Apropos of the recent discussion between James Croft, Leah Libresco and me over the specifics of Humanism, I’ve stumbled upon the British Humanist Associations “Are you a Humanist?” quiz. Though I ended up tentatively supporting Humanism as a movement while rejecting it as a philosophical position, I’m apparently 90% a Humanist. I felt that the responses were somewhat limited (understandable, considering it’s a multiple choice quiz for a broad lay audience), so I thought it might be fun to expand on my answers in more depth below.

Take the quiz yourself and let me know if you’d have preferred any other choices, or just think my responses are way off.

1. Does God Exist?

The negative responses to this question were either “I don’t know” or “There is no evidence, so I assume God doesn’t exist.” I wasn’t particularly satisfied by either choice. I’m not an agnostic, I’m an atheist (and I reject the useless muddling of the terms by pretending they overlap.) So I very much believe that God doesn’t exist, and I don’t consider that an assumption based on a lack of evidence. I actually think the evidence is rather suggestive that God doesn’t exist, and I’d wager many other atheists and Humanists feel the same way. So I feel uncomfortable categorizing that as an assumption. Nonetheless, that’s the option I chose.

2. When I die…

That’ll be the end of me. There’s a cute option that involves living on through children and memories but that’s not really me living on (but instead my works and memories of me…). Woody Allen put it nicely, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.”

3. How did the Universe begin?

I also have a few quibbles here, as well, because I’m skeptical that science can ever answer this question. I also don’t think the scientific explanations being the best explanation available is necessarily incompatible with God creating the universe. That’s because the two are at different levels of explanation, so what’s best is really a matter of preference. But again, minor quibble. I chose science.

4. The theory that life on Earth evolved gradually over billions of years is…

True. Next.

5. When I look at a beautiful view I think that…

“this is a beautiful view.” But the only choices were “protect it for the future” or “think that this is what life is all about.” This was a toss-up for me because I don’t ever really think either. Life is about more than just looking at beautiful views, and I’m not thinking about future generations on a typical day. I figure that “this is what life is all about” is close enough, though.

6. I can tell right from wrong by…

I’m pretty tiffed that the only decent answer is a consequentialist one. The other options are “my parents,” “my pastor,” or “I do what I want.” (Can the responses be at least close to one another on Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, please?) My problem is that the consequences of actions themselves don’t really tell you what you should do. A hedonic egoist, a consequentialist, and someone with a chaotic neutral alignment will all come to very different conclusions based on the same information about consequences. So this answer doesn’t really give anything substantively moral. I would have preferred an answer like “by weighing everyone’s preferences equally and acting accordingly,” even as vague as that is. Personally, I’ve got a shaky working model like “choosing the action that would make me most like the person I want to be,” and I’ll just bite the bullet that there’s some inherent subjectivity to that. It gets close to what I think is a more solid position, though.

7. It’s best to be honest because…

The only good answers here are motivated by self-interest, which I don’t really appreciate. I can choose between “people respect you more if you’re honest” and “I’m happier being honest.” I picked the latter, but would have preferred an answer with a more universal justification.

8. Other people matter because…

We can choose between “people have feelings” and “we will be happier if we treat each other well.” I’m not particularly happy with either answer, but I think the first one has more moral weight. And to anyone who chooses the second one: if the empirical facts swung the other way, and it turned out that being cruel to other people or a subset of people actually increased aggregate happiness, would you then be willing to say that we ought subjugate those people? That’s not a comfortable place to be in.

9. Animals should be treated…

With respect, because they can suffer, too. I think this is the only coherent answer given, and I don’t think it makes sense for a Humanist or atheist to not care about animal welfare. If suffering matters, then there’s no inherent reason that human suffering is special. I think I might write at length about this later, but I can’t think of any good reason an atheist or Humanist shouldn’t be a vegetarian or vegan. Just something to mull over.

10. The most important thing in life is…

We have either environmentalism or general welfare and happiness of humanity. I think the latter is more important, but it ignores animal welfare (which matters) and it depends on some strong and as-of-yet unjustified ethical principles. I’m happy to choose that, though.

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Anyway, those are my answers. I think as a whole it was an interesting quiz which did a good job of highlighting some values I think Humanists can somewhat uncontroversially organize around (even if I think it’s philosophically shaky). At the very least, I have a better idea of some of the things Humanists are committed to, even if I might not agree with the justification.

h/t to Paul Fidalgo at The Morning Heresy

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.