On the differences between the humanist and the religious conceptions of what it means to be a human person. For humanists the fact that we are rational beings, able to think and stand back from our actions is what marks us out from our animal brothers. For some, like Sartre, it follows that we are free; free to reflect on future possibilities and choose rationally. Others like Freud and Skinner would question the freedom but they would allow a certain amount, at least when the inner springs of behaviour were in the domain of the conscious.
The main problem with humanism, as I see it, is the question of meaning. Life has no meaning other than that which we choose to give it. I can choose whatever I like as my purpose in life, research, medicine, sport, pleasure and, at a practical day to day level, consider whatever I have chosen as my raison d’être. And this is fine until I am faced with the three brute facts of existence – powerlessness, contingency and scarcity.* Suffering robs us all of our pride and tramples on rationalisations. It shrinks our world to the orbit of the body and the only thought which has any meaning is, ‘End it.’
The religious view of what it means to be human provides both an answer to suffering and a meaning for life which transcends the three brute facts. The trouble with the humanist view is that it is in the end reductionist. It reduces the deepest and most complex of all mysteries, me, simply to an intelligent organism, unique among the flora and fauna of earth, yes, but another specimen nonetheless.
We know, how I know not, but the knowledge is there in the depths of our being, that each life is infinitely precious. Why else do we spend so much on ambulances and fire brigades etc. Why otherwise would complete strangers risk, and sometimes give, their lives for another. Why are we fascinated by, and go silly over, babies, over the miracle of another life.
We are never satisfied. Satiety lasts a few moments and is replaced by a new hunger. In the endless search for novelty we are haunted by boredom. The pleasures of living are rewarding but in the end we yearn for something more than mere living can give. Something in us transcends the senses and our limited minds. Our being, in the depths of our being, is plunged into depths unimaginable. The senses cannot pierce them though, sometimes, in moments of silence when we are not particularly paying attention, we catch a glimpse of unutterable beauty.
*cf Thomas F. O Dea, Sociology of Religion (Foundations of Modern Sociology), Prentice-Hall, 1966