Humanism: The activist atheist’s wimpy brother.

I’d like to call my self a Humanist.  It has such a nice connotation and at face I seem to have much in common with them. Their code of ethics is based on positive assertions.  You know, like respecting science and being kind to our stupider theist brethren (my words not theirs).

But the fact is the few times I’ve brushed elbows with Humanists I tended to find myself being looked down on like some kind of bomb throwing radical fiend, out to destroy peoples beliefs, ridicule them, and cause them angst in the process…as though that’s a bad thing.

I read a blog today by the executive director of the American Humanist Association that really tweaked my hump.  Among a lot of pastoral avuncular babble he included condemnation of Richard Dawkins for things he said that make nonbelievers seem arrogant and which are hurtful to religionist / non-believer relations (as though I want a relationship with believers).  Two examples were Dawkins’ statements that "… religion is an organized license to be acceptably stupid."  and that the “…combined number of Nobel Prizes won by Muslims was less than that won by a single English university.“

Here’s the whole article if you care to read it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roy-speckhardt/an-end-to-arrogant-atheis_b_4602404.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

Both of those statements are true, at least by any thinking person’s standards. Without organized religion and it’s doctrine of inculcating stupid, and maintaining it, people who independently “believed” in creationism would be declared stupid by the entire planet. There is no reasonable debate about that.  Only the fact that organized religion supports and promotes ancient ignorance and rejects scientific fact is what keeps religious people from understanding and accepting the fact of evolution.  It’s mass stupidity by doctrine. 

As for the Muslims’ notable lack of contributions to civilization over the past couple of centuries; the inference is real.  Muslims represent 1.6 billion people / 23% of the planet’s population, yet they garnered less than 1% of the Nobel prizes awarded. Compare that to the 13.8 million Jews who represent 0.2% of the planet’s population and have been awarded 23%  (TWENTY-THREE PERCENT) of the Nobel Prizes.

Dawkins’ comparative example’s point is clear:  Islam does not (any longer, nor for some time) promote, foster, nor admire intellectual growth and academic achievement. It contributes little to the advancement of civilization. Indeed, it goes beyond that even to being a detriment to our advancement. 

Yes, the truth sometimes hurts.  That’s life.  If Humanism is about sugar coating, caging reality in less in your face terms, playing word games, and making nice to the point where the telling of a truth - in all its ugliness - is interpreted as "arrogance" that puts freethinkers in a bad light and hurts the feelings of the willingly deluded who would impose their delusions on all of us just as they do to their children, well… that's why I remind myself why I won’t call myself a Humanist.  Fact is, I’m now suspicious of those that do. 

As Humanists are the wimpy brother of activist atheists, so too are they the first cousin of Uncle Tom atheists; those Neville Chamberlain, appeasing atheists, who decry the activism of the FFRF, or Americans United for the Separation of Church and State as “inflammatory.”  
Fuck ‘em both.