The Council for Secular Humanism

The Council for Secular Humanism (originally the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, or CODESH) is a secular humanist organization headquartered in Amherst, New York. In 1980 CODESH issued A Secular Humanist Declaration, an argument for and statement of belief in Democratic Secular Humanism. The Council for Secular Humanism does not call itself religious and has never claimed tax-exemption as a religious organization; instead it has an educational exemption.

The council made news in 2006 when Borders Group refused to carry the April-May issue of Free Inquiry in their Borders and Waldenbooks stores because of the magazine's publication of 4 cartoons that originally appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and sparked violent worldwide Muslim protests, (The reason given by Borders for their decision was not sensitivity to religion but fear of illegal violence.) The Free Inquiry affair was reminiscent of a 1989 withdrawal of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses by Waldenbooks and B. Dalton in the aftermath of a death sentence issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against the British author as well as the recent Everybody Draw Mohammad Day on May 20, 2010 which resulted in Indian Muslims asking the government to ban facebook.

The notion of secular humanism was the topic in a recent Washinton Post article by columnist Kathleen Parker:

All Roads Lead to Heaven? — Kathleen Parker Does Theology
What catches the attention of a columnist for The Washington Post? A recent column by Kathleen Parker indicates that theology has become a focus of national attention. Kathleen Parker used her column in The Washington Post to take on Franklin Graham and his belief that belief in Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation.

Also:

Edward Tabash-William Lane Craig Debate: "Secular Humanism vs. Christianity: Which One is True?"
February 8, 1999, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, USA. Edward Tabash, a Beverly Hills attorney who is affiliated with the Council for Secular Humanism, takes on William Lane Craig, a Christian philosopher and Campus Crusade's full-time anti-atheist debater, arguing that Secular Humanism is preferable and more supported by the evidence than Christian Theism. Tabsh does his usual and emotional "God is a big meanie" routine while Craig took him down with ease. Even atheist Richard Carrier said "the rhetorical victory was Craig's.

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Religious Pluralism

Religious pluralism (rel. comparative religion) is a loosely defined term concerning peaceful relations between different religions, and is also used in a number of related ways:

• As a synonym for religious relativism; that one's religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth, and that some level of truth and value exists in at least some other religions. As a synonym for ecumenism. At a minimum, ecumenism is the promotion of unity, co-operation, or improved understanding between different denominations within the same religion, or sometimes between different religions. The latter is sometimes called Macro-ecumenism.
• As a synonym for religious tolerance, which is a condition of harmonious co-existence between adherents of different religions or religious denominations.
• Pluralism as the belief that more than one religion can teach truths
• In its strongest sense, religious pluralism holds that no single religion can claim absolute authority to teach absolute truth. The word of God is not literal religion. On the contrary, religion attempts to describe God's utterances. Given the finite and fallible nature of human beings, no religious text written by Man can absolutely describe God, God's will, or God's counsel, since it is God apart from Man who reveals the divine thoughts, intentions and volition perfectly.

"Just as microsurgery proves more effective than the amputation of a limb, there are better ways to deal with religious pluralism than removing religion from public life. In short, there are good reasons to question whether secularism is the enlightened path to living together." Hunter Baker's The End of Secularism (pg 23).

Religious pluralists point out that nearly all religious texts are a combination of an assortment of human observations documented, for example, as historical narratives, poetry, lections, and morality plays. Accordingly, a distinction exists between what may be claimed as literal in a religious text and what may be metaphorical. The text, therefore, is open to interpretation. In this light, no religion is able to comprehensively capture and communicate all truth. Although all religions attempt to capture reality, their attempts occur within particular cultural and historical contexts that affect the writer's viewpoint.

Believers in religious pluralism, in this sense, hold that their own, self-made syncretistic belief system is "true". In other words, their religion is the most complete and accurate interpretation of the divine, though they also accept that other religions teach many truths about the nature of God and man, and that it is possible to establish a significant amount of common ground across all belief systems.

Dr N. T. Wright Bishop of Durham, in his lecture titled, Paul in Different Perspectives has this to say regarding religious pluralism:

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The Council for Secular Humanism

The Council for Secular Humanism (originally the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, or CODESH) is a secular humanist organization headquartered in Amherst, New York. In 1980 CODESH issued A Secular Humanist Declaration, an argument for and statement of belief in Democratic Secular Humanism. The Council for Secular Humanism does not call itself religious and has never claimed tax-exemption as a religious organization; instead it has an educational exemption.

The council acts as an umbrella organization for a number of other groups, such as the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, Secular Organizations for Sobriety, African Americans for Humanism, and provides support for Center for Inquiry - On Campus. It also publishes several magazines and newsletters, including Free Inquiry. The council was founded by Dr. Paul Kurtz, who also founded CSICOP (now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) and the Center for Inquiry.

The council is a member organisation of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and endorses both the IHEU minimum statement of Humanism (ref bylaw 5.1) and the Amsterdam Declaration 2002).

The Council for Secular Humanism with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and The Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health are all headquartered at the Center for Inquiry, adjacent to the State University of New York.

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Secular Humanism

Secular humanism is a humanist philosophy that upholds reason, ethics, and justice and specifically rejects rituals and ceremonies as a means to affirm a life stance. The term was coined in the 20th century to make a clear distinction from "religious humanism". A perhaps less confrontational synonym is scientific humanism, which the biologist Edward O. Wilson claimed to be "the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature".

Relationship to other concepts
When humanists use the phrase secular humanism it is typically to emphasize differences relative to religion or religious humanism. There are a number of ways in which secular and religious humanism can differ: Religious humanists may value rituals and ceremonies as means of affirming their life stance.

• Secular humanists are typically not interested in using rituals and ceremonies.



• Some religious humanists may seek profound "religious" experiences, such as those that others would associate with the presence of God, despite interpreting these experiences differently. Secular humanists would generally not pursue such experiences.


• Some varieties of nontheistic religious humanism may conceive of the word divine as more than metaphoric even in the absence of a belief in a traditional God; they may believe in ideals that transcend physical reality; or they may conceive of some experiences as "numinous" or uniquely religious. Secular humanism regards all such terms as, at best, metaphors for truths rooted in the material world.


• Some varieties of religious humanism, such as Christian humanism include belief in God, traditionally defined. Secular humanism is skeptical about God and the supernatural and believes that these are not useful concepts for addressing human problems.

While some humanists embrace calling themselves secular humanists, others prefer the term Humanist, capitalized and without any qualifying adjective. The terms secular humanism and Humanism overlap, but have different connotations. The term secular humanism emphasizes a non-religious focus, whereas the term Humanism deemphasizes this and may even encompass some nontheistic varieties of religious humanism. The term Humanism also emphasizes considering one's humanism to be a life stance. Secular humanism advocates secularism but is a broader concept. Secularism has a number of usages but generally emphasize limits on the role of religious or supernatural considerations in the affairs of society or government. Secular humanism adds to these positions a comprehensive perspective on life, including affirmation of human dignity and the importance of ethics.

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