The January 18th 1992 edition of the Salt Lake Tribune featured in the Religion section an article by reporter Peter Scarlet on the Humanists of Utah. A Photo of Bob Green, Flo Wineriter and Ed Wilson standing in front of the First Amendment monument at the new Free Speech park recently erected at the Salt Lake County Government Complex accompanied the article.

We are greatly gratified that the article was very well written, and contained much important information about Humanism and our chapter, as related from the personal view points of Bob and Flo. It also quoted from The Utah Humanist and the Humanist Manifestos.

Utah Humanists Say Reasoning Gives Life Dignity, Meaning

---Peter Scarlet
The Salt Lake Tribune

Bob Green was a practicing Mormon a year ago when he read the Humanist Manifesto, which emphasizes reasoning and science over supernatural beings and dogmatic religious beliefs.

"When I read it, I recognized it as what I believe and have long believed," Mr. Green said. "Before, I tended to compartmentalize science and religion in seperate spheres in my mind."

He quit the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and now belongs to the First Unitarian Church. He is also the managing editor of The Utah Humanist, the monthly journal of Utah's chapter of the American Humanist Association.

"Humanism engages me intellectually and actively. It's relevant to life and knowledge. My belief and my knowledge have come together," he said.

Florien J. Wineriter, acting president of Utah's AHA chapter, said humanism is more of a philosophy than a religion. Humanism can take many forms, and a variety of adjectives is used to describe it, he said. There are religious humanists, secular humanists, free-thought humanists, and rational humanists.

"There is controversy within AHA between those calling themselves secular and religious humanists. The Utah chapter doesn't use an adjective. We take all humanists under our umbrella," he said.

Secular humanists tend to be strong atheists, Mr. Wineriter said, while religious humanists see religion - a search for reason and purpose - in human life.

"Humanism affirms the inherent dignity and worth of every human being and asserts that persons are responsible for the realization of their aspirations, and that they have within themselves the power of achieving them," Mr. Green wrote in the January 1992 issue of The Utah Humanist.

"Humanism is free from any belief in the supernatural and is dedicated to search for meaning and values for individuals on Earth through reliance on intelligence and the scientific method, democracy and social sympathy," he added.

Messrs. Wineriter and Green said they are more closely aligned with religious humanism than secular humanism. Both are members of Salt Lake City's First Unitarian Church. Unitarianism historically stresses the importance of human reasoning and the oneness of God.

"I have a hard time identifying myself as religious or secular. I just identify myself as a humanist, with a small 'h'," Mr. Green said.

"I more closely identify myself iwth religious humanism," Mr. Wineriter said. He cited the religion section in the Humanist Manifesto II, a 1973 consensus statement of policy by AHA.

"In the best sense, religion may inspire dedication to the highest ethical ideas. The cultivation of moral devotion and creative imagination is an expression of genuine 'spiritual' experience and aspiration," the manifesto states.

But it isn't traditional religion. The manifesto sees traditional "dogmatic and authoritarian" religions that place "revelation, God, ritual or creed above human needs and experience" as negative. It substitutes humans for God and nature for deity. It emphasizes scientific reasoning.

"The human condition is the result of human activity. Our values and rules were developed by people, not superimposed by deity," Mr. Wineriter said. Both men said humanism's ideals date back to the Renaissance, and era that identified the Classical Age of ancient Greece and Rome.

Humanism may not be a religion, but humanists have things they venerate with the same devotion evangelical Christians view the bible.

"We consider the Bill of Rights a divine document. Not in the same sense that we think it was divinely inspired, but in that it reflects the best of man's thinking on what it means to be a human being. It is one of the evidences of our abilities as human beings," said Mr. Wineriter.

As humanists, Messrs. Green and Wineriter said reason - not religion - is sufficient motivation for ethical behavior.

"Our morals and ethics are the result of centuries of experience," said Mr. Wineriter. "Humans respond to the idea of not stealing because we all benefit by not stealing."

Utah's year-old AHA chapter meets on the second Thursday of each month. One of the organization's long-term goals when it gets more members and resources, Mr. wineriter said, will be to take up social causes it supports. There are about 200 people on the chapter's mailing list, but only 40 with paid up memberships.