The second major contributing influence comes from liberal religious movements, including liberal Christian and Jewish movements, Transcendentalism, and Unitarian Universalism. Over time such movements have tended to significantly deemphasize the role of God and the supernatural, moving closer to a position of outright Humanism. Humanistic Unitarian Universalist congregations continue to this day.
It is largely from these religious traditions that the Humanist concern for the worth and dignity of all people is derived. Like any ethical tradition, the full range of values and ideals central to Humanism is difficult to capture in a short statement. The task is made even more challenging in the case of Humanism because Humanism is non-dogmatic by design; there are no required creeds in which Humanists must believe, no holy book of Humanism that lays out what Humanists should or should not do.
This is appropriate for a tradition which has no single founder, admits no ultimate authority, and believes that ethics is an ever-changing field of human practice which must alter to fit the context and the times. The closest Humanists come to creedal documents is a set of Humanist Manifestos which seek to record a consensus view of what Humanists believe at a particular time, with the understanding that the answers given may need to be revised when circumstances change.
Three such manifestos have so far been written, each altering the last to respond to changed circumstances and new ideas, all evidence that Humanism does not stand still. Humanism has a complex relationship with traditional religions. Rather, Humanists seek to eliminate aspects of religious practice found to be inhumane and dehumanizing, while reconstituting those that affirm and promote human flourishing.
While Humanists condemn dogma and irrationalism, they do not indiscriminately condemn all expressions of religious culture. Since Humanists see religions and religious practices as human-created, they seek to ensure that those religions that do exist do so to serve human ends rather than dictate them.
To many this will seem an insecure foundation upon which to erect a philosophy. But because it deals honestly with the world, we believe it is the most secure foundation possible.
We humanists wish to avoid these costly errors and have thus committed ourselves to facing life as it is and to the hard work that such an honest approach entails.
We have willingly sacrificed the lure of an easy security offered by simplistic systems in order to take an active part in the painstaking effort to build our understanding of the world and thereby contribute to the solution of the problems that have plagued humanity through the ages. We maintain that human values make sense only in the context of human life. A supposed nonhumanlike existence after death cannot, then, be included as part of the environment in which our values must operate.
The here-and-now physical world of our senses is the world that is relevant for our ethical concerns, our goals, and our aspirations. We therefore place our values wholly within this context. Were we to do otherwise—to place our values in the wider context of a merely hoped-for extension of the reality we know—we might find ourselves either foregoing our real interests in the pursuit of imaginary ones or trying to relate human needs here to a very different set of nonhuman needs elsewhere.
We ground our ethical decisions and ideals in human need and concern as opposed to the alleged needs and concerns of supposed deities or other transcendent entities or powers. We measure the value of a given choice by how it affects human life, and in this we include our individual selves, our families, our society, and the peoples of the earth.
If higher powers are found to exist, powers to which we must respond, we will still base our response on human need and interest in any relationship with these powers. This human perspective limits us to human ways of comprehending the world and to human drives and aspirations as motive forces.
We practice our ethics in a living context rather than an ideal one. Though ethics are ideals, ideals can only serve as guidelines in life situations. This is why we oppose absolutistic moral systems that attempt to rigidly apply ideal moral values as if the world were itself ideal. We recognize that conflicts and moral dilemmas do occur and that moral choices are often difficult and cannot be derived from simplistic yardsticks and rules of thumb.
Moral choices often involve hard thinking, diligent gathering of information about the situation at hand, careful consideration of immediate and future consequences, and weighing of alternatives. So when we declare our commitment to a humanist approach to ethics, we are expressing our willingness to do the intensive thinking and work that moral living in a complex world entails.
Our planet revolves around a medium-sized star, which is located near the edge of an average-sized galaxy of as many as billion stars, which is part of a galaxy group consisting of more than thirty other galaxies, which is part of an expanding universe that, while consisting mostly of cold, dark space, also contains perhaps one hundred billion galaxies in addition to our own.
Our species has existed only a very short time on the earth, and the earth itself has existed only a short time in the history of our galaxy. Our existence is thus an incredibly minuscule and brief part of a much larger picture.
In light of this, we find it curious that, in the absence of direct evidence, religious thinkers can conclude that the universe or some creative power beyond it is concerned with our well-being or future.
From all appearances it seems more logical to conclude that we alone are concerned for our well-being and future. Human beings are neither entirely unique from other forms of life nor are they the final product of some planned scheme of development. The available evidence shows that humans are made from the same building blocks of which other life forms are made and are subject to the same sorts of natural pressures.
All life forms are constructed from the same basic elements—the same sorts of atoms—as are nonliving substances, and these atoms are made of subatomic particles that have been recycled through many cosmic events before becoming part of us or our world.
Humans are the current result of a long series of natural evolutionary changes, but not the only result or the final one. Continuous change can be expected to affect ourselves, other life forms, and the cosmos as a whole. There appears no ultimate beginning or end to this process. There is no compelling evidence to justify the belief that the human mind is distinct and separable from the human brain, which is itself a part of the body.
All that we know about the personality indicates that every part of it is subject to change caused by physical disease, injury, and death. The titles of his books, Food and the People , Health and Income , and Famine and Feast , showed the main concerns of his life.
Born into a high caste Orthodox Hindu family and marrying Saraswathi in when she was only 10 their religion dictated at that time that girls must marry pre-puberty , Gora was exposed to the inadequacies of societal practices in India. Humanists tend to plan their giving rationally and selectively, but most also respond generously to emergency appeals and street collections. Only 2 out of responses did not support charitable giving.
Some humanists also contribute to society through their work as celebrants, helping the non-religious to mark important occasions in their lives in humanist ceremonies for baby namings, weddings, affirmations, and funerals. Others perform other voluntary humanitarian work, such as in humanist hospital visitor or chaplain roles through the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network.
In recent years there have been humanist peace groups, most recently the Humanist Peace Forum, as well as Humanist Climate Action , formed by individual humanists to take action for a more sustainable world. Humanist associations in many western countries also help to raise money for schools and other social projects in Africa and Asia, and Humanist Associations in Africa and Asia run many social action projects. Sign up as a supporter and we'll keep you up to date by email about all of our work for a fair and equal society.
Click here to see our Privacy Policy. Remember me. Humanists working for a better world Because of their belief that this world is the only one we have and that human problems can only be solved by humans, humanists have often been very active social reformers. More in this section. Our campaigns ». Faith schools. We want pupils from all different backgrounds educated together in a shared environment, rather than separated according to the religious beliefs of their parents.
Find out more. We want a country where institutions such as Parliament are separate from religious organisations, and everyone is treated equally, regardless of their beliefs. Human rights and equality. As humanists, we support the right of every person to be treated with dignity and respect, and to be allowed to speak, and believe, as they wish.
Humanist marriages. Humanist marriages are currently legally recognised in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but not England and Wales. Elsewhere, couples having a humanist ceremony must also have a separate civil marriage. We work to change that.
0コメント