HUMANIST- The belief that all decisions regarding moral behavior, either individually or as a society, can be found through intellectual reflection and discourse. It rejects any faith based grounding of proper ethical behavior.
Christian Humanist- Accepts the Divine nature of Jesus, but believes that God gave man the ability and mental discipline to find ultimate truths regarding proper moral behavior. Scripture is not the source for finding ethical absolutes. The Gospels may be correct, but must be judged on a case by case basis.
Secular Humanist- Believes that faith based institutions have no place in deciding public policy or law. Religion is purely an individual choice, and should not influence the legal system in any way. A Secular Humanist is not by definition an Atheist.
Deistic Humanist- Closely resembles the Christian Humanist. Believes in an ultimate power (God), that is the prime mover in our universe. However, this power created the laws of nature and set reality in motion, but leaves the concept of morality as something the human mind can comprehend without Divine interference.
Keep in mind these are my definitions. You are free to disregard or accept them. My main goal is to show that we often use blanket definitions on certain belief systems. However, some of these systems are not uniform, and vary in how they view the nature of God, Reality, Morality, and the Universe in general.
No comments:
Post a Comment