What are human beings?

Are we unique?

Shakespeare’s Hamlet helps highlight that, although we might see ourselves as holding some special place in the natural world, we are essentially mistaken.

At first glance, human beings may appear to be very different from anything else that we are familiar with. But the closer we look, the more we are able to recognise our similarities to other things. The chemical elements we are built from are found in everything around us, in rocks, in rivers, and in rodents (our atoms all formed in the hearts of stars and the astronomical explosions). Science continues to reveal how many of our talents and capacities are shared with other species across the animal kingdom, such as empathy, communication, and problem-solving. In the modern world, we are now even able to see ‘human’ attributes appearing in the technology that surrounds us. Machines can already far exceed many of our capabilities. How long before they truly challenge our sense of what it means to be a person?

What, then, is a human being to a humanist? Is there anything special or unique about us? Anything to be celebrated?

A humanist understanding of human beings

In Humanism: Beliefs and Practices, Jeaneane Fowler draws our attention to the links between the historic roots of the words ‘human’ and ‘earth’. We are beings of the earth.

The humanist understanding is that we are part of this world, and only of this world. We are made from matter. When we die, humanists see no persuasive reason to believe our lives will continue in some other world, nor will we return to exist again in this one. Instead, the matter of our bodies will return to the earth. They see no evidence that we were individually created by some higher power, but believe we are the result of natural, purposeless, physical and biological processes. We are a product of both nature and nurture: the result of the genetic inheritance acquired from our parents and our ancestors dating back to the origin of life, but how those genetic propensities play out is also influenced by our experiences and the environment in which we live. Our personalities are dependent on our physical brains and the world in which we find ourselves, not on anything immaterial, such as a spirit or soul.

What is there left?

One criticism of humanism is that this materialist picture embraces a diminished conception of what it means to be human.

‘The dilemma for atheistic humanism can then be put like this. On the one hand, the word ‘humanism’ suggests a recognition of something importantly special and distinctive about human beings. On the other hand, because of its championing of scientific knowledge, humanism seems to be committed to a materialistic conception of human beings as physical systems and therefore not radically different from anything else in the universe.’

Richard Norman, On Humanism

However, we shall learn how and why humanists might argue that, while we have our limits and our flaws, there is also much that is distinctive and wonderful about human beings, and much to be valued, without the need for us to be built from anything other than atoms. We shall also learn how a recognition of our oneness with the natural world, and the need to balance our sometimes lofty aspirations with our intrinsic animal nature, can lead to positive outcomes.

We will still find much we can celebrate about being human.

‘Our entire bodies and brains are made of a few dollars’ worth of common elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, enough calcium to whitewash a chicken coop, sufficient iron to make a two‐inch nail, phosphorous to tip a good number of matches, enough sulphur to dust a flea‐plagued dog, together with modest amounts of potassium, chlorine, magnesium and sodium. Assemble them all in the right proportion, build the whole into an intricate interacting system, and the result is our feeling, thinking, striving, imagining, creative selves. Such ordinary elements; such extraordinary results!’

James Hemming, President of Humanists UK (1977–80)