h.u.m.a.n.i.s.t.

In my quest to find humanists, I came upon a few organizations:

1. British Humanist Association - seems to be the most active in the news, fervently trying to separate state and religion in the U.K. They claim that humanists form 36% of the British population.

2. SL Humanism - This is a group in Second Life and has weekly discussions. Since Second Life is basically an online chat tool, this seems to work well for discussions. They are also supposed to have an Action wing to actually undertake humanistic projects according to their founding leader Torin Golding.

3. The Humanist Church (THC) : relatively new, still in formative stages. The founder Dwight envisions a humanist church which encapsulates the structural and community set up of a church albeit without a God. His contenion is that it is a lack of such a structure that humanism has not taken off and widely adapted even though there are many humanists scattered around. He aims at solving that through THC. It is an interesting concept to say the least, if it can get past the defining stages and progress to formation.

4. The Rational Responders : This group seems to be extremely active in the United States and has gained significant attention after their youtube "Blasphemy Challenge" around December 2006. Founded by Brian Sapient, Rook Hawkins and a group of core members, this is primarily an atheist group trying to confront irrational theist beliefs. They have a live Stickam on their website and I joined one where Sapient and Kelly were online discussing/answering quesitons.

5. Humanism.org - This site gives the basis of humanism very simply and has a contact email for more info. I liked the simple design of the site, but not sure who runs it or what they do. Have not contacted them yet.

6. American Humanist - All I know is they exist - I have not researched the organization and their activities yet.

There may be more, but from the ones I have run into, what I find is most of these organizations define Atheism as the foundation or basis for humanism. While this is a difficult argument on whether a theist can ever be a humanist, too much focus on theism vs Atheism leads to misguided organizations that just define themselves with respect to theism and therefore lose sight of what humanism should really be - the unifying factor of all humans, that we are all one.

Theism is so deep rooted, that trying to uproot and discard it before pursuing "true" unification of humans is far fetched in my opinion, or atleast not happening in the forseeable future. As long as humans are mortal, fear of death, fear of the unknown will keep the search for a God/belief in a living God alive in one form or the other. So while these organizations may gain prominence by the noise they make, I am not sure they are about to achieve any lasting and tangible change to human perspective.

At the same time, theist beliefs are posing a barrier between humans and religion is infact the basis of a lot of disharmony in the world. Therefore, unless humans get past religious beliefs, achieving true human unity is out of question.

Hmm... its a real catch-22 situation, and I am not sure what the right approach is.

The objective very simply put : Humans should have a core understanding that we are all one as a layer below all other beliefs. This core should drive our world view such that our other beliefs do not violate this core understanding.

What is the approach that can lead us humans to this state of mind?

Often, Humanism is confused with various viewpoints on religion, such as atheist or agnostic views. Before I express my opinion on this topic in an upcoming post, I think its best to define all these terms first.

Extract from Atheist vs Agnostic, Theist vs Gnostic :

Theism addresses the issue of belief. For any claim asserting the existence of a god, a theist is an individual who accepts (or positively believes) that the claim is true and an atheist (literally, "one without theism") is someone who does not.

Gnosticism (in the general sense being discussed here) addresses the issue of what one knows or claims to know. For any claim regarding the existence of a god, a gnostic is an individual who claims knowledge that the assertion is true and an agnostic (literally, "one who lacks knowledge") is someone who makes no such
claim.

Most often, people fall somewhere in between these extremes and the following combinations describe those well:

i
am
human
so
are
you...

Having made the journey from religious beliefs to exploring various schools of thought by various eastern and european philosophers and thinkers to spending enormous amounts of time trying to understand life after death, Godhood, divinity, the supernatural, etc. I have this to say:
I still don’t "know" a thing about God.
I don’t "know" about life after death.
I don’t "know" about reincarnation.
I don’t even "know" what there is to know.

And as much as anybody out there would claim to know, I can emphatically state that they don’t "know" either. They think they know, they convince themselves and others that they know, but they really don’t. The point is, we will never know. Period.

So with that out of the way, I finally have arrived at what I think makes most sense. I am ready to put a label on the philosophy that I believe I can live by. “Humanism” which means living with compassion for all fellow human beings without barriers, letting go of the ego and uniting as human residents of this planet towards making life and the world better for all of us and celebrating our lifetime on earth.

A friend quipped to me recently, “you are agnostic, I am a believer”. That made me think; I did not like being labeled a non-believer. I knew I believed in something, because it is after all human to want a purpose in life. I realized the one thing I believed in very naturally without doubt is “Humanism”.

Being a humanist does not automatically imply one is an atheist or agnostic. Infact, Humanism is not a counter philosophy at all. While its true that often the atheists or the agnostic seem to open up to Humanism, I would like to emphasize that Humanism is something that is fundamental to every human and is nothing more than a positive approach to human progress. It is so fundamental to our existence and yet seems to have been cast aside in favor of human diversity.
Now more than ever, as the globe grows smaller thanks to technology, as humans learn to harness the universe that we live in, as issues that affect us are no longer isolated local occurrences, now more than ever, unity in our thought and action is of utmost importance.

Luckily, humanism is not new, there are quite a few people who subscribe to this rational philosophy, and hopefully can all come together to make this world a better place. I shall strive on this blog to bring focus on such humanistic groups, efforts and issues that humanism alone can address.

Thanks for stopping by fellow human, and please feel free to share your thoughts.