General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What can you guys tell me about Humanists? I've never dealt with one before. [View all]hunter
(38,264 posts)...of the religion they abandoned.
That's not "humanism," it's just intolerance of religion. One sees a huge amount of that, even on DU; all the culturally white male Protestants who have abandoned formal religion, but still express great animosity toward Catholics, Muslims, etc. (for example); who fail to recognize recognize the patriarchal, Puritanical, authoritarian and intolerant patterns of thinking that permeate this Christian Protestant society they exist within; the "religious" patterns that still permeate their own thinking.
Having abandoned religion, an atheist can still be a sexist, racist, Puritanical, judgmental, religiously intolerant asshole; the guy you hated in church, but without the church.
Google's definition of humanism is pretty good:
Religious intolerance and bigotry are not rational ways of solving human problems. Religions exist in human societies, that's a scientific fact, deal with it. An anti-religious person can be as intolerant and bigoted as any fundamentalist religious person. That's not humanism.
I can be very critical of any single aspect of a religion or secular society, but lumping groups of people together as "atheists," Catholics, Southern Fundamentalists, Muslims, whatever, is never rational, and it solves no human problems.
Every human being is a bubbling stew of contradictions. Religious beliefs are just a small part of that stew.