History and Secular Humanism (PDF)

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject History - World History - Modern History, University of Portsmouth, language: English, abstract: The word humanism bases its origin from the 15th century Italian word umanista, which connotes, a teacher or scholar of classical Greek and Latin. The contemporary definition and meaning however stems, from the conceptions and works of German historian George Viogt who used the term Humanism to describe the renaissance movement in Italy, which revolutionized learning.
However, over the ages, the word and concept has revolutionized to accommodate a more universally accepted meaning. Here, it refers to the study approach that focuses on human value and concern. Further according to the Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, humanism refers to "any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, or dignity predominate" (691). In light of this humanism has different connotations, such as secular and religious.
Thus, secular humanism ascribes to a philosophy that adopts reason, ethics, and the search for human fulfillment, and precisely abnegates supernatural and religious dogma as the basis of morality and decision-making. Thus based on theological underpinning secular humanists are atheists as demonstrated by Corliss Lamont who says, "Humanism contends that instead of the gods creating the cosmos, the cosmos, in the individualized form of human beings giving rein to their imagination, created the gods"(145).
The history of secularism in modern world traces back to the mid 17th century when George Jacob Holyoake, in describing an ideology, accentuated on the acquisitiveness for accommodating a concept, based on verifiable questions authenticated by scientific means and statistical methods. In other word, the concept emerged because of increased discontentment of individuals, with the religious adages and dogmas of the religious assemblage. Thus, Historians ascertain that the movement traces back to the enlightenment era when individual thinkers began to question the fundamental certitudes and values of the religious groups, especially the catholic dogma.