But not humanist ethics, which have been consistently in the service of maximizing human opportunity and potential by applying reason to evidence and utilitarian ethics. Humanism opposes authoritarianism, and embraces tolerance. It embodies the Golden Rule where the religious want to marginalize and demonize certain demographics based in faith in destructive doctrine.
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The problem there is the believers all seem to have a different god that they're dedicated to. The advantage of a secular ethical system is that it can be based in love and reason, and I mean authentic love, which involves protecting and supporting the objects of love, not this Abrahamic version of love.
I see you making an error of assuming it is the system itself that is the difference, viz., secular humanism vs theistic religion. This is a slight of hand tricking reason into an illusory logic fallacy. Let me try to explain this. There are a several layers to this to try to unpack in this first to in order to understand what I'm saying.
First, in developmentalist theories, you will see certain earmarks of higher stages of development in the various lines of develop, such as cognitive, moral, spiritual, kinesthetic, etc., that do not come online, or appear at the earlier stages.
For instance, a global-centric view of others in human society does not emerge at the earliest stages of tribal or later ethnocentric stages, where only those who are "like me", or closely related to me, are considered part of the group. Those outside are foreigners, or outsiders, or even non-humans, or subhumans, or "rats", or some other dehumanizing reality. Such a view of others is considered wholly anathema to later, more highly developed sensibilities found coming online around the postmodernist, or pluralistic stage.
Something like humanistic principles, which you embrace, as well as do I, is a higher stage of development that comes online post-ethnocentric, post-nationalistic modes of perceptions, or "worldviews". The reason you see humanism "better than religion" is because it is something that emerged in a post-ethnocentrist cultural worldview. You generally do not find pre-postmodernist, or pluralistic mentalities within it, because they cannot relate to it. It is literally "beyond them", developmentally speaking.
Now bring religions into this. Religions, being something that cuts across many diverse periods of human history, is far less specialized than "secular humanism", which is very specific in its audience that it will appeal to. Religion is much more culture-wide, touching everyone from the tribal mentality, to the ethnocentric mentality, to the rationalist mentality, to the pluralistic mentality, etc., because it is far more embedded symbolically and culturally than a niche philosophy of postmodernity in recent Western history is.
You will, and do find those same values of what you extol the virtues of in humanism, within religion itself. Why? Because our religions are made up of the human individuals who make up the cultures which include modern and postmodern, and post-postmodern. In all cultures you have forward thinkers, and backwards thinkers, progressives and conservatives, tribalist and humanistic thinkers. The larger the culture, the more of this diversity you have. So, you will, and do, therefore see this represented in religions.
A couple other points before pointing to the error I see you make. The demographics of these higher stages, are by default fewer in numbers than those at the earlier stages. This is just a simple growth hierarchy. The base of a pyramid which lays the foundation for higher blocks to be placed on, has the greater number and greater span. The higher blocks cannot exist without that base being laid underneath them to support them, and their numbers are fewer than the base, and less span. Next level, higher stage, less numbers, less span. And higher and fewer you go on the way up.
The problem is you want to take what could not have appeared or come online until after 10,000 years of cultural evolution, the postmodernist, "secular humanist" worldview, that very small slice of the pyramid 3/5ths of the way up, and kick out all the blocks underneath it as "bad", or unnecessary, or outgrown, and make that the basis for a new human society. That's kind of like saying, now that I'm 50, I realize how stupid being a teenager was, so we need to get rid of children being teens and go straight to 50!, forgetting that you are only 50 because you learned how to be 50 by being a teen first.
Do you really think humans can bypass these earlier modes or structures of consciousness that were necessary to develop first before the higher more sophisticated, more advanced stages could come online? What happens developmentally to humans when they are forced to skip stages of growth? Answer, they get ****ed up. They need to go into therapy and do some regression therapy, putting them in touch with earlier stages that get missed, because they needed those as a healthy foundation for later, more advanced adult stages to come online.
Unlike you, I do not see religion as all the earliest, mythic-literal, tribalist, ethnocentric levels of development. I see it has these higher stages in it as well, but it is seen in about the same distribution curve in it as in culture at large. The confusion is because you see the wider span, the greater numbers represented, you assume there are no higher blocks of the pyramid present at all. And I'd say that is because of your focus. If you stand at the base of the pyramid looking at the lowest blocks, you don't see the higher ones very well. But if you take a 30,000 foot view of them, then you see all the layers.
Why I see religion as potentially of greater value than a niche postmodernist philosophy, as noble as that is in itself, is that because religion is embedded in the larger culture, the higher stages are in fact exposed to the earlier stages, and can and do have an effect towards overall growth.
Think of it like having multiple generations all living in the same household. Have one's great grandparents with their life wisdom there to influence and shape the younger generations, has a greater more beneficial effect than just having children raising children in a generational vacuum.
I'll leave it there for the moment and let you process this and get back to me. See if this makes sense to you where I am going, and as always, I value your thoughts.
