Life in the pandemic XXIV Alice through the twitter glass…….

I am fairly sure that (most) humanists are nice people. Certainly, the current president of Humanists UK, Alice Roberts, has always struck me as quite nice. I haven’t met her personally of course, but she pops up on the telly in the UK fairly frequently, usually presenting broadly scientific documentaries. They are often very interesting and …. nice. Alice recently got involved in an Easter twitter spat, which she kicked off by tweeting the following around teatime on Good Friday: “Just a little reminder today. Dead people - don’t come back to life.” At the time of writing, this tweet had been “liked” almost 12000 times, and commented on just over 3000 times. The responses were the sort of mixed bag that we’ve all come to expect in the twittersphere. Some were delighted, others were derogatory, and some tweets intimated a degree of disappointment. One line of criticism was that while Alice is quite entitled not to share the beliefs of Christians celebrating Easter, it was disrespectful to tweet as she had done on that particular day. To which she responded: “I don’t have to respect unscientific beliefs.”

Fair enough. After all, respect cannot be forced, and to that extent of course she doesn’t “have to” respect anything. Her critics might (and some did) respond that, particularly as a public figure, she also doesn’t have to parade her lack of respect for particular beliefs in so public a manner, at a time calculated to cause offense. Now, while I’m prepared to believe that the intention was not to offend (and as I discussed previously, Christians of all people should be quite difficult to offend), some pointed out that she has a bit of form in this regard, getting into a previous twitter spat in the gender recognition debate. What’s of more interest is Alice’s comment about “unscientific beliefs”.

It’s not that Alice has a problem with unscientific beliefs in general. I can say with some certainty that there are many beliefs she holds which are unscientific, but which she finds perfectly respectable (otherwise she wouldn’t hold them). I can say this because precisely the same is true of us all. She is a professor of the “public understanding of science”. I take it that she believes that a scientifically knowledgeable public is a good thing, something she and I would agree on. This is a belief that is perfectly worthy of respect, but it is not a scientific belief. Few of the many beliefs that all of us have are. It seems that Alice’s problem is with specific unscientific beliefs, that she feels she can take a pop at. At the top of this list appear to be the beliefs held and taught by Christians.

This is of course is no surprise. Alice is, after all, president of Humanists UK. In a recent interview she stated her belief that “Living a good life comes from you, from employing your own human faculties of reason and empathy and love.” Now, what are we to make of such a belief? For my part, I find it perfectly respectable, and feel no need to poke fun at it. However, it is clearly not in any sense scientific. It is both highly debateable and over centuries has been hotly debated. And it is in my view, respectfully, deeply flawed. But it is not flawed because it is unscientific. Science doesn’t deal in such terms as “good” and “love”, and can’t be used to settle whether this belief is better than any other belief for this or that purpose. Science is entirely the wrong tool to use, in the same way a screwdriver isn’t appropriate for hammering nails.

Of course the game Alice is playing is to portray her humanism as non-religious, rational and scientific, and Christian belief (and presumably other religious beliefs) as unscientific, irrational, and therefore not worthy of her respect. The problem is that the distinction being drawn doesn’t work. It turns out that Alice’s brand of humanism, secular humanism, actually has distinctly religious origins, and was at least originally conceived as a competing religion. As Humanists UK make clear on their website, they grew out late 19^th century “Ethical Societies”, many of which originated within the Christian tradition, but gradually rejected key features of Christian belief, until laterally all traces of supernaturalism were thrown off. However, well into the 20^th century “Ethical” churches were meeting, singing “ethical” hymns and listening to sermons. Sounds familiar. And this isn’t just historical baggage that humanists might claim is ancient history that is now irrelevant. The contemporary manifestation of such ideas (besides Humanists UK) is the Sunday Assembly; interestingly the founding London branch meets in Conway Hall which is owned by one of the original Ethical Societies. The Sunday Assembly was founded by two comedians who “wanted to do something that was like church”. While I find all of this perfectly respectable, it does sound a bit (say it quietly) religious. One might be tempted to tweet that it was all a bit “unscientific”.

I am not the only one to detect these religious undertones in secular humanism. A recent reviewer of John Gray’s “Seven Types of Atheism” reported Gray as being of the view that “humanists are in bad faith”. He continued “Most of them are atheists, but all they have done is substitute humanity for God. They thus remain in thrall to the very religious faith they reject.” Thoroughly shaking off the trappings of Christian belief and patterns of thought, it turns out, is really tricky. Alice, who has confirmed on twitter that she is indeed an atheist, has work to do.

Humanists of Alice’s stripe are not even entitled to exclusive use of the title “humanist”, as though they uniquely have the best interests of their fellow human beings at heart. The word has a long and distinctively Christian history. Again back in the 19^th century, it came to be used for an intellectual movement originating in the Renaissance, and later luminaries such as Erasmus of Rotterdam combined Biblical thought with classical philosophical traditions (among other things). This was a distinctly Christian humanism and there continues to be an important strand of it within the Evangelical tradition, exemplified by the likes of Packer and Howard in their book “Christianity: the True Humanism”. There is a simple reason that it makes sense to talk of Christian humanism. If humanism at its heart is about human beings finding true fulfilment (an aim I think Alice would agree is a worthy one), then Biblical Christianity has two important things to say (neither of which Alice would agree with). The first is that secular humanism has historically failed and will continue to fail to address humanity’s deepest needs, because it denies that these exist. The second is that it is in God’s self-revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ that we will find the answers to our deepest needs. And of course this brings us back to Easter.

I can confirm that it is indeed the case that in general (at least at the moment) dead people do not come back to life. I accept that anyone who denies this as a general proposition is in need of sympathy, if not some form of mental health intervention. But I can also confirm that this general principle was violated on at least one occasion in history. This is not a contradiction, nor is it a scientific statement. But neither is it irrational. There is evidence to be evaluated. Have a go Alice.