Thanks to Steven Carr for the link. I will comment later...http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
At first I thought the Cardinal was just saying anyone who fails to consider the transcendent has an impoverished conception of what it is to be human. But at the end he is clear that those who fail to consider such bigger questions are themselves not fully human.
Well, in a way, I would agree. The Cardinal's mistake, I think, is not in suggesting that someone who never thinks about the bigger questions is lacking in an important dimension of human existence - that may be true (it's a weaker claim than the Socratic assertion that the unexamined life is not even worth living) - but in supposing that atheists never think about such questions, and indeed have no time for them. This is the popular straw man fallacy endlessly wheeled out against atheists: they don't even ask such big questions, but just dismiss them as worthless. I have previously commented on it here (where I point out Rowan Williams also commits the fallacy).
I could spend more time unpacking the various muddles the Cardinal gets into here (such as e.g. he seems to conflate (i) saying that a conception X of humanity is importantly deficient re humanity, with (ii) saying that those who have conception X of humanity are importantly deficient re humanity), but it is also worth just drawing attention to the fact that going round saying that those with whom one most profoundly disagrees are "not fully human" is an extraordinarily insulting and dangerous thing to say, whether true or not.
Religious folk regularly moan about Dawkins being rude and insulting to religious people. This, surely, is far, far more insulting. I get the impression it's intended to be.
Isn't the Cardinal at least aware of the disturbing connotations of the phrase, "They are not fully human"? It is surely most closely associated with mass-murdering dictators and eugenicists. If I really am not fully human, according to the Cardinal, I wonder to what lengths he might be prepared to go to make me fully human? And does he consider my not-fully-human existence worth less than that of a fully-human religious person? The use of this chilling phrase is, at the very least, bad PR for the Catholic Church.
At first I thought the Cardinal was just saying anyone who fails to consider the transcendent has an impoverished conception of what it is to be human. But at the end he is clear that those who fail to consider such bigger questions are themselves not fully human.
Well, in a way, I would agree. The Cardinal's mistake, I think, is not in suggesting that someone who never thinks about the bigger questions is lacking in an important dimension of human existence - that may be true (it's a weaker claim than the Socratic assertion that the unexamined life is not even worth living) - but in supposing that atheists never think about such questions, and indeed have no time for them. This is the popular straw man fallacy endlessly wheeled out against atheists: they don't even ask such big questions, but just dismiss them as worthless. I have previously commented on it here (where I point out Rowan Williams also commits the fallacy).
I could spend more time unpacking the various muddles the Cardinal gets into here (such as e.g. he seems to conflate (i) saying that a conception X of humanity is importantly deficient re humanity, with (ii) saying that those who have conception X of humanity are importantly deficient re humanity), but it is also worth just drawing attention to the fact that going round saying that those with whom one most profoundly disagrees are "not fully human" is an extraordinarily insulting and dangerous thing to say, whether true or not.
Religious folk regularly moan about Dawkins being rude and insulting to religious people. This, surely, is far, far more insulting. I get the impression it's intended to be.
Isn't the Cardinal at least aware of the disturbing connotations of the phrase, "They are not fully human"? It is surely most closely associated with mass-murdering dictators and eugenicists. If I really am not fully human, according to the Cardinal, I wonder to what lengths he might be prepared to go to make me fully human? And does he consider my not-fully-human existence worth less than that of a fully-human religious person? The use of this chilling phrase is, at the very least, bad PR for the Catholic Church.
Comments
What I would mean by it is not that atheists are sub-human, but that their lives lack a vitally important aspect: a relationship with God.
Perhaps not very many people look at it this way, but lots of people think that having human relationships is an important (perhaps most important) part of our lives. Such a person may say that if you lock yourself away from all other people then you are not fully human.
I agree that saying things like that are only likely to cause confusion and upset when said on the BBC.
http://antarena.blogspot.com/2009/04/atheists-not-fully-human-says-cardinal.html
If I was referring to someone who did something along the lines of what Kyle mentions (say locking themselves away from other people), I would perhaps say that (I think) they are rejecting or denying a part of their humanity, or part of what makes them human.
Saying that someone is "not fully human" could be taken to suggest that they are inherently lacking, rather than consciously choosing to lack, I think.
One can also quite easily use 'not fully human' and 'subhuman' pretty much interchangeably. The majority of definitions I can find for the prefix 'sub-' seem to suggest meanings like 'less than', 'nearly', 'almost' and 'not quite' in the context of 'subhuman' and I really don't see how 'not fully' is any different.
Murphy O'Connor's choice of wording here seems particularly poor. If not, perhaps he is deliberately seeking to offend, or perhaps he really does see atheists as subhuman?
Btw, I've also blogged briefly about this, and PZ Myers and John Wilkins have both blogged about it in their respective forums over at Scienceblogs. It's getting a lot of coverage in the secular blogosphere.
You could turn the words of the good cardinal around (if you were feeling particularly "strident"):
'You cannot and should not be considered a fully evolved homo sapien if you continue to cling to repeatedly debunked dogma and invalidated superstition when all the evidence accumulated by humanity's collected investigative endeavour points in no such direction.'
But that might be a tad shrill, so I won't.
God I love how religion gives stupid people in stupid hats a free pass to act like stupid bastards toward anyone who doesn't accept their mythology.
If he was serious about realising or contemplating a greater humanity, he would acknowledge that a belief in God is not a requisite at all. I would argue that empathy is what the world really needs more of – a belief in God can sometimes enhance it but oftentimes achieves the exact opposite. So at the end of the day, it’s not God that matters, but the individual who believes or doesn’t believe.
The Catholic Church is becoming increasingly an anachronistic institution in the 21st Century and this is more evidence of the same.
Regards, Paul.
It's obvious that atheists can find meaning in their lives, and that they do contemplate the bigger questions - history is full of philosophers of various persuasions - no one, and no culture, in my opinion, has a monopoly on truth and meaning. And to pre-empt Kyle, that doesn't make for moral relativism.
But it's the idea that a belief in God is a panacea, or makes someone a superior person to an atheist that I find particularly uninformed, even for a theologian. There are so many different ideas of what God is, some of which are genocidal.
To quote an essay I read recently by Raymond Smullyan in reference to giving God a personality: But the so-called “personality” of a being is really more in the eyes of the beholder than in the being itself.
As I like to point out to fundamentalists: do they really think that George Bush and Osama Bin Laden believe in the same God?
As I've said previously, I'm not against people's belief in God, but it's obvious to me that the God someone believes in says more about them than it says about God.
Regards, Paul.
Paul.
I think the main difference is that Singh does explain what he means by 'bogus' in the article - there's no need to speculate on what he intended. Perhaps he could have explained it more thoroughly. Perhaps a different word would've been a better choice. The libel case appears to hinge on a specific definition of bogus, even though Singh does provide some explanation of the way he uses the word.
The Cardinal's lack of detailed explanation is obviously due to the different medium involved, but without one, all we can do is speculate. As far as I am aware, though, no-one is suing Murphy O'Connor for slander. On the other hand, the clip seems to be the Cardinal explaining previous comments to the same effect, so I'm not sure what to think here.
I wanted to have a look to see how other people may use the term 'not fully human', so googled it. Leaving out the obvious raft of results referring to the topic at hand, I found most of the references to it do infer the meaning 'subhuman'. The strength of the inference seemed to correlate to how political the results were. Pro-life sites had the weakest inference, a book on human rights had a strong inference, and a quote from Robert Heinlein used the term interchangeably with 'subhuman'.
That's not to say that the Murphy O'Connor was using it in that way, of course.
Dick:
That's a very good point. I think by wording things in the way I suggested in my first comment, that assumption could be avoided. Although you'd still need to argue as to why whatever you were referring to is part of being human.
Autistic people?
Hermits?
Sociability may be the norm, but it does not seem to be definitive.
You agree with the Cardinal, but your argument is not his. Yes you can argue that without a relationship with God we cannot be fully human (which I consider about as cogent as arguing that without a relationship with Santa we cannot be fully human), but the Cardinal's argument here is not that, but the currently more fashionable argument (see my reference to Rowan Williams) that only religious folk consider the transcendental/bigger questions, and that to fail to consider them is to miss out on a key aspect of what it is to be human. That popular argument is a straw man, as I explained previously.
This Cardinal is, shall we say, one of the less bright religious leaders. I imagine his academic advisors put their heads in their hands when he transformed the above popular argument with which he'd been fed into "atheists aren't fully human".
Silly Cardinal, what do you think led me to naturalism?
That fits the Cardinal to a tee.
I read your link, Another Myth about Atheism, and I think it puts the argument very succinctly.
And there are theologians who would agree with you, though not the Cardinal I would expect.
And I think your point about what constitutes a secular society is also often overlooked.
Regards, Paul.
Loved it.
Paul.
What an ill-informed piece of self righteous nonsense. Coming from a man that protected a child abusing priest!
Athiests are on the whole decent thoughtful folk who have spent time reading different views and making decisions on facts as opposed to following what they are just told to accept.
When someone who is an athiest does voluntary work, they do it as they believe its the right thing to do not because they think it will give them a better chance of some reward in a later life.
When we ( I am an athiest) obey the laws of the land, we do it because we see and understand that society works better with respect. There is no need of a god!
That makes us MORE human as we care for others because it is simply the RIGHT thing to do, not because of what we can get out of it.
What does 'fully human' mean anyway? O'Connor can't explain it.
Does it mean enslavement to a dogmatic artificial world culture guided by silly men who do not have a clue about life for 4 billion inhabitants of this lovely mudball?
Corrmac was once a whiny little baby like the rest of us. He messed his diaper, made his demands for mama's nipple, proceeded through the terrible 2's and 3's.
Somewhere the old scary catholic ladies got ahold of his natural superstitious nature...his fear of everything in the neighborhood. The gave sissy Cormac a personal superman with which to deal with the world. He did not experience the joy of his heroes from comic books though. He picked up his mythologies from that supercomic book: the bible. Most of us outgrew our comic book heroes, but Cormac had no inner strength; he clung to the cute myths and discovered he could make a living ...a good living by scaring ignorant or well educated people laden with fears.
All of his life he has enjoyed trying to control the fearful with his comic book heroes. For new problems, he simply comes up with new but empty theories.....non-participants in the theistic culture are now NOT fully human; how nice. He could not offer any half brained reasoning for this conclusion. His law is that good old solid "because I told you so" law promulgated throughout the romcath empire. Cormac, like his colleagues, is just another carnie, another malicious conductor who enjoys making his enslaved zombies kneel and stand and bow and cry and laugh to the tune of his stick. Cons like him have never given a tiny bit of evidence for anything that pukes out of their mouths.
James said every culture needs its leeches; western culture was damned with these oversized leeches.
Any average human being can investigate anything and everything that they spew as truth and law; all will discover that not one word computes to a reasonable person.
Alas! this is the problem with long term indoctrination. You can't break your bonds...you fear breaking your bonds. You support those who would tighten those bonds.
So sad....so sad...when freedom and truth await any of you who break those bonds that have no more power than tissue paper. So sad....your whole life controlled and wasted as a result of these myths that were supposed to go away in adulthood along with superman, mickey mouse, batman and cardinalman.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6334837.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084Now it appears to be "Atheism: greatest of evils"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa2UDXAB31o&feature=popular
No, I'm fully human.
Try again Cormac.
Catholics fallen to the heresy of Modernism also, for the most part, detest the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has been, in my opinion, the greatest scientist-theologian ever to live; he laid the foundations upon which much modern science developed. He also wrote—in an extremely logical, syllogistic manner—about the relationship of and differences between faith and reason, and he is firmly on the side of scientists in modern questions like the Protestants' flawed "Intelligent Design theory." The Catholic Church, not some of its flawed human constituents, has never opposed true science.