After years of campaigning by humanists, finally saw the outdated blasphemy laws abolished , and Humanists UK lobbied to keep the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill from making abortion law more restrictive or from blocking important scientific research.
Professor Grayling heralded the 60th anniversay of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a brilliant, powerful series of commemorative articles for the Guardian. National public celebrations of intellectual and scientific achievement are rare but precious, wonderful opportunities.
All this activism and open debate are good things. Humanism encompasses all this and it taps, also, into an even deeper vein of thought and feeling. 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. How Humanist Are You? Who are humanists? Remember me. Humanism Today In the UK today, many people are very sceptical of religious claims to truth and hold values which are broadly humanist. Active humanist campaigning After years of campaigning by humanists, finally saw the outdated blasphemy laws abolished , and Humanists UK lobbied to keep the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill from making abortion law more restrictive or from blocking important scientific research.
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Oxford Handbooks Online. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. The Practice of Humanism.
Louis Close. Humanists also look to the future in hope, believing that human beings, if working together, can build a better world. Many tributaries flow into the mainstream of Humanist thought, but two are particularly significant. Much of modern Humanism is inspired by the principles that animated the Enlightenment: a commitment to reason as a mechanism to change society and a commitment to science as the best way of learning about the world.
The staunch rationalism that pervades Humanism today is inspired by the spirit of these times. Humanists believe that people should be free to think and discuss any thought, regardless of the sacred truths that may be questioned by doing so. 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.
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