Battle to Remove the Ten Commandments

by Ward Ellsworth

August 14, 2003

In the on-going battle to remove the Ten Commandments from public places, perhaps the real issue is equal rights of other religions to display their beliefs. Perhaps Humanists should be allowed, instead of getting the Ten Commandments removed, to display the following: (From "Humanist Manifestos I & II)

“To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present....We therefore affirm the following

First: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created

Second: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a continuous process.

Third: Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

Fourth: Humanism recognizes that man's religious culture and civilization, ... are the product of a gradual development due to his interaction with his natural environment and his social heritage.

Fifth: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

Sixth: We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism, and the several varieties of 'new thought'.

Seventh: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant.

Eighth: Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now.

Tenth: It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural.

(p. 13, Manifesto II) As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, ..., is an unproved and outmoded faith.

p. 15, Many kinds of humanism exist in the contemporary world. The varieties and emphases of naturalistic humanism include 'scientific,' 'ethical,' 'democratic,' 'religious,' and 'Marxist' humanism. Free thought, atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, deism, rationalism, ethical culture, and liberal religion all claim to be heir to the humanist tradition.

p. 17, Third: We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction.

p. 18, Sixth: ... we believe that intolerant attitudes, ..., unduly repress sexual conduct. The right to birth control, abortion, and divorce should be recognized ... individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their life-styles as they desire.

p. 19 ... It also includes a recognition of an individual's right to die with dignity, euthanasia, and the right to suicide.

Ninth: The separation of church and state and the separation of ideology and state are imperatives.

p. 21, ... we look to the development of a system of world law and a world order based upon transnational federal government ... We thus reaffirm a commitment to the building of world community, ...

Fourteenth: The planet earth must be considered a single ecosystem.

p. 22, Fifteenth: World poverty must cease. Hence extreme disproportions in wealth, income, and economic growth should be reduced on a worldwide basis.

p. 24, These affirmations are not a final credo or dogma but an expression of a living and growing faith.”

If they, as a matter of religious equality under the law, were allowed to post their religious beliefs along with the Ten Commandments, they would be widely known as a religion, people would know what they REALLY stand for, and someone might actually begin to ask why THEIR religious beliefs are ALL taught and promoted in the public schools, at public expense, to the exclusion of other religious beliefs!!!!

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