My Faith: Humanism

By David Blyfield
BBC North Yorkshire Contributor

David believes that Humanism helps people challenge imposed beliefs

Without knowing it, I had been a Humanist for most of my life. At school I was always the one asking the difficult questions; challenging why you accepted parts of the bible as truth and parts as fable; why events such as wars or losing a child happened, and being told it was to allow us to become stronger human beings.

About ten years ago I decided to become pro-active in challenging the indoctrinated view that only religious people could lead 'good lives', and became more involved in Humanism.

To me what Humanism is not is the most important point. It is not a religion; there are no sets of rules to which I have to subscribe or higher beings to believe in. For us there is one life, and this is it, and we should make the most of it, for the benefit of ourselves and all others.

There are two main organizations, the British Humanist Association, and the National Secular Society. Neither have priests, elders or ministers; neither hold services or own buildings; and finally neither expects the state to heavily subsidise their activities.

Both promote keeping religion out of politics and education. Both would like to see Religious Instruction and assemblies in schools replaced with much wider based Citizenship classes, that includes topics such as personal morals; human rights and responsibilities; racial and ageist understanding; life skills; and accepting that others can have different beliefs to yourself.

A survey from the Education Department, in 2004, called 'Young people in Britain' found that 65% of 12 to 19 year olds described themselves as non-religious, up 10% in just ten years.

Despite leading questions, in the last national census 'non religious' was the second largest belief category after Christian, and even this was greatly understated because many people when questioned thought baptism automatically included you as that faith.

Humanism helps you challenge life-long imposed beliefs, and if answers don't come at once, or nothing changes don't worry that is part of the fun of life!