09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Robert Ray Secular Invocation
Thank you Mayor and council members for this opportunity to provide an inspirational start to your meeting.Normally you would bow your heads for an invocation in this chamber, but I am going to ask that you raise your eyes and think about a few things today.
When this body comes together to govern, they do so with the consent of the citizens of Oak Harbor. Oak Harbor is a very diverse community with many different views and opinions.
My Secular Humanism, which is to say, reason and science ...Folksonomies: secularism
Folksonomies: secularism
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notesRobert Ray, president of The Humanists of the North Puget Sound and humanist celebrant, gave the first ever Humanist opening invocation at the Oak Harbor city council meeting on February 4, 2014.
21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
"Cosmos" Converts
I’ve met secular humanists who grew up in evangelical households, for whom Cosmos was their first exposure to a scientific way of viewing the world. Dad was a difference maker. He reached out to people. He took them by the awe and wonder we feel over the most important questions we can think to imagine. He pulled them away from blind faith, away from pseudoscience, toward a deeper, richer understanding of the universe.
And he did it with compassion. He didn’t berate people or make them f... 1 notes
notesNick Sagan explains how his father's compassion and energy converted people to humanism.
02 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Possibilianism
Eagleman was brought up as a secular Jew and became an atheist in his teens. Lately, though, he’d taken to calling himself a Possibilian—a denomination of his own invention. Science had taught him to be skeptical of cosmic certainties, he told me. From the unfathomed complexity of brain tissue—“essentially an alien computational material”—to the mystery of dark matter, we know too little about our own minds and the universe around us to insist on strict atheism, he said. “And we...Folksonomies: secular humanism
Folksonomies: secular humanism
1 notes
notesAnother flavor of secular humanism.
06 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Comfort of Secular Humanism
The secular philosophies of death that I’ve been writing and reading about and contemplating for years have been a tremendous comfort. For instance: The idea that we didn’t exist for billions of years before we were born—that nonexistence wasn’t painful or bad, and death won’t be either. The idea that our genes and our ideas will live on after we die. The idea that each of us was astronomically lucky to have been born at all. The idea that death is a deadline, something that helps u... 1 notes
notesThe many reasons Humanist philosophy and worldview provide comfort.
30 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Atheist and Religious Origins of Secular Humanism
Atheism and freethought trace their roots to ancient Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on rational inquiry and curiosity about the workings of nature. Other sources included early Chinese Confucianism, ancient Indian materialists, and Roman Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. Submerged during the Dark Ages, freethought re-emerged in the Renaissance. With the Enlightenment, rationalist and empiricist thinkers laid foundations for the modern scientific outlook. Utilitarians emancipated morality... 1 notes
notesA list of the shoulders on which secular humanism is built philosophically and spiritually.
30 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Definition of Secular Humanism
Secular humanism begins with atheism (absence of belief in a deity) and agnosticism or skepticism (epistemological caution that rejects the transcendent as such due to a lack of evidence). Because no transcendent power will save us, secular humanists maintain that humans must take responsibility for themselves. While atheism is a necessary condition for secular humanism, it is not a sufficient one. Far from living in a moral vacuum, secular humanists “wish to encourage wherever possible the... 1 notes
notesA concise definition of secular humanism.
30 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Where Secular Humanism Falls Between Atheism and Religiou...
Secular humanism occupies one point on a spectrum of reformist orientations, between atheism on the “left” and religious humanism on the “right.” Drawing from all across this spectrum, it is a vigorous hybrid whose debt to its source traditions should never be forgotten.
Atheism lends a valuable critique of outmoded, regressive religious systems. We welcome its vision of a universe upon which meaning was never imposed from above. But secular humanism goes further, calling on humans t... 1 notes
notesSecular Humanism plots on a line with atheism on the left and religious humanism on the right.
