Charles Francis Potter
On Humanism
Originally published in 1930
Language updated in 1994
Old: God created the world and humanity.
New: The world and humanity evolved.
Old: Hell is a place of eternal torment for the wicked.
New: Suffering is the natural result of breaking the laws of right living.
Old: Heaven is the place where good people go when they die.
New: Doing right brings its own satisfaction.
Old: The chief end of humanity is to glorify God.
New: The chief end of humanity is to improve ourselves, as individuals and as the human race.
Old: Religion has to do with the supernatural.
New: Religion has to do with the natural; the so-called supernatural is only the not-yet-understood natural.
Old: Humankind is inherently evil and a worm of the dust.
New: Humankind is inherently good and has infinite possibilities.
Old: Humankind should submit to the will of God.
New: Humankind should not submit to injustice or suffering without protest and should endeavor to remove its causes.
Old: Salvation comes from outside humanity.
New: Improvement comes from within. No person or god can save another person.
Old: The ideas of sin, salvation, redemption, prayer, and worship are important.
New: These ideas are unimportant.
Old: The truth is to be found in one religion only.
New: There are truths in all religions and outside of religion.
John Dietrich:
Energy conveys to us the idea of motion and activity. Inside a living organism we see a source of power, which by some manner is released in terms of movement.... Life is energy... it is the creator or initiator of movement change, development. We are different from moment to moment because the life principle is at work with us.... The spirit of humanity, like the forces of nature, and like the physical life, is at bottom energy.... Spiritual life, therefore, is just as much a development out of what has gone before in the evolutionary process as physical life is; which means that the origin of spiritual life is from within.
Marcus Aurelius
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.
Pearl S. Buck:
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.
Robert Ingersoll:
If abuses are destroyed, we must destroy them. If slaves are freed, we must free them. If new truths are discovered, we must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of people. The grand victories of the future must be won by humanity, and by humanity alone.
Sir Julian Huxley:
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable ... and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.
Unknown:
Humanism is optimistic regarding human nature and confident in human reason and science as the best means of reaching the goal of human fulfillment in this world. Humanists affirm that humans are a product of the same evolutionary process that produced all other living organisms and that all ideas, knowledge, values, and social systems are based upon human experience. Humanists conclude that creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy. - unknown; published in Free Mind, American Humanist Association.
"The beginning of wisdom is the awareness that there is insufficient evidence that a god or gods have created us and the recognition that we are responsible in part for our own destiny. Human beings can achieve this good life, but it is by the cultivation of the virtues of intelligence and courage, not faith and obedience, that we will most likely be able to do so." Paul Kurtz
"Man is the measure of all things." Protagoras
"There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings." Friedrich Nietzsche
"There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help." Robert Ingersoll
"When I became convinced that the universe is natural – that all ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain . . . the joy of freedom. . . . I was free – free to think, to express my thoughts . . . free to live for myself and those I loved . . . free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope . . . free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the ‘inspired’ books that savages have produced . . . free from popes and priests . . . free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies . . . free from the fear of eternal pain . . . free from devils, ghosts and gods. . . . There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought . . . no following another’s steps . . . no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words." Robert Ingersoll
"The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. . . . Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty." (except when it comes to promoting and defending Christianity) Carl Sagan
"Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to help make others so." Robert Ingersoll
"Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast." Isaac Asimov
"On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known." John Stuart Mill
"I think . . . that philosophy has the duty of pointing out the falsity of outworn religious ideas, however estimable they may be as a form of art. We cannot act as if all religion were poetry while the greater part of it still functions in its ancient guise of illicit science and backward morals. . . ." Corliss Lamont
"Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast." Isaac Asimov
"On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known." John Stuart Mill
"I think . . . that philosophy has the duty of pointing out the falsity of outworn religious ideas, however estimable they may be as a form of art. We cannot act as if all religion were poetry while the greater part of it still functions in its ancient guise of illicit science and backward morals. . . ." Corliss Lamont
"Those with the privilege to know, have a duty to act." Albert Einstein
"That so much . . . suffering can be directly attributed to religion - to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious taboos, and religious diversions of scarce resources - is what makes the honest criticism of religious faith a moral and intellectual necessity." Sam Harris
"To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker." Robert Ingersoll
"To free a man from error is to give, not take away." Arthur Schopenhauer
"I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human experience. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions - and should be vigorously opposed." Steve Allen
John J. Dunphy :
"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future
must be waged and won in the public school classroom
by teachers that correctly perceive their role
as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity
that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians
call divinity in every human being...
The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict
between the old and new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity,
together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith
of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which
the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor'
will finally be achieved."
"Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?" Charles Potter, 1930
"What can you or I do? Alone, almost nothing. Yet one person - you alone - can make the difference. . . . The failure of just one person to join, to participate, to do whatever he or she can - your failure or my failure - may mean that there is just one too few to win the fight for sanity, and so leave the world on the road to destruction. Each of us, all of us, must do what we can." Archibald Cox
"As a single vote may be crucial in an election, so the whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual. . . . This is why the individual is sacred." M. Scott Peck
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." Edmund Burke
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." Robert F. Kennedy
"A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of achieving full victory." Martin Luther King Jr.
"Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." Theodore Roosevelt
"My heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain . . . to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still." Robert Ingersoll
"As with military campaigns, cultural warfare is always decided over the pragmatic problems of strategy, organization and resources. . . . The factions with the best strategies, most efficient organization, and access to resources will plainly have the advantage and very possibly, the ultimate victory." James Davison Hunter
"Power is the flower of organization." A. Philip Randolph
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform." Susan B. Anthony
"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." Chinese proverb
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
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