The Humanist Symposium

I love reading blog carnivals. For those of you who don't know, a blog carnival is a serial post on a certain topic that showcases articles from multiple bloggers. There are blog carnivals on every topic you could possibly imagine, but the one that I have followed every three weeks since its inception is The Humanist Symposium. I post this now because the #15th Humanist Symposium is the first one to occur since I started this blog, but I will be posting the location of each one every three weeks when they are published. So, to reiterate, the 15th Humanist Symposium is now up at Cafe Philos.


So, why post this at all, aside from wanting to share the work of some amazing and talented writers? Well, the primary purpose of this blog is to air my thoughts on things that are important to my world view, and standing at the forefront of that world view at this moment is my position on religion and where it stands in the "quest for the meaning of life." Though this may not be well-known to anyone currently reading this blog, I decided several years ago that I was an atheist - which means that I weighed all my observations about the world with everything I had been taught about the idea of God as the creator of it all, and decided that there was no longer any reason for me to believe in something when I have no proof that it exists. That is the simple explanation, which I will expound upon at a later date.

However, after doing a lot of reading and self-evaluation of my thoughts and feelings with regards to being an atheist, I decided that it was not the label that I wanted to apply to myself when someone asked me what I believed in. To be an atheist is to not believe in something, and I am an atheist in the same way that I am a a-Santa-ist, an a-fairy-ist, and an a-Easter Bunny-ist. Not believing in something is not the best foundation for one's outlook on life, nor is it a good way to describe one's self when asked what one does believe in.

So I eventually came to the conclusion that I was a secular humanist - I believe that this life I have on Earth is all I've got, and that the same is true for everyone else, so I want to work every day to make the lives of everyone I meet (and those that I don't) a little better with my actions and my presence. As a humanist, I hold the care of my fellow humans above all else, but it is a secular humanism because I do not feel this way as a result of any religion or a belief in any deity. I wish I could explain it better, but I am still having difficulty expressing my thoughts and feelings about this significant change in my life.

That's where the Symposium comes in. It was started by my favorite atheist blogger, Ebonmuse, over at his blog, Daylight Atheism, and has been going strong since April of last year. The wonderful bloggers who contribute to the Symposium every three weeks express their thoughts and feelings about what it means to be an atheist and a secular humanist better than I ever could, so I will continue to follow and advertise this excellent Symposium now that I have a blog of my own.