Lately, there has been concern raised about the issue of secular humanism.

Commonly, the notion itself is seen as incoherent, and for good reasons.

If, as the modern scientific worldview claims, the existence of human beings is by complete chance, and there is no room for God, how can we claim that human beings have intrinsic value?

Thankfully, moral philosophy has come up with several answers to this question. However, before I explain the one I prefer, it is important to refute a common and problematic way of looking at value.

This is the notion of finding something valuable because it is ascribed by an outside agent. God is often seen as the agent that ascribes value to human life.

From this line of thinking, our naturalistic worldview has no agent to give us value (such as God), and we cannot say that there is value to human life at all.

Unfortunately, this claim is false, both in its need for divine command and in its consideration of the naturalistic view of the world.

First, if it were true that value can only be ascribed by an outside agent, we would be compelled to ask which outside agent ascribes value to God.

Second, we ascribe value to things all the time. Money would not be valuable if nobody wanted it. Furthermore, I find my decision-making skills to be valuable, and that is why I make decisions. This seems like a case of an agent assigning value to himself.

Immanuel Kant has a response to this value puzzle. He argued that the fact that we value our ability to make decisions and reflect on our own decisions implies that we value our own humanity.

Since we cannot help but make decisions, we cannot help but value our decision-making ability, and therefore our humanity.

This is a starting point for a non-theistic argument for humanism. The argument still needs to extend responsibility from valuing my humanity to valuing that of others, but that seems like an easily overcome obstacle rather than a defeating objection.

Even if we are not convinced by Kant’s argument, it is not the only one out there, and I am sure there will be at least one convincing enough to warrant a discussion of human rights.

Our modern scientific worldview does in fact conflict with the view called “moral realism,” which claims that truths about morality really exist, independent of us.

In this sense, I agree that there is a problem: the modern scientific worldview does put moral realism in a little bit of trouble, but there are still some moral realist atheists out there.

Even if moral realism is false, this does not imply that there aren’t other ways of arriving at a morality which is powerful enough to obligate us. Kant’s theory is a nice example. Morality and naturalism are necessarily incompatible with each other.

The modern scientific worldview does pose a challenge for those of us who still want to accept our obligation toward our fellow human beings.

Fortunately for us all, we have philosophers around who will attempt to make sense out of these very serious problems.

This is not a reason to shy away from the theory of evolution, but rather a reason to do philosophy.

Damian Melamedoff is a third-year philosophy student at the University of Winnipeg. Come to the Toad in the Hole Pub on Wednesdays after 8 p.m. to participate in discussions with members of the Philosophy Students Association.

Published in Volume 65, Number 24 of The Uniter (March 24, 2011)