Paul Kurtz is Editor in Chief of Free Inquiry, a professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York, at Buffalo, and Chairman of the Center for Inquiry/Transnational.
The steady economic progress of two mammoth Asian countries—India and China—is a significant achievement. Some have likened this to a Third Industrial Revolution.
The First Industrial Revolution occurred in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It replaced manual labor with machinery, as with the mechanization of textile manufacturing in Birmingham and Manchester. It saw the introduction of the steam engine, steamboat, locomotive, telegraph, the iron foundry, and the cotton gin.
The Second Industrial Revolution refers to the rise of industrial countries like Germany and the United States from 1871 to 1914. This ushered in—or set the stage for—the many daring technological inventions that have continued to transform life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as electricity, new methods of producing steel, skyscrapers, modern sanitary systems, improved medical care with surgery and antibiotics, advances in communications (including the telephone, radio, and television), the introduction of the automobile, the growth of highway systems and suburbs, and air and space travel.
The term “Third Industrial Revolution” has been used to designate the Information Revolution, beginning roughly in 1974, with the introduction of computers and, eventually, the Internet. This has been extended by some today to incorporate other promising technologies, such as nanotechnology and bioengineering. Actually, the Third Industrial Revolution is rather an Industrial-Technological Revolution. Of considerable significance is its impact upon India and China, which have leapfrogged their economies forward. Manufacturing in China is replacing the industrial base of many Western countries. More people in China own cell phones than in the United States, and China is building new cities throughout its territories.
Of special importance today is the growth of outsourcing to India (as well as other countries). This involves a radical change in the location of the workforce. Alan S. Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and an adviser to former President Clinton, recently emphasized the significance of outsourcing and the risk that it poses to the industrial economies of the United States and Europe. For the first time, workers need not be wedded to an industrial plant, for many types of work can now be transported anywhere by means of computers and satellites. Thus, multinational corporations find it easier to employ the skills of Third World workers at lower cost than those associated with their home-based labor forces. A recent story in The New York Times (April 4, 2007) pointed out that many large corporations such as IBM, Citigroup, Accenture, and Aviva are rapidly transporting jobs overseas. Everyone is by now familiar with the fact that airline reservations are now serviced in other countries, and much back-office work is handled offshore by foreign, English-speaking personnel. This trend has spread from financial institutions, banks, and insurance companies to aerospace, pharmaceutical, and other industries, all of which are sending routine communications and manufacturing work overseas. This has led to a surge in the Indian economy, where a newly educated middle class with special skills is developing in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad.
For many years, India was considered the “basket case” of Asia, with famines threatening continually. From 1991 to 2003, however, India’s economy—with Western investment—began to grow at an annual compounded rate of 5.7 percent, a rate far higher than the advanced economies of Europe. Today this is accelerating, due to outsourcing, and is approaching 7–8 percent and even higher. Such growth is absolutely necessary for India’s future.
For its part, the Chinese economy keeps growing at breakneck speed, by transporting entire manufacturing operations from affluent countries to China, where labor costs are much lower. Its economy has been growing at rates of 9–10 percent per year, which has transformed Chinese society, though this is projected to level off at 8 percent in future years. China has emerged as a great power, holding vast sums of dollars in reserve due to its enormous trade surplus with the United States. At the same time, America’s ballooning trade deficit with China has benefited consumers in the United States, who can buy goods at greatly reduced prices, though it has at the same time decimated industry after industry. Some balance has to be achieved that fulfills the desire to help India and China grow, yet is sensitive to the needs of workers losing their jobs in more affluent countries.
There are increased calls in the United States for erecting tariffs and trade barriers, especially against China, to protect jobs in the home market; and one can sympathize with the reasons for this apprehension. The Bush administration is calling for a crackdown on pirated goods, such as movies, books, and music, as a first step while asking China to import more Western products.
From the standpoint of planetary humanism, we encounter a dilemma. We have argued that as secular humanists “we have a responsibility to care about each and every person in the planetary community, and . . . this obligation should extend beyond our own societies to humanity as a whole” (see my editorial, “India’s Population Time Bomb” FI, Spring 1999). Thus we wish to see India, China, and other Third World countries prosper and grow. The nation-states that we live in are no longer islands unto themselves: whatever happens anywhere reverberates everywhere. The interdependence of the global economy—especially since the Information Revo¬lution—is apparent when communication is instantaneous and anyone with a computer anywhere can contribute to the production of goods and services. Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan has said that advanced economies need to retrain workers for new jobs if they are to compete in the global market. Unfortunately, it is overwhelmingly in the low-paying service sector that this process is occurring. Some critics of this trend mistakenly call it “socialism.” It is a far cry from that, for the socialism of an earlier generation called for the nationalization of the means of production; what is happening today is a result of free-market capitalism, pure and simple, on the world scene. Those who rail against competition from abroad are anti–free-market and anticapitalist. No doubt some balance has to be achieved between free trade and equality of concern for workers at home.
There are many great problems that rapid economic growth has caused in both China and India. I specify only three of them.
First is the need to reduce population growth. In 1950, the population of China was 556 million and that of India 350 million. China’s population in 2006 is approximately 1.3 billion; India’s is 1.1 billion. It is likely that India’s population will outstrip China’s in thirty years. By 2050, it is estimated that China will have 1.48 billion people and India, 1.6 billion. World population is projected to grow to 9.3 billion by then. Such continuing growth in absolute terms exerts enormous pressure on resources. Every effort has to be made to lower the rate of growth. China, with its stringent one-child policy, has managed to do that, especially since the year 2000, when the population growth rate was 0.9 percent per year; in 2006, it declined to 0.59 percent per year. In any case there is a significant decline in the birth rate, which is now 1.8 children per couple.
India’s population continues to grow at a much higher rate. Last year, it was estimated at 1.38 percent, more than two times China’s rate. India had adopted some time ago population measures, including vasectomies for males, sterilization for females, and public support for contraception.
Unfortunately, these policies have not kept pace with the country’s population growth.
In China, decades of population control have reduced the number of young workers relative to the number of aging elders; is it now a live question whether or not there will be enough working people to support the nonworking population. In India, 35–40 percent of the population is under age fifteen, so its primary challenge is the need to control the rate of population growth. Unless India adopts a rigorous nationwide policy of population control, it will continue to falter, no matter how expansive its economic growth. Interestingly, in India, the Hindu birth rate has declined, but the Muslim birth rate has not. The Muslim population apparently still considers it advantageous to have large families and shows considerable resistance to contraception. The great question for China and India is whether rising levels of affluence will reduce the desire for large families, as it has in other countries. In 1980, India and China had roughly the same income per capita, though China’s has nearly doubled since then. India is making great efforts to try to narrow the gap.The second great challenge that India and China face is the tremendous drain on their natural resources, particularly energy and water. Demand for energy is outstripping the capacity to produce it, with fresh water in increasingly short supply. With this, of course, comes the danger of pollution to the environment, which the Kyoto Protocol is trying to reduce—though, regrettably, Kyoto does not apply to China or India, which are given leeway for their attempts to catch up. Yet China was responsible for an estimated 18 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, almost equal to the 21-percent share of the United States (2004 figures), and is likely to outstrip the United States shortly. Fortunately, both India and China have so far been able to feed their populations; as those populations have risen, so the green revolution has contributed to the food supply. Whether this will continue, only the future will tell.
The third great challenge both countries face is the need to overcome poverty in the countryside and to bridge disparities in income. While a large middle class is growing in both societies, large underclasses persist. Concomitant with economic growth, there need to be continued efforts to increase standards of living and provide opportunities for education for the poorest sectors of society. Of considerable significance is the fact that India is a democracy, whereas China still has a long road to travel if it is to become democratic.
From the standpoint of planetary humanism, we need to be concerned about each person on the planet, and we need to try to improve the education, happiness, and well-being of every person. One can only hope that China and India will be able to overcome enormous economic problems and that they will continue to grow, while at the same time limiting population, preserving the environment, reducing poverty, and defending the freedom and rights of their ordinary citizens.
I should point out that, in a modest way, the Center for Inquiry/Trans¬national is attempting to assist these countries by establishing Centers in India (there are now four—in Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, and the port city of Kakinada in the state of Andhra Pradesh—and a fifth is planned in Chennai, formerly Madras) and in Beijing, China, which will host a World Congress in October, 2007. The agenda of the Center for Inquiry is to develop the public understanding of science, to reduce levels of superstition, and to develop some public appreciation of humanist values in ameliorating human life. This priority should be high on the agenda of both China and India, if they are to solve their problems and contribute to better lives for their citizens. Of Human Dignity
In a provocative article in Commentary,* the neoconservative magazine, Leon Kass raises questions about the relationship between science and biblical religion. Western civilization, he says, draws upon both science and religion, which are necessary to its future. He is concerned that many scientists today reject biblical religion as “irrational.” He is especially disturbed that “an aggressive intellectual elite” has converted to “scientism.”
He asks whether, given this challenge, biblical religion can respond. This is all the more pertinent today, he says, because of developments within the sciences of genetics, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology. Kass, Professor of Social Thought at the University of Chicago, served as chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001–2005. In that capacity, he opposed many proposals brought before the Council on cloning, stem-cell research, and other bioengineering techniques, because he believed they violated “human dignity.” He concluded this, apparently, because he believes that these new technologies conflict with biblical religion, and because of his commitment to his own ethnic loyalty to Judaism and the Hebrew Bible. Astonishingly, Kass refers to the revelation of scripture as the basis of his view that humans possess “dignity.” Interestingly, he does not discuss the differences between the Old and New Testaments—which is to say, Judaism and Christianity. Nor does he acknowledge the centuries of hatred and persecution to which these differences have led, or the crimes against humanity often condoned by devout religionists—from the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the protracted wars between Catholics and Protestants to the condoning of slavery, patriarchy, the historic suppression of women and homosexuals, and the opposition to democracy and human rights.
Although Kass grounds his religious view on revelation, he totally excludes any reference to the Qur’an, a legacy of the Book of Abraham and surely a latter-day claim to knowledge from on high. He disregards centuries of bloody confrontations between different revelatory traditions; this shameful history does little to support his claim that human dignity is rooted in revelation. Given the wars fought in the name of Allah or God, one can ask, “Oh, Dignity, where is thy divine embrace?”
I surely do not deny that religions have some good as sources of meaning, consolation, charity, and hope, but they have also been dysfunctional. The question is whether these religious institutions can be profoundly reformed or replaced by others that are more relevant to the present condition of world (not simply Western) civilization.
Of special interest to readers of FREE INQUIRY is Kass’s frontal assault on “the luminaries of the International Academy of Humanism—including the biologists Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, and E.O. Wilson and the humanists Isaiah Berlin, W.V. Quine, and Kurt Vonnegut”—who, in 1997, issued a statement defending cloning research in higher mammals and human beings (“Declaration in Defense of Cloning and the Integrity of Scientific Research,” FI, Summer 1997). That statement deplores the fact that some world religions teach that human beings are fundamentally different from other mammals, for they are “imbued by a deity with immortal souls.” The statement goes on to say that, “A view of human nature rooted in humanity’s mythical past ought not to be our primary criterion for making moral decisions about cloning.”
Kass deplores the fact that leading scientists today are willing to dethrone the traditional idea that humanity is created in God’s image and has a special place in the universe. He regrets that these scientists have thrown out not only the “immaterial human soul” but the very idea that we are free and responsible for what we do. He accuses the secular elite of “dehumanizing” humanity from its proper status as “noble, dignified, precious, or Godlike.” He calls this “soulless scientism.” Science, he argues—erroneously, I submit—is totally unable to account for ethical behavior and is “morally neutral.” Kass is worried that we stand today on the threshold of an effort by scientists to “perfect” human nature and “enhance” human life. He asks, how do we know that biogenetic engineering (such as embryonic stem-cell research) is worthwhile? Why should we welcome a “post-human” future? This, he insists, is the “moral and religious crisis” we face today. He rails against the use of evolution and neuroscience “as battering rams against the teachings of the Bible and the religions built upon it.” Kass brazenly asserts that “[t]he teachings of Genesis 1 are indeed untouched by scientific findings.” His case rests on the statement in Genesis 1:31: “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
Thus, Kass says, when we ask, “Why should there be something rather than nothing?” we now have it on the highest authority of the Bible that the world, having been created, is good. Quoting Joshua Heschel, Kass continues that “the story of creation is not a description of how the world came into being,” but an “appreciation” of the glory of the world’s having come into being. The point of the creation narrative is to summon us to celebrate with awe and to recognize that the existence of the universe is good and that it calls us to a worthy life, “a life that does honor to the divine likeness.” The first chapter of Genesis, like (Kass declares) no work of science, “invites us to harken to a transcendent voice.” It is “a response to the human longing for meaning.” This, he says, is more than cognitive, for it answers “the call to righteousness, holiness, and love of neighbor.”
Kass concludes “that we should have been given such a life-affirming teaching is, to speak plainly, a miracle.”
All of this, it seems to me, is a form of gobbledygook. For Kass assumes that Genesis 1 is in some way divinely given by a “transcendent” voice. In truth, it is only the voices of human beings in an ancient age trying to find existential meaning in the universe and reading into it everything that they longed for.
The Bible is not the word of a distant God, proclaimed by him to humans, but a series of books written by human beings in the distant past, presenting their own visions of reality. To consider the Bible divinely inspired is a pernicious form of the “God delusion,” as Richard Dawkins so aptly describes it—the invoking of God to satisfy the human quest for meaning, an anthropocentric God read into the fabric of nature by the hunger for some supernatural purpose. There is something terribly amiss when the former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics invokes his own religious convictions in an attempt to determine national policy, and when President Bush and his evangelical and Roman Catholic cohorts use the Genesis story to block scientific research. The Vatican’s doctrine that human life begins at conception, when an immortal soul is implanted by God, is oblivious to the potential benefits that embryonic stem-cell research may offer in curing diseases and extending life. The same is true concerning other potential discoveries in biogenetic engineering, which Kass fears.
Kass’s article does pose a serious challenge to secular humanists and atheists, however: if we reject the religious presumption that dignity has a divine source, then how do we justify the ethical principle that we ought to consider every human person equal in dignity and value?
Secular humanists respond that human beings are responsible for their own destinies—for themselves and for the wider community of humankind. This does not depend upon an absent deity nor on spurious promises of eternal salvation. Human beings living within communities learn to abide by ethical principles that prescribe how they should treat one another. A basic principle is implicit in the democratic ethic that has developed over the centuries and is now deeply ingrained in human behavior, across cultures and ethnicities: the recognition that we ought to respect the dignity of each person as a moral being, not simply within our own nation-state (the dignity of fellow citizens) but within the broader planetary community (the dignity of all humankind). The respect for this dignity is not a divine right inherent in the person himself. It is not a description of an abstract metaphysical property. Rather, it is a general normative prescription that tells us that a civilized community ought to recognize the moral equality of each person as such, recognizing the duties and obligations that arise out of his or her relationships to others. These include their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and also the obligation of society to provide as best it can the means by which each person can satisfy his or her basic needs for survival and growth, including cultural education and enrichment. Implicit is the recognition that society will respect some degree of personal freedom consonant with the preservation of social order.
Also included are prohibitions against physical harm or death without lawful cause. Humans should be treated with kindness and caring (for those deserving of it). The idea of dignity thus has deep roots in human civilization; it is not a contrivance of caprice. It has its expressions in the democratic revolutions of the modern world, in the battles for what Thomas Paine called the Rights of Man, now widely proclaimed through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and accepted by most of humanity. It entails the concepts of equality before the law, equal opportunity, the right to education, a prohibition of discrimination based on race, creed, ethnicity, national origin, or gender. This ideal has been expressed in the struggles against slavery and the oppression of women and minorities.
These ethical principles are intrinsically humanistic, for they encourage human beings to realize the best life of which they are capable. They respect the right of privacy: the right of individuals to have some latitude in fulfilling their diverse conceptions of the good life, so long as they do not restrict the rights of others. These principles seek to distribute the opportunities for achieving happiness as widely as possible.
How is dignity justified? I would say that, in the last analysis, it is vindicated by its empirical consequences. Those societies that do not respect the dignity of persons and consistently violate the basic rights of humans tend to condone cruelty, duplicity, and repression. Humanistic ethics focuses on the ends to be achieved—maximizing the dimensions of freedom and happiness of human beings. But it also entails an ethic of principles, holding that some principles are so fundamental that they ought not to be violated by civilized communities. The respect for the dignity of each person is such a principle, justified not only because of its instrumental value but also because it is intrinsically valued for its own sake. As such, it appeals to both our rational understanding and our empathetic and compassionate feeling for others.
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