Humanists, Meet Humanists

This, folks, is why you read a book more than once.

And why sometimes you have to remind yourself that reading out of good books doesn’t necessarily meaning reading books off someone’s “good books” list.

This is from Terry Pratchett’s “Unseen Academicals,” in which again this famous Humanist again proves that Humanism isn’t all that far from the teachings of one Jesus Christ, it’s just that some of Christ’s followers are a bit on the wonky side.

Here’s what I mean, reproduced in two pictures from the book, rather than via typing all those words:

The important bit:

Glenda blinked, trying to get the slide slightly less than three seconds out of her memory. “And that’s true, is it?” But it had to be true. There was something about the way the image was sticking to the back of her brain that declared the truth of it.

“I want to see it again.”

“You what!” Said Hix.

“There’s more to it,” said Glenda. “It’s only part of a picture.”

“It took us hours work work that out,” said Hix severely. “How did you spot it the very first go?”

“Because I knew it had to be there,” said Glenda.

And Glenda watches the bit of preserved memory again, of an Orc attacking someone. But she sees more than the teeth and the claws.

“There!” She pointed at the frozen image. “That’s men on horseback, isn’t it? And they’ve got whips. I know it’s blurry, but you can tell they’ve got whips.”

“Well yes, of course,” said Hix. “It’s quite hard to get anything to run into a hail of arrows unless you give it some encouragement.”

Greater evil behind the lesser evil. Greater evil driving others to use as weapons. We see it daily. Not necessarily in the form of tooth and claws and whips forcing others into the hail of arrows. But we see it in politics, in society, where if you’re not supportive of one thing you must be a hater.

It’s as Paul wrote to the Corinthinas, in 1 Corinthians 13:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my good to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

In Unseen Academicals, through the eyes of Lord Vetinari, this story is told:

 This is the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. From a tyrant. An amusing tyrant, yes, but a tyrant who has had people killed and gotten away with it because of that moral superiority.

There is no superior morality without charity. Not even the Humanists can claim to be superior without it. And there is enough evil done both by purported Humanists and purported followers of Jesus Christ for me to think that any braggadocial claim of moral superiority is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

Because, to continue from the King James:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, it not puffed up.

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

I don’t see any of that in the so-called moral superiority. What I see is superiority wielded as a weapon, just as racism is wielded, just as jingoism is wielded. Help is offered not because one is charitable, but in an effort to make one’s enemies look uncharitable.

Good books hold mirrors up to the reader. Good books help us hear the echoes of our own sounding brass, of our own tinkling cymbals.

And here’s something interesting, also from Unseen Academicals: A refutation of the Humanist “If God Were There, He’d Stop All This” argument. Page 315:

[After being asked if wizards could to something to convince the Ankh-Morpork populace that there’s nothing to fear from Mr. Nutt, an Orc.]

“Yes,” said Ponder. “We can do practically anything, but we can’t change people’s minds. We can’t magic them sensible. Believe me, if it were possible to do that, we would have done it a long time ago. We can stop people fighting by magic and then what do we do? We have to go on using magic to stop them fighting. We have to go on using magic to stop them being stupid. And where does all that end? So we make certain it doesn’t begin. That’s why the university is here. That’s what we do. We have to sit around not doing things because of the hundreds of times in the past it’s been proved that once you get beyond the abracadabra, hey presto, changing-the-pigeons-into-ping-pong-balls style of magic you start getting more problems than you’ve solved. It was bad enough finding ping-pong balls nesting in the attics.”

“Ping-pong balls nestin;?” said Trev.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Ponder glumly.

Humanists don't believe in God because they believe they are morally superior to Him. Yet we see here the wizards of Discworld recognizing that the behavior Humanists would expect in a god isn't the kind of behavior that wins awards.

Someone's gonna be upset.