J. A- Gray is Deputy Editor of the NOR.

The Council for Secular Humanism sent me from New York a mailer about Humanism, offering a collection of essays entitled Imagine There's No Heaven and a quarterly called Free Inquiry, with writers who are "leading the way toward living the good life without reliance on traditional religion." They listed such names as Francis Crick, Camille Paglia, Thomas Szasz, Richard Dawkins, Martin Gardner, Paul Kurz, E.O. Wilson, Art Buchwald, and the late Isaac Asimov, who write "for freethinking individuals who do not follow the 'susceptible crowd' into lives of selfdenial in the name of uncorroborated religious claims rooted in the supernatural." They promised risk-free, money-back subscriptions and they included a document entitled The Affirmations of Humanism. A Statement of Principles.

Now, I had thought that Humanists had no prescribed code of belief and that freethinkers were free when they did their thinking. But these Affirmations of Humanism are a forthright credo, and I am amazed to discover not only that a Humanist creed exists but that it proves upon examination to be more demanding than the Christian creed.

The first thing that strikes one about this creed is the sheer size of it. The Humanist creed has nearly 500 words. Of the principal Christian creeds, the Apostles' has only about 100 words and the Nicene has about 200. (The Athanasian Creed is a special case; it contains some 600 words but it gives an impression not of bulk but of intricate repetition; it is a sort of Trinitarian fugue, a complex piece of theological music.)

So the Humanist creed is long, but perhaps it's not overlong, perhaps every word is meaningful and memorable. Let us unroll the scroll and begin to read.

We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

I'll skip down to one of the meatier sections: We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.

We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to the fullest

We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence....

We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children.

The lofty sentiments and assertions keep coming, passing in solemn procession, with now and then a little shocker slipped in: Mature adults should be allowed ... to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom ... and to die with dignity.

Here we see death warrants for the unborn and the ill or depressed quietly join the high-minded parade. Then comes this oddity: We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

I said it was demanding. A faithful Humanist not only must affirm a long list of abstractions and disavow all supernatural terms but also must express delight over unnamed things yet to be discovered everywhere. That's a lot to ask of a mere human - though maybe a citizen of the universe can handle it. (Are we Christians citizens of the universe too? Is my intergalactic tax return due some time soon?)

As it nears its end the creed suddenly gathers speed and races into this paragraph: We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

After this burst of platitudes, the Humanists come to a halt with this: We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

To save space I haven't printed all their articles of faith, but this is a fair sample of a creed that is confident in tone and massive in size - a Goliath next to which the Apostles' or Nicene Creed is a spindly David. But this giant, like that one, has weak points. (One is even tempted to call it Philistine.) David's opponent left only his forehead unarmored, but this big fellow seems to have soft spots everywhere. Where should 1, who am with sin , cast the first stone at those who say they are without it?

Perhaps just there. We believe in joy rather than guilt or sin. Now, why is it "rather than"? Why do the Humanists speak as if these are mutually exclusive? A great modem literary critic has given us an analysis of these terms that suggests otherwise. He recounts in a personal memoir (Surprised by Joy) how he believed in nothing but joy, but in fidelity to joy he learned that joy pointed him to belief in gratuity and belief in gratuity pointed him to belief in God, which pointed him to belief in sin, which pointed him to belief in guilt - guilt being a practical estimation of his distance from God and godliness. After his conversion he continued to feel joy but ceased paying much attention to it, stopped "believing" in it. This is one man's story and perhaps not the only story possible; the point is that when joy and guilt and sin are examined fairly one may discover deep and even practical relations among them. When they are used as counters merely, as in this Humanist slogan, one discovers nothing - except that the Humanists seem to be as incurious about their chosen Good Words as about their selected Bad Words. One also wonders if being a faithful Humanist means suppressing one's full, ragged humanity. Feeling guilty? Feeling sinful? We Humanists don't believe in that, so please feel something else.

It is understandable if the mutuality of joy and guilt has escaped the notice of the Humanists in their announced isolation from religion. But the Humanist creed proffers other purported mutual exclusions that are familiar old counterfeits. We believe in learning in the place of dogma, they say. It has been observed a hundred times that there is no learning without dogma. Nietzsche is well known for announcing to Europe a century ago that God is dead, so the Humanists may be prepared to credit him when he says, "It is clear that science too rests on a faith; there is no science 'without presuppositions'... it always remains a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests" (The Gay Science, Book V). "The question whether truth is needed must ... have been affirmed in advance.... 'Will to truth' [means] 'I will not deceive, not even myself: and with this we are on the ground of morality" (his italics).

The Humanist creed also claims We believe in reason rather than blind faith. This sounds nearly plausible until you recall that the tools essential to reasoning are taken up and used strictly on faith: faith in the order of nature, faith in the reasoning process, faith in the possibility of communication. That the Humanist creed blandly implies mutual exclusion where it is well known that there is mutual dependence does not encourage me to trust the creedmakers.

Their reply might be that they are merely waving banners, not writing treatises, and a banner can't hold a nuanced explanation. Fair enough. But in addition to mottoes that contradict themselves, the Humanists also announce mottoes that contradict one another. Even if you're just waving banners you can't wave the banners of all sides at once. The Humanists proclaim a duty to enjoy life here and now; they also proclaim equal duties to practice compassion over selfishness and to cultivate moral excellence. How do those go together? Up here they believe in helping the handicapped but down here they believe in the kind of reproductive freedom that puts a handicapped baby in danger of abortion. Over here they affirm opposition to ideologies of violence but over there they affirm several varieties of murder in abortion, suicide, and euthanasia.

Their creed is full of unexamined slogans. One passage says that they believe in the common moral decencies (altruism, honesty, integrity, and so on) and they also believe that moral principles are tested by their consequences. There are serious objections to these blithe formulations. First, these "decencies" are not "common" in either their character or their frequency; they are quite uncommon. Second, these "decencies" are adopted before one knows their consequences and are practiced precisely on conviction - that is, on faith and not on calculation. Third, "decent" is hardly the proper name for them, hardly big enough for the heroism these virtues may require: Take seriously any one of them and you will shortly be involved in indecencies such as helping the poor and tending the sick, in doing good and combating evil in ways that are sure to conflict with the forthright Humanist values of privacy and reasonableness and even moral excellence not to mention enjoying life here and now.

What, by the way, is moral excellence? I have heard of being moral and immoral, and of acting morally or immorally, but - "excellence"? If you were to ask me whether I cheat on my taxes, and I were to reply that I believe in the cultivation of fiscal excellence - I wonder what you would think. Likewise, I don't know what to think of moral excellence. I cannot conceive of a question of morals to which the phrase "cultivate moral excellence" would be an answer. It sounds like evasion and obfuscation.

Paul the Apostle once said that he had been all things to all men for the sake of the Gospel. The preachers of Humanism seem to presume that all men can believe all things - except, of course, the Gospel. But can the Humanist really conform his mind and will to the array of contradictions sketched above? Well, all faiths involve paradox, and who knows what marvels of casuistry Humanist exegetes may perform? Little Humanists, for all I know, may be drilled in some simple but profound catechism: "Q. Why didn't God make me? A. God didn't make me to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world, and certainly not to be happy with Him in the next. Q. Why did Mom and Dad abort baby sister? A. Mom and Dad believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing their creative talents to the fullest."

How does the Christian creed compare? The one I recite each week is the Nicene, so I will quote from it. It begins at the beginning of time (We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth) and ends at the end of time (We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come), and in between it sketches - the life of Jesus and the nature of the Church. It is far briefer than the Humanist creed. But is it better?

It seems at least more fit and less puffy. It is spare, containing no generalizations, no clashing orotund slogans. Its very understatedness produces, for me, a kind of pleasurable suspense. Why? The surprising answer is that it is good stagecraft, drama on a cosmic scale. It constructs in a few short phrases a proscenium that arches over the universe, from its conception to its crisis (he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again) to its consummation.

The Humanist creed, by contrast, builds no stage and sets no scene; its generalizations bump about in space. It reads like a bulletin from that floating mountain full of mad scientists and progressive thinkers that Gulliver encountered on his travels. (The Christian priest who wrote Gulliver's Travels would shudder at the Humanist creed, I think, for the satirist's secret fear is that the sincere will put satirists out of business by surpassing the most pointed satire.) One of the items of Humanist faith I did not list above is this: We seek new departures in our thinking. On this point their creed actually succeeds on its own terms. Its thinking is full of departures: What it lacks is arrivals. The slogans endlessly circle the landing field.

To compare creeds fairly, it must be acknowledged that the Humanists - citizens of the universe though they be - have not set themselves the task of evoking cosmic history. Their creed features only human skills, ambitions, pleasures, and pastimes, and it endeavors to build up from these a complete picture of man - complete but for the avowed suppression of man's regrettable tendency to seek, worship, and even obey God.

The Christian creed does not operate in the same way. It does not opine about who man is. It does not even put mankind at center stage. Instead it reports the career of the Holy Trinity, with particular attention to Jesus of Nazareth. Yet its reticence pays artistic dividends: It makes me interested in man in a way that the Humanist creed does not. The Christian creed conveys the peril and grandeur of man's situation, from which I can infer the grandeur and peril of being a man. The Humanist creed labors to portray man directly, but its composition is a muddle, the portrait a disservice to its subject. Christian man is, as Pascal said, the glory and scum of the universe. Humanist man seems merely a windbag and a bore.

I resisted earlier the temptation to call the Humanist creed Philistine. I now surrender to it. Considered as works of art, the Christian creeds are vivid and the Humanist is pedestrian. The Athanasian Creed, I suggested, is a sort of fugue; or perhaps an intricately repetitive poem, a villanelle. The Nicene Creed may be read as a gripping short story. The Apostles' Creed, which Catholic children learn easily by heart, has the depth-in-brevity of a classic nursery rhyme.

To what literary artifact can the Humanist creed be likened? It's prosy, generalized, and full of off-the-rack sentiments. The Humanist creed turns out to be a sort of greeting card: Best Wishes, Mankind; Thinking Fondly of You.... Greeting cards have their purposes and their virtues, of course, but they cannot compete with real creeds in the cosmological sweepstakes. The Humanist creed disqualifies itself not so much by denying God (that could be interesting) but by offering in His place merely a stack of stale abstractions, wistful proclamations, and boasts of autonomy. For all its talk of progress it is recidivist, for it succumbs to humanity's great old temptation: generalizing.

Satan, we recall, had little trouble persuading the First Couple to trade their concrete relation to God for some vague promises about their own godlike knowledge and power. Job's comforters have become proverbial for offering generalized (and technically not incorrect) theological ruminations to a desperate man demanding to know his concrete relation with God. When Jesus finally came, one of His purposes, I take it, was to save us from our sins of generalizing and sloganeering: He rebuked plausibility ("The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose") and formula ("Don't heap up empty phrases, just say 'Our Father... "'), and He offered man a relation with God unprecedented in its concreteness: His own flesh for heavenly food.

Understandably, we hesitate before His intensity. It takes a certain kind of maturity (the kind that Jesus called childlike) not to evade His clarity and His charity. The Humanist backs away from the brilliant light of the unique and universal (We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God) into the cool gray shadows where wishful thinking is done (We believe in optimism rather than pessimism). The Humanist cannot be blamed for lacking childlike faith, since faith is a gift, but he is certainly accountable for his failure to develop a grown-up taste in creeds. A real creed (like real philosophy, real art, and real science) discloses the concrete, the gritty, the unique, the unexampled - verities, not generalities. God is in the details, they say, and man is no less so. In the art of the creed as in other arts, William Blake's dictum holds true: "A general knowledge is the knowledge fools have."

A detailed story of unique persons and unique actions is exactly what the Christian creed offers. The Christian creed is even open-minded in a way that the Humanist creed is not. For despite its name the Humanist creed contains no humans (only categories) while the Christian creed mentions several humans by name. The Humanist creed claims to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on religion. But what could be more parochial than their explicit banishment of religious belief? So inclusive and cosmopolitan is the Christian creed, by contrast, that one of the most prominent persons in it is a Humanist. Or at least he sounds like a Humanist: He is a responsible citizen, a skeptical inquirer, a doubter of uncorroborated claims, a government officer who meets Jesus, examines Him, and definitively rejects Him.

This man, Pontius Pilate, whose name we say each week when we recite the Nicene Creed, exemplified two major tenets of Humanist faith: He dismissed supernatural claims and he tested morals by their consequences. When Jesus said, I was born to bear witness to the truth and everyone who is of the truth hears my voice, Pilate scoffed, What is truth?, and the interview was over. The Galilean enthusiast, Pilate saw, was unacquainted with the fact that truth is relative. Did the Roman then waste time trying to explain that moral principles are tested by their consequences? No, he simply gave the Nazarene traditionalist an apt demonstration. He said: I find no fault in him, but torture him and kill him anyway.

It is a dicey principle, this one about morals being tested by their consequences, and the Humanist laity might want to keep an eye on this creed their hierarchs have published, having in mind George Orwell's depiction in Animal Farm of the slipperiness of novel creeds. The lofty principles written on the barn wall by Orwell's pigs (No animal shall kill any other animal, All animals are equal; and so on) were given to changing subtly overnight. After the pigs carried out their first political executions their puzzled animal comrades checked the barn wall again and found that the principle now read No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.

There are many places where the Humanist creed is susceptible to such emendation. For instance, the principle that "mature adults should be allowed to die with dignity" could quietly be altered one day to "overmature adults should be made to die with dignity." Older Humanists might want to watch for that minor improvement. Very young Humanists should also be alert, for the declaration "We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children" might be altered without notice to "We are deeply concerned with the moral education of the children we exempt from culling as fetuses or neonates. "

Since the moral principles to be tested by their consequences must include all the principles of the Humanist creed, are Humanists well served by principles so changeable and so contingent? A creed ought to have a settled text and a discernible meaning, surely. The Christian creeds do. But the Christian creeds, of course, are religious, and the Humanists are vocal about their dislike and distrust of religion. And yet (how do I ask this politely?) I wonder if they know what they're talking about. In the hope of reducing the distance they perceive between us, let me venture some brief replies to their brisk charges.

Well, what enterprise doesn't? Self-expression, self-direction, and self-improvement - the sorts of worthy activities affirmed in the Humanist creed - involve self-examination, self-knowledge, and selfdiscipline. The line between these and self-denial is finer than I can see. Self-denial is not necessarily religious nor is it rare; nothing is more common. Dieters deny themselves doughnuts, piano students deny themselves afternoons off, those in love deny themselves dates with attractive strangers, and truthseekers deny themselves idleness and dishonesty. if Christians deny themselves sin and Humanists deny themselves prayer, their goals may differ but they both practice "self-denial."

Again, what doesn't? How much of what I affirm is corroborable by me? I take almost everything on authority and give it my more or less reasonable assent. The process by which we assent and dissent has been explored astutely, and I think definitively, by geniuses such as Cardinal Newman and Wayne C. Booth. It is false to imply that the mind, when working properly, withholds assent until incontrovertible proof is available. I find that Christianity is sober, sane, and reassuringly grounded in human nature when it explicitly affirms its reliance on Revelation and Tradition. It reassures me that in divine as well as mundane matters we depend on what a few divinely inspired geniuses tell us (Revelation) and on the vast body of findings that has been generally affirmed (Tradition).

Religion and faith are inimical to (or the opposite of) science and reason.

The topic of the relations of religion and science is large and fascinating and can only be treated with detailed knowledge of religion and science. The Humanist insinuation that one must choose religion or science (that science is real and religion unreal) evades this genuine topic and produces only one more of their standard counterfeit mutual exclusions, one that is false to both science and religion.

A short response would be that both religion and science exist; both are adventures of the spirit (similarly institutionalized adventures, if you will);, both continue to develop in surprising ways; and both have brought out some of the best and worst in human character. Christianity is still somewhat young, and science is much younger still. They have had their misunderstandings and quarrels and will have more, but these are family quarrels, not the clashes of rival empires. Mother Church was perhaps understandably anxious when her big boy Science wanted to go off and do things his way. But Science has grown into a calmer postjuvenile phase, and in its relations with Mother Church and Father God there is now evident a certain incipient maturity and selfconfidence.

The Materialists, however, in the grip of their own metaphysical insight, are still rancorous and still press the vocabulary of science into the service of their dark antipoetry, their cottage mysticism. I trust that Materialism is not what the Humanist creed means by "science and reason." Philosophic Materialism is not a fact proved by science nor is it science itself. I presume Humanists know that. Yet nowhere in their creed or their mailer do the Humanists mention the Materialists; meanwhile they inveigh heartily and repeatedly against "traditional religion" and "supernatural beliefs" as the foes of freedom and learning and all good things.

Excuse me, Humanists, but have your duties as citizens of the universe required your absence from earth this century? Materialism has demonstrated what it wants and what it is capable of. Committed Theists and committed Humanists alike have been committed to totalitarian prisons. If Humanists are against absolutistism, why do they single out the Theists, who see them as brothers and sisters under an absolutely loving Father, rather than the Materialists, who see them, with their noble slogans and scrappy individualism, as just so much unmalleable material?

Brothers and sisters is what we actually are, though by now Christians and Humanists are widely separated brethren, like the two in Jesus' famous story: The elder brother stayed home and managed their father's estate; the younger, full of

free thoughts, cashed in his patrimony and wandered away and had a high time but wound up slopping hogs. (Were they the same hogs that took over the Animal Farm, I wonder? Was it from them that the Prodigal Humanist got the idea for a new creed?) The original Humanists five and six centuries ago were basically a bunch of restive Catholics: a few men of genius, several men of talent, and many of independent mind, who wrote poetry and essays and taught school. They had ideas about education and curricula. They disliked stale theology and mechanical philosophy. They had a love of books. They wanted to read the old Greek and Latin texts, sacred and profane, in the original, and to introduce Europe to the litterae humaniores, "humane letters" (what our universities now call the Classics).

How the Humanist movement shaded in some places into the Protestant Reformation and how Humanism has now come to the point that its High Council in New York pronounces all "supenatural terms" anathema, are matters for detailed historical study. I simply note here that the Church, in her usual deliberate way, did learn some of the lessons the Humanists wished to teach her and has incorporated much of their inspiration, to the point that today, if a Humanist should wish to become a genuinely learned person like his illustrious forebears Petrarch, Erasmus, Colet, Ficino, and St. Thomas More, to read Greek and write Latin, to know the Classical authors and Church Fathers for himself, he would probably have to go to a Catholic university, and a rather conservative one.

Jesus' other story of two brothers is also germane. Their father asked both to come out and work; one said "No," but then repented and did his duty; the other said "Yes," and never followed through. Maybe this inadequate creed is the Humanists' curt but still filial "No." Maybe this attempt to put into credal form their positive philosophy will prove to be a step toward recantation of that philosophy. For in this creed they have exposed a code of belief so meager, so contradictory, and so reactionary that it's hard to believe they mean it seriously. If their hearts were in it, wouldn't they have done a better job?

Jesus made it clear that we who say "Yes Yes" and "Lord Lord" aren't necessarily close to God;

those who say "No No" but do His work are. The desperate sound of this Humanist "No" surely moves His pity. I can imagine Jesus, who loves the sincere adherents of this creed, rebuking its writers: Woe unto you, you Humanist scribes and pharisaical freethinkers! You bind huge burdens on Humanist backs and give them no God to help them carry them. You can see the sliver of religion in your brother's eye but not the plank of irreligion in your own. You strain at the gnat of faith and swallow the camel of fatuousness!

Here is the final sentence of the Nicene Creed: We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Here again is the final sentence of the Humanist creed: We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

The first speaks of the strictly unspeakable: It is daring and rather glamorous. The second sounds like some nonbinding city council Resolution in Favor of Good Things. This difference in credal tone matches the difference in credal content. The Christian creed recounts God's gifts to man; the Humanist creed announces man's moral excellence. This makes the Humanists sound throughout their creed not like philosopher-kings, not even like philosophers, but like a sort of Chamber of Commerce for the human race - not saviors of mankind, not students of mankind, but boosters of mankind. Boosters clubs have their uses, but why boost us to ourselves? We're seeking selfknowledge, and the Humanists offer us self-promotion.

Well, I didn't order their magazines or books. And though The Affirmations of Humanism have provided me much enlightenment, I don't think I'll be sending $4.95 for "a parchment copy suitable for framing." But in gratitude I will offer the Humanists what I have.

I offer them this question: Why not have faith in God? You've put your trust in a slippery bunch of illassorted platitudes. Why not look a little deeper into human nature and see there the image of the God who wants your trust? It's a gamble, but what have you got to lose? Why not gamble on God, since even if you lose you win? That's a crude way of putting the ontological wager that Pascal (pre-eminent practitioner of the science and reason you claim to trust) proposes with logic and humor in his Pensees.

Dante saw at the entrance to Hell the famous sign, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," but in he had to go if he wanted to get to Heaven. The doors of my parish church may look to you about as attractive as the Gates of Hell, but maybe you should come in. Well put up a sign: "Abandon mere hopefulness, you who enter here, and take on real Hope." The nobler parts of your creed reflect your innate confidence, your amiable wish for the best, your plucky cheerleading on behalf of good old mankind. Perhaps inside our church you will find real Hope, which we are taught comes only in an irreducible trinity with real Faith and real Charity.

Welcome, Humanists, to the most human of fellowships, that with the God who became Human. Leave your prolix and unmemorable creed behind. Try ours. It's brief, pointed, easy to remember, and infinitely suggestive. Once you get used to it, it's rather beautiful. (You could even learn it in Latin, the tongue the original Humanists so loved.) It leads into the heart of human mystery and opens up the meaning of human history. It is a guide to achieving just what you say you want, "the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings."

We recite it every Sunday. Join us.

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