It's plain that secular humanism represents "atheism with the beginnings of a philosophy".

Philosophy is not religion (that is theosophy, mainly, even without gods in it, if it presents ideas about gods. Atheism is, by that standard, a theosophy, albeit one empty of content). Philosophy is not science, either; it is about science, attempts to make sense of it through speculative hypotheses, of trying to pull together all the strings left dangling by the scientific process. What you get, in philosophies, is a bunch of knots attached to various truths, and it is those knots that atheist people argue about (whether or not we attempt to separate ourselves out from the pack by calling ourselves 'humanists' and then ridiculing or criticizing the then-separated atheists, who are now no longer seen as a contingent body to which our 'humanist' philosophy is attached.

So, humanism being a philosophy about science, it still lacks a scientific approach to what humanists propose to be the standards of expression either among themselves, or in the way various words get to be perceived (let alone understood).

We atheists splinter our approach to reestablishing a place for secularity in our various societies for so long as that stays true, and will never gain any kind of cohesiveness for so long as that stays true. It is from cohesiveness that moral concepts arise, as like-minded human beings struggle to maintain and balance that tender attachment they gained toward one another and so are then forced to try to identify heretical tendencies and root them out from their midst. Failing that, cohesiveness perishes and all they are left with is exactly that from which secularity suffers now, absence of any semblance of homeostasis in our midst. All our arguments and disagreements given voice or pecked into computers is an attempt to somehow deal with that. We fail to acknowledge that, and so fail to formulate a goal that might help to heal a process that is more a stirring up of dust than an actual attempt to make an identifiable accomplishment.

What is true is that we have to overcome our own internal illness in that respect before we ever turn our attention to dealing with external forces. For so long as we fail to recognize religion in all the ways I defined it in my Glossary, and recognize those definitions all apply to each and every one of us as individuals, groups, cultures, societies, nations… For so long as we avoid recognition that all of us are subject to the insidious influences that can and will creep into our own philosophies, we will never achieve a cohesiveness that amounts to anything really meaningful. I will give you an example of to what I am referring; watch your own responses and, if you share the following information with others, stay aware of their responses and see the insidiousness at work:

I am an ordained spiritual humanist.

Notice how the entirety of the concepts represented by that statement get rejected out-of-hand without any effort being made to find out what all it entails. If anyone wants to be a religious humanist, there is where (s)he should look for support. He will be very disappointed, however, in what he will eventually learn: Spiritual humanism is exactly the same as secular humanism but for the actual focus it takes toward living and understanding human life, especially in the subhead domains found under the heading, psychology.

The "swear words" of secular humanism are found useful for people like myself, who are interested in what all is inherent (really) to such words and phrases as 'spiritual', 'the religious experience', 'pleasure', 'joy', and so forth that are usually attached to religion. There have been scientific studies made about them, of which I have read over the years, but never made any attempt to formulate an opinion —or a philosophy— about them until I self-certified myself as an atheist and got exposed to all the eternal, ongoing arguments that calling oneself a humanist, apparently, does not help one to avoid.

So, the main difference between myself and most atheists, then, will be that I am interested in the swear words and seek not to avoid them but to understand them. I seek to learn, not to condemn, and not to be condemned just because I suffer from an overbearing amount of curiosity (and no, I am not accusing anyone of condemning me; you would have to stand in line and wait your turn if you had that in mind. 'Condemn', after all, has to be one of the swear words if a complete list were to be compiled).

An atheistic view of spirituality, if one can get past acknowledging the presence of that circumstance as a commonality shared among various cultures, would recognize its secular roots in the relationships between oxytocin, body production of lysergic acid, seratonin and dopamine, and whatever concoctions we whip up to get and keep ourselves in stride and focused (or drunk and deliriously in love). Those are largely responsible for the so-called "religious experience" and the spiritual feelings proclaimed by the flocks of the faithful that direct them on their journeys through life.

Copyright ©2005 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling. All rights reserved.