THE BARE ESSENTIALS The Five Pillars of Humanism

Preface
 
Atheism is love because religion is harmful. If you agree that living like an Atheist and making your own decisions instead of taking orders from a religion or god is love then you are an Humanist. You can be an agnostic or even a Theist and still be an Humanist. True Atheism is humanistic, it advocates treating humankind as God. Since you have to look after yourself instead of depending on God you have to make friends among other people and even people you don’t like so that you will feel safe and secure. Belief in God cannot give you any of this if you don’t love other people. Humanism teaches that we need love not religion.
 
Humanism should be practised according to the needs of each community. It should be egalitarian. That is to say, nobody should be dictator or prophet – or tell anybody what to think – give the evidence and let people make up their own minds. All are prophets and seek guidance from one another. The goals must be self-development, sharing of information and fellowship. If some groups want dogma they may use The Gospel According to Atheism as a standard work to whatever extent they wish. It is up to each group how they practice Humanism, they may have it informally or formally. No way is right or wrong. What matters is that they try to change society starting with themselves.
 
To say that Atheism is love means that there some principles that must be adhered to be an Humanist. You will see that there are Five Pillars of Humanism, five basic principles. They are all sound commonsense. Yet they are nothing more than what a person who really cared about equality would believe. That’s all they are.

Click here for the rest.