Religion creation and design principles

¶ … Religion

In The God Part of the Brain, Matthew Alper argues that the human quest for religious truth is biologically-based, precluding the existence of any external creative deity. Whether or not external deity or deities exist, religion plays a vital role in human society, human history, and human psycho-social development. The personality and self-concept can both be shaped by one's religious beliefs. For instance, the Catholic will demonstrate different psychological reactions to death than a Hindu. Because religion can be a dominant force in personal and collective experience, an organized religion still serves a definite and useful function whether or not God actually exists. The Humanist Faith is based on the fundamental principle that human beings need faith. Humanistic Faith is, however, devoid of the types of religious dogma found in other world religions. Lacking a canon of holy texts entirely, the Humanistic Faith does not offer its followers any mythology. Our truths and our ideas are formulated through scholastic inquiry, taking into account the wisdom of the sciences as much as the wisdom of the humanities including art, literature, and music. The collective human experience is where we derive our understanding of the universe and of our individual role within it.

Our grounded perspective allows Humanistic Faith followers wide leeway in their choice of lifestyle, habits, or conceptual understanding of God. We allow atheism as much as we allow theism, because the fundamental purpose of Humanistic Faith is to provide a social venue within which human beings can gather, discuss, and debate religious and philosophical issues. Codes of ethics and morality are likewise flexible, open to rhetorical dialogue. However, we do have a few fundamental ethical underpinnings from which we cannot stray. These ethical underpinnings can be summed up neatly in the word ahimsa. We leave most of the detailed moral questions up to the individual practitioner to contend with, with the aid of our community and the recommended sources for truth-seeking we suggest. So long as the individual does not harm or interfere with the lives of others, we do not condemn or condone any specific behaviors.

The Humanistic Faith proposes neither a concept of deity nor a concept of Evil. We allow each individual practitioner to conceive of God in whatever way best suits their personality or cultural environment with the one caveat: that God never suggests that one person or group of people are superior or inferior to any other. Sexism and other social biases will not be tolerated by the Humanistic Faith.