Humanism and God As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they do exist or that they do not exist. --Protagoras (485-410 BC)
Humanism is an ethical process through which we can all move, above and beyond the divisive particulars, heroic personalities, dogmatic creeds, and ritual customs of past religions, or their mere negation. -- Humanist Manifesto 2 (1973)
Humanism is about what's human, not about gods. Its concerned with ethics, deciding how to live the good life, not with metaphysics, what exists or doesn't exist.
How do you decide what a good act is? You know byobserving its consequences.
There is less human suffering when the choices made are right choices. Right and wrong are determined by human experience. Theres no need for allegedly revealed moral codes.
Humanists are occupied with observing what happens when you act in particular ways. Reason applied to evidence tells you if the act was a good act. You don't need to speculate about mystical things. You don't need faith. Humanism is practical. Debates about the existence of God are irrelevant. Humanists have no need either to affirm or to deny the existence of God. Humanist ethics is based on solid ground: observable experience. And whats observed is natural, not supernatural. You can decide what's right without any supernaturalism at all.
Humanism - It's Not Marginal It's the Mainstream of Western Civilization
by Konstantin Kolenda, professor of philosophy at Rice University, Houston TX, a Board member of the American Humanist Association and an Advisor to the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego. Published in FREETHOUGHT FORUM, newsletter of the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego, February 2001.
It would be a grave error for the Humanists to acquiesce in the attempted characterization of them as merely a fragment, an insignificant and aberrant one at that, of our civilization. The opposite is the case.
From its very inception in ancient Greece, humanistic thought provided the dominant impetus toward the exploration of nature and toward the development of the central moral and political ideas which received embodiment in democratic states that gradually emerged from autocratic and absolutist regimes of Europe.
The best policy for the Humanist movement is to refuse to be drawn into a debate on its detractors' terms. Those terms would lock the Humanists into a fruitless and pointless defense against the preposterous and undocumented charges of being responsible for an assortment of contemporary ills.
Instead, our efforts should go into developing awareness, through discussions among ourselves and in our publications, of the central role of humanistic ideas that underlie the standards of decency, fairness, justice and compassion, and are embedded in our institutions and in our way of life. We need not deny that Christian beliefs for the most part are compatible with and have contributed to the moral objectives of our civilization.
Bt articulating the positive features of humanistic thought as they permeate all important spheres of our society, thus making it the most humane, constructive and progressive society in th world, we will deflect and de-fuse the attempts to reduce us to a minor role of mischief-makers and will show forth the dignity and power of our ideas.
We are not representing a small minority, but speak for the forces that champion the growth of rationality, morality, and good sense.
Rather than being sidetracked into narrow debates over the ultimate sources of the human spirit, we should concentrate on making manifest the good that that spirit has infused into the history of mankind on Earth.
The Humanist Fellowship of San Diego is a non-profit educational organization.