This is my second critique of the British Humanist Association video “How do we know what is true?” In my first article on the topic I pointed out how the video tacitly endorses scientism and thereby undermines the value claims upon which humanism is predicated. It is now time to turn to the deeper and more troubling aspect of the video.
In this second article I am going to focus on the way this short video constitutes propaganda since it seeks to further the interests of the British Humanist Association by caricaturing the views of “non-humanists” (the out-group) by way of indefensible binary oppositions that inhibit critical thinking and thereby encourage indoctrination into the secular ideology of the in-group.
In order to make my case, I want to begin by summarizing two questions that can serve to identify whether the video constitutes propaganda and indoctrination. As you watch the video ask yourself these questions:
(1) Does this video seek to cultivate a charitable and nuanced engagement with the views of non-humanists?
(2) Does this video caricature/strawman the views of non-humanists?
If the answer to (1) is “no” and the answer to (2) is “yes” then that provides evidence that the video constitutes propaganda and thus aims to further humanism by undermining critical thinking and indoctrinating the viewer.
Once again, let’s begin with the 2 minute video:
Now we can turn to analysis.
Indoctrination in the Video
Let’s start by taking a look at the content of the video. Immediately the narrator (Stephen Fry) begins by presenting the viewer with a stark binary opposition between two groups. As will become clear in a moment, the contrast is between the humanists who believe science is the way to gain knowledge of the natural world and the non-humanists who believe that supernatural revelations, visions, and inspired books are central to gain knowledge of the natural world.
As Fry explains, the in-group (humanists) accept the “normal” senses and gain knowledge of the world by “carefully and in detail, forming ideas about why things behave as they do, testing those ideas through experiments, refining them in the light of experience, then testing them again.” Fry summarizes that the humanists gain knowledge of the world by “observation,” “experimentation,” and the “testing of theories against evidence.”
Contrast this with the non-humanists who believe in a supernatural reality that includes cartoonish “ghosts and goblins, gods and demons”. These people “have thought that knowledge can come from this [supernatural] source, from revelations, prophetic visions, or divinely inspired books….”
Note that Fry does not say the non-humanist depends wholly on supernatural revelations. Rather, he says that their knowledge can come from this source. Nonetheless, this is a nuance in the narrative that can readily be lost on the casual listener who sees two stark alternatives emerging: that of the humanist (the scientific way) and the non-humanist (the supernatural, revelatory way).
Fry drives the point with the following stark choice:
“If asked to choose between taking a medicine prescribed by a doctor whose methods are based on experiment and one who has selected medicine for you based on his visions, you will probably not choose the medicine from the vision.”
Clearly that choice is the apex for the argument: a decision between two different ways to approach reality, the way of humanism and science or the way of non-humanism and its world of visions, revelations, goblins, and who knows what else.
At that point Fry concludes by waxing eloquently on the humanist’s way of engaging the world — i.e. science — as the best method to know reality.
So let’s return to our two questions:
(1) Does this video seek to cultivate a charitable and nuanced engagement with the views of non-humanists?
(2) Does this video caricature/strawman the views of non-humanists?
How does the video fare? Let’s look at the evidence.
A closer look at Humanist Propaganda
The video’s epistemology appears to be a grossly naive empiricism/scientism. As I pointed out in my first article, it is simply false to claim that all knowledge is gained through science. But as many philosophers have pointed out, scientism isn’t merely false, it’s self-defeating since the core claim “All knowledge is gained through science” is itself not a product of science.
That said, let’s now turn our attention to that ideological wall that Fry uses to divide the humanist and the non-humanist. Let’s begin with the non-humanist. I have never met a non-humanist (i.e. a person who did not identify themselves as a humanist) who denied all scientific knowledge and claimed that they regularly form their beliefs based on revelations and visions from another realm. Perhaps there are such people out there but if there are, they most surely are not broadly representative of the non-humanist group.
In fact, epistemologically speaking non-humanists are like humanists for most of life. Both humanists and non-humanists form beliefs in a number of ways including sense perception, proprioception, memory, testimony, intuition and reasoning processes. (More on those different ways below.)
Consequently, to represent the non-humanist group with a person who advises taking medicine based on a vision is nothing more than an absurd strawman caricature. There may be such people, but they are hardly representative of the group!
Sorry Mr. Fry, but non-humanists don’t regularly consult crystal balls or have seances as guides to navigate the world. We also use our sense perception. We also engage, formally and informally, in observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against evidence.
What is more, some of us do surprisingly well at that whole science thing. But don’t just take my word for it. Let me give you an example close to home (literally). I attend church at Greenfield Community Church in Edmonton, Canada. One of my fellow congregants is Aksel Hallin, the Professor and Canada Research Chair for Astroparticle Physics at the University of Alberta. Twenty years ago Professor Hallin worked at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and in 2015 the team on which he worked was honored with a Nobel Prize in physics.
So yeah, there we have at least one contribution that a non-humanist has made to science.
Which leads me to ask, what contributions has our humanist narrator, Mr. Stephen Fry, made to scientific knowledge? Hmm, I’m not sure. His Wikipedia profile describes him as a “comedian, actor, writer, presenter and activist.” But it doesn’t mention any Nobel prizes in science. In fact, it doesn’t mention any formal contributions to science at all. Which seems a bit ironic given that he claims this is the one way to know about the world. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, the answer is sadly no, propaganda humanist videos do not count as contributions to science.)
Now here’s an interesting question: do humanists also partake of forms of knowing apart from the empirical study of science that is rooted in sense perception?
The answer is yes, of course. Let’s name a few. Consider rational intuition, the means by which one intuits what philosophers refer to as synthetic a priori knowledge. (See, for example, Laurence BonJour’s book In Defense of Pure Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1998.) If you want a stunning example of pure reason then read the life story of the great autodidact mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Or consider moral intuition/moral perception, the means by which one initially appraises the moral status of actions and states of affairs. And then there is the ability to intuit danger. And proprioception, our ability to know where our body is extended in space. And memory, our ability to recall the past. And testimony.
Alas there are more ways to gain knowledge of the world, Mr. Fry, than are dreamt of in your reductive empiricist philosophy.
To conclude…
Imagine if a Christian apologetics and evangelism organization produced a two-minute video which contrasted the “God-fearers” and the “atheists”. The narrator waxes ominously, noting that while the God-fearers embrace meaning, purpose, and morality, the atheists embrace a bleak vision, reducing human beings to mere “machines made of mud.”
No doubt Mr. Fry and the British Humanists Association would be utterly indignant. Propaganda! they’d cry. Indoctrination! And they’d be right. Such a video would be propaganda, it would be promoting indoctrination, and it would deserve an indignant reprimand.
The binary opposition in this video is no less stark and the caricature of the out-group no less appalling. It is nothing more than propaganda that seeks to subvert proper reasoning in favor of furthering an ideological agenda.
