Articles written by Alan Perlman

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About me - Alan Perlman

I've been a secular humanist as long as I can remember. When they put the words "under God" into Pledge, I said to myself, "I'm not saying that." And I never did. I was 12 years old time.

My writings in Helium are mostly about secular humanism. One of my goals

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Religion & Spirituality > Atheism & Agnosticism Good without God: Secular humanism and morality: 1 of 15

Don't look now, but your neighbor, uncle, cousin, coworker - or even the person next to you in church or synagogue - might be a (gasp!) secular humanist. A secular humanist is almost the same thing as an atheist. If there's a difference, I suppose it's that the atheist focuses on the absence of God, whereas secular humanists...
Religion & Spirituality > Spiritual Insights The many meanings of spirituality: 1 of 9

Spirituality is very popular these days. Everybody wants to be known as "spiritual." That's not surprising, because religiosity is on the rise, governments in America and in the Middle East believe God is on their side, and 95% of the US population professes to believe in God. With those kinds of numbers, no one wants to be ...
Religion & Spirituality > Atheism & Agnosticism Reflections: Atheism: 14 of 49

Religious literacy - what is it and how can secular humanist/atheists achieve it? "Americans get an F' in religion," announces a USA Today cover story (sec. D, 3/8/07), reporting on a new book, Stephen Prothero's "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know." The author laments the fact that people don't know the f...
Religion & Spirituality > Atheism & Agnosticism Reasons not to believe in God: 45 of 117

I think a life without God, prayer, and obsessing over the Bible is a much better life! I should know - that's how I've lived. Over the centuries, God has gotten excellent PR and marketing. When the times required it, the Torah God was supplemented with a nicer God. As humans evolved, so did their concept of God. I wonder if...
Religion & Spirituality > Speculations & Criticisms Book reviews: The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins: 5 of 11

A second look at Richard Dawkins This is my second look at Richard Dawkins. My first look came during a recent viewing of an episode of South Park, in which the great man was placed in a, shall we say, compromising (no, let's go further: degrading) position, as if to illustrate that the even skeptical atheism can be desecrat...
Religion & Spirituality > Judaism What is Zionism from a secular humanism point of view: 1 of 2

"O Jerusalem of gold, of brass and of light, For all your songs I will be your harp." Traditional Hebrew song "Zionism" is an emotionally loaded word, and like other such words, it has sharply different meanings, depending on who's talking and in what context. Zionism has been around, as a word and as a concept, for my whole...
Religion & Spirituality > Judaism A Secular humanist view of the Torah: 1 of 2

Many Jews revere the Torah but don't know the first thing about it. I wrote a whole book about the Torah, the purpose of which was to de-mythologize and de-mystify it. A few facts Let me re-cap a few facts about this most misunderstood and overrated document: Science (linguistics, history, archaeology, anthropology, and othe...
Religion & Spirituality > Atheism & Agnosticism A humanist's kingdom of heaven: 1 of 2

It sounded like a really bizarre idea when I first articulated it to myself: the secular humanist's idea of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. This would be a world in which it is the widespread, open, and 90%-majority opinion (there will always be a few believers) that God and all related phenomena (angels, heaven) do not exis...
Religion & Spirituality > Atheism & Agnosticism Pro-God propaganda in the media: 1 of 1

This just in: The New York Times affirms that God exists. After years of agonizing over whether the New York Times was going to come down for or against God, I can now rest. God exists. All is right with the world. God exists NOT One of the great things about being a secular humanist or at least an agnostic is that you never...
Religion & Spirituality > Heaven, Hell & Afterlife Exploring the possibility of life after death: 21 of 35

"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." I have, unfortunately, been compelled to consider yet again these wise words from James Thurber. If humanists are to offer anything positive to religious believers, it must certainly include a way to think about and deal with ...