Church and Humanism
Feb. 4th, 2016 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqAt my prompting, we signed up for a three-week seminar on Humanism being offered by the church. When I say three weeks, what I mean is 2-3 hours every Tuesday evening for three weeks. The first was this past Tuesday. I was interested in going because I know our church has strong Humanist elements in it, but other than that I know surprisingly little about it. One of the first things I learned on Tuesday is that there is not just one flavour of humanism. The only version I knew of was Secular Humanism, and all I knew about that was that it was a product of the Devil (thank you, Pentecostal upbringing).
Aside from Secular Humanism, there is also Religious Humanism, Modern Humanism, Renaissance Humanism and a few other flavours as well. They said that they were not going to get into a deep discussion about all of the different varieties, but they offered up some reading suggestions for anyone who is interested.
Another interesting thing I learned was that one of the presenters is also one of the signers on the 2003 Humanist Manifest III.
When I was chatting with an old friend on Facebook the other day, he (formerly of the same fundamentalist church in which I was raised, and more recently a proclaimed atheist) said that he was having a tough time trying to resolve humanism and church in the same sentence. It turns out that some of the members in our church have the same problem. When we broke up into discussion groups for the second half of Tuesday's seminar, some of the people in my group were uncomfortable calling our institution a church.
I take great delight in it though. I love confusing co-workers by mentioning the goings-on at our church. First, they are caught off-guard when they find out that I attend a church, and then I blow their minds when I casually mention something like, "This past Sunday we had tag-team speakers from the Atheist Society and Skeptics Club."
Belladonna loves her people. She also loves bedtime even more than she loves dinner time. In this shot, she is giving me the "are you coming to bed with us?" look.
I am not saying that our cats are getting up there in years, but they take enough medications now that they are on a first-meow basis with the pharmacist.
Aside from Secular Humanism, there is also Religious Humanism, Modern Humanism, Renaissance Humanism and a few other flavours as well. They said that they were not going to get into a deep discussion about all of the different varieties, but they offered up some reading suggestions for anyone who is interested.
Another interesting thing I learned was that one of the presenters is also one of the signers on the 2003 Humanist Manifest III.
When I was chatting with an old friend on Facebook the other day, he (formerly of the same fundamentalist church in which I was raised, and more recently a proclaimed atheist) said that he was having a tough time trying to resolve humanism and church in the same sentence. It turns out that some of the members in our church have the same problem. When we broke up into discussion groups for the second half of Tuesday's seminar, some of the people in my group were uncomfortable calling our institution a church.
I take great delight in it though. I love confusing co-workers by mentioning the goings-on at our church. First, they are caught off-guard when they find out that I attend a church, and then I blow their minds when I casually mention something like, "This past Sunday we had tag-team speakers from the Atheist Society and Skeptics Club."
Belladonna loves her people. She also loves bedtime even more than she loves dinner time. In this shot, she is giving me the "are you coming to bed with us?" look.
I am not saying that our cats are getting up there in years, but they take enough medications now that they are on a first-meow basis with the pharmacist.
