John Gray’s books are the subject of two reviews in this issue of the EHA Bulletin. For us humanists, Gray is nothing if not a challenge.

He implies that humanism has not yet thrown off the old Christian notion that humans are the favoured children of some cosmic godfather. This might goad humanists but it may not be that far from the truth. Humanists have to fight hard to overthrow centuries of religious preaching on the topic of a personal God who can’t stop interfering in human affairs. Many humanists were brought up to think of human nature as being, in some sense, half way to the divine. Of course, the well established thinking secular humanist knows that, where the human species is concerned, the cosmos doesn’t give a damn.

Gray goads humanists further by claiming we do not understand Darwinian evolution. I suspect Gray is not as learned in evolutionary theory as he would like us to believe. He says evolution is self-evident. To lean on such a simplistic assertion fails to acknowledge how Darwin’s original ideas have spawned such a deeply scientific construct during its struggle into a blaze of molecular genetics.

Those humanists who seek to understand that great scientific theory are fully aware that our species is as much a part of the biosphere as any other animal.

The mere acquisition of consciousness in the deep recesses and intricate processes of the humanoid brain does not remove the human species from the evolutionary underpinning of the biosphere. Consciousness and self-awareness may well give our species the edge over other animals; it means we have the ability to generate a language brimming with thoughts of gods, inventions, and philosophical meanderings. But it is also at the heart of the most profound contradictions of the ‘human condition’; e.g. we persist in destroying the environment even after having acquired the sense of responsibility that allowed us to comprehend what we were doing.

Perhaps we have something to learn from critics like Gray who may lift us out of the self satisfied complacency that many of us have adopted.

The modern world is awash with dogmatic belief systems and Gray is probably right to accuse humanists of practising their humanism as if it were just another one of them. Do we?

Our notion of what is special about human beings should in no way be an imitation of the way Christians think. But what should it be?

Anthony Constable