The Momentous Significance of Rationalism Today
There is an overriding need in India today, that it encourage and cultivate the rationalist outlook. Indeed, the growth of rationalism is the key to its future development and progress. What is true of India is true of the entire planet.
India will become a testing ground for the validity of rationalism for the future of humankind. A country with over one billion people, India represents rich multicultural university. It is home to pluralistic linguistic enclaves and contending religious traditions. Many go back tens of centuries, deeply ingrained in social custom.
Rationalists and secular humanists ask which methods will best help to discover new truths, most successfully resolve complex human problems, and realize human needs and values? And they respond that it is by applying reason, science and free inquiry to educate the India public and the institutions of power in society.
Large sectors of the Indian population disagree, being unaware of the implications or meaning of rationalism. They believe that ancient Hinduism should provide the basic framework of life. Pitted against them is Islam, representing a large minority within India and dominating Pakistan and Bangladesh, formerly contiguous with India. Other significant minorities, such as the Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians have other faith systems. As fundamentalism grows, factionalism seems to simmer. How overcome possible future turmoil? How can social peace be maintained?
India is the largest parliamentary democracy in the world. It was founded as a secular state, though severe strains constantly challenge the separation of religion and the state. India faces enormous social problems: a growing population, ecological pollution, the depletion of resources, large numbers of unemployed straining urban areas, poverty, illiteracy, health care, the danger of nuclear confrontation, etc.
The defenders of rationalism believe that the application of its principals are essential if India is to solve its problems and progress. The Indian Rationalist Association is to be congratulated for the leadership role that it has played. There are many humanist, atheist, secular, skeptical and rationalist organizations in India doing important work in various areas, though I believe that the rationalist movement has a special and perhaps momentous role to play; for it can help to bring India into the twenty-first century and the postindustrial, information age. I say this because what is central to rationalism is its emphasis on both scientific inquiry and secular humanism.
What are the essential ingredients of the rationalist outlook today? First, contemporary rationalism is committed to a method of inquiry; that is, it it affirms that if it is to understand nature and human behavior, it needs to use the best methods of science. Beliefs should be considered to be tentative hypotheses until they are tested by evidence, reasons and their experimental consequences. Beliefs based upon faith, mysticism, abstract speculation, authority or emotion are inadequate. While they may have aesthetic or poetic value, they have no basis in empirical fact. The great challenge today is to resist lethargy and hidebound traditions and extend the methods of reason and critical thinking to all areas of human interest. Given the great breakthroughs in the natural, biological and behavioral sciences, rationalists wish to use similar methods in other fields. The great value of this has been demonstrated by the industrial, technological and information revolutions, which have been applied to the amelioration of the human condition.
The major challenges that the global community faces is to extend the fruits of such inquiries from the affluent societies and the middle classes to the vast underclass of the world.
If we are to achieve this aim, the highest priority for rationalists should be education. This involves the cultivation of critical thinking in students at all levels, but also in the mass media. This should apply to every individual in society. The basic moral principle is that each person, no matter what class or backround has the right for cultural enrichment. Learning how to think is essential for all democracies.
An educated public is the best guarantee against tyranny. Second, the major revolutionary result of the application of the methods of science is that it has transformed our understanding of nature. No longer based on a on an archaic spiritualistic metaphysic, we now see that the universe is basically physical-chemical in character and that it is undergoing evolutionary processes of change. Our cosmic outlook today points to an expanding universe with billions of galaxies. Ever since Darwin, we understand that the biosphere also is understood as part of an evolutionary process. There is no special divine role for the human species, other than what we attribute to it. Modern science has rejected the ancient doctrines of a separate soul, reincarnation or immortality.
The next stages of human evolution depends in part on what we do, for we have the power to understand and influence its course. By expanding our comprehension of the universe, we are better able to enlarge the domain of human interest and become a citizen of the universe. This enables us to transcend parochial, chauvinistic and anthropocentric illusions. Third, both the methods of science and its cosmic outlook on the frontiers of knowledge have given us new powers and opportunities, and these are pregnant with ethical significance.
(a) We can use reason and science to reconstruct our values, making them more appropriate to the actual conditions. Ancient spiritualistic doctrines often advise retreat, withdrawal, self-denial, or they often focus on salvation. The new secular morality seeks happiness and realization in this life here and now. Among its key ingredients are education, rationality, the fulfillment of a person's talents and potentialities and the development of self-determination and a sense of power over one's own destiny.
(b) It also means that we will be concerned with social justice, equality of concern for each individual in society and an appreciation for individual freedom. This presupposes a democratic society, in which there is both political freedom and some measure of economic democracy. But further it also recognizes that no society can live in isolation. Thus the highest obligation today is planetary humanism. This means that each person has equal dignity and value and that our long range responsibility is to improve where we can the entire world community, of which we are all a part. No one nation no matter how powerful should be allowed to dictate to the rest, nor should intransigent religious factions be allowed to block social reform.
We need to be concerned with the fate of the human species and the natural and social ecology and with the disparities in wealth between various parts of our planetary habitat, and we should seek to overcome these. What are the dramatic consequences of the rationalist and secular humanist agenda today: that we should encourage the use of reason, science and critical inquiry throughout the world today, that we should beat our weapons into plowshares, that we should sit down and reason together, and negotiate our differences beyond our preexisting nationalistic or religious prejudices. We should make new efforts to find common ground. Perhaps it is too much to ask others to abandon their deepseated religious convictions. At least, we should try to get them to modify them in the light of reason and to replace dogma with tolerance and the willingness to understand the views of others. Above all, we need to convince all humans to at least respect and allow freedom to believe or not to believe: this is the first principle of a democratic society and planetary humanism. It is clear that the Rationalist movement in India can and should play a momentous role. Since the salient point is not simply to reject false superstitions, but to create new values and principles based upon reason. This outlook is not negative; it does not engage in naysaying; it is positive and constructive. For its task is not to destroy but to build a better world, based upon knowledge, not presumption or falsehood. Ideas have powerful consequences; and the ideas and values of Rationalism and Humanism have already had far-reaching transforming effects. They have literally created the modern secular world; and they will continue to do so in the future. I trust that this International Rationalist Conference will focus on how to implement its powerful message.
Paul Kurtz is Honorary Associate of Rationalist International; Vice President of Rationalist Press Association; Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo; Chairman of Center for Inquiry International; Founder of Council for Secular Humanism.