Famous Humanists- Attenborough, Sir David Frederick

“I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programs a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature, to which I reply and say, “Well, it’s funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the almighty, always quote beautiful things, they always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses.” But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he’s five years old, and I reply and say, “Well presumably the god you speak about created the worm as well,” and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful god with that action, and therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.”
— David Attenborough Read on…

Humanist Values- Nature and Evolution

I suppose suppose it could be said that the second item in the list of the six mentioned in the Humanist Manifesto 3 is an extension of the first. In full, this item reads “Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of evolutionary change, an unguided process.” If you remember that first item, it had to do with empiricism, including observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. You know, the scientific method, critical thinking, pragmatism, etc. Read on…

Famous Humanists- Baldwin, James

“Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty — necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.”
“If the concept of God has any validity or use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
— Baldwin, James Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Armstrong, Karen

“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, “he” becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.” Read on…

Historical Humanists- Annet, Peter

“[The Free Inquirer had ridiculed Scripture and tried to show] that the prophet Moses was an impostor, the sacred truths and miracles recorded and set forth in the Pentateuch were impositions and false inventions, and thereby to infuse and propagate irrelegious and diabolical opinions in the minds of his majesty’s subjects and to shake the foundation of the civil and ecclesiastical government established in this kingdom.”
— From the blasphemy charges against Peter Annet Read on…

Humanist Values- Observation, experimentation, and rational analysis

When Humanists last endeavored to define themselves, the did it in the Humanist Manifest III, released in 2003. It is not so much a statement of what is wrong with the world, as was much of the first two Manifestos, but a statement of what could be right. There is so much in the world that is negative; it can mire one in society’s mud. And examination of the basic principles of humanism should be a positive experience, one that I need. Read on…