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Humanists find a home without a ‘religious aspect’
Published: Monday, October 24th, 2011
When Corinne Stephenson ’12 came to campus as a freshman, one of the first events she attended was the activities fair. As dozens of clubs shoved fliers in her face and pushed her to put her name on email lists ...(back to the article)
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I have chosen to comment on this article because it's the first time I have heard US atheists take a similar attitude to most European atheists. That is that joining an organisation based on atheism or humanism is just not something they want to do.
My own reason for not being a joiner, apart from apathy, is I find it rather difficult to become enthusiastic about not believing in things.
So what is the group's website? http://www.princeton.edu/~push/ seems kind of broken.
This article focuses almost entirely on the fact that PUSH is not associated with any particular religion, portraying it as an 'atheist group' - and judging by the student quotes, it was framed to the interviewees as such as well. It seems that the whole point of PUSH is to provide a humanist society that is not affiliated with any religion, in order to allow humanistic students the freedom to operate outside the constraints of organized religion. It does not seem like the intention was to create an 'atheist society'...
But, umm...exactly.
It seems that many on Princeton campus, perhaps including the author, have misunderstood the aims and principles of humanistic philosophy. Humanism does not define itself negatively, as an "anti-ism" in opposition to religion. Rather, it finds morality, beauty, and truth in human nature itself--deriving a system of ethics from reason and logic. I believe this is an extraordinarily positive and powerful message, and I'm so glad Corinne and others have brought it to Princeton. I do hope PUSH will hold joint events with religious groups and other campus organizations, both to encourage lively debate and also to make sure that humanism is understood in its entirety.
Thanks so much for the support! As you said, humanism is a positive philosophy, and is not synonymous with anti-theism. Part of our hope is to increase awareness and understanding of humanists, atheists, etc. Yes, humanism concerns religion, but it also concerns bioethics, LGBT rights, politics, and even astronomy. I appreciate the suggestion; we certainly do plan to hold events with religious groups as well as with other campus organizations, as we are interested in improving the level of discussion and debate at Princeton.
Check out our Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Princeton-Univers...
Or our website at http://puhumanists.weebly.com/
this is so lame