I'm challenged
This forum is interesting and stimulating for me in lots of different ways, but even though we have laid out some starting definitions of terms - things like "secular" and "humanist", I feel quite at odds with the way they're used sometimes. They feel often like shorthand for "I hate everything to do with religion and there's nothing I like better than having a good go at it". More, it feels like Buddhism and Taoism and Shinto and Paganism et al are somehow considered to be honorary humanisms, full of enlightened information, but the Judeo-Christian tradition is dismissed. It's simply wrong.
Humanists have famously embraced the motto of the Roman historian Terence - "I am human, and nothing of humanity is foreign to me". All human experience is a marvel - being able to disentangle ourselves emotionally from other's experience of course is a big deal for us alcoholics! - and humanism to me means being open to explore our shared experiences and our shared solutions.
"Secular" means something quite specific to me. It means "public". Secular, public experiences are those we explicitly share, those that allow us to set light upon our common humanity. Secularism is and always has been a joyful part of my life, and never more so since I was broken into AA (lol), and I began to be better at sharing the public space with people who were very different from me, but were always looking for the shared, the common, rather than the different and the prejudiced. Of course, we alcoholics in fellowship are very lucky, because we discover a whole wealth of experiences, emotional states, human crises, which we share very specifically with other alcoholics - and we discover a response to the existential crisis so beloved by some - alone with our choices in the universe? Not in AA. I am not alone. Not any more.
So I'm challenged. And I suppose I'm challenging everyone else here too. As I have said elsewhere I was a great fan of Karl Popper. He gave this wonderful instruction - I quote from memory -
"If you are going to criticise another's philosophy, find it's strongest point and criticise it there. To criticise it's weaknesses is just sophistry"
Let's use the secular forum to talk about what is wonderful about humanity, not about how much we hate religion, or how clever we imagine we are for dismissing it.