More On Waking Up And The Humanist Community

A few days ago I read the book Waking Up after also reading about a new kind of Christianity.  Both books started me on a journey of self discovery.  I’ve always been an atheist, so hearing others describe atheism is interesting but not mind expanding.  What’s really interesting is discovering how atheists can also experience spirituality (Waking Up) also live a good life based on a rational moral code (Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe) and that inquiring Christians are really struggling to make sense of their faith (A New Kind of Christian).  I also read the excellent 10% happier that made it abundantly clear that secular spirituality is just as hard work as religion would be (for me).

My atheist life though has always been lonely, I’ve mostly grown up surrounded by Christians, most social gatherings I attend are Christian, the school my kids went to was a church school and they all attended Christian clubs.  The self discovery though is that there are others like me, a billion apparently, maybe intellectually I already knew this, but until I actually discovered the Humanist movement it never seemed real.

All of a sudden I’ve discovered groups all over who think like me.  People who want to do good in the world, who want to improve themselves, but don’t expect God to help out, it’s liberating.

I strongly recommend this 100 minute video that explores many of the topics I’ve touched on in this post, it’s really excellent.

The photo today is what I woke up to.  I have almost no ability to recall memories from my childhood now, but as I drifted out of sleep this morning I remembered my very laid back high school RE teacher telling me “you’re a humanist Steve”, it’s taken me nearly 40 years to understand what he was talking about!