By Sally Morem
Also, manifestos tend to be too wordy, the humanist varieties being no exception. What people usually remember are extraordinarily well crafted, urgent—and short—statements of core beliefs. Anyone left dissatisfied after reading a short manifesto can be referred to any number of essays or books for further illumination on any given topic.
I decided to write my own humanist manifesto. It is a revealing undertaking. I had to ask myself a series of questions. For instance, how do my views on science fit in with my political and philosophical beliefs? Do I contradict myself? If I so, how do I go about reconciling the beliefs in question? May I suggest that any of you in your busy lives would find it well worth your while to take the time to think through and write down your own set of beliefs or overall world view by crafting your own manifesto.
In my manifesto, I’ve attempted to compress my thoughts into fewer words than the number allotted the original Humanist Manifesto. I succeeded at a count of 883 words. By doing so, I realized I had to avoid virtually all explanations and defense of my beliefs. If the words ring true, I figured they’d stand on their own. I also constructed each statement of belief in a positive framework. All interested readers of a new manifesto know humanists by and large disagree with ancient and contemporary religious thought. What they generally don’t know is what we love and believe in. Finally, I wrote the manifesto quite deliberately using the plural instead of the singular, anticipating that at least some other humanists would agree with at least parts of it.
I hope my humanist manifesto is helpful to those of you interested in secular humanism. Perhaps I’ve been able to contribute a few memorable lines that you may incorporate into your own statement of beliefs. If so, I’d be happy to hear from you. I found this exercise to be extraordinarily useful and meaningful. Your responses would be chocolate icing on a very tasty cake.
2. We seek to comprehend more fully the vast, interlocking, multi-leveled universe of processes and objects in which we live.
3. We believe that the best way to achieve the fullest possible understanding of reality is through reason guided by a wide-range of human experiences.
4. We are confident in our ongoing use of the scientific method to give added depth and breadth to our understanding. This method is so strikingly successful because it melds the strengths and weaknesses of human thought into a search engine of extraordinary power. Observations, hypotheses, experiments, meticulous record keeping, and broad conclusions (not necessarily in that order) are the best ways we’ve found to get outside of the fantasies we’ve created in our heads and into the reality of the outside world.
5. We understand that the universe is of finite age, is expanding and has undergone a kind of physical evolution, an undirected buildup of substances from the very small and simple to the very large and complex since the Big Bang. Subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules were concentrated by the gravitational force into stars, planets, and galaxies—each level of organization building upon the preceding level.
6. We envision the Earth with its proximity to the Sun and its oceans of liquid water as a natural catch basin for solar energy. As a result, it served as a sturdy conduit and platform for biological evolutionary processes. We see no conflict in this description of self-organization with a postulated hypothesis of entropy.