Revolutionary Humanism

This article traces the split within Judaism resulting in the birth of Christianity and considers the ideology contained within the Christian Gospels.

Third in the series, this article examines the ideas and values found within the Qur’an.

This fourth article explores the ideas and narratives within a selection of Hindu scriptures.

When political forms of organisation and authority superseded tribal forms of organisation, they did not initially leave behind the tribal forms of religion. A result of this was the pantheon of god’s attached to the political communities formed in Ancient Greece and Rome. Even after the demise of paganism and the triumph of monotheism in the east and west, religion and politics were not separate. Over the intervening years, the cultures which became dominant carried within them the language, concepts and values associated with religious modes of thinking. The rise of the nation state, whilst to some degree separating religion from politics, nevertheless could not eliminate this religious/cultural heritage. As a result all political ideologies, to the present day have contained a religious element and this includes the ones professing an Atheist value system. This article will provide evidence of religiously inspired ideas and values within so-called fully secular movements.  

There is frequently confusion over the difference between scientific and religious modes of thinking. The case is often dualistically presented as science only dealing with fact and religion only with fancy.  The reality is more complex than this. Religious modes of thinking do deal with what can be considered historical and contemporary facts and scientific modes of thought rest to some degree on an element of prior belief. The difference between the two modes of thinking lies in the extent to which reliable (independently confirmed) evidence is sought to support any position and in the way the gaps in knowledge are dealt with.  Any gaps in scientific knowledge are dealt with by a philosophical acceptance that some things at the present level of understanding are as yet beyond our reach.  In the case of religion gaps are usually considered to be fatalistically or intentionally there until the ‘higher being’ chooses to reveal what they contain. There is another difference between the two modes of thinking and this arises from the fact that all thinking is subjective. That is to say the individual subject contemplates and arrives at various conclusions. The scientific mode however, seeks to test the objectivity of this subjective thought process by experiment and/or sceptical peer review and evaluation. The fully religious thinker, however, arrives at various conclusions after contemplating their ‘revered’ scripture or by claiming some form of revelation. There is no experimental testing and the peer review aspect is only provided by like-minded (usually of the same creed) religious thinkers.  However, it also needs to be stated, that fully religious people are not the only ones who arrive at conclusions after contemplating written work and who assert their certainty without testing or any external peer review. Many sectarian dogmatists in the tradition of Lenin and Stalin operate in a mirror image of the religious mode of belief.  That is to say after contemplating their ‘revered’  texts or considering their view of reality, they arrive at conclusions and assert them dogmatically without any experimental or evaluative test.

What follows these introductory remarks is an article which considers the difference between rational scientific-based belief and irrational religious-based belief.

This is the title of a book dealing with the corruption of the revolutionary humanism of Karl Marx and others, by the sectarian dogmatists who claimed to be following his theories and humanist values. The accompanying short article will give an overview of the book and details of how to obtain a copy.