What is a secular humanist?

In January I received a message on Meetup asking, “What exactly is a secular humanists? What is your group about? Is it atheist?”

I replied:

Thanks for reaching out. Many secular humanists identify as atheists, but certainly not all. Humanism is the belief in the dignity and value of every human being as free, equal, and rational agents. It is also the commitment to the idea that humans can solve human problems. We are responsible for living lives of meaning and value. We are responsible for ourselves, and for making the world better--to care for others.

The secular part is a general skepticism of the supernatural. Most reject the supernatural outright, but others will have more subtle views on the metaphysics of reality. What we share in common is the belief in science and reason as a means of knowing about the world.

For more information about us, please visit our website at lowcountryhumanists.org. Under the “About” tab you will find more detailed information about who we are, what we believe, and what we do. Please let me know if I can answer any other questions for you.

When I shared this exchange with my fellow SHL board members, one of them replied, “Tucker, please post your initial response in the newsletter. I sometimes struggle to formulate a response when I’m asked, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Thx! 🙏 (I can’t resist that emoji!)”

Secular humanism has a branding problem. Not enough people know what that term means, and there are a lot of bad actors–Christian nationalists in particular–who like to talk bad about us. In his book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman explains that after the fall of communism, the religious right was in need of a new boogeyman and fixated on secular humanism. Consequently, we are frequently maligned and misrepresented in right-wing media, and we lack the media presence and force to counteract the bad press.

I strongly suspect that the majority of humanists don’t know that they are humanists because they aren’t familiar with the term and its meaning. So it is important that we get out into the world and spread the good news. Last month the American Humanist Association–of which SHL is a chapter–released a video series called Humanism 101 to educate people about humanism. Check those videos out, and share them widely.

If you think that science is how we figure out what is true, and empathy is how we figure out what is right, then you’re probably a humanist–and you are not alone. There is a whole community of like-minded people, and a growing movement committed to protecting our secular democracy from religious encroachment against the separation of church and state.