This article looks at Humanism, which is a positive attitude to the world, centred on human experience, thought, and hopes.
Humanism
Last updated 2009-10-27
Humanism
A positive approach to life
Humanism is an approach to life based on reason and our common humanity, recognising that moral values are properly founded on human nature and experience alone.
Robert Ashby
While atheism is merely the absence of belief, humanism is a positive attitude to the world, centred on human experience, thought, and hopes.
The British Humanist Association and The International Humanist and Ethical Union use similar emblems showing a stylised human figure reaching out to achieve its full potential.
Humanists believe that human experience and rational thinking provide the only source of both knowledge and a moral code to live by.
They reject the idea of knowledge 'revealed' to human beings by gods, or in special books.
Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives.
It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities.
It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.
International Humanist and Ethical Union
Humanist ideas
Most humanists would agree with the ideas below:
- There are no supernatural beings.
- The material universe is the only thing that exists.
- Science provides the only reliable source of knowledge about this universe.
- We only live this life - there is no after-life, and no such thing as reincarnation.
- Human beings can live ethical and fulfilling lives without religious beliefs.
- Human beings derive their moral code from the lessons of history, personal experience, and thought.
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