Foxy
"I'm having a problem with the term -
'secular humanism.' Is the word
'secular,' really necessary?"
I have problem with the term -
'secular humanism.' too! and I can not understand where is the humanism? Is not hypocricy to call the secular USA as humanistic?
How we can call a secular country as the USA with the highest degree of prisoners in the world, as humanistic?
How we can call a secular country as the USA with the worst welfare and health systen from developed countries, as humanistic?
How we can call a secular country as the USA with so much children's blood in their hands from bietnam or Iraq war as humanistic?
Do they call the marketing studies as humanistic?
Do they call the interogation studies in guantanamo as humanistic?
Do they call the studies how to miximize the productivity or minimize the cost as humanistic?
I feel sick to hear that secular countries as USA with so much violation to human rights and international law are humanists!
At the end it is imposible for me to find who are jumpions in hypocricy religious or secular people!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Dear David f,
Let me repeat, where we seem to disagree is Lustiger’s right to call himself a Jew in the ethnic, cultural, meaning of the world. There are Australians (e.g. on this OLO) about whom one could say that their “young impressionable mind was indoctrinated into“ losing their Christian faith (as much as I do not like the term indoctrination, in their case it was a kind of “negative indoctrination”, i.e. reaction to incompetent religion instructions they perceived as indoctrination) and some Christians might regard their lives as tragedies. Nevertheless, they are still Australians, in the political as well as cultural meaning of the word.

>> Bishop Spong makes more sense to me than other versions of Christianity I am aware of.<<
This is a very honest statement that resonates with me saying that Lustiger’s book “Choosing God-Chosen by God” made me understand more about Jewish culture, and be sympathetic to it, than other sources I have read.

Dear Foxy,
I am really honoured that you addressed to me this fair - and, I would say, moving - account of the fate of Lithuania (and implicitly also other nations, including Slovakia, where I experienced WWII and its aftermaths) caught in the catch-22 situation between Communists and Nazis. I grew up with the uneasy dilemma (for a child) that on one hand we were yearning for the Americans to come and liberate us from Stalin, on the other hand we were convinced that should they decide so, one of the Comrades’ first precaution would be to deport Catholic intellectuals and their families to Siberia, if not worse (c.f. Katyn).

Explanations can provide extenuating circumstances, but only in extreme cases could they provide excuses. Explaining that the driver did not kill the pedestrian on purpose, but was drunk, does not extenuate him, only shows that his act was not a premeditated murder. I would argue that many - if not most - people co-responsible for the deportations of Jews thought that they were only “ethnically cleansing their homeland” (like what the Czechs and Poles did with their German populations after WWII). As abhorrent as this is, it is not the same as knowingly send them to a death camp.

I agree, one should not “forget the past” but I think one should forget to “retaliate” (a nice word for revenge), that I was horrified to hear even from the lips of the American President after 9/11 (of course, nobody could object had he kept referring only to defence). The only way to break this vicious tit-for-tat circle of sweeping accusations (stereotyping nations as you call it), retaliations, self-righteous urge to punish, etc., is to unilaterally stop with it. Even Christians forget too often that they are forbidden to retaliate. Defence yes, retaliation no.

Dear George,

Thank You for your kind words, and understanding.

It's very heartening to read that you understood
exactly what I was trying to say. I learned from
my father to love not hate - and above all to
forgive.

Judith Wright wrote, "For a time it seemed that the
shock of realising the terrible power of total
destruction we now possessed had sobered the
war makers. Then in 1950 came the Korean war,
and a year or two later the first hydrogen bomb
was tested... The tests continued, obliterating
islands in the Pacific. Human values seemed to
vanish with them..."

As you point out - look at what's happened in the
world since ... I've stated so many times in
previous posts - I fear that our world can become
so obsessed with the problems of hatred and
aggression, that it will allow peace and love to
be regarded as soft and weak. Yet our survival depends
on their dominance.

Dear George,

Lustiger could call himself anything he wants to. However, to me he was no longer a Jew. I have read more about him since I wrote last, and he apparently was genuinely attracted to Christianity. I take back what I said about a “young impressionable mind was indoctrinated into“ losing his faith. He really was ignorant of Judaism, and his parents were really not connected with it.

However, I wonder where he would get enough knowledge of Jewish culture to write about it. His education was Christian. He had little to do with the Jewish milieu. Christians can have a great deal of knowledge of Jewish culture if they experience it and live among Jews. James Joyce was an Irish Catholic, but he had close relationships with Jews and his fictional character, Leopold Bloom, in "Ulysses" is very Jewish. James Joyce, George Eliot, Iris Murdoch and other non-Jewish writers have created believable Jewish characters because they had the knowledge and association. However, to the best of my knowledge, Lustiger could not have obtained that knowledge from what I read of his life on the net. He was just another Christian writing about Jews. He had only peripheral contacts with Jews. Culture is something one lives with. It is not genetic.

His bio on the net contained: "He considered Christianity to be the accomplishment of Judaism, and the New Testament to be the logical continuation of the Old Testament. In Le Choix de Dieu (The Choice of God, 1987), he declared that modern anti-Semitism was the product of the Enlightenment, whose philosophy he attacked."

The first sentence contains the replacement idea that "Christianity to be the accomplishment of Judaism." I see that as a source of anti-Semitism. Some Christians see Judaism as not a religion in itself. To them it is merely a way station on the road to Christianity. Apparently he was another Christian bigot. There were and are many.

My view of the Enlightenment is that it was a tremendously liberating force.

ASymeonakis,

I suspect that many refer to the United States, as "secular", because its institutions (unlike the Arab countries) are -in theory at least- non-religious and that there is separation between church and state (as a product of the Enlightenment). Nonetheless, this is an ideal and not always practised.

In England, that nation, seems nominally secular, because the Crown is Anglican and upward mobility would be harder for Catholics than Protestants.

Secular humanism would have morals self-evident and stand alone. An unconditional positive regard for our fellow humans (Carl Rogers).

Secular humanists are those whom condemn the deeds of Christian, Islamic and non-humanist secular institutions in history. Likewise, I suspect, there are Christian humanists and Islamic humanists that would condemn most of their leaders in history.

Only, I find that a secularist would be more readliy criticise Stalin, than might Catholics their Popes. I guess, for most secularists, Stalin isn't apart of their belief system, so there is no pressure to make excuses; whereas for a Catholic, Popes are a part of their belief system, and, for this reason, the many acrocities of the Church are given minor recognition. Ditto of the other religions.