Is Humanism Religion?

* note: many humanist and atheist organizations are web hosted by www.infidels.org. When that server goes down, all the links go down with it.

There is no one answer to that. Here's what Frederick Edwords, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, has to say about it in his essay What is Humanism?

"The most critical irony in dealing with Modern Humanism is the inability of its advocates to agree on whether or not this worldview is religious. Those who see it as philosophy are the Secular Humanists while those who see it as religion are Religious Humanists. This dispute has been going on since the early years of this century when the secular and religious traditions converged and brought Modern Humanism into existence."

It's not my purpose to argue the point at this site (or anywhere.) Certainly some humanists say that humanism plays the role in their lives that religion plays in the lives of others, and more broadly, many or most religious liberals consider humanism to be a component of their belief.

Humanism as Organized Religion

Most notable is the American Ethical Union, with its member groups known variously as Ethical Humanist or Ethical Culture societies. The organization doesn't have home pages up and running, but Jone Johnson's Virtual Ethical Society is an excellent online exploration of the Ethical Society, with information on joining or on founding an Ethical Society in your community.

Affiliated with the Unitarian Universalists is a smaller group, Friends of Religious Humanism, which offers a quarterly and a mailing list for discussion of topics in religious humanism.

Some Humanism links:

Humanist and Freethought Weblinks
American Humanist Association

And what site on humanism would be complete without

Humanist Manifestos I & II

Atheism and Freethought

Many of the world's major religions -- and most of the minor ones -- do not assume a theistic personal creator god. "Atheism" is a word which has meaning only in a context of theism. The word itself means the rejection of theism. Not surprisingly, it's the people who are inside a western religious culture of theism and who have rejected that kind of thinking who refer to themselves as "atheist." A better term for eastern (such as Buddhist) religious thought would be non-theist. Rejection of the person-god isn't a central issue to people who have never been asked to accept such a concept. In mysticism, also, the "attributes" of god fall away. In short, non-theistic thinking can be found in every religion, including Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism.

Here are a few links to sites which are specifically Atheist:

The Secular Web (Internet Infidels)
Freedom From Religion Foundation
What Is A Freethinker?

Excerpts from Losing Faith in Faith by Dan Barker