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Secular humanism [1]
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Date: 2025-02-15
Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion, art, science, food, and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. Today’s topic is secular humanism.
In 1973, Paul Kurtz and Edwin Wilson, under the auspices of the American Humanist Association, drafted the Humanist Manifesto II which defined humanism as secular and nonreligious. In 1980, philosopher Paul Kurtz and others organized the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH) and in 1996 this became the Council for Secular Humanism.
In an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Paul Kurtz writes:
“Succinctly, secular humanism rejects supernatural accounts of reality; but it seeks to optimize the fullness of human life in a naturalistic universe.”
In an article in Free Inquiry, Judy Walker and Tom Flynn write:
“Secular humanism is not a religion. It is in part a worldview, in part a methodology.
In an article in Free Inquiry, Andy Norman puts it this way:
“Humanists have long sought to replace religious ideologies with scientific humility.”
According to the Council for Secular Humanism, Secular Humanism is: (1) a naturalistic philosophy; (2) a cosmic outlook rooted in science; and (3) a consequential ethical system. As a naturalistic philosophy, Secular Humanism holds that reliable knowledge is best obtained through scientifically based investigation. Concerning Secular Humanism, religious studies professor Van Harvey, in an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, writes:
“Men and women are said to be responsible for their own destinies and cannot look toward some transcendent being for salvation.”
Judy Walker and Tom Flynn put it this way:
“Secular humanists seek to construct the good life in an undirected universe in which no higher mind observes, much less directs, the blind play of physical forces—a universe in which ‘spiritual’ entities or energies have no place.”
In an article in Free Inquiry, Andy Norman writes:
“At bottom, humanism is a commitment to developing a shared, responsible, reality-based understanding of what matters: a worldview that also happens to immunize its adherents against the worst forms of ideological derangement.”
With regard to ethics, Secular Humanism holds that rational ethics are based on human experience and that ethical choices should be judged by their results. Ethical principles are based on science, reason, and experience. Secular Humanism sees the flourishing of human civilization depending on free intellectual inquiry. It rejects all attempts to restrict this inquiry. It sees the scientific method as the best way of understanding the world.
The goals of ethics are human happiness and social justice. The 2003 Humanist Manifesto states:
“Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond.”
The humanistic idea that it is possible for people to be good, for people to have an ethical system, is opposed by those who feel that morality is only possible when dogmatic, rigid ethical rules can be attributed to a deity who will punish people for not following these rules and who can instill fear within people. Atheism and agnosticism do not lead to immorality, as often claimed by theists. Ethics can be separated from religion. In his book The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, A.C. Grayling sums up Humanism this way:
“It is about human life; it requires no belief in an afterlife. It is about this world; it requires no belief in another world.”
How do you feel about secular humanism?
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This is an open thread—all topics are welcome.
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