8. We view the process of biological evolution as an ongoing natural marvel, producing a fecundity of plants and animals of striking variety all over the world, even in the most inhospitable environments.
9. We glory in the wonder of the human brain and its ongoing electrochemical pattern of mind and awareness—the most complex pattern we know of anywhere. Even so, we acknowledge that humans are wholly a product of biological and cultural evolutionary processes.
10. We celebrate the grandest product of the human mind—culture. Here in the midst of societies of minds, the manifestation, growth, mutation, clash, and symbiosis of language, trade, art, science, and technology thrive.
11. We take seriously the importance of history, which records the integration of larger and larger numbers of people in more and more complex societies throughout the ages.
12. We appreciate the deep-seated need of people to engage in free exchange of all kinds, including goods and services, conversations and debates, knowledge and wisdom, and we defend social systems that foster them.
13. We especially enjoy and revel in the life of free, democratic political systems with their rough and tumble decision-making processes and their open-ended search for self-improvement.
14. We also value the search for truly workable answers to deep-seated group animosities. For instance, we believe individualism is nature’s only known cure for racism, sexism, and all other prejudices.
15. At the same time, we find that a certain amount of inequality among individual members of society is a positive good. The commingling of people with different abilities, knowledge, interests, and drives makes for societies of extraordinary freedom and creative power.
16. We approve of the ongoing trends toward the globalization of Western ideas and ideals. Their openness and flexibility have made them the most fit and competitive of human concepts in the accelerating tempo of world cultural evolution.
17. We thrill in astonishment as the information revolution allows us to bind ourselves together freely into novel association and coalitions as we use faster and more data-rich computers and communications systems to learn and discover what humans could never have known before.
18. We support scientists and engineers as they continue to delve deeper into the realm of the microcosm. Such work may well lead to revolutionary technologies of amazing power and scope, such as nanotechnology.
19. We call for the further exploration and development of outer space. The amount of resources and energy available in space stagger the Earth-bound imagination. As environmentalists take pains to tell us, Earth is no longer enough for a growing technological civilization.
20. In conclusion, we humanists work toward the day in which every one of us everywhere are able to enjoy a rich bouquet of the best that life can offer—work that enhances the self and contributes to the general well-being, food that nourishes and delights the palate, wealth that softens the harshness of life and opens doors to new experience, friends and family who teach the child and ease the way to love, associations that invite friendly socialization and participation in worthy causes, and arts that expand aesthetic sensibilities and lead to a more profound understanding of life.
Life is a continual learning. We humanists intend to grow and learn till the end of our days.
sallymore@yahoo.com