Articles > Volume 124 Issue 4 July/August 2009 >

What kind of humanist are you?

Are you hardline or happy, hedonist or hounded? Answer the questions below and find out how far your personality suits your philosophy

Editorial Staff

Martin Rowson's illustrations for What Kind of Humanist Are You? Using our simple 14-question quiz you can find out where you fit on the humanist spectrum - just choose one option for each, then click submit. A quick metaphysical caluculation from our computers in the blasphemy lab will then tell you if you're happy, hedonist, hounded or hardline. Illustrations by Martin Rowson.

During your summer holiday you visit a fine example of a medieval cathedral. Your reaction is:
1. You are filled with awe at the spiritual power of the majestic structure – despite your lack of belief you can’t help responding.
2. You admire the architectural brilliance, paying particular homage to the unusual cupola and cunning construction of rafters.
3. You are disgusted by the vulgar display of conspicuous waste – the whole edifice symbolises the oppression of its congregants.
4. One look at the beatific icons and saintly stained-glass parables and you’re out of there before you are violently sick.
What is your attitude to the government’s recent decision to ban Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the UK?
1. You condemn it because you believe in free speech.
2. You accept it reluctantly because of his illiberal and xenophobic views.
3. You welcome it. Right-wing nutters should not be allowed a platform. We have enough of our own, thank you.
4. You’re against it. Like it or not he’s been democratically elected. You’re uncomfortable about his more extreme views, but at least he’s standing up to a major threat to our civilisation.
Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips recently denounced “the absurd and destructive ideas which surfaced in the ’60s [which] progressively destroyed the education system and the nuclear family.” What is your reaction?
1. The 1960s was a decade of original and empowering change. Yes, we had fun but we were also charged with a strong public conscience and were out to change the world. She’s chosen the wrong scapegoat. Look instead to Thatcher.
2. Tend to agree with her. All that hippy nonsense, drugs and music and flowery clothes, distracted from serious politics and debate.
3. The decade heralded some fantastic advances but also made way for some unbelievably silly ideas, and a lot of self-satisfied pseudo-rebellion. Then again there was the anti-war movement and I like love and also peace. But, then again, Buffy Sainte-Marie.
4. Can’t remember.
Which of the following statements best defines your philosophy?
1. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion – to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources – is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. (Sam Harris)
2. The God we have in the Big Three monotheisms is a God who originated in a period when male superiority was absolutely taken for granted. That time has passed, but the superior male God remains and that God holds women in contempt. That God is the one who puts “His” imprimatur on all those tyrannical laws. That God is a product of history, but taken to be eternal, which is a bad combination. That is the God who hates women. (Ophelia Benson)
3. There is a sense in which replacing a transcendent God with an omnipotent humanity alters surprisingly little, as Nietzsche scornfully pointed out. There is still a stale metaphysical centre to the world; it is just that it is now us, rather than a deity. (Terry Eagleton)
4. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx)
Your partner of 25 years announces that he/she has returned to his/her faith and will now be going to Mass every Sunday. You:
1. Assume this to be a joke, an illness or a cover for an adulterous affair. Whatever happens you won’t believe it can be serious.
2. Try to reason. Failing that, agree not to talk about it.
3. Accept it. There’s a lot to be said for the comfort of ritual and belonging, even if you don’t seek it for yourself.
4. Kick them out and change the locks.
When you die, what will happen to your body?
1. Like Vanessa Feltz, you will have your ashes scattered in the local shopping centre to ensure that your children will visit your grave.
2. Have the parts donated to science.
3. Be buried in the family plot in the church graveyard. Just in case.
4. Have yourself frozen by cryonics, a near-death experience that should settle once and for all any doubts about the afterlife. Then when you’re revived you can tell the verified truth.
Following the French government’s banning of all religious symbolic dress in schools, Nicholas Sarkozy has now announced he’s planning to ban Muslim women from wearing the full veil in public. Do you agree?
1. No, because freedom of expression is the most basic characteristic of a democratic and progressive state.
2. Yes, because France is asserting its hard-won position as a secular state.
3. Yes, because as Sarkozy said, the veil is “not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement”.
4. No, because it will just encourage xenophobia among the wider population and will probably give Muslim patriarchs the excuse they need to prevent their girls from ever leaving the house.
Which of these comes closest to your ideal summer holiday?
1. A Spartan croft in the Highlands with as few amenities as possible.
2. A big house with a pool in Tuscany, full of friends and family.
3. Visiting New Humanist’s adopted school, Mustard Seed, in Uganda and helping to dig a well alongside the local community while staying in a mud hut.
4. Following Darwin’s route round the Galapagos Islands in a tall ship.
Your local art gallery is showing an exhibition of satirical representations of religion, one of which depicts the prophet Muhammad. Local Muslims demand its removal, threatening to destroy it. How would you respond?
1. The gallery must oppose censorship. Leave the picture but increase security.
2. Remove it – why antagonise an already beleagured community?
3. Invite the critic in to the gallery for a discussion on the subject, and try to persuade them of the value of the exhibition and the picture.
4. Remove it, but put it on a website instead, inviting comments from around the world.
When you dream of the perfect garden, which of these styles most appeals to you?
1. “Profusion, even extravagance and exuberance within the confines of the utmost linear severity”, wrote Vita Sackville West of her paradise at Sissinghurst.
2. Something created out of and perfectly in keeping with its natural surroundings, such as Derek Jarman’s garden in Dungeness, which is built out of sand dunes and incorporates debris from the beach.
3. No flowers, no shrubs, no fancy colours without usefulness. A garden devoted to self-sufficiency and sustenance, rich with berries and fruits, vegetables and herbs.
4. Like the fabulously deceptive creations of the great landscape gardener Capability Brown, it will speak of wild, untrammelled nature – even though the illusion of freedom was maintained with meticulous discipline.
You are dismayed to discover that your child is going to be in the nativity play and, even worse, you have to make the costume. You:
1. Write a note saying that as an atheist you cannot allow her to take part.
2. Write a note saying that sadly your family will be on holiday in Lapland that week.
3. Give in and stitch those gossamer wings. You can’t allow your views to jeopardise your child’s happiness.
4. Make a really cool devil’s costume complete with horns, fork and nasty bile.
Your partner, who is Jewish, wishes to have your baby boy circumcised. You:
1. Go along with it provided it’s done in hospital and not by a scary bearded guy with a knife. Hey, he’ll probably have a better sex life and thank you for it.
2. Refuse. It’s not natural.
3. Race to the internet to find evidence that the child will be healthier, less likely to pass on cervical cancer, and better able to relate to his heritage.
4. Refuse. You will not sanction the mutilation of a child for outmoded and barbaric reasons.
You get into a pub argument with someone who rabidly opposes animal-human embryo research, claiming it’s not natural and tramples on human dignity. You:
1. Painstakingly explain that this form of research does not attempt to fuse human and animal matter, merely uses the animal embryo as a host.
2. Retort that all scientific and medical advances are against nature: they attempt instead to understand it and so conquer its terrible and remorseless cruelties.
3. Simply point out the appalling diseases that such research may cure. Relieving suffering is surely more important than allegiance to abstract concepts?
4. Punch him in the face and get into an ugly brawl.
The Rev Michael Reiss, former director of education at the Royal Society, had to resign after he proposed that creationism should be taught in science lessons. Should he have been forced out?
1. Yes, absurd fantasies have no place in the national curriculum.
2. Yes, it’s fine for creationism to be included in religious education as a world view, but it has no place in science lessons.
3. No, it’s a marvellous tool for explaining to children the difference between speculation and evidence-based inquiry.
4. Yes, but resignation is not enough. He should be pilloried and disgraced – there is no room in the scientific world view for superstition.

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