Customer Reviews

Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism

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As in his other book 'In Defense of Secular Humanism', Paul Kurtz explains that one need not be tied to religion to be ethical (or even moral). I agree with the previous reviewer who stated that the wirting can get a bit technical at times, but I don't think that it slows the pace at all. The technicality of some of the arguments is necessary, as Kurtz is using reason and logic to explain issues that are usually debated with emotional rhetoric or repititious dogma. You may have some friends who are teetering in their lockstep devotion to religion... so buy this book and give 'em a shove. They'll thank you.

Paul Kurtz's "The Ethics of Humanism" is an excellent book showing an alternative to the mind- rape known as religion. In such chapters as "The Common Moral Decenies" and "Excelsior, The Ethics of Excellence" Kurtz provides an excllent defense of Humanistic principles and shows that life can indeed have a positive affirmative outlook. Indeed, to champion the Promethean ideal of living an automonus ethical life, is lost today in the world bombarded by theism, and Kurtz I feel does a nice job of trying to be Pro-humanist instead of anti-theist. I refrain from giving the book 5 stars because at times I feel Kurtz is a bit too technical in explaining his arguments and at times the book can be a little tedious. However, do not let these minor criticisms stop you from reading, in my opinion, one of the most influental books of contemporary ethical philosophy that I've ever read. This book will leave you with a feeling of an affarmation for the joys of life, an apprecation for autonomus ethical principles and a solid foundation on which you can life a life of principle and purpose without a belief in god. Purchase this book not only for yourself, but also for those who have been trapped in the delusion known as religion.

I would like to say that I have enormous respect for Paul Kurtz and that I essentially agree with everything he espouses. I am an agnostic who believes that religion is a force mainly for ill. But he has written better books than this one.

Unlike The Transcendental Temptation, where Mr. Kurtz masterfully strips religion & pseudo-science of their pretensions & delusions of grandeur with damning evidence, Forbidden Fruit comes up a bit short & a little inconsequential in comparison. As a general introduction to Humanist ethics, it's fine. To be sure, Kurtz does spend a lot of time aptly demonstrating the ills & immorality of religious thought. He also capably describes how ethics are human inventions & obviously not ordained from high. I completely agree with these observations.

Unfortunately, some of his observations are as ill-considered as those of any mystic or creationist.

Aside from quibbles like these, this is an excellent book written by a giant of Humanist thought. I definitely recommend it to those considering abandoning outmoded religious thinking and fanaticism. Speaking of these, I would humbly request that the reviewer from "stationed overseas" remain stationed overseas. We have enough close-minded religious fanatics in the US as it is.

This book is solid evidence that atheists do consider issues of "right and wrong" to be real, and important; that they have strong opinions about them; and that they can argue well, and at length, for their opinions.

As eloquent and insightful as Paul Kurtz can sometimes be, however, he seems to regard his own moral reasoning as THE "reasoned" morality. The evidence of history is that there are multiple opinions on moral issues, among those who base their opinions on "fact and reason" as well as among those who base their opinions on "faith and scripture."

Before reading, I already agreed that there is a rational basis for morality that does not depend on the existence of, or instructions from, a supernatural God. I was hoping to find new arguments for that, and found myself disappointed. This book isn't going to prove anything to religionists who insist that God is the foundation of all morality, because evidence does not affect basic assumptions. Basic assumptions affect how evidence is perceived. The most dogmatic religionists are more likely to avoid this book altogether, or to be immediately alienated by it (as demonstated by an earlier one-star review).

So far, I like Kurtz better as an editor than as an essayist. The case he attempts to make here seems to me to be made better in his compilation of other people's essays, Moral Problems in Contemporary Society. Moral Problems in Contemporary Society: Essays in Humanistic Ethics,

For a rational examination of the actual basis for the human moral sense, I recommend The Moral Sense by James Q. Wilson. It not only has more of science in it than Paul Kurtz's book of opinion, it is also not framed as a head-on conflict with religion. It is easier to appeal to reason when you do not gratuitously arouse emotional issues. The MORAL SENSE

If Kurtz is really the "leading secular humanist philosopher" as the back cover proclaims, then secular humanists are in trouble.

Sounding arrogant and angry, he calls God an "ancient superstition" and "primitive". Religion, he announces dogmatically, is a "fanatic system of moral wrath" and the "misguided reveries of ancient tribes". Believers are "infantile" and even "pathological". This is the language of hate, not ethics. Clearly, he loathes God and those who believe in God. And since the vast majority of the world's population dare to disagree, they are all "pathological" and "infantile"?

Strangely, he wrote this book to talk about secular ethics. Does he really think it ethical to despise the majority of humanity? Certainly not by the standards of love and charity that are Christian teachings. But Kurtz is an atheist.

What he does want to proclaim is his own list of secular human rights. These turn out to be all the current planks of the Democratic party, taken a few steps to the left. "The state" he pontificates, "should not prohibit sodomy, prostitution, or pornography" (p 239).

Rather frighteningly, he also pronounces that "although parents should have some say about the education of their children, they do not have the right to deprive them or others of exposure to ideas or values they oppose" (p 242). This sounds so much like Communism 101 that it's hard not to imagine the concentration camps being set up for any religious parent.

Kurtz believes the world is growing towards a universal morality, sans religion. There is one region of the world where religion has all but vanished, and that is Europe. Kurtz carefully refrains from asking if human rights are growing in Europe.

Perhaps that's because human rights are unraveling as quickly as Christian morality in Europe. Christians believe every human life is sacred. Today in the Netherlands, elderly people are terrified of visiting a hospital lest they be euthanized, according to a recent poll. And babies born with defects can be allowed to starve to death.

Abortion seems the only universal human right . It's as if they are trying to live out that line from Proverbs: all who hate me are in love with death.

A cruel utilitarianism is emerging in Europe; not rights. The officials will let you live just as long as you don't cost them anything.

How will Kurtz feel once he's elderly, sick, and rather dotty, to see Nurse Ratchet heading in his direction with a syringe full of deadly poison? Are there any arguments in the atheist arsenal that could protect him? Are you kidding?

Then there is the confusion over who gets rights. In Spain recently, a law was proposed to give gorillas the same rights as humans. And another atheist ethicist, Princeton's Singer, argues that not giving equal rights to animals is tantamount to racism. If our dignity is not stamped in our souls by God, why shouldn't we consider gorillas just as worthy of rights?

So there are huge problems with human rights for secularists. But is perhaps secularism is leading to a more rational morality? Anyone who's been to Europe lately will laugh out loud. What's emerging there is moral collapse. Visit any lower class area in England--places that just fifty years ago were orderly--and what you will see is feral children, drunk, throwing up, having sex in alleys, and mugging any elderly person stupid enough to venture out after dark. Marriage has practically vanished. The state simply funds the unending teenage pregnancies. And the secular answer: more sex ed, has not helped one whit. Not in thirty years of practically forcing condoms on every child who toddles to school. Morality, of course, is never, ever mentioned.

And another major problem: Freed of Christian strictures about sexuality and marriage, Europe is committing suicide. Of the women with college degrees in Germany a stunning 40% will end up childless. It's like taking the genes of the best and brightest and throwing them in the garbage. By 2050 Spain and Italy will lose 25% of their population, Germany 20%. And that's just the start of the demographic death spiral.

Mark Steyn wrote " Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries....Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone" (America Alone).

Yes, the grand buildings will be there...for the Muslims. The Muslim population of the United Kingdom is growing 10 times faster than the rest of the population.

Sound to you like secularism is working out?

Kurtz also carefully never mentions the times in the last century when the atheists were in control. It was a time of endless murder, of vast rivers of blood. Father Stephen Kurti was shot and killed by atheistic communists in Yugoslavia because he had baptized a baby. Viet Minh atheist communists shoved chopsticks into children's ears for listening to Catholic school lessons in Haiduong. The 20th century had more Catholics killed for their faith than all the other centuries combined; some estimates put the figure as high as forty million ( The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, by Royal).

Atheist communists in Spain shot, crucified, and hung nuns and priests and lay Catholics by the thousands. Of more than 900 Catholic priests in 1920 in Russia, only 300 were left in 1930. The usual figure for the total number slaughtered by the atheist communists is 100 million.

All things considered, I'd rather pass on giving atheists another go.

Besides avoiding all the problems with his thesis, Kurtz never once tackles religion fairly. Many of the greatest geniuses in history were Christians, but Kurtz has avoided reading a single word written by them. At least I presume so, since he actually proclaims "there is no suggestion that we will be treated fairly and our rights respected" (p 231) by God. And that rights "did not exist in the Garden of Eden" (p 231).

Come on, even a kindergarten catechism teacher could tell Kurtz God is all good and is incapable of doing anything to a human that is not just.

As the old saw goes: It's easier to toss grenades than it is to catch them. In other words, it's easier to attack something than it is to posit a defensible alternative. Kurtz is on stronger grounds critiquing theistic ethics and theism in general than he is in providing some rational, secular basis for ethics. For the last few centuries, philosophy has been rife with failed attempts to find some nontheistic, rational foundation for morality. But if there's any consensus in moral philosophy today, both theistic and nontheistic moral philosophy, it's that no attempt to generate such a rational defense or "proof" has of yet been successful. There's simply no rational secular reason why someone should always morally care for another human being, particularly when there's no particular reason why caring about another serves any particular personal interests. What the religious folks have going for them is that they have shared bases for moral appeal. Go to a church, mosque, temple or synagogue, and everyone can point to some shared agreement in a religious text that tells them why they ought to care for one another and for strangers. Atheists and agnostics have no such shared basis, and whatever basis any particular nontheist might personally appeal to provides no rational reason for any other nontheist (unless they just choose to believe - i.e. faith), since there's no objective, secular, rational grounds for morally caring about others when it's not in one's interest. Any assumption that it's always in one's interests to morally care about everyone else in every case is just naive and unrealistic. Certainly there are cases when the expected personal gains from, say, stealing from someone else, outweigh any personal costs, at least for some people. Appeals to evolutionary ethics begs the question, since just because evolution has generated a moral impulse gives nobody any reason to follow that impulse (should we follow all impulses all the time? - and why should one in the short term care about the ultimate survival of one's genes or even species?). What's good for society is not always what's best for the individual, so merely appealing to the best interests of society in general doesn't provide the individual any rational reason to do something that may not be in his or her bests interests. And so on. Perhaps this is why we see moral and charitable movements generated by religious movements but not many by way of atheistic groups. Religious folks can rally around some shared sacred text to motivate them en masse. What do nontheists have?

In the end, the ethics one chooses just ends up being articles of faith, the same kind of rationally unproveable faith that notheists criticize religious folks for embracing.

It's just another "I hate religion" book. This book is seething with "I feel guilty and I refuse to believe its my conscience given to me by God"...