"I think an awful lot of people are humanists without being aware of it," says Marilyn Mason, education officer at the British Humanist Association.
In the interview, Mr. Kurtz wondered whether it would have been better, years ago, for people simply to have declared themselves humanists, without the adjective secular.
The author of the New York Times best-seller and landmark secular humanist book, Good Without God, will join us at our Fall kickoff social to speak about his secular moral ideals, and his vision for his new role as MIT's first humanist chaplain.
What is dangerous is when the center ignores the edges or the edges ignore the center -- art for arts sake or science without a humanist and societal perspective.
The humanist movement itself isn't without disagreement either.
I should, in the interest of full disclosure, state that I am a secular humanist concerned with maintaining religious values but without supernatural claims.
I heard Nobelist Steven Weinberg say while accepting the Humanist of the Year Award, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
Instead we part company on a benign note, without controversy or dispute, the great humanist having succeeded in showing his humanity.
Mr. Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and author of "Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe".
