Humanism

One of the topics we're covering in my Civilization class is humansim.  Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns.  As I was performing my various research I was getting somewhat confused because the information I was finding wasn't always consistent.  Humanism may mean several things. Wikipedia breaks it down into the following four categories:
1. A historical movement associated especially with the Italian Renaissance
2. An approach to education that uses literary means or a focus on the humanities to inform students
3.  A variety of perspectives in philosophy and social science which affirm some notion of human nature.
4.  A secular ideology which espouses reason, ethics, and justice, whilst specifically rejecting supernatural and religious dogma as a basis of morality and decision-making.

To attempt to better understand a humanistic way of thinking I found a video of Humanists expressing their views on the subject.      
                                                                


This video came across as slightly confusing and contradictory to my own personal beliefs.  As one woman put it in the video, humanists don't need to be "forced" or have a reason to do good things.  I don't feel as though people of a religious background that do positive things are doing them always out of duty.  To simply put it, I believe people act in a manner similar to their parents and since God is our Eternal Father, we have it in our blood (soul/spirit) to do/act/think as He does.

After watching the video above, humanism seemed to sound a lot like atheism.  I was able to find a video of an individual who views himself as a strong atheist address this subject.



A follow-up comment was posted to the video defending Secular Humanism and it reads:

   "No, we don't shift the same values from Christianity into secular humanism because we don't believe that we are inherently bad and need to be constantly apologizing for our existence. Just the opposite; we put authority of thought into ourselves and we celebrate the existence of human kind. We value our existence and we do believe in SECULAR science as the only real science, in the art and humanities and WE BELIEVE WE CAN DECIDE ON OUR MORALS - that's a huge difference."


After reading the posted comment, I better understand where Secular Humanists stand.  I can also understand where the guy in the video is coming from, although some of his statements are a bit biased