Are humanism and Christianity mutually exclusive?

[°Leprechaun]

The former tend to believe that people are inherently good, the latter tend to believe the opposite.

[Del Tachi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_humanism

[RINO Tom]

As Del pointed out, OBVIOUSLY not in totality.  However, the extreme logical conclusion some Humanists reach is incompatible with all types of spirituality.

[dead0man]

no


but you know who really piss me off, the religious people who can't fathom how someone could be a good person and not have a "higher power" in their life.

[RI]

no


but you know who really piss me off, the religious people who can't fathom how someone could be a good person and not have a "higher power" in their life.

Speaking as a former atheist, atheism can be harnessed into a force for temporal good in the world when it's used to emphasize the common preciousness of all human life, being that this one life is all that any human being can ever hope to attain. This can create a strong sense of empathy and reciprocity for our fellow man.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the most common way atheism is used; I see far more people use it to essentially build themselves up as mini-deities writing their own morality while using other people, for which there is no eternal consequence other than the prospect of damnatio memoriae.

It seems very important that moral/"good" (at least in a relative sense) people believe in something greater than themselves which checks and constrains their personal/group hubris, whether or not that's a literal higher power. Atheists are no exception to this, and I'd argue they are especially vulnerable to choosing self-serving objects/systems which they effectively worship, and they are far more vulnerable to losing sight of (perhaps without even recognizing it) or compromising away from whatever higher purpose they place themselves under.

[°Leprechaun]

no


but you know who really piss me off, the religious people who can't fathom how someone could be a good person and not have a "higher power" in their life.

Speaking as a former atheist, atheism can be harnessed into a force for temporal good in the world when it's used to emphasize the common preciousness of all human life, being that this one life is all that any human being can ever hope to attain. This can create a strong sense of empathy and reciprocity for our fellow man.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the most common way atheism is used; I see far more people use it to essentially build themselves up as mini-deities writing their own morality while using other people, for which there is no eternal consequence other than the prospect of damnatio memoriae.

It seems very important that moral/"good" (at least in a relative sense) people believe in something greater than themselves which checks and constrains their personal/group hubris, whether or not that's a literal higher power. Atheists are no exception to this, and I'd argue they are especially vulnerable to choosing self-serving objects/systems which they effectively worship, and they are far more vulnerable to losing sight of (perhaps without even recognizing it) or compromising away from whatever higher purpose they place themselves under.

Obviously being a good person is not a condition to be an atheist, but I don't know if the typical atheist is any worse or better than the typical individual.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Is "atheist" really the important bit here, rather than "secular" or "irreligious"? Theism is a technical characteristic of some currently very widespread religions that tends to get treated as more fundamental than it is in societies traditionally dominated by religions that feature it. It isn't really causally connected to questions about things like how "thick" a religion's cosmology and truth-claims about the universe are, how stringent its moral prescriptions are, or how readily it's pressed into service as a tool of social control, yet in the Western world it's commonly discussed as if it is.

[RINO Tom]

no


but you know who really piss me off, the religious people who can't fathom how someone could be a good person and not have a "higher power" in their life.

If anything, the inverse is FAR more prevalent in mainstream US culture, especially online.

[Mr. Smith]

Yes. Totally.

[First1There]

no


but you know who really piss me off, the religious people who can't fathom how someone could be a good person and not have a "higher power" in their life.

If anything, the inverse is FAR more prevalent in mainstream US culture, especially online.

44% of Americans, as of 2019, say it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. It's not universal, but it's really common. And just because somebody said no to this question does not mean the inverse is true for the 56%.

I agree this attitude is more prevalent online. Young people are less likely to say that.



A question about believing in God making you immoral, was not asked.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

39% seems high for Japan considering what its religious traditions are. I wonder how the question was worded in Japanese.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

No, definitely not. I guess it depends on how you would define humanism (and Christianity), but to me they seem mutually reinforcing, at least in theory if not necessarily in practice. There are certainly many outwardly practicing Christians who are not humanists and many humanists who are not Christians, but a Christianity based on love, compassion, decency, tolerance, and openness to other people seems to me an essentially humanist philosophy.

[Georg Ebner]

Yes, they are.
Historically "Humanists" in the ReNaissance were partly insofar able to be Christians, as they were not humanists, i.e. believing in the goodness of mankind.
Amusingly all this modern humanism/optimism/progressism has no basis in the Ancient, who were far too intelligent for forgetting the human limits. Just look at THUKYDIDE or TACITUS. It was a Syrian ApoLogete, who spoke for the first time of "human dignity", but for us Christians that's not more than a parcel of GOD to us. It were pseudoChr. "humanists" (beginning with gothic scholasticism), who took this gift for granted and as a part of human nature. Ending in the present paraDoxon, that in theory "human dignity", "human rights" aso. are held in high regard; in practice people have never before exploited others as shamlessly as the modern bourgeois has done, have never before sunken so deeply into primitive animality.
But that's no wonder: "The human is neither angle nor beast. And our misery means, that whoever makes him an angle, makes him a beast." (PASCAL)

[UWS]

No, definitely not. I guess it depends on how you would define humanism (and Christianity), but to me they seem mutually reinforcing, at least in theory if not necessarily in practice. There are certainly many outwardly practicing Christians who are not humanists and many humanists who are not Christians, but a Christianity based on love, compassion, decency, tolerance, and openness to other people seems to me an essentially humanist philosophy.

That is defended by the First Amendment of our Constitution

[Blue3]

There's a lot of overlap, most is compatible or even natural.

I wouldn't say Christianity says humans are inherently not good. We were created good, and then there was sin.

There's a range of how much different denominations place more or less importance on original sin, if original sin is even a concept, among different denominations. For some it's more just a tendency to sin. Or it's a result of a flawed world. Or sin is seen more as something that needs healing, not punishment.

I also wouldn't say this is the main different between Christianity and humanism.