Just humanism with extra steps

When I first became an atheist, I still held onto the idea that Christianity (if done right) had a lot of good stuff, even though the god stuff isn't true. The first thing I wrote as I tried to process my thoughts and feelings about it eventually became the first post to this blog, titled "The Atheist Christian".


But since then I've learned more about humanism, and realized that anything that was ever valuable in Christianity was just humanism with extra steps. Loving and serving your neighbor, helping those who can't help themselves, striving for justice and peace, being merciful to those who need mercy... none of that needs a religion or ever did. The religion is at best a symbol for those things, but more often a distraction from them, or worse still a path in the opposite direction (as it has become for American Evangelicals).


No point in adding the extra steps, really. We can just have humanism, and it works much better that way.




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