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From: lkk@teddy.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: "Secular Humanism" banned in the US Schools.
Message-ID: <1175@teddy.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Aug-85 18:45:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: teddy.1175
Posted: Tue Aug 20 18:45:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 20:38:30 EDT
References: <4141@alice.UUCP> <938@bunker.UUCP> <161@gargoyle.UUCP>
Reply-To: lkk@teddy.UUCP (Larry K. Kolodney)
Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass.
Lines: 48
Xref: linus net.politics:9882 net.religion:7022

In article <161@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes:
>In article <938@bunker.UUCP> garys@bunker.UUCP (Gary M. Samuelson) writes:
>
>> Didn't the Supreme Court
>> recognize Secular Humanism as a religion not too long ago?
>
>I imagine I'm not the only one who missed this.  References, please.
>Whatever "secular humanism" means (and it seems to cover a wide area
>of ambiguity) I doubt that it refers to a religion.  Perhaps there
>are several Secular Humanist temples in your neighborhood, but there
>are none in mine.  Oh, you mean the University of Chicago?  Wrong,
>pal.  The U of C (in the classic description) is a Baptist university
>where atheist professors teach Thomas Aquinas to Jewish students.
>More than a grain of truth in this.
>
>Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes


There IS a secular humanist church.  It is called:

The Ethical Culture Society.

It was founded about 100 years ago in NYC.  There are various
congregations around the NY metro area (and perhaps elsewhere), and they
have a rather large headquarters on central park west in manhattan.  

Local congregations (I don't know if that's what they're called), have
sunday school, and weekly meetings at which the "leader" discusses 
moral issues.  They generally don't believe in God, or at least don't
beleive in organized religion as such.

Unitarians might also be called a secular humanist church for all intents
and purposes.


I believe the reference on secular humanism being a church stems from
a footnote by Mr. Justice Hugo Black in a Supreme Ct. decision overturning
a rule which required that a person be a beleiver in God to be
a conscientious objector.  The court ruled that a number of "religions"
didn't have such a belief, and the footnote listed secular humanism
(or maybe it was "ethical culture" now I'm not sure) among them.

-- 

Sport Death,
Larry Kolodney
(USENET) ...decvax!genrad!teddy!lkk
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