal

or pro-environment, because most of them probably are. But Bentham very early on, when it talked about like the suffering of animals, he said

they can't reason that I've brain's like us.

“He combated that with the question is not can they reason, nor can they talk, but can”

they suffer? Yeah. What a thing to say in the 1700s. Yeah. I'm glad you explained what you meant by he was into animals, because I was convinced

that first of all, come on.

One of the other cool things about Jeremy Bentham is he willed his body to science. You donated to science early on, and they used it, they said, "Thanks a lot, buddy." Here's your skeleton back, because as part of his wishes, he wanted to remain at University College London, which he helped found as a secular college open to everybody. And he's still under glass at the University of College of London, dressed up in his own clothes.

He's got wax hands with gloves on. He has a wax head, and apparently he originally wanted his head to be part of it. So they used some, I guess, some Maori technique of desiccation, and it didn't go very well. And his desiccated head is still around, but they're like, Jeremy, you do not want to still leave us on your body, because he looks so great with the wax head, we're just

going to keep this separate under glass itself. Yeah.

Up with Jeremy Bentham, you mentioned the secular college.

He went well beyond separation of church and state, where he was like, "Colleges should have nothing to do." There should not be religious colleges. He really wanted to draw a strong divide between God and all the institutions. Right.

He was also the father of utilitarianism, which is essentially if, at its worst, killing one person saves two people, then you kill that person, which gave us things like the trolley problem as a utilitarian thought experiment essentially.

“Bentham, I think, didn't really think that way, but he was basically like, "We want to”

maximize the most good for the most people." Yeah. That's the way he developed it. Yeah. Pretty cool stuff.

Take a break. Yeah.

I think we're off to a hot start, so I'm going to go take a cold shower and we'll be right back.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite on humor me with Robert Michael and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and Headwriters, Streeter Side L helped an Occupella band with their "Between Songs" banter.

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“means the world to me, and that's what motivates me to win more gold medals.”

At our level at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning, it's about showing up, even when it's hard.

Isn't a hurdle with Emily Abadi on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of I-Heart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged, it's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I put on 10 pounds. I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth.

Listen to superhuman on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay Chuck, we're back, and we're going to talk about the development of human nationalism in the way that we know it today. Because up to this point, we've been talking about little bits here, little bits there, that all together changed the world.

States away from the church, and organized religions in general, and said, "No, there's

a way for you to live a upstanding, meaningful life without even believing that there's a God or an afterlife, and here's how we're going to do it." Yeah, I mean, the idea at the time, and there's still people that believe this, then 2026, which is pretty scary, is that if you were not religious and devout, then you were a heathen, and you were morally bereft.

And those people very early on stood up, and were like, "That didn't make any sense." Why is it, I don't believe in God, like, people have feelings in their heart or whatever.

“Someone realized, like, "Why is it in my heart?" I don't believe in a God, but I believe”

in doing really good things. Why are those two things have to be tied together, and that was humanism, or if you look

at philosopher and theologian from Germany, Frederick, Niethama, the term was humanism.

In 1808, and that is, he was kind of talking about that Renaissance humanism, those studies that they were doing with the people that are trying to sort of reform education during the Renaissance. Yeah, but very quickly, people latched on to that. He just kind of came along at the right place at the right time, which was Germany, because

Germany eventually became kind of the cradle of modern humanism. And eventually humanism, what we would call humanism now, we just dropped the US, or us, and if you kind of subscribed to that, it was way beyond the way that you interpreted scripture. It was, you supported women's equality.

Yeah. You were all about separation of church and state. You had compassion for all people, not just people that looked like you and had the same amount of money as you. You cared about actually doing stuff to get the government, to take care of poverty and things

like that, like the conception of Quakers at this time is a really good view of what it meant to be a humanist at the time, because you still believe in God, but you really cared about other people. And this was fairly new for Europe at the time. Yeah, for sure.

You mentioned the French Revolution, but in the 19th century, during the time of all those European revolutions, it also started to kind of touch on socialism, of course, and like this idea of a utopian society that we could strive for, it was starting to become a little more acceptable in the United States at the time, where, well, partially because of German immigration to the United States, and you were talking to them being the cradle.

But also Charles Darwin, and just this idea that you don't need these deist beliefs to be a good person, and there's something called free thought that can happen, like free thinking, is very much at this time of line with deism. Yeah, for sure. And free thought, essentially, as a concept, is it's just questioning everything, especially

“received with some, you stop and ask, like, well, wait a minute, why do I think that?”

How do I know that? You just challenge all of your own assumptions, and by doing that, you can kind of free yourself from being indoctrinated by the man, essentially. So this is when it seems to me the progressive movement in the United States really started to come about.

Yeah, right? This is the mid-18th century. Yeah, in the late 19th century, one of the next big things that happened was the establishment of the New York Society for Ethical Culture by my name Felix Adler. And this became essentially the ethical movement in capital E, capital M. And they were

basically, like, the very first humanists.

They tried to essentially provide the same thing that's a moral upstanding structure that the church provides for so many people to people who don't believe in God.

“Yeah, and not more than that, but alongside that, I think they realized that the church”

had something that people clearly liked in tradition and in ceremony. And they're like, hey, if we're going to be a thing, like, maybe we should have some of that stuff too. So they organized Sunday services, and they said, how about a, how about a deist marriage ceremony, like kind of substituting religious ritual for non-religious ritual, because

people like that kind of stuff? Yeah. They're like, how about atheist, holy communion, and the humanists are like, how does that

Right? They're like, oh, we don't know. This is new. We're just throwing everything we can at the wall. See what sticks.

Yeah. Maybe instead of the blood and body of Jesus, it's just crackers and grape juice. You can. And they're like grape juice or flavor, and they're like grape juice. So these grape, we used grape juice at our church, because even the Baptist did not take

wine. I know. I know. It's kind of funny to think about.

“I remember moving to the south of me, like, you don't drink any wine, like, even”

in church. Because I was raised Catholic. Well, just baby. Well, just baby. Yeah.

That's funny. So this whole kind of evolution is still going on in the United States in particular, so we started to take off humanism really as huge today, or through the 20th century in the US and the UK, they're kind of like hotbeds for humanist activity. And the people who are attracted to this were very frequently liberal intellectuals, philosophers,

literary, intelligence, like academic elites, and people who ran in their circles, which included communists at the time in the 20s and 30s, like basically super radical liberal thinkers were very much attracted to the early establishment of modern humanist organizations. Yeah. 100%.

That in the United States in particular, the University of Chicago in 1927 was one place where it really got cooking. They were efforts there by students and some professors who belonged, and this is where the Unitarian Church comes into play. They were Unitarian Church members, which is technically Protestant denominations.

It's very, has always been very politically progressive.

And in this group in Chicago, there are a lot of ministers even and theologians who had non-Christian ideas that they were putting forth like transcendentalism, and they had a magazine. They organized what's called the humanist fellowship, and put out the new humanist magazine. It was like all ads though. Yeah, roughly so.

All ads in perfume samples. Well, and at the very end, they had the little fold thing like the Mad Magazine Ted. It's very popular. But they were trying to move Unitarianism even in 1927 completely away from theism. Yeah, and Unitarianism, as a church, was like, yeah, let's go and then stop.

Just short. And that's where it's days today, essentially. Right. They're like, you don't believe in God? Great.

You can be a member of our church. Do you believe in God? Yeah. Great. You can be a member of our church.

It's universalist Unitarian. Right. Should we talk about the manifestos? Yeah. Because you can't have liberal thinkers and communists together and not come up with a manifesto.

It's just going to naturally bubble up from those people being together.

“And in 1933, I think, they drafted the first humanist manifesto.”

And it basically said, so, and this is where this is one reason why religious people don't

like humanists. It took direct aim at religion. Right? Yeah. And then this is why people who aren't religious don't like humanists.

But also called humanism, it's own type of religion. Yeah. Take that chuck and run with. It makes messages. Can I read this bit from the 73 manifesto?

Yeah. Or wait. This was, okay, the 73 was the manifesto part two. Yeah. Sorry.

1933. I believe. 33 was the first one, I think. Thank you. We got there.

Okay.

The 33 was the first one.

The 33 was manifesto two, and this, this is from 73. Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, marketly reduced disease, extend our lifespan, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution, and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, starting to sound a little bit like Scientology there.

And provide human kind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life. Yeah. And also, it also smacks of transhumanism too. Oh, yeah.

We noted by H plus, Stellarck. It's a branch of humanism where you graph to human ear on to your forearm. Right. Oh, boy. Man, I can't believe you remembered his name.

It just came right up. If you're a long time listener, you remember when we first talked about Stellarck. The transhumanists who did, in fact, graph to human ear to his arm, complete with a

“little speaker, like it, it, it heard and worked, right?”

Yeah. I think it, yeah. I had a Bluetooth speaker, which is probably dead by now. How many cute tips do you think that guy's gone through? No, perhaps.

He's like, got ketchup in there again. Oh, man. So the reason that they wrote the 1973 Manifesto 2 was because Manifesto 1 had a lot of, well,

Yeah.

“It was very pro-communist and socialism.”

It was anti-capitalist. It even said, quote, the existing acquisitive and profit-motivating society has shown itself to be inadequate. Yeah. It said, it was a religion.

So in 1973, they're like, let's just kind of get rid of some of this. Let's drop call ourselves a religion of any kind. We'll still take aim at religion, but we're not going to call ourselves a religion. We're going to drop the whole, like, communist capitalist, you know, West Coast East Coast War in our own manifesto.

Yeah. And then it's time went on. There were more affirmations. There were more manifestos. Yeah.

In 1983, in 2002, so all these were American, by the way.

In 2002, it finally went international, which what's called the Amsterdam Declaration

of Humanism from 2002. And it basically, it basically says, like, yeah, everything these guys have been saying, but take out the religion stuff and the anti-capitalist stuff. That's right. And they said, we need a word, though, if we're going to be consistent.

And so instead of religion, let's settle on this word, life stance. You know, oh, sure. Sure, life stance. Everyone knows what that is. We did a little digging.

It's a pretty obscure term.

“I think Wikipedia, which is not a website we really like to go to a lot for this.”

But that's kind of the only place we could find anything, but this is how they define it. It's the relation that one has with what he or she accepts as being of ultimate importance. It's a great definition of life stance for sure. Yeah. It really gets across and essentially it's what they use in place of religion, not just

what they offer, like humanism offers people, but what people need.

And that's one thing that humanism is always basically said is you need the things that

religion give to you. People need that. It's been around for thousands of years for a reason, right? Yeah. And there's all these different ones around the world that billions and billions of people

have subscribed to, because it gives their life meaning. It gives you purpose. It tells you how to be a good person. And humanists were like, all we're saying is that you don't need religion. You don't even need to believe in God to have all those same things.

And as the world and in particular the United States and the West has got more and more secular and less and less religious, there's a debate that's developed. It is humanism up to the task of providing meaning in people's lives in the absence of religion. And that definitely remains to be seen, but it seems to be leaning a little more like, no, actually things kind of fall apart when you don't have a lot of people who believe

that their lives have meaning because they believe in religion.

That seems to be the way things are leaning right now. That's not the end point necessarily though. No, for sure.

“And you know, I think I'm like you, like a lot of this stuff seems very appealing to me, a”

lot of the thoughts, but you know, when I was reading that one thing, I was like, man, this sounds a little Scientology like here and there. Sure. Sure. And then, what's the life stance?

Yeah. It just feels like the kind of word where you go to a meeting like a humanist congregational meeting and they're like, and now Josh would like to rise and share his life stance. And then everyone like, "Clucks and goes life stance, life stance or something." And that's when I like back out of the room very slowly.

You know, life stance says to me, it says, "I don't know what I mean." Right? That's what that word screams. If you use a word to describe what you're talking about and no one else knows what that word is, it's matter of fact, it's much more widely understood as the name of an insurance

company than is it. Then you, yeah. Then you, you, like he can't have figured out exactly what you're trying to say. That's my take on it. And what the reason they're using life stance is because they can't use the word religion.

Right. They're using that in place of the word religion. So a lot of people kind of look at humanism like me and these guys really tie themselves up and not to get around this religious thing. They're really preoccupied with religion despite saying you don't need religion to live

a good life. If you don't care about religion, stop talking about religion so much, stop focusing on religion so much. That's a big criticism of humanism that it's just, it's like those hilarious parodies of like southern preachers or whatever and it's making aim at hypocrisy and stuff.

If you really feel that way about the church or religion or God or whatever, just go your own way, do your own thing, stop paying attention to it, stop giving it your oxygen if you really feel that way about it. And if you don't, if you still are focused on it like that, there's something, there's some disconnect between what you claim to believe and what you're actually doing.

For the Josh, I want to thank you for sharing your afflack, afflack, afflack, afflack. That was great, Chuck.

I like that, that's screened. Maybe we should take a break and talk about what happened in 1941 right after this. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert Smigle and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Kirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier this week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Sidel,

helped an Occupella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes, those people are starving for banter. Wasn't a humor me with Robert Smigle and Friends on the iHeart Radio app, apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Life throws hurdles, big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches and Olympic champions, to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going.

From the WMBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Leila Edwards.

It's a boy can do it, I don't see what I can do, like I've never understood that, like

it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like you don't feel like you don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie LaDecu. The ability to show gold medals to someone and have their face slide up and smile, that

“means the world to me, and that's what motivates me to win more gold medals.”

At our level at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world, like I can do anything, like I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning, it's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to hurdle with Emily Abadi on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged, it's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games, and with

the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, everybody.

We're back. We're going to talk about what happened in 1941, not the movie in 1941, from Steve at Spielberg. Good one. I'm talking in, not really.

I'm talking about, did you like it? Hey, man. Anything that's got pollution in it, I like it. Yeah, I don't see what was wrong with it. It was a notorious bomb, but that's not to say you can't like it.

No, I do like it.

I just have never heard that other people didn't like it.

But yeah, yeah, it's pretty well regarded as a big flop, but I appreciate you sharing your app like once again. I had, that's my life stance on in 1941, it's a good movie. I can't wait to get sued. All right, so in 1941, there were two unitarian ministers that formed the AHA that we referenced

at the very beginning. The American Humanist Association, they advocate for humanist causes, like separation of church and state, of course, in schools that is like, "Hey, let's legalize birth control." Things like that. They have about 34,000 plus members with 230 local chapters and their, like, you know, their

“goal is, I think, not only to spread the word, but I think like you were saying is to like,”

try and unify into something that's with a coherent message that people can actually say, like, "Hey, that's a legitimate thing that you can believe in and follow." Yeah, like that appeals to me, so I'm going to go find out more about what you guys are saying. So, there's a guy named Andrew Copsson, he's very frequently cited when you're talking

about humanism. He's the executive of Chief Executive of Humanists U.K., and he basically says, "Here's what humanists are about." One, we use the senses in reasoning when we're seeking out the truth to understand what the world's all about.

We are all about rationalism, we're all about scientific inquiry. That's what our stuff is based on. It's not based on supernatural beliefs, again, it's not based on receive wisdom. It's about using rationalism in our own senses to understand the universe for ourselves. Yeah, can I just make a quick comment, I don't want to get too political, but using the

“senses in reasoning, that is missing, I think, a lot today, because we're in a world”

now where they're very powerful people in the world that are literally sort of gaslighting

Even though you're seeing it and hearing it, to see someone stand up and say, "Hey, one

“of our big tenants is going to be to use deceased stuff and hear stuff," and that's what”

it is. Yeah. Can I find your reasoning sensible? Yes. Affleck, affleck.

Viewing humans as the product of natural, biological processes and seeing death as the end of individual consciousness, so you're not going to an afterlife, you're not going to go hang out with Elvis and Tom Petty once you're gone, you're wounded. Yeah. There's nothing after that.

It's a real bummer part of it for sure.

It is, but I've always, well, I've always in my adult life, believe that.

And I don't think it's a bummer, that's just, yeah, I don't think it's a bummer. You know, I believe that for years and years and years, and I've just recently kind of started to, I don't want to say go back, but just kind of expand the possibilities. Yeah. That's good.

More than I used to. Because I was exactly where you're talking about, like that's it, like you're just, it's lights out. You don't even know it's lights out, because you don't exist anymore. Now, just like you didn't exist before you were born, this is exactly the same thing.

It's just tacked onto the end of your life, not the beginning of your life. Yeah, I like the term exploring that. I think that's, I think, I'm not opposed to anyone in there, believe. So I think it's great, especially when you get older and you're in, like, 40s and 50s. And you start kind of radically exploring new ideas.

I think that's very valuable. It's funny. I have been doing that a lot lately. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode in humanism. I've been reading a lot of different philosophy and just, yeah, exploring things that I hadn't

before. I didn't realize why, apparently it's because I'm about to be 50. Yeah, probably so. I've been hurrying. I have to find meaning in life before I die.

I've been watching a lot of kids in the whole year. Nice. You can do a lot worse than that. I've been reading rock bios, but that's fine, everyone has their own thing. What else?

“Chuck, how about if you want to live a good life?”

Yeah. What are you going to do? Well, you have to develop yourself personally, like keep striving to be better and do better, try to connect with others, pursue things that are truly meaningful. But you don't necessarily have to believe in the meaning of life to do all that stuff.

That's not what you're seeking. Yes, and from my recent exploration, that is essentially the basis of a philosophical existentialism, which actually is born out of nihilism.

And it's basically saying, yes, there's no God, there's no meaning to life where all

a fluke, but that doesn't mean you can't live a grateful, filling life, right? That has meaning that is meaningful to you. So go figure out what your life is, what you want it to be, if make it meaningful. And I think that's, if you do believe that there's no such thing as God, that to me is essentially the best mentality you can take on, that if there's no afterlife before all a fluke,

then it's up to you pal to go make meaning for your own life. Yeah, like live with intention, I think is another good way to say that to like not just be someone who thinks happened to. Yeah, or live without Netflix, that's another way to put it to you. That's another view moral behaviors, like consider other people's needs, like humanism

is not a self inward looking thing, like you're looking inward, but you're acting outward if that makes sense. Oh, it does. It makes perfect sense.

“It's not a self-centered or self-centered, that's what it's looking for.”

Yeah, you're not self involved. You care about other people. And yeah, by doing that, you're developing yourself, that's part of self-personal development, right? You're also not relying on any doctrine to teach you ethics.

Although you can go find ethics from like say, the great Greek philosophers, or Buddha, or, you know, Taoism or Confucianism, like you can go find these forever you want. You can even read the Bible or something and, sure, you know, like Thomas Jefferson edited

the Bible, he took the miracles out and just basically made it a really great moral handbook.

You could do the same thing, right, and still gain these ideas. The point is you're not supposed to take anything wholesale, including ostensibly humanism, like you should not just go, okay, I want to be humanist, tell me how to be, because they're going to say, no, you got to go figure that out. Yeah, you should probably start with a new testament, too, and just leave it at that.

Yeah, that old testament is grim. Yeah, it's a pretty grim, you know, if you're a humanist, you're, you're definitely like opposed to war, you value universal rights of all humans and equality.

of liberal progressive think, but you don't have to be like, oh, I'm a registered Democrat and a humanist, like you can, you can be anybody, argue maybe not, you could vote for anybody, but as far as political affiliation, it's not tied to any one thing. No, nor should it be, you know? We should probably name some famous humanist through the years.

You could start and end with Albert Einstein, but we're just going to start there. He supported the capital E, capital C, ethical culture movement, and was a founding member of the first humanist society of New York in a 1950 published essays in humanism. And he was, he was, he was walking the walk. Oh, he definitely was.

He was big time into world peace and civil rights, and he was a pantheist, apparently, as well. So, yeah, he was definitely the real deal as far as humanists are concerned. So, too, was Isaac Asmov and Kurt Vonnegut, apparently, they were both very much active in the American Humanist Association.

No surprise. Kurt Vonnegut had a great quote, if you don't mind me taking it. Yeah, do your best, Vonnegut, owning her this. He said that, by the way, Kurt Vonnegut and I are basically voice doubles. Oh, okay.

Does he have a, I've never heard him talk, man.

“Does he have an unusual, or significant, well, I don't know, weirdly, the only time I think”

I've ever heard Kurt Vonnegut talk was, if I'm not mistaken, he had a cameo and Brian and he danger fields back to school. Oh, yeah. Because he hired him, he paid him to, well, to tutor him in college. Well, how about this?

You take this quote, but do it as danger field? No, no, no, no, no. I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear. He said being a humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards

or punishment after your dead. Yeah, that's nice. That's great. Great description of it. What else?

Trick fan, you know, even if you're not, you're probably not surprised that Jean Roddenberry was a very big in the humanist movement. He, I mean, Star Trek is a, is a great example of just a group of people that are doing humanist things that's kind of the culture of that show, a, they're trying to solve problems

peacefully, tie tech, but of course, they're, they're always trying to do the right thing

on Star Trek. Yeah, they're much doot-gooters. Yeah.

“They don't want to use their fasers, that's why they always set them to stun.”

So there are many critiques to humanism. They get it from all sides, other atheists, other philosophers, Christians, obviously Christian thinkers basically are like, dude, you can't, you can't have meaning in your life without God. Theology teaches us that God is what gives your life meaning you chump, and that's essentially

the most basic criticism of humanism. They basically say, you can't be ethical or moral or have meaning or value in your life without believing that there is such a thing as God. Right. You mentioned atheists.

There are also atheists that say, you know what? A little too much crudulity going on about the value of humanity and like that we can all just improve ourselves and I mean, I think there's some very prominent philosophers from the 20th century that are very much anti-humanist. Yeah, they called themselves anti-humanists.

Yeah. Apparently the structuralist and post-structuralist movements of philosophy that came out

“of France in the 60s and 70s, I think maybe even into the 80s, they were very much”

anti-humanists and they were like the individuals don't matter other than, you know, we don't go make our own meaning. Everything we are is basically created by institutions and structures that were born into and there's basically no way out, so stop being silly and naive. Yeah, that's interesting to me and not to do a episode on necessarily, but I'd like to

poke around the structuralism a little bit more, I'd never heard of that.

I have been doing that and it is very interesting, essentially what they're saying is like, you are so shaped by institutions that these cool thoughts that you think you have, the interactions you have with other people, all of them are shaped by the institutions we're born into. Yeah.

It's hard to argue with that. Right, but so much so Chuck, that those cool thoughts, those amazing things that you're saying, those interactions with people, all they're doing is reinforcing the institutions because they're all within that structure, so you're just teaching other people how to be in that structure too by even rebelling against it as a form of reinforcing the structure.

Wow. It's very grim, like it's actually a very grim approach.

One other thing too that they get held up for a lot is that they believe that man is inherently moral. And a lot of philosophers are like, how do you prove that? What are you talking about? Where do you get that from?

That's not a universal given, like philosophies never turned that up.

And did you see that thing that I found from Francisco, J. Alaya? You basically did, but it reminded me, yeah. So basically, this guy kind of proves that humans are actually biologically moral resulting from a consequence of natural selection. Francisco J. Alaya says that one, we have the ability to anticipate consequences of our own

actions. Two, we have the ability to make value judgments. And three, we have the ability to choose between alternative courses of action. And so because of our abilities, our natural abilities to do that, we are naturally moral creatures, which is the only support I've seen for that idea that people are inherently

moral, I've only ever seen a text, this guy did a pretty good job of making a case that supports that. Yeah, I mean, in the idea that humans are inherently evil, much more common, like wasn't that what Hobbes was all about.

“That's what Hobbes was about, Satanists, basically, or I think they're like, it's not good”

or evil. I think Satanists are really, they don't like humanists very much either. Yeah, probably. There's a, yeah, there's a lot of, it's definitely not settled whether humans are inherently good or bad.

So we haven't figured that one out. I guess not. I mean, toward the bad lately, though. Yeah, I'm with you. I mentioned environmentalists and animal rights activists earlier that sometimes they believe

there's just a little too much human in humanism. But there are certainly a lot of people in humanists that have kind of worked the environment and animals in the value of all that stuff into the cause. For sure, very, very Jeremy Benthamask. Yeah, yeah.

Although, if you want to get down to it, I've seen an example given where a genuine humanist, if somebody killing a deer kept a human family alive, they would be like, kill that deer. Yeah. The deer is secondary, it's life a secondary to human life. Other humanists might be like, no way, man, go eat, go eat a plant, go eat some like

in.

Yeah, I've never been a hunter, but if the zombie apocalypse happened, I could do it.

You could eat zombie?

“I think it's if they bite you that you become a zombie.”

I've never seen any problems with somebody eating them. Well, that's true. You definitely need a healthy spice rack, though. Yeah. It's like that rodded shark they eat in Iceland.

Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. That's essentially like eating zombie from what I understand. Okay, tastes like zombie.

You got anything else? No. You were right. I didn't think I was going to be able to get through this because it's very petty stuff for me, but you said, settle down, jerk.

You'll be fine. Yeah. You did great. I wasn't fully a philosophy class when your favorite class is in college, too.

Yeah, and every time we do anything philosophy related, I get all scared and it always

works out. Oh, yeah. You did great, man. You always do great. Yeah.

So do you. When I agree, we both did great, we're padding ourselves on the back. Can't we pet you on the back? Thank you. Uh, that means, of course, it's time for lesson or mail.

All right, uh, this is going to be short and sweet. It is, I think I jokingly asked for a, um, high coup, as it relates to McGuffins, totally. Because many years ago, we put out the call for high coups and got hundreds and hundreds of them to the point where I think we just quit reading them. So, and hopes people quit sending them.

And time marched on, and they did. But David's innocent, a Mike, uh, high coup about the McGuffin, uh, a Mick Koo. Okay. Me? You ready?

Mm-hm. The McGuffin lives, critics argue, and Nash Tee, the ending still comes. Wow. And David goes on to say this. Great show guys.

He all created an entire universe of stuff inside our stories and jokes. I hate it when I can't recall one of the callback tangents, uh, and just won't say lastly, the Jackhammer episode wasn't that terrible guys. It was needed in the world. Can you read the high coup again?

It's still sinking in like the genius of what David did. Yeah, it's pretty good. The McGuffin lives, critics argue, and Nash Tee, the ending still comes. Me, pretty good. That's a teacher to five over her to one hour in Cooper.

That's a high quality coup buddy. Uh, it is.

“If you want to be like David, and, well, not send us a high coup, but just,”

write in about something, we would be happy to hear from you.

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Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. And l8 night comedy guy, not quite on humor me with Robert's Michael and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Oden Kirk to David Letterman help make you funnier this week, my guess.

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between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

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or wherever you get your podcasts.

“The life is full of hurdles, so how do you keep going?”

On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level at this scale, being able to fail in the front of the entire world, like I can do anything.

I can do anything.

“Listen to hurdle with Emily Abadi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever”

you get your podcasts. Want to invite Capital One, founding partner of iHeartWomen's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged, it's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days I'd put on 10 pounds, I was having troubles stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts.