principles – Doug's Views

January 25, 2013April 18, 2020

Complaints About Criticizing Religion Usually Means Stay Silent

On Wednesday, American Secular Census (ASC) posted an article that focused on secular women. The report didn’t have any new information for me since I am a geezer in the movement but I wanted to address something that has bothered me ever since I identified myself as an atheist and secular humanist. There seems to be a notion that criticizing religion is always wrong and that we stunt the growth of freethought by doing it. I feel this is a false notion and is a wrong point to focus on when trying to build a secular community.

March 12, 2012April 18, 2020

Framing Humanism Is Okay But Not At The Expense Of Honesty

Humanism is a strange collection of individuals in a stew of rationality, all of us looking for the truth for our world view. We, as Humanists, know we must work with believers and other theists to find common ground with the goal of bettering the human condition. Andy Norman, writing for the Humanist Network News, an e-zine of the American Humanist Association, tries to offer tips for dialogue on Humanism to non-humanists but does so by giving up honesty in the process.

Norman, in his essay “Framing Humanism, or How to Win the Culture War”, starts out great by explaining how we as Humanists could do a better job of bringing in new people or at least getting our message out by the use of Framing (where we control the meaning of our message), but then my alarm bells start going off when I read this: