How often we forget that we are all free.

We forget that the essence of humanism is to allow and appreciate the freedom of others, while expecting the same in return. It is an exciting aspect of naturalism, provided in the constraints of certain moral theories, to be able to allow our inventive, creative, wonderful nature its full blossoming.

It is easy to be willing, out of fear for scorn, whether personal or (more despicably) politically, to put a cage around our minds and hearts in the name of some standard of conduct, or out of some respect for an invisible punisher. We do this by disguising our emotions – our brilliance, our love, our passion, especially our most human trait, sexuality – under acceptable clothing, mannerisms: How you doing and thank you very much.

Do we walk in within these boundaries because it is good to do so? Or is it true that we walk in line because someone has told us, “Behave, or else.”

We look upon ideals of conduct as valuable maps for our lives – schematics for robotic behavior that ensures we will be accepted by the bigger machine. But why? Given you are not causing any suffering, are there not untold riches to be found when you have elbow room to express yourself naturally? I believe this healthy rebellion and freedom is what gives us all the humanities – what reveals that we truly are fascinating, talented creatures rather than quiet, efficient automatons.

We are a suppressed creature, and naturalism can give us the key to health by establishing a moral standard like this:

The human being is only rightfully constrained by ability and material nature, and that there is no such thing as a victimless crime – there is no act, which when it has caused no suffering nor loss, that can be reasonably described as wrong.

This freedom is in contrast to the whims of the omnipotent and supernatural beings, who would have us appreciate a poisoned freedom from within their regulations – Gods who would make themselves exceptions to the Golden Rule so often preached by their devout by placing others within a caged and non-free system while they remain at large.

Any restraints against the freedom of victimless human expression, experimentation, cognition, opinion, art or activity go against the values of the humanist.

But some would have us believe that you can be religious and also stand up against these wrongs – but I don’t believe that’s true.

They would have us actually consider the freedom of those who crouch under an otherworldly dictator (whose government is conditional love), those who are seeking warmth in a supernatural source of validation and acceptance of their miserable state, seeking to be owned as a form of currency or loved conditionally or within a system or rebirth in which our future is deliberated – can these people, who so desire to be controlled and systematized  that they imagine supernatural beings to do it, say anything at all about what it means to be free?

The essence of freedom can not be had by any organization that says “As long as it is within our guidelines, or else.” So when religious organizations tell us that our actions are to be judged in the afterlife, or as some do, that life itself is empty and meaningless (to be transcended through magical thinking by extended meditation, prayer or other practices), we have the essence of immorality: a breach of the golden rule, performed not by men and women but by our supernatural beings.

We are to honor the world as a place conceptualized by these otherworldly spirits such as God, Vishnu or (as religious Buddists would have it) the reincarnated ghosts of the Wheel of Suffering. They tell us these magical processes do indeed exist, have a supernatural origin, and do have magical properties outside space and time – but they don’t stop there.

A supernatural hierarchy with men as vassals, slaves, serfs, sufferers and potentials is, for some, the ultimate guide and anchor to morality. This is not only not right – it can not possibly be right, given the golden rule has anything to do with morality.

Yet, if we are to agree that the golden rule is a basic aspect of morality, these creatures of our imaginations must be immoral. A worldview that perceives reality as a deliberated supernatural hierarchy is morally inferior to one that allows for true human freedom. Within a system of all-powerful spirits and their cosmic destiny for the Universe (a cosmology which has been designed or has some intrinsic mind-made purpose) it easily follows that no one could possibly be free by any definition of the word – we are playing by rules which have been made by other beings for us, far and above our material ability, trivializing the golden rule.

And so the gods who have made this decision to create rules for you, to set boundaries for you, and indeed to create you at all, while they remain omnipotent and free, break the Rule themselves.

Do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you.

So often is the golden rule preached, strangely enough, even by religions whose standards are dictated by a Punisher on High who has little concern for whether eternal punishment would ever be reflected back upon Him.

So we find the golden rule to be a core seed in moral religion, though by no means should it be considered to bloom only out of supernatural water. Take some of these (often hypocritical) passages to heart – these passages make up the room in the house of religion which is not decorated with bloody wallpaper and echoes of magical thinking.

Christianity – All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.
Matthew 7:1

Confucianism - Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state.
Analects 12:2

Buddhism - Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
Udana-Varga 5,1

Hinduism - This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you.
Mahabharata 5,1517

Islam - No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
Sunnah

Judaism – What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.
Talmud, Shabbat 3id

Taoism - Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.
Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien

Zoroastrianism -That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself.

Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5

• Do you agree with the golden rule?
• If so, is the true freedom to make the choice to behave by the golden rule even possible if there is any sort of a God who has designed this Universe with you in mind?
• What about an Eastern (Buddhist, Hindu) Universe that is understood to be itself an illusion?

“He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.” Friedrich Nietzsche

I recently heard a student in a Religious Studies class declare that Atheism was, “A pretty bleak way of looking at things – kind of a sad life to live.”

The only interesting thing about this sentence is who’s talking.

I’m willing to play along, though. Atheism has some kind of cultural tinge of being angry and nihilistic (in fact, to try to fit the horrifying ideal of Atheism I am currently crying tears of pain while reading Nietzche in a shower of razor blades and black vinyl while listening to the Cure and hating my parents). We have no reason to give any value to anything, because it is all atomic machinery whose deterministic status renders human life’s value describable in one meaningless word: Poopsack.

So, let’s be open-minded and pretend we’re religious for a moment. Let’s give a good ear to the Buddhas, the Prophets, the Gurus and the Imams and the Priests (and their wive(s), slaves, concubines, boys and other unmentionables) telling us to look beyond this life for answers.

So life is just absolutely stinking skidmark filthy – life is a wretched damned march toward hellfire, life is an illusion filled with suffering, life is a challenge to be met, life is a punishment. Life is a critique of our behavior, life is a period of failed awakening, life is a stretch toward re-incarnation, life is a scapegoat, life is a discarded empty atomic corpse from which blooms the beautiful fiery deadly flower of faith.

In appreciation of our upcoming event (SHAFT presents “Celebrate Your Mind”) your feedback is absolutely crucial:

What is positive about your secular humanist, atheist or free-thinking attitude toward life?

After ripping this computer away from an elderly woman in an elevator, I want to talk about secular morality.

Between Aristotle laying the foundations for proper angry-looking-statue-faces and Burger King picking up the highly overpriced veggie patty, for years questions about what’s right and wrong have pestered some bored professionals such as yourself who have the leisure time to worry about such things.

Universally, we’ve got a severe problem with finding out what, exactly, is actually “Good.” Even though, unlike the Greeks, we don’t have slaves to bother with menial tasks while we talk, like refilling the wine and getting slapped (and speaking of which, what good did the Romans ever do us, anyway?) we still find time to ponder establishing some kind of moral theory. At this time of crisis (I can say that because there’s never really not been a time of crisis) we should really figure it out once and for all, right here on the SHAFT blog.

We have different ideas among each of us about what it means to be a so-called Goodie Two Shoes. “Well,” you might say. “Being good is to live a virtuous, compassionate, healthy, flourishing, righteous, happy, socially-concerned, knowledgeable, altruistic, rational lifestyle and obviously have a nice riding lawn mower and a set of porcelain figurines in the kitchen and frequently scowl at smokers outside of K-Mart.”

A policeman next to you might remind you, “Wrong. All that matters is what you actually cause to happen by doing things. It’s not who you are – it’s the consequences of your actions that count. I’m watching you.” (If you’re defenseless and part of an American protest, you may then receive a complimentary dose of bear mace.)

In addition, should the setting of this commentary be at the zoo, you may have an additional mind-exploding Daniel Dennett-esque moment when you realize that gorillas seem to have generalized standards of give-and-take or simple group moral theory as well – “AHA!” you proclaim through a cloud of pepper spray, jabbing an opposable thumb in the air. “Evolution is the place where we must go to seek an ethical foundation for all these good things!”

Shady, smelly little figures might slither out of postmodern art galleries and scowl at you. “Fool!” they hiss, “All ethics are Relative to our culture and Subjective to our personal lives!” Thereafter they would insist on pulling their pants down and shitting all over the conversation.

All of these ideas are nice, but I feel that there is something missing. Whether defining Good as a sort of lifestyle, consequences of our actions, some kind of evolutionary behavior (or even as some kind of indescribably annoying relativism) it’s all very nice, but I want something truly concrete.

What, really, is Good – and what are we going to do about it?

Well, let’s get down to business. First, what are we? This tiny planet in a far-off corner of a Universe filled with trillions of stars has exploded with life, thanks to the arrival of DNA. DNA showed up on the scene some time before it was wearing bell-bottoms, supposedly from an asteroid or underwater time machines or something.

(The actual origin of DNA is something I don’t care about in this conversation. It’s a point of scientific contention, but I don’t think that matters when we talk about values of right and wrong. For fun, let’s say DNA exists because our planet is obliterated by a giant meteor in 2029, and the only thing left is a Queen album that gets sucked by a black hole back through time and lands in the primordial sludge. Voila!)

Anyway, what we know is that DNA has a basic function of replication, and that its vessels function through competitive natural selection – and that’s all it takes to establish a universal idea of what is good. Why so easy? Because we now know what all life has in common: humans, chimps, fish, coconuts, bacteria and even John McCain are all competitive over one thing. One thing causes all the problems over which we struggle in order to do what life does (flourish and replicate).

Energy. All life needs energy fueled by the Sun to flourish and replicate – and we only worry about Ethics because there’s not enough energy to go around, so such is a world where predators seek prey, rapists seek victims and Bukowski goes bar-fighting for fun. Thanks to the bee-line traced by agriculture, iron, bronze, steel, steam, coal, oil, nuclear and solar power – things just keep getting better for all of humanity (a solid argument for this is in Matt Ridley’s “The Rational Optimist”.)

Imagine a world in which we have a pulsating purple gem that is a source of infinite energy. Everyone can have as much as they want, and there’s absolutely no limit. Perhaps the real universal Good is in seeking out better sources of energy, so all of life can experience more flourishing, more replication, and with these better conditions no one will have much need to steal computers from elderly women.

Of course, someone might say, “Well, with loads of free energy, someone would still be inclined to blow everything up with a giant space-bomb.”

But what we’re trying to establish is a reality-based, scientific definition of what is Good, so also we can say that blowing people up is, in fact, a bad thing to do. No matter who or what you happen to be, you can agree: Yes, energy is what is good for me, and preventing the process of survival and replication (for no energetic reason) is bad.

Someone might say, “What about fat people? Don’t they have too much energy?” Well, yes. So here we have a STANDARD by which we can objectively say – yes! Fat is bad! Goodness is based on energy input/output. So if you choose to blow people up, or become fat and unhealthy, you are disregarding the basic survival needs of DNA. You’re hindering replication and survival for no reason (assuming there’s enough energy for everyone) – you’re doing Bad things.

So here’s what I want you to tell me. When humanity comes up with more and more ways to provide energy for the biological needs of all creatures’ flourishing and reproduction, are we not doing the highest objectively Good thing we secularists could do? How do you think biology influences good and evil?