At various times across the ancient world, particularly Greece, philosophers began formulating the idea that humans alone were responsible for their own welfare and destiny.

The Ancient Greeks, in spite of their numerous gods, were mostly concerned with earthly comforts and sought to honour human actions and ideas through sport, art, and drama. In addition, the seeds of an early form of Humanism, not overtly non- religious, were sown by philosophers like Protagoras, Epicurus and Aristotle.

One of the earliest recorded Humanist was Protagoras in the fifth century BCE. Like Jesus five hundred years later, was a wondering philosopher. He was banished for the agnostic sentiments he preached, but unlike Jesus he had no team of apostles to document and quote (or misquote!) him. However, his most famous dictum has survived: ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ This sentiment was taken up by, among others, Shakespeare; in Hamlet, the Prince declares: “What a piece of work is a man …”

Even twenty-five centuries years ago, it seems, people were beginning to rise out of the swamp of self-deprecation into which they had drifted.

ENTER RELIGION

However, Humanism’s early ascendence was short-lived. With the decline of Greek culture and the rise of Christianity and Islam, the humanist movement lost impetus, and for several centuries (sometimes called the Dark Ages), Western Civilisation was based in religion, tradition and authority.

Generation after generation of peasants across Europe, working long hours and seldom living beyond their forties, were constantly reminded in Sunday sermons of the latent evil in humanity and told that without a belief in God there would be a moral free-for-all. This, of course, created a state of mind that conveniently helped to maintain a social hierarchy favourable to landowners and the aristocracy.

REASON PREVAILS

Humanist ideas surfaced again during the 18th Century Age of Enlightenment, which emphasised reason over superstition and science over blind faith. And later, with ever-expanding knowledge in areas of science, geology and psychology many thinkers began to question the idea of God.

The German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 -72), suggested that it is humans who invent God, while Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 -1900), maintained that non-belief carried to its conclusion paradoxically produces a positive experience – which many Humanists will confirm.

The publication of Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ in 1859, along with the irrefutable evidence of both fossils and our clear similarity to the higher apes, provided a rational explanation of human evolution and finally loosened the creationist stranglehold the Church had long maintained on people’s ideas.

The meaning of Humanism has varied over the centuries but today it can be summed up as:

A philosophy or way of life that rejects any belief in gods or a supernatural realm. Instead the focus is on doing good and living well in the here and now through  reason, tolerance and kindness.