| Zoroastrian Humanism |
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Zoroastrian Humanism is both a very new and a very old ideology. It is a modern attempt to revive the original Humanism of the ancient world which sought to provide an impetus to the ethical life independently of traditional religion. In our thinking the word Humanism derives from the Persian word Humanah which means Good Mind. A Humanist is one who believes that the state of the human world is largely a consequence of human actions and that human actions are born in the mind. The better the mind of a person, the better will their actions be and the more they will contribute to the general improvement of society and the wider world. The first person who articulated the Humanist way of thinking was a Persian philosopher called Zarathustra or Zoroaster who may have lived about 1000BC in an area of ancient Iran. Hence we call our Humanism, Zoroastrian Humanism to indicate our roots in Zoroaster's work and distinguish it from more recent varieties of Humanism which for convenience we can call Darwinian Humanism. 1) Darwinian Humanists derives the word Humanism from human and say they champion human values as opposed to godly or religious ones. Zoroastrian Humanists derive Humanism from Persian humanah and English humane and champion the Good Mind as opposed to the Bad Mind. 2) Darwinian Humanists consider that the only valid source of knowledge is that gained through reason applied to the results of scientific experimentation. Zoroastrian Humanists consider that the whole experience of the human mind is valid source material for our reasoning processes to try and make sense of. 3) Darwinian Humanists are materialists - they believe that everything in existence is made of one kind of substance - the physical material which is the object of scientific research. Zoroastrian Humanists believe that the world is best explained as composed of two different kinds of substance - the physical and mental. 4) Darwinian Humanists believe that those who believe in God or gods are just deluded and that there is no truth at all in their beliefs. Zoroastrian Humanists don't have such a definite opinion as this. Generally they will argue that gods are at least in part a creation of the human mind. They exist in the sense that they exist in people's minds and they may be considered 'true' to the extent that they are true to the reality beyond people's minds. Both kinds of Humanists would agree that ultimately it is only human beings (or other living beings) whose actions create the world and that is bad-thinking to look to a divine agency to sort things out as an alternative to trying to do so yourself. |