This week, I have the honour and privilege to host the fourth edition of the Humanist Symposium blog carnival. Without further delay, the humanists have something to say.

Awakenings

We might all be born atheists, but not all of us stay that way. Some people, for reasons usually beyond their own control, are—at a young age—convinced, pressured, tricked or forced into accepting claims that they can’t, through no fault of their own, verify.

Thankfully, a number of them make their own way back to reality under their own steam, some because they can’t reconcile what they have been told with what they independently discover¹, and some just to be free from the shackles of imposed intellectual bondage².

But atheism itself doesn’t offer any answers³, so we need to look elsewhere⁴ to see how we might live our lives to the fullest with kindness and generosity, and without deference to myth and legend.

Choosing a path

Losing faith in faith isn’t always easy for someone like me, who has no religious upbringing, to appreciate. One needs to consider their own circumstances, and discover what life means to themselves. Some might do this by discovering what is true about the world⁵, and how that relates to what they’ve been told is the “truth”. Of course, one needs to initially discover how they are able to work out what is true⁶ in the first place.

Certainly, many others before us have thought about this, and they have been kind enough to give us some understandings without knowing us, except perhaps in their own hopes. Sometimes this lets us take some shortcuts in our routes to understanding, but we should always be ready to question the most basic of assumptions⁷. It is in this way that we make progress as a society, and don’t have to reinvent the wheels of knowledge and realisation with every generation.

Walking the path

Life isn’t easy: anyone who tells you that it is is selling something. But this doesn’t mean that we should give up at the first hurdle⁸.

Life is full of choices: we can choose how we behave⁹ and we can choose how we treat others¹⁰. We choose how much we find out about ourselves, and how we look at the world.

But sometimes we don’t have a choice; bad things happen, and we also need to learn to take setbacks on the chin¹¹, and carry on.

Our fading footprints

It would be a benighted existence that didn’t give us the opportunity see where we have come from. Not being able to do so might lead us to stagger through life without any idea of where we might be going¹².

The footprints may fade with time, but the path we’ve taken should become clear.

Unto the end of the world

It is said that there are two certainties: death and taxes. While most of us might like to avoid both, our certain mortality is the one thing that we can’t militate against with an offshore account.

On a personal level, I don’t have a fear of death¹³ (I’ve had my fair share of scrapes with the grim reaper) but this doesn’t mean that I’m in any hurry to hasten in along.

Death may be the end of our life here on earth¹⁴, but everything else will go on without us, although we may hope that our loved ones will remember us¹⁵¹⁶ as we would like to be remembered: fondly and with good cheer.

Death comes to us all, sooner or later¹⁷, so perhaps we should make the most of the time that we have.

The one life we have

One could, if one so chose, decide that life just isn’t worth living: it’s ultimately futile… isn’t it? People who view existence like this seem to be focused on the destination alone. But perhaps the destination isn’t quite so important; perhaps the journey is the thing¹⁸.

We, for whatever reason, have this one opportunity of life; it would be an awful waste if we were to not live it.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam

This was my first experience of blog carnival hosting. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure as to how I might arrange things. If you have any observations about how I’ve executed this, please let me know by adding your own comment below. I’d love to know what you think.

The next Humanist Symposium is to be hosted by The Green Atheist on 22 July 2007. If you didn’t get a chance to submit a post for this edition, feel free to submit it for the next.

1. evanescent [↩]
2. Secular Skeptic [↩]
3. Hell’s Handmaiden [↩]
4. Daylight Atheism [↩]
5. HotStrategies.com [↩]
6. Philosophy, et cetera [↩]
7. Atheist Revolution [↩]
8. Pharyngula [↩]
9. Confessions of an Anonymous Coward [↩]
10. Hell’s Handmaiden [↩]
11. A Load of Bright [↩]
12. Metamagician and the Hellfire Club [↩]
13. Greta Christina [↩]
14. Gospel of Reason [↩]
15. Jon Swift [↩]
16. satire! [↩]
17. Letters from a Broad [↩]
18. The One Life We Have [↩]

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