Humanism

Question from the Internet:

“What are the basic principles of Humanism?”

I have found these definitions through a Google search on the Humanists UK website:

Defining humanism

Roughly speaking, the word humanist has come to mean someone who:

• trusts the scientific method when it comes to an understanding of how the universe works and rejects the idea of the supernatural (and is, therefore, an atheist or agnostic)
• makes their ethical decisions based on reason, empathy, and a concern for human beings and other sentient animals
• believes that, in the absence of an afterlife and any discernible purpose to the universe, human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.

Basically, according to these definitions, Humanism is following the basic principle that a unique, empirical natural scientist — who established a special science that deals with human nature in contrast to nature’s system — also stated: “The judge has only what his eyes can see.”

This means that we have to base our lives and decisions on the practical and discernable facts and experiences we can examine, establish and actually share with others. According to this viewpoint, blind belief and faith cannot help us; we need solid foundations to build our lives around. Moreover, since we are human beings, our most important concern should be the life and prosperity of human beings above everything else.

This sounds reasonable; we can even call it a healthy approach.

The problem is that by default, our actual life experience, our worldview, and our perception of reality are 100% egocentric, subjective, and individualistic. This means that, by default, the way we experience, assess, and judge the world and everything around us is completely false and arbitrary.

We can have the most developed technology and devices, but since we compute and interpret the results of any science and experiment with the same 100% egocentric, subjective, and individualistic mind and reason, our results and conclusions, all our scientific formulas and facts will inevitably remain false and arbitrary.

What our “judge sees” and makes decisions and judgments on is an illusory world. It turns out that our blind and unquestionable belief in our human mind and intellect is also a religion; it is blind faith. And we can argue as much as we want, and we can bring as much evidence as we want, but as long as we all see the world and judge everything from our own 100% egocentric, subjective, and individualistic point of view, we remain locked inside the illusion we ourselves project for ourselves through our individual qualities and our 100% self-serving and self-justifying “pleasure/pain” calculations we cannot escape from.

We cannot establish a truly scientific and correct perception of reality and a realistic and successful “life-system” or ideology before we liberate our “judge or observer” from its inherent prison.

Only when we learn how to observe, judge and experience life and everything in the world “outside of ourselves,” totally disconnected from any subjective and individualistic bias, becoming capable of existing as if the egocentric self did not exist, can we start recognizing the true reality around us.

Then, we will also see and understand that the “Universe” actually has a discernable purpose and that in this lawful and deterministic Universe, we also have a very special, discernable evolutionary purpose predetermined for us by the Universe — or natural evolution.

And this is not mysticism, religion, or any other belief, but it is a scientifically proven fact that any of us can research, reveal, understand, and fully attain — as soon as we liberate our judge or observer from its inherently egocentric, subjective, and individualistic limitations.

True “Humanism” is this unique, practical, empirical natural science that can explain to us why and how natural reality came to exist and what exactly our Human purpose in this system is, why we are actually “Human beings,” and how, in practice, we can become Human beings, fulfilling our purpose in this world.