The humanist returns

Back in the days of Multiple Organisms (go find your grandfather or someone else who was first on the web and ask them about it), I used to have a brief page justifying, or at least mentioning, humanism and my own unpaid subscription to it. Irrational urges led me to publish it, and then I promptly forgot about it and got on with writing stuff about sex and other more pressing issues.

Except that I got more email about that one article than I did about anything else on my pages (bar the Thora Hird blow-up doll offer, and charges were never brought anyway). Some of it was the crank variety from lunatic American evanglicals. Some of it came from lunatic American humanists holed up in enclaves back east. Much of it simply said, "Thanks, I feel the same way and I'm glad someone else does." Back then, there weren't many humanist resources on the web so search engines usually put my meagre effort near the top of a brief list.

I suppose I could have exploited this unexpected publicity, for entirely wicked ends (everything else is a cult nowadays). But I couldn't be doing with much of it frankly. The page was there to offer some clue as to my own leanings, which weren't even entirely clear to me at the time, not to fulfill the role that the Humanist Society doubtless so admirably does. But for the benefit of all those hyperlinks left dangling, and purely in the name of historical record, here's that page again. Please note that it is not any of the following:

  1. A request for befuddled, obsessive fundamentals whose minds have been blinded by the glory of the Lord to bombard me with ridiculous propaganda that I'm not going to spend even a second pondering. Those who wish to tell me I'm going to hell when I die can go to hell right now. Anyway, your email will be lost in the flood of porn junk mail and dodgy investment scams that jams my mailbox.
  2. A rallying cry for everyone who bears a grudge against the Church and maybe wants to burn a few down. I realise that in some parts of the USA, a person can't even blow their nose in the street without being denounced from the pulpit the following Sunday, but I'm not here to lead a counter-revolution. (Take comfort from the fact that established Christian religion will probably be all but extinct in fifty years.)
  3. Open for discussion. (It might be if I had more time.)

Ade
17th December 1997
- Happy Pagan Festival


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