What is Secular Humanism?

In my last post, I discussed atheism. In this post, I’d like to discuss what Secular Humanism is. To put it simply, Secular Humanism is a personal philosophy. It is the view that morality can exist separately from a deity. Secular Humanists believe that humans are responsible for ensuring that all humans thrive.

This is the American Humanist Associations logo. As you can see, their slogan is “good without God.” Secular Humanists don’t necessarily believe that every human is good, but they do believe that you can be good without religion.

While Humanism can be theistic, Secular Humanists tend to be atheists or agnostics. Most believe that gods are imaginary. This is one of the main reasons why they do not believe that gods are required to be good: if humans created gods, then the moral codes dictated by gods were actually created by humans. If humans created all moral codes, then they can do so without the guise of a deity.

Secular Humanists, like skeptics, freethinkers, etc, tend to be very interested in seeking out and discovering what is true. Secular Humanists generally believe that we should always be seeking more information and trying to learn as much about our world as possible.

Those are all qualities that many Secular Humanists hold. But you may have noticed that there is no clear definition offered. That’s because there is no clear definition. Secular Humanists are those who label themselves as Secular Humanists. Many atheists and agnostics don’t like Secular Humanism. Many feel it is a weak position held by those who are too afraid to just call themselves atheists. Others like Secular Humanism because it is about morality and ethics. It really depends on the person.

Both Withteeth and I are happy to call ourselves Secular Humanists, because we both care deeply about ethics and Social Justice.