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Secular humanists offer hope

In response to Jim Swan’s letter Secular humanists — they’re everywhere, published in the Advocate on April 14, I would like to submit the following.Unfortunately, Swan is misinformed as to what secular humanists believe.

In response to Jim Swan’s letter Secular humanists — they’re everywhere, published in the Advocate on April 14, I would like to submit the following.

Unfortunately, Swan is misinformed as to what secular humanists believe.

For the sake of brevity, following is the website which lists the Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles — http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=affirmations&section=main

In fairness to secular humanists, I would ask that Advocate readers go to this site and discover the truth rather than forming an opinion based upon the ramblings of an ill-informed source.

There are several principles listed at this site but one of the most compelling is:

“We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.”

With the current recession, we can all use some optimism and renewed hope for the future.

Lynn Moker

Red Deer