I see what you're trying to say better now, but indeed, its too bad I can't read Swedish. It would have been easier to see your point, and most probably I would have agreed with you if the website is really as fundamentally dogmatic as your post seems to imply. It just irked me that it seemed you condemned the whole of humanism based on that website. I've visited some humanism websites and read a bit into them, and in my experience they weren't as bad as the website you seem to have found. That's why I objected in my first reply.

I know and agree that religion can't be delineated as belief systems that include gods, but most often they do offer some supernaturalism. Buddhism, for example, has the doctrine of reincarnation. And that's another reason why I do not see humanism as a religion - it has no supernatural precepts that I am aware of. Even though you did not write it explicitly, it did seem like you were condemning humanism on the grounds it was religious. Like I said: things fall under the same definition if they share the same properties; therefore comparing humanism (or this particular website's way of promoting it) to religon (or religion's way of promoting itself) makes them fall under the same moniker.

This is just metalanguage though, and it can be safely ignored on the grounds of it not being very important. Thanks for elaborating, though!

Bump! We talked about this in the Kriegphilosophie forums just recently.

The royal opposition has arrived!

It is true humanism places great importance on people, but I always thought this was meant as opposed to (half-)gods; not necessarily as opposed to the other life forms we know to exist. It puts the emphasis on human effort in our pursuits of knowledge and ethics - we can't rely on divine revelation or anything supernatural like that. We are the sentient beings who must deal with the problems we face in daily life, philosophy and science. It does not necessarily say: "Here we are, universe! Get used to us!" because that indeed is silly. I think many humanists realize only too well how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of the universe (as opposed to the religious of the Abrahamic religions, who think they have been given the main role in this universe by the creator god).

And then I don't understand what's so bad about it being a group or organisation. I think you go out on a limb there a bit. A group is defined by the common properties the members have. Humanism is largely a philosophy, but it does have elements of an activist organisation, which due to managerial reasons have a hierarchy (and not unsurprisingly, a membership fee). However, I don't think you can compare a chairman of a humanist organisation to a leader figure like a pope or imam. Unlike religion which is largely based around one "divinely inspired" piece of literature, humanism as a philosophy has many books and articles, none of which enjoy a sanctity or absolute authority like a Bible or Qur'an.

For these reasons, I think its unwarranted to draw a parallel between humanism and the typical religion.

True, but you're the one introducing humanism. I never mentioned that in my text, nor did Anath. Secularism does not entail humanism, although humanism often entails secularism. Therefore, I still stand by what I say.

I have to object to secularism being denoted as a religion. On the other hand, I do agree that freedom of religion should also include the freedom of non-religion.

Yeah, it was kind of sad the debate derailed pretty quickly, and that the other two people hardly said anything. And like Anath said, condoms are effective against STDs. I thought it pretty naive of Lakita and the bald guy to think that teenagers simply won't have sex. The US being at the top of teenage pregnancies list speaks volumes.

I always wonder about the comment on Hitler concerning "Darwinian ethics" - Hitler shouldn't have worried if he really adhered to the "Darwinian model", because it predicts weaker species will eventually lose their finger in the gene pie anyway, due to natural selection of the stronger / better adapted individuals.

Furthermore, accepting that evolution is true does not mean you think it is a good system to derive ethics from - or anything else, like economic polities, actually. A "neuroeconomist" (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean) recently wrote an article titled "If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy". I wrote a similar comment there (second, titled "Bullshit")

NonStampCollector has lots of these brilliant animations. I highly recommend his channel for subscription! :-)

And we're back at square one. Christians and people of other religions are making positive claims, about events and such. This is all good and well, but you can't expect the rest of the world to accept those claims when there is no evidence for them. How often must I tell you that the Gospels were not written by contemporaries of Jesus - or if they were, the Gospels were written between 65-100 CE, a few decades after the supposed Jesus? So there are no "first-hand, eye-witness accounts".

Even if there were, that doesn't count for much. People believe to have seen, heard, smelled and felt all kinds of things. Read Carl Sagan's The demon-haunted world for an analysis on what alien abduction accounts have in common with the witch hunts, and generally why people believe strange things.

Quick! Insert fuck, cunt, asshole and similar derogatives in the other post titles! :P