Humanism Week explores nonreligious belief
AYLA BESEMER APR 12, 2016
STAFF REPORTER
Last week, students and New Haven community members participated in a series of events highlighting the questions, debates and beliefs confronted by nonreligious individuals through Yale & New Haven Humanism Week.
Co-founded in 2012 by former Yale Ph.D. candidate Paul Chiariello and Miles Lasater ’01, the Yale Humanist Community is a campus organization for “humanists, atheists, agnostics and the nonreligious,” according to its website. Though according to the Chaplain’s Office only 0.24 percent of Yale undergraduates explicitly define themselves as Humanist, another 6.62 percent are either atheist or agnostic, and 4.52 percent are unaffiliated. The events of Humanism Week — which took place from April 2-9 — were meant to highlight aspects of the Humanist community and “facilitate important conversations related to belief, identity and meaning,” YHC Executive Director Chris Stedman said.
Events included talks on topics from America’s religious history to agnosticism, as well as a launch party for the Green Light Project — a crowd-funded initiative to install a nonreligious statue on the New Haven Green — and a day of service. The week concluded with an Animal Gratitude Ceremony led by psychology professor Laurie Santos, who sits on the YHC’s Board of Directors.
“(Humanism) really is about hearing other people’s perspectives on life and figuring out what each person can do to make the world a better place, and how can we live through a philosophy of compassion, reason and understanding for other people across the world, and really try to take action,” said Fiona Riebeling ’18, a student member of the YHC who discovered the community through dinners and events before realizing that Humanism aligned with her developing worldview. “That’s the core of it, and I think you can do that whether or not you do have a religious faith.”
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/04/12/humanism-week-explores-nonreligious-belief/
https://yalehumanists.com/
