Know then thyself
Presume not God to scan.
The proper study of mankind is man.
--Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

True to itself, the subject of humanism is things human. Humanists ground values in human welfare, shaped by human interests, circumstances, interests and concerns, and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond.

Humanists find wonder and awe in the joys and beauties of human existence. Humanists rely on the rich heritage of human culture and the life stance of humanism to provide comfort in times of want and encouragement in times of plenty. Humanists hold to the informed conviction that humanity has the ability to progress toward its highest ideals. The responsibility for our lives is ours and ours alone.

Humanity is, at last, becoming aware that human beings, not deities, are responsible for the realization of the world of humanity's dreams. Humanism can give purpose and inspiration; it can give personal meaning and significance to human life. It is not a proposition about anything supposed to be greater than human. It is an ethical process through which we all can move above and beyond the particulars, dogmas and creeds of past religions--and beyond merely negating them.

Humanists affirm a set of common principles that can serve as a basis for united action--positive principles relevant to the present human condition. The existence of a supernatural is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of the survival and fulfillment of the human race. We humans are responsible for what we are and for what we shall become. Our concern is not whether or not deities exist; we affirm that no deity will save us; we must save ourselves. Moral values derive from human experience. Humanism affirms ethics, based on the firm ground of human experience, not attempting to build on the shifting sands of alleged theological or ideological sanction.

Ethics stems from human need and human interest. Any denial of this distorts the whole basis of life.

Humanism, then, is occupied with what is human. A hundred years ago, thinkers seeking to cultivate liberated minds were much occupied with God. Today, humanists have showed successfully that it is more productive of useful conclusions to be occupied with humankind.

Yet there are some who are still thinking like those who were striving to win their freedom in the Victorian era, when God, not man, was more appropriately their object of attention. Humanism has long since moved on, as has mainstream Christianity and Judaism. Theologians advanced the study of God in the twentieth century, although the fundamentalists remained behind, fearful of "modernism." Today it makes no sense for freethinkers to lag behind with the fundamentalists and argue old issues held to be important in Queen Victoria's time. Humanism is a philosophy of and for the twentieth century and our own new century.

Some websites, and some people, apparently supported by some humanists, are regressive. They appear to identify humanism with buggy-whip theological issues. By its complaint of "...all the endless God talk..." they deplore that "God" is so much discussed--but in fact that is true mostly of fundamentalists, not of humanists nor of modern mainstream Christians. Then they add to this perceived problem by proceeding to discus's God even more! Billboards erected alongside highways now pose its yawn inducing pseudo-questions of whether or not one of the undefined Gods of humankind is "believed in." They mistakenly identify humanism as an ethical atheism, which it is not and never has been. Humanism is beyond all that. Humanism is not about God but about humanity and human concerns, things known by human experience.

--Freethought Forum, Newsletter of Humanist Fellowship of San Diego