FAQ's

Refer to our About Us page 

No. There is no conspiracy by humanists to force people to reject religion. We do take philosophical issue with beliefs of religious followers. However, what concerns us even more is when religious believers attempt to use the power of the government to force their beliefs upon the rest of society. As it has been shown throughout history, no one benefits when religious belief and government power mix. This ideal can best be reached through a secular government. This would mean a government neither favors religion, nor discriminates against it.

When we talk about ‘secularism’ we mean a political principle that the state acts in a way which is neutral with regard to people’s beliefs (for example, governments should not discriminate against someone just because that person holds a minority belief), and that the state is not over-influenced by particular religious beliefs and institutions (for example, the law should not force someone to comply with religious beliefs that they do not hold or use state finances to build cathedrals). The political principle of secularism is nothing like a “ban” on religion, on the contrary it enables people with different worldviews, whether religious or non-religious, to co-exist freely and fairly. Also secularism should not be confused with atheism (i.e. not believing in “God”) and should not be confused with humanism. Humanists will very likely support the political principle of secularism, but it is not unique to humanists or the non-religious either: religious people support secularism for the same reasons that humanists do, because it enables people to live side by side in states which do not discriminate against you based on your beliefs or force you comply with religious beliefs that you don’t share.

No, humanism is not a religion. Religion is usually defined with an inherent element of supernatural or divine beliefs, something like: “the belief in a god or gods and the activities that are connected with this belief, such as praying or worshiping in a building such as a church or temple.” Humanists do not believe in these things, or worship them. Humanists are likely to reject ‘faith-based’ belief. Other elements connected with religion such as holy books, divine figures, dogmas that must be enforced, are all absent in humanism and run contrary to humanist values of freethought, reason and personal liberty. Of course, if you use the word ‘religion’ to mean absolutely any set of big ideas functioning as a worldview regardless of the character of those ideas, then humanism would be ‘religious’ on that very broad definition, but then so would everything else — Marxism? Nihilism? Scientism?… — and then the word ‘religion’ would seem to have lost its distinctive purpose.