Subject and Expectation:
This article will be discussing the philosophy of humanism theory and how being an atheist can correlate with that theory. There will be some reasoning on what atheism means included, along with some critical thinking as to how we should live our lives. What we hope you take away from this discussion is a fresh inspiration to evolve from within yourself and an encouragement to believe in just how amazing humans can be….how amazing you are!
Being Introduced to Stephen Hawking by Pink Floyd
I remember the first time I listened to Pink Floyd’s album The Division Bell, I was 21 years old. The excitement was building as I drove to Musicland to buy the CD. The first album in 7 years from the musical geniuses! I brought it back to the house and did what should be done with a Pink Floyd masterpiece; I sat down and listened to it from start to finish, uninterrupted. About halfway through the album, the song called Keep Talking comes on, and about a minute into it this strange sounding voice says “for millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened that unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk” … “we need to make sure we keep talking.” I had never heard that before and I had no idea who it was. It certainly stuck with me, but I wasn’t in a place in life at all to understand what I had just heard. I would come to learn many years later that the voice was coming from one of the most amazing critical thinkers that has ever lived, Stephen Hawking. For me, this was an introduction to a beautifully openminded view of our evolution and the philosophy of humanism theory.
March 14th, 2018 was a very sad day; we lost the great Stephen Hawking. His thoughts and philosophies on the evolution of our universe, and essentially us, are one of the four cornerstones that are the foundation for humanists and atheists around the world. So many of his beautiful thoughts correlate so closely with the philosophy of humanism theory.
The excerpt from that Pink Floyd song was taken in part from one of Stephen Hawking’s famous quotes:
“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
A Pivotal Point in the History of Our Evolution
Just think about what Hawking is saying in the quote above. He is identifying this as one of the most pivotal points in our evolution when we began to talk and grow through communication. Now think about how that philosophy plays into the unprecedented age of information that struck our species within the last 30 to 50 years, and more specifically the profound effect it has had on how humans view religion, god, and the bible. Suddenly we were learning of the many religions from all around the world that we knew nothing about. We learned that there are also thousands of different adaptations of these religions out there, thousands of different versions or philosophies on how we should be living our lives directed by a holy book. Prior to this, we had books and newsprint with which we had access to, but never before were we able to communicate almost instantly with people across the globe, about anything! In accord with Hawking’s theory that we unleashed a massive leap in our evolution when we learned to talk, we likewise took another giant leap forward with this age of information and communication that we have created more recently. Our participation in worldwide communication drives us to grow from within and to never stop learning. We began to “talk” like never before. The essence of our evolution.
What is The Philosophy of Humanism Theory?
This blog conversation began with me beginning to tell my own personal story of being born into a very well known but misunderstood religion, Jehovah’s Witnesses…or sometimes known for its official name The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. As I stated in Part 1: Inspiring Comeback Story: Getting Out of the Most Dangerous Religous Cult in the World, I will be documenting my experiences from the first part of my life that I completely devoted to God and Religion, culminating in defining where I am in my life now and explaining the reasons why I have found true contentment and happiness outside of religion and without god. These days, I live my life as a content and continuously learning and growing atheist with a heart that believes solely in the principles and inspirations that define a culture and philosophy known as humanism theory.
It is my goal that my experiences and our conversation may inspire as many people as possible, worldwide, to find in themselves the emotional compass to direct them towards being better humans. We are such amazing creatures; the most amazing species to have ever evolved on our planet since the beginning of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago. We have inside of us a passion and drive to continue evolving towards never-ending improvement. There is a thing built in our DNA called empathy, a guidance system, and intuition to know right from wrong…to know good from bad. The ability to adapt and to learn what it means to be good to ourselves and to others is inside all of us. We simply need to work together in cultivating and nurturing it. If the human race used even a small fraction of the energy and devotion that it consumes in regards to religion and god, the amount of growth and forward movement of our world and species would be immeasurable by our current standards.
What Would a World That Never Knew Religion Be Like?
Imagine a world in which every one of us ceased giving our precious time to the entity that we created called “religion.” There would have been very few wars that ever took place, saving millions of lives and absolute devastation to parts of our world. Homosexuals would have been loved and accepted from the beginning of existence. The billions and billions of dollars that have been donated and tithed to churches could have fed anyone starving and possibly made world hunger nonexistent. There would have been hundreds of thousands of children living a normal life without having been molested by a priest that was hard up for sexual satisfaction because of a needless vow of celibacy that came from a mere book of stories. Anyone that just happened to be born with a different color of skin than the majority of the humans living on the Earth at that time in history would have been just as free to live any kind of life they wanted without being forced into being another human being’s slave. Just think of the amount of advancement that could have already taken place in our evolutionary growth if nobody had ever prayed, but instead actually did something in every one of those situations, in our entire history.
It is pure laziness to sit on your chair of faith and pray for your imaginary friend to fix the world. Get up off of your blind faith and be a part of the solution, to play your part in fixing us” - The Small Town Humanist Click To Tweet
Where is The Human Race Now?
We have evolved to a point where the stories in the bible just aren’t enough anymore. We are collectively much more intelligent than ever before and we are way past that. We simply have to question everything. If something is true or should be a part of our existence, no matter what it is, then it will stand up deep analysis and provide at the very least relative proof. Having a warm and fuzzy feeling inside that god exists, that he hears our prayers, or that he has a plan for everything, does not and will not fix our problems. We have to fix our problems. My father died the most horrendous death from cancer, and not one aspect of the utter torture he went through was affected in the slightest by all of the people who were simply “praying for him.” It was the empathetic actions of the countless number of family and friends that actually did something. He had a chance to feel their love one more time. He got a chance to see just how many lives he crossed in his time here. It was the empathy and actions shown by real live human beings, not prayers to an imaginary entity in the sky, that comforted him and our family during that difficult time. These prayers did nothing except make the person saying the prayer feel better.
The human race has evolved to a point now where it is absolutely insulting to our species when religion continues to make its tired worn-out claims of Christ’s return. How insulting it is to us that there is a multitude of versions (and revisions of those versions) of what the creator’s plan is for our fate. It is insulting to the intelligent children growing up now to be expected to believe the ridiculous stories that we’ve taught our children for centuries. Stories of talking snakes. Stories of a father willing to kill his own son because a voice in his head told him to. Stories of a dude building a boat big enough to contain 2 of every single one of the 8.7 million species alive today. Stories of a god that is supposed to embody the essence of love, that also created a place of eternal torment for anyone that doesn’t believe that he exists, or that worships another god.
We are simply past all of that and we deserve better than that. This is evidently seen by the extreme growth in numbers around the world of people beginning to live their lives without any spiritual faith at all, based on an atheistic approach. As seen in this article from nationalgeographic.com, it stated:
“The religiously unaffiliated, called “nones,” are growing significantly. They’re the second largest religious group in North America and most of Europe. In the United States, nones make up almost a quarter of the population. In the past decade, U.S. nones have overtaken Catholics, mainline protestants, and all followers of non-Christian faiths.”
We expect answers and for things to make sense. We aren’t going to accept any longer the ridiculously close-minded philosophy that, “he works in mysterious ways.” Bullshit. My apologies, but I simply cannot read one more time the biblical account in the 19th Chapter of Genesis of Lot’s wife and what followed in the cave between Lot and his daughters without emphatically saying “WTAF!” There is nothing mysterious about the fact that the god in which you worship and rely on to direct every aspect of your life inspired a human being to actually write down that story, protecting and preserving the writing for all these years because it is to be of some value to the human race. What possible absurd lesson could there be to learn from the fact that god was so unhappy with how Lot’s wife turned around to witness the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (commencing because of the homosexuality that was going on there), that he saw fit to kill her by turning her into a pillar of salt, but yet he was ok with the fact that Lot and his daughters retreated to a cave to get drunk and have an incestuous orgy threesome with each other? (Genesis 19:30-38) Just imagine the outcome if someone were to produce a movie based on this plot. How do you think the religious community would react to it?
How Humanism Theory Can Help Change the World
We have also become stronger as a species. We do not need religion to define what is right and what is wrong. We do not need religion to use as a crutch or an excuse anymore. Humanists and atheists are not ignorant to the fact that there are indeed people in the world that simply get their strength from belonging to something and from praying to an entity that they believe is out there to help them and comfort them. I do not wish to take this away from you if you happen to be one of those people. I completely understand because I was one of those people for many years. However, I am no longer part of that group. I accept full accountability for every one of my actions. If I need to make it through a bad situation, I rely on my inner strength and drive. I rely on learning or adapting to whatever the situation is, in order to use my brain and reasoning ability to figure out how to make it through, relying on friends or family if needed. If the outcome is bad then I accept it for what it is and move forward with the lesson that I learned, hoping to do better next time. I choose not to use prayer or faith as my crutch to lean on. I choose to fight and grow stronger inside. I choose to evolve from within and never stop learning. It is my sincere hope that I’m able to leave an indelible footprint on this life, helping others and doing my part to make it as contagious as possible for many others to also believe in evolving from within and to never stop learning.
