''Humanism and Its Aspirations'' (subtitled ''Humanist Manifesto III, a successor to the Humanist Manifesto of 1933'') is the most recent of the '' Humanist Manifestos'', published in 2003 by the

American Humanist Association The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism. The American Humanist Association was founded in 1941 and currently provides legal assistance to defend the constituti ...

(AHA). The newest one is much shorter, listing six primary beliefs, which echo themes from its predecessors: * Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis. (See

empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...

.) * Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

ary change. * Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. (See ethical naturalism.) * Life's fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals. * Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships. * Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. It has been used as source material for secular and atheist ethics.

Signatories

The following academics and other prominent persons were signatories to the document, who signed the statement "We who sign ''Humanism and Its Aspirations'' declare ourselves in general agreement with its substance":

Notable signatories

Philip Appleman Philip D. Appleman (8 February 1926 – 11 April 2020) was an American poet and writer. He was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. He published seven volumes of poetry, the first of which was ''Su ...

(poet and distinguished professor emeritus of English, Indiana University) *Khoren Arisian (senior leader, New York Society for Ethical Culture) * Bill Baird (reproductive rights pioneer) *

Frank Berger Frank Milan Berger (June 25, 1913 - March 18, 2008) was a Czechoslovakian pharmacologist who discovered meprobamate, carisoprodol, and felbamate, while working at Wallace Laboratories. He also discovered the 'tranquilising' effects of mephenesin ...

(pharmacologist, developer of anti-anxiety drugs) *Howard Box (minister emeritus, Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, Tennessee) *

Lester R. Brown Lester Russel Brown (born March 28, 1934) is an American environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and former president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC ...

(founder and president, Earth Policy Institute) *August E. Brunsman IV (executive director, Secular Student Alliance) *Rob Buitenweg (vice president, International Humanist and Ethical Union) * Vern Bullough (sexologist and former co-president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union) *David Bumbaugh (professor, Meadville Lombard Theological School) *Matthew Cherry (executive director, Institute for Humanist Studies) *Joseph Chuman (visiting professor of religion,

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, and leader, Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, New Jersey) *Curt Collier (leader, Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture, New York) *Fred Cook (retired executive committee member, International Humanist and Ethical Union) *Carl Coon (former U.S. Ambassador to Nepal) *

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ...

*Charles Debrovner (president, NACH/

The Humanist Institute The Humanist Institute is a training program for leaders within the humanist, and secular humanist movement. Purpose and organization The Humanist Institute offers several kinds of educational programs to the humanist community. These program ...

) * Arthur Dobrin (professor of humanities, Hofstra University and leader emeritus Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island, New York) *

Margaret Downey Margaret Downey (born August 16, 1950) is a nontheist activist who is a former President of Atheist Alliance International and founder and president of the Freethought Society (formerly Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia). She also found ...

(president, Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia) * Sonja Eggerickx (vice president, Unie Vrijzinnige Verenigingen, Belgium, and vice president International Humanist and Ethical Union) * Riane Eisler (president, Center for Partnership Studies) * Albert Ellis (creator of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and founder of the Albert Ellis Institute) *Edward L. Ericson (leader emeritus, Ethical Culture) *Roy P. Fairfield (co-founder, Union Graduate School) *

Antony Flew Antony Garrard Newton Flew (; 11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, Flew worked on the philosophy of religion. During the course of his career he taught at ...

(philosopher) *

Levi Fragell Levi Fragell (born 30 March 1939) is a Norwegian humanist. He has been chairman and secretary of the Norwegian Humanist Association, and was President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) between 1987–1990 (as one member o ...

(president, International Humanist and Ethical Union) *

Jerome Isaac Friedman Jerome Isaac Friedman (born March 28, 1930) is an American physicist. He is Institute Professor and Professor of Physics, ''Emeritus, ''at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Henry Kenda ...

(Nobel Laureate, Physics) * Arun Gandhi (co-founder, M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence) *Kendyl Gibbons (president, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association) * Babu R.R. Gogineni (executive director, International Humanist and Ethical Union) *Sol Gordon (sexologist) *Ethelbert Haskins (retired treasurer of the Humanist Foundation) * Jim Herrick (editor, the New Humanist) *

Pervez Hoodbhoy Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy ( Urdu: ;;born 11 July 1950) is a Pakistani nuclear physicist and activist who serves as a professor at the Forman Christian College and previously taught physics at the Quaid-e-Azam University. Hoodbhoy is also a prom ...

(professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan) *Fran P. Hosken (editor, Women's International Network News) *Joan Johnson Lewis (president, National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union) *Stefan Jonasson (immediate past president, HUUmanists) *Larry Jones (president, Institute for Humanist Studies) *

Edwin Kagin Edwin Frederick Kagin (November 26, 1940 – March 28, 2014) was an attorney at law in Union, Kentucky, and a founder of Camp Quest, the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of secularists, atheists, agnostics, bri ...

(founder and director,

Camp Quest Camp Quest is an organisation providing humanist residential summer camps for children in the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway. It was first held in 1996 in Kentucky to provide an alternative to the traditional religiousl ...

) *Beth Lamont (AHA NGO representative to the United Nations) * Gerald A. Larue (professor emeritus of Biblical history and archaeology, University of Southern California) *Joseph Levee (board member, Council for Secular Humanism) *Ellen McBride (immediate past president,

American Ethical Union The Ethical movement, also referred to as the Ethical Culture movement, Ethical Humanism or simply Ethical Culture, is an ethical, educational, and religious movement that is usually traced back to Felix Adler (1851–1933).

) * Lester Mondale (retired Unitarian Universalist minister and signer of Humanist Manifestos I and II) * Henry Morgentaler (abortion rights pioneer) * Stephen Mumford (president, Center for Research on Population and Security) *William Murry (president and dean, Meadville Lombard Theological School) *Sarah Oelberg (president, HUUmanists) *Indumati Parikh (president, Center for the Study of Social Change, India) * Philip Paulson (Church-state activist) *

Katha Pollitt Katha Pollitt (born October 14, 1949) is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abo ...

(columnist, the Nation) *Howard Radest (dean emeritus, the Humanist Institute) * James "Amazing" Randi (magician, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation) *Larry Reyka (president, the Humanist Society) *David Schafer (retired research physiologist, U.S. Veterans Administration) * Eugenie Scott (executive director,

National Center for Science Education The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding ...

) * Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic magazine) *James R. Simpson (professor of international agricultural economics, Ryukoku University, Japan) *

Warren Allen Smith Warren Allen Smith (October 27, 1921 – January 9, 2017) was an American writer, humanist and gay rights activist. A World War II veteran and an outspoken atheist, he dubbed himself as "the atheist in a foxhole". Biography From 1942 to 1946, ...

(editor and author) *Matthew les Spetter (associate professor in social psychology at the Peace Studies Institute of Manhattan College, NY) *

Oliver Stone William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Sc ...

(Academy Award-winning filmmaker) *John Swomley (professor emeritus of social ethics, St. Paul School of Theology) *Robert Tapp (dean, the Humanist Institute) *Carl Thitchener (co-minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Amherst and of Canandaigua, New York) *Maureen Thitchener (co-minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Amherst and of Canandaigua, New York) * Rodrigue Tremblay (Emeritus professor of economics and of international finance, Universite de Montreal, Quebec, Canada) * Kurt Vonnegut (novelist) *John Weston (ministerial settlement director, Unitarian Universalist Association) * Edward O. Wilson (professor,

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

, and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner) * Sherwin Wine (founder and president, Society for Humanistic Judaism)

Nobel laureates

22 Nobel laureates signed the statement, these being: * Philip W. Anderson (Physics, 1977) *

Paul D. Boyer Paul Delos Boyer (July 31, 1918 – June 2, 2018) was an American biochemist, analytical chemist, and a professor of chemistry at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research on the "enzy ...

(Chemistry, 1997) *

Owen Chamberlain Owen Chamberlain (July 10, 1920 – February 28, 2006) was an American physicist who shared with Emilio Segrè the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the antiproton, a sub-atomic antiparticle. Biography Born in San Francisco, Ca ...

(Physics, 1959) *

Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical stru ...

(Medicine, 1962) * Paul J. Crutzen (Chemistry, 1995) * Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (Physics, 1991) *

Johann Deisenhofer Johann Deisenhofer (; born September 30, 1943) is a German biochemist who, along with Hartmut Michel and Robert Huber, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for their determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane p ...

(Chemistry, 1988) * Jerome I. Friedman (Physics, 1990) * Sheldon Glashow (Physics, 1979) *

David J. Gross David Jonathan Gross (; born February 19, 1941) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. Gr ...

(Physics, 2004) *

Herbert A. Hauptman Herbert Aaron Hauptman (February 14, 1917 – October 23, 2011) was an American mathematician and Nobel laureate. He pioneered and developed a mathematical method that has changed the whole field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in d ...

(Chemistry, 1985) *

Dudley Herschbach Dudley Robert Herschbach (born June 18, 1932) is an American chemist at Harvard University. He won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry jointly with Yuan T. Lee and John C. Polanyi "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical eleme ...

(Chemistry, 1986) * Harold W. Kroto (Chemistry, 1996) * Yuan T. Lee (Chemistry, 1986) *

Mario J. Molina Mario José Molina-Pasquel Henríquez (19 March 19437 October 2020), known as Mario Molina, was a Mexican chemist. He played a pivotal role in the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, and was a co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemis ...

(Chemistry, 1995) *

Erwin Neher Erwin Neher (; ; born 20 March 1944) is a German biophysicist, specializing in the field of cell physiology. For significant contribution in the field, in 1991 he was awarded, along with Bert Sakmann, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine fo ...

(Medicine, 1991) * Ilya Prigogine (Chemistry, 1977) *

Richard J. Roberts Sir Richard John Roberts (born 6 September 1943) is a British biochemist and molecular biologist. He was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the me ...

(Medicine, 1993) *

John E. Sulston Sir John Edward Sulston (27 March 1942 – 6 March 2018) was a British biologist and academic who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cell lineage and genome of the worm ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' in 2002 with ...

(Medicine, 2002) *

Henry Taube Henry Taube, (November 30, 1915 – November 16, 2005) was a Canadian-born American chemist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his work in the mechanisms of electron-transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes." He ...

(Chemistry, 1983) *

E. Donnall Thomas Edward Donnall "Don" Thomas (March 15, 1920 – October 20, 2012)Frederick R. Appelbaum.Perspective: E. Donnall Thomas (1920–2012) Science 338(6111):1163, 30 November 2012 was an American physician, professor emeritus at the University o ...

(Medicine, 1990) *

James Dewey Watson James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick ...

(Medicine, 1962)

Past AHA presidents

* Edd Doerr * Michael W. Werner * Suzanne I. Paul * Lyle L. Simpson * Bette Chambers * Lloyd L. Morain * Robert W. McCoy * Vashti McCollum

AHA board

The then-current AHA board all signed, these being: * Melvin Lipman (president) * Lois Lyons (vice president) * Ronald W. Fegley (secretary) * John Nugent (treasurer) * Wanda Alexander * John R. Cole *

Tom Ferrick Tom Ferrick, Jr. (1949) is an editor, reporter and columnist long active in print and web journalism in Philadelphia. Until 2013, he was senior editor of Metropolis, a local news and information Web site based in Philadelphia that he founded in 20 ...

* Robert D. Finch * John M. Higgins * Herb Silverman * Maddy Urken * Mike Werner

Drafting committee

Finally, there was the drafting committee of: *

Fred Edwords Fred Edwords, born July 19, 1948, in San Diego, California, is a longtime agnostic or ignostic humanist leader in Washington DC. He served as director of planned giving for the Humanist Foundation, the endowment fund of the American Humanist As ...

(chair) * Edd Doerr (also included above as a past president of the AHA) * Tony Hileman * Pat Duffy Hutcheon * Maddy Urken

References

{{Reflist

External links

''Humanism and Its Aspirations''

''Humanism and Its Aspirations'' – Speech by Maddy Urken

Notable Signers

Critical commentary on the Humanist Manifesto III
Humanist manifestos Nontheism publications 2003 essays 2003 documents