Humanism as the future of religion

fter a series of plagues and then an earthquake ravaged Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, killing nearly half its population, people were bereft and looking for answers. Theologians responded that it was God’s will, that there was some larger plan we were part of. But Humanist philosophers ventured another idea. They were the among the first to answer the question “why did my child die?” with “because we didn’t build a bridge over the train tracks.” 

We can build bridges, and this became Voltaire’s beat. In his novel Candide, the titular character rages against the “mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly.” We can fix things, he insists, we can make them better. We needn’t sit idle as we await the next plague or earthquake, assured that this is all part of God’s grand design. Instead, we can study earthquakes, build safer buildings. We can develop vaccines and halt pandemics. 

“We must cultivate our own garden,” Candide concludes. 

Voltaire may have been the first progress writer—focused on how we can make the world better one plot at a time—and we have built a lot of bridges since his time! We created an inoculation for smallpox. We figured out germ theory, increased sanitation, and developed antibiotics that saved our children’s lives. We created safer working conditions and regulations that make it easier to evacuate a building in a fire or survive an earthquake or cross the train tracks.

And we did all of these things whether we were religious or not.