Naturalistic Humanism

What is naturalistic humanism? Is it a religion or what? According to the

dictionary naturalistic humanism is a doctrine that affirms that"religion

does not depend on supernatural experience, divinerevelation, etc., and

that all religious truth may be derived from thenatural world." I would

like to spend the next few minutes unpacking this term further before

continuing with the main theme of my talk.

What is religion? There are probably as many definitions as there

Are people who think about such things but the word itself is from the

Latin word that means "to bind back to". Perhaps one of the most concise

definitions that can be found was offered by William James: "Religion

shall means for us the feelings, acts, and experiences ofindividual in

their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves tostand in relation to

whatever they may consider divine." But I think that a short definition

that most of us would agree on is that religion is our attempted

conciliation with the ultimate reality. It helps answer such question as

why must I and my loved ones eventually die and why there seem to be so

much apparently needless suffering in the world? The answers to these

pivotal issues are the stuffings of all meaningful religions. So for as

long as we are human facing the dilemma of not wanting to die but knowing

that we must there will be a need for some kind of religious expression.

But does this religious expression necessarily have to mean being an

believer in a religious dogma based on divine revelation? The most

influential and philosophical of this century's religious naturalists is

John Dewey. In his book "Common Faith" he outlines the difference between

the noun religion and the adjective relig...

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... want to integrate the revelations of

science into their religious life. However, naturalistic humanism is not a

religion but an alternative to religion. Naturalistic humanism rejects

divine revelation in favor of scientific inquiry, but recognizes the value

of religious expression, based on love of nature, each other, and

ourselves. Naturalistic humanism preaches that love for all of Nature

including humanity will be the only thing that will save us in the end.

Naturalistic humanism acknowledges the limitation of our knowledge but

condemns any attempts to use myth to placate fear of the unknown.

Naturalistic humanism espouses that the only reasonable antidote for the

suffering and fear due to our ignorance is the active pursuit knowledge

and the total commitment to a life based on love for ourselves, each other,

and Nature as the unifying whole.