I explained to Ryan what I was looking for, and what he sent me was so personal and informative, that I asked if I could publish the entire email. So, here is what Ryan Sutter has to say about Humanism, and how he found it. Enjoy.

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and stayed one until I was 30 years old at which point I lost my faith in it and didn’t know what to call myself or what I believed. I took the Beliefnet Belief-O-Matic and found out that my beliefs were most closely defined as humanist. Not having really ever thought about humanism before this, I was a bit surprised to find a web site telling me that I was one.

I went on to study it a little and found that the whole idea of humanism was fairly straightforward and could be boiled down into the statement: Do what is right because it’s right and there may be nobody else to do it. In other words, we live in a world that may or not have any supernatural element, but that really should have no bearing on being a good and moral person. Goodness and morality are things you need to practice if you want them to exist in the world, they don’t come from somewhere other than us and if we don’t do them, they don’t exist. This is a compelling alternate reason for living a clean moral life as opposed to the reward/punishment model of Christianity.

You don’t do good and avoid evil in order to reap a reward or avoid a punishment, you do so simply because you wish for good in the world and you wish to avoid evil in the world and you let the supernatural aspect take care of itself, if there is such a thing.

That is humanism and it is my deep belief that even the religious person who hates or fears the “godless atheists and secular humanists” basically lives a moral life for the same fundamental reasons, if you press them on it. Most Christians will admit that they aren’t restrained from killing their neighbor and raping his life because they are afraid of God but because they know it’s the wrong thing to do. They know this innately, because they wouldn’t want it done to themselves. “Do unto others” is a very humanist statement.

Of course, in conversations with religious believers (including my own father) I’ve come to realize that this is not what humanism means to fundamentalist eyes. To a lot of people it seems that humanism means “whatever man decides to do is right” or “there is no god so we’re screwed, ACK! let’s call our pathetic plight ‘humanism’ and worship ourselves”. The first commits the naturalistic fallacy and the second conflates humanism and atheism. Humanism does not glorify people or set them up for worship. The whole concept of worship means to give praise and obedience to a higher power. When you are a human, and a humanist, you are not suddenly a higher power. In fact, it’s humbling. You look at yourself and your limited capabilities and you look at humankind and their messy psychological and sociological situations and you realize that we all need to work really hard to solve our problems, cooperate more, communicate more, help each other more, because if we are all we have then none of us is an island, none of us can operate without considering the fates of the others, and we all need each other. Kinda’ knocked me down a peg from when I thought I was personally fashioned in God’s image, while simultaneously making me feel a sense of civic and moral obligation as opposed to how I felt when I thought God would charge in and fix everything. The sense of personal responsibility implicit in humanism is extremely powerful. I think that explains why so many humanists are involved in social justice and activist causes, as well as volunteerism. They have to be, on some level, or their conscience nags at them because all it takes for bad people to have their way is for good people to do nothing.

I have found a lot of prejudice against humanism over the last 5
years. People say Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot were humanists, to
which I say bullshit. Humanism is a philosophical justification for moral and humane behavior. If a psychopath or despot commits acts of atrocity and cruelty, their actions are immoral and inhumane and therefore anti-humanist, whether they believe in a supernatural or not. Like I mentioned earlier, humanism does not say there is no God, humanism says that regardless of the metaphysical state of things, if we want to see good in the world we have to do it ourselves. The sad fact is that some people decide their is no God so they DO murder their next door neighbor and rape his wife, and other people do the exact same thing and say God made them do it, or the Devil, or whatever. The point is, that any behavior that is anti-human is anti-humanist and people can decide to be evil with or without belief in God. When people start to connect the two questions of “Does God exist” and “How should I behave” as if they are inextricably linked they are committing a fallacy. They are two separate questions that do not necessarily relate.

Thanks for the insight, Ryan.

Jack
I Listen.

Basic Ideology 101
Lesson #23
The Battle of Human Action

Jack
I Listen.
SKT

Thanks Shawn!
Jack
I Listen.

Featured

I lied. It’s not a story at all.

What is it? It’s a call.

This was brought on by a post my Mexican brother, Renato, sent me sometime late last night. It was a story of love, and loss, of pride, and attitude. Please, just read it yourself. Fair warning. It is slightly graphic. But it’s goddamned beautiful.

What Renato made me think of with that post is not something I can really even begin to explain. But, being the cocky bastard that I am, I’m gonna fucking try.

It reminded me of something I had forgotten. Something that I am afraid Renato may have forgotten by the end of that post. I hope not.

I had forgotten everything that got me where I am today. Some people might call it vanity or pride. Some people might say an undeserved sense of self worth. What I am getting at is attitude. I have always believed that my stories are meant to be read, by sanction of god, or satan, or odin, or zues, or who gives a fuck. I’ve always had a feeling deep inside me that what I am doing is right. No matter what anyone had to say about it. That I was walking that golden path that so many before me have walked.

Is it pride? Sure. Is it vanity? You’re damned right. Is it undeserved? Go fuck yourself.

The attitude that we own this. That we belong. That we are meant for far greater things. It doesn’t matter if we are wrong, because this is the only attitude that ever changes the world. Some will fall, some will rise. It matters not.

Change is brought on by the cocky bastards out there. Do the world a favor, and buy one of us a beer. We’re easy to spot. Look for the guy that has absolutely no right to be dancing with the best looking girl in the bar. Look for the lead singer that takes all of the drinks the crowd offers up, and still doesn’t fuck up a song. Look for the guy surrounded by empty beer glasses and notepads that everyone stops to talk to and buy a beer for.

Look for us. If we are not screaming for attention, we are drowning in despair. We will be remembered, because we will not settle for less.

We spot each other with a word. We are brothers.

Jack
I Listen.

I listen better if that’s a six pack in that grocery bag.

We had another full week, with posts every day. I’m gonna try to keep making this happen.

My friend, Pete, turned me on to this great acoustic solo act, Matt Nathanson. Check his site out. Freakin’ awesome.

The novel that I am serializing here at Loki Listens, started on Saturday. Check out the first section.

Twitter. I am apparently back in business. Check out my tweetstats.

After several recommendations, I moved from Pidgin to Digsby for my Instant Messaging client. Main thing is that digsby takes care of my email, myspace, and facebook.  It also crashes less than Pidgin.

With that said, let’s talk about Squidoo. I reached my target of 10 Lenses. With that target goal, I will not make another lens until I believe these 10 are very, very good. Check them out.

• Seth Godin’s Tribes
• Loki Listens to You
• Who is Jack Lhasa
• Jack Lhasa’s Lensography
• Richard Bach’s Illusions
• Fable 2 Review
• Saint’s Row Review
• Xbox 360 Review and Hub
• Herbal Remedies: Echinacea
• Herbal Remedies: Ginkgo Biloba

And lastly, I’d like to talk about Daily Mugshot. Come and join in on this fun.  I have set a goal to wear a different hat every day.  Or atleast wear it in a way that I have not before.  Check it out below.

Jack.
I Listen.
Monday Updates
December 8, 2008

First off, let me tell you why I use twitter.  I use twitter because it allows me to communicate with the maximum number of people with shared interests.  These interests vary greatly, and would take more than this simple post to expound upon.

Okay, so you and I both use twitter.  I follow you.  You don’t follow back for whatever reason.  Soon you are gone.  My timeline is for conversation.  conversation requires two people.  If you are not returning my follow, you are not seeing what I am saying, and thus not actively participating in the conversation.  You’re off my list, fast as possible.  I’m not going to waste my time or yours on a one sided conversation.  End of story.

Okay, so you use twitter.  You follow me.  I don’t follow you back.  Why?  Many reasons.  First thing is to ask yourself if you ever actually talk.  I don’t follow people that only link to their other sites.  Secondly, you should look at your follower to followee ration.  If you follow 4,000 people, and only 300 people follow you, I’m not gonna be one of them.  You can only listen to so many people and give a damn and any given time.  Another reason.  Are all of your posts about free give aways or making money online?  I’m not interested.  I get enough spam to my gmail, thanks.  And the final reason.  You have not posted any tweets.  How can i decide if I want to follow you without seeing what you have to say?

How do I keep up?  I use qwitter and friendorfollow.

Jack
I Listen.

—————————–

It’s hard to quantify things when you are looking backwards through the filter of memory. What happened? What did we do? Where did we go? Two months in California, surely I have stories to tell. For a singular moment in time, I am that goofy, straight-faced, storyteller again. I remember. I remember good things. I remember bad things. I remember sloth and melancholy. I remember unbridled joy and wonderment. If anything I mention here has been in a previous post, I apologize. Perhaps the stories will be slightly different now with the influence of time.

So, let’s get started.

Scarab and I are walking down Sunset Boulevard to the library so that we might check emails and such. We’re a little early and the library is not yet open. We light up cigarettes and try to kill the ten minutes or so before we can go inside and get out of the heat.

A man, no younger than 60, approaches us. His clothes are tattered and he carries a small backpack and a 3 day beard. He asks for spare change. We scramble through our pockets, but find nothing. Scarab offers him a cigarette and begins to roll up several as we talk. He tells us that he’s homeless, which we could have guessed. Talks a bit about his former life. A happy gleam in his eyes. Then the present breaks through the dream-memory. He says his wife is gone. His children won’t speak to him. Everything he owns is in the pack on his back. He was a Vietnam Vet, like so many of our nation’s homeless. He sleeps on the wheelchair ramp to the library when the LAPD doesn’t run him off.

Scarab finishes up a handful of cigarettes for the man, and he departs. I’m sure we’ve already faded from his memory. But we don’t forget.

Jack.
I Listen.

Fragments
#2
Homeless in LA

Why not spend part of your Thanksgiving Day helping out at the local soup kitchen? You could make a lot of people thankful with a few cans of food, or an hour or two of volunteering.

What am I thankful for? Lots of things. Lots of people. For the reader’s here. For my extended family over at Twitter, and my real family right here. I’m thankful that I can talk to the far side of the world on a regular basis. Thanks to everyone who helped out with Twitter Travels this year. Not a one of you has been, or will ever be, forgotten. Thanks to all of the people who are helping with my first book release, even as I write this.

It’s been a strange year, but I wouldn’t change it. With winter, comes change. Are you ready for that fresh start?

What are you thankful for?

-Thanks to all my friends, family, and readers.
-Jack Lhasa
-Yeah, I Listen.

—

I got a little carried away with NaNoWriMo this weekend, and didn’t even realize I had missed the Sunday Update. So here goes.

Brooke came to visit for the better part of three days.

I started my novel for NaNoWriMo. (sitting at 4031 words, as of today)

I’ve been helping on the Game FAQs Forum for Fable 2 whenever I can.

The novel is taking up most of my time, so I’m suspending the mandatory Ideology lessons until the end of November. You may still see them, if inspiration strikes me. The same goes for poetry.

Wow. I can’t believe that’s all….

Jack.
I Listen.

I was a guest on Cranky Tech in the early AM Sunday. Click the link to hear the whole hour.

This photo was censored on flickr without my permission or notification. I’ll be moving over to Picasa web soon.

I’d like to take a moment to thank a few great people at twitter. Phyrdancer was nice enough to design a logo for me.  Check it out below. Tonysteward was nice enough to give away 3 copies of Seth Godin’s Tribe. And I was lucky enough to be one of the receivers. Iaindodsworth, who created TweetDeck, was very helpful when I was utterly lost. Another twitter innovator, Mario, creator of twitterfeeds, was willing to go above and beyond to help me change my OpenID login info.

As you can see, there’s a lot going on with twitter again.

In blog news, there will be a post similar to this every Sunday now. Basic Ideology 101 lessons will be on every Monday now.

The eBook collecting the Developmental Theology 089 series is well under way and coming along well. For those of you that didn’t follow this series of articles, it focuses on introducing philosophical concepts to the average person.

-Jack
I Listen.