Humanism: Good for Goodness’ Sake

The world has many reli­gions, as most know. Those with ingrained or strong reli­gious beliefs often think theirs is the only true and cor­rect one. How could that be, as human beings con­tin­ue to pop­u­late the planet?

It is a much more calm­ing thought to believe that all major reli­gions fol­low the tenet “treat oth­ers as you want to be treat­ed.” Shouldn’t that be the basis of get­ting along in this world? 

Not know­ing a lot about reli­gions oth­er than the one my par­ents adhered to. Both Methodism (in the days before some dis­agreed and got angry about women as lead­ers and gay peo­ple being mar­ried in the church, and went their own way), and Judaism, as I had friends grow­ing up who invit­ed me to their tem­ple and celebrations. 

There will be no argu­ment from me as to which is best. They all have myths and teach­ings that old­er men said and wrote about many years after hear­ing them from their elders. Who can be sure the sto­ries they tell are true? How can one know whether they were trans­lat­ed cor­rect­ly? And what about all the con­tra­dic­tions just with­in the Old Testament and the New?

I do believe the Bible con­tains many life lessons that are impor­tant to learn, and they apply to human­i­ty at large rather than to any one par­tic­u­lar religion.

Humanity—the human race, all of us. Humanism is a phi­los­o­phy that holds that humans can be good because it is right, not because of super­nat­ur­al beliefs.

Imagine being good with­out a god, liv­ing by sound eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples, affirm­ing the dig­ni­ty of every human being. We are each as wor­thy as the oth­er, regard­less of our reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al beliefs (my par­ents taught me this).

Humanism does not den­i­grate peo­ple who believe in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty or reli­gion or who are dif­fer­ent from our­selves, as long as they, too, are guid­ed by com­mon eth­i­cal and respon­si­ble behav­ior. The col­lec­tive wel­fare and resources should be impor­tant to all humans as we strive to respect all.

Humanism does not depend on the promise or fear of an after­life to direct human behav­ior. We feel respon­si­ble for doing what is eth­i­cal with­out those beliefs. I can­not under­stand how any­one who claims to fol­low the myth­i­cal Jesus can believe that oth­er humans are less than them­selves or deserve pub­lic denounce­ment. Perhaps those peo­ple need to reread their reli­gious tomes and rethink how they speak about and treat others.

Winchester has a local Humanist group, which is an offi­cial chap­ter of the American Humanist Association (AHA). We meet month­ly at the Clark County Public Library. For more infor­ma­tion about our group or Humanism in gen­er­al, please vis­it the Humanists of Winchester web­site and the AHA web­site.