Secular humanism and the persistence of Christianity

In last week’s column, I briefly mentioned “The Break” that occurred sometime during the course of the First World War. By break, as coined by British poet David Jones, it’s meant a bold line of demarcation dividing two distinct eras.

Jones, much like fellow Modernist poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, discerned the Great War as severing humanity from the culture cherished in the past. Pound was a bit more hard-edged when it came to his views, but even he could be nostalgic for the world pre-vortex.

Unlike Pound and Eliot, Jones actually had fought in the bloody battle of the Somme as a member of the Royal

Welsh Fusiliers (as did Robert Graves). Jones’ firsthand experience provides the grist for more graphic detail of how humanity gambled and lost a grand portion of its soul in the razor-wired, corpse strewn, noman’s land separating the ratinfested, bombed-out trenches of two opposing armies.

While it may true at the time there existed no atheists in foxholes, what emerged from those very same foxholes was an attitude that antagonized the previous status quo, and sought to replace Christianity with secular humanism. According to them, a proper alchemy of reason, science, political theory and post-romantic logical positivism would set the world on a course of peace and justice.

The problem was then, as it remains today, no one has devised such an effective alchemy, a crew that includes my fellow resident of this real estate. I take exception to his statement appearing in last week’s edition of this fish wrap: “By the mid-18th century, plagues, the Little Ice Age with subsequent crop failures, and the findings of the philosopher-scientists of the period, it was time to break away from the Aristotelian-theocratic grip on the Western world weltanschauung for well over a thousand years.”

Do tell! The author of such drivel then anoints his own philosophical trinity to lead the West into the Promised Land of Reason beyond Christianity. The calibration goes something like this: Spinoza (pantheism), Adam Smith (enlightened selfinterest) and David Hume (empiricism) all add up to … well, something.

The problem is, the author is cherry-picking factoids rather than presenting a complete picture. For example, the pantheism of Spinoza, according to Karl Jaspars, only works if God is not used interchangeably with the term nature.

As for Adam Smith,

“The Wealth of Nations,” as fine a work as it is, was followed by the grand “A Theory of Moral Sentiments.” In short, it’s a very Christian-informed book. Squeezing a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment into some post-aristotelian, secular matchbox is dishonest and, frankly, banal. The same could be said about the caricature presented of Hume.

Of course, every portrait of some perceived Holy Trinity must include its version of John the Baptist, and so Thomas Paine is also included because of his critique of religion. Only six people attended Paine’s

1809 funeral because of his religious views and all-around disagreeable nature, so there’s that. As I noted above, cherrypicked factoids do not a cogent, consistent argument make.

“Enlightened self-interest is a valid approach to a happy, productive lifestyle.” I can’t find much to disagree with here, other than my definition of enlightened might differ significantly from our resident secularist. I also know the term “enlightened” doesn’t necessarily throw out the Baby Jesus with the proverbial secularist bathwater. Just ask Adam Smith.

And this: “Knowledge tempers emotion leading to imagination and creativity.” I’m not convinced Hume would agree entirely with this last statement. It’s a preposterous assertion challenged by centuries of artistic expression. I do believe W.H. Auden would most likely agree, but he’s simultaneously responsible for some of the past century’s most enduring Christian poetry.

Looks to me as if Christianity continues to endure, steadfastly defying a complete break.