Humanist Manifesto I. The Manifesto is a product of many minds. It was designed to represent a developing point of view, not a new creed. The individuals whose signatures appear would, had they been writing individual statements, have stated the propositions in differing terms. The importance of the document is that more than thirty men have come to general agreement on matters of final concern and that these men are undoubtedly representative of a large number who are forging a new philosophy out of the materials of the modern world. - Raymond B. Bragg (1933) The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century.
FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. (Signed) J.A.C. Humanist Manifesto II. Preface It is forty years since Humanist Manifesto I (1933) appeared. Events since then make that earlier statement seem far too optimistic. Nazism has shown the depths of brutality of which humanity is capable. Other totalitarian regimes have suppressed human rights without ending poverty. Science has sometimes brought evil as well as good. Recent decades have shown that inhuman wars can be made in the name of peace. The beginnings of police states, even in democratic societies, widespread government espionage, and other abuses of power by military, political, and industrial elites, and the continuance of unyielding racism, all present a different and difficult social outlook. As we approach the twenty-first century, however, an affirmative and hopeful vision is needed. Those who sign Humanist Manifesto II disclaim that they are setting forth a binding credo; their individual views would be stated in widely varying ways.
. - Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Religion Ethics The Individual. Danette Clark: Secularists in Today’s American classroom. Horace Mann, G Stanley Hall, John Dewey. John-DeweyEd-and-Social-Change-by-Jen-Dainels.pdf (application/pdf Object)