Against All Gods: The Way to Humanism

The author's grandfather (born 1832) was a farm worker and jobbing gardener who, unusually for the time, was a committed atheist. An autodidact, his education ended when he was eleven, but he became well enough read to be, from his soap box, a socialist scourge of Ayrshire aristocracy and to correspond regularly with Keir Hardie and George Bernard Shaw. His son, the author's father (born 1882), worked his way from poverty to Glasgow University and subsequent Training College to become a schoolteacher, but later decided to take a BD degree at Edinburgh University and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. That did not find favour with his father, who told him never to darken the door of the family home in Girvan till he gave up &quote;that daft dog collar&quote;. That he never did, but the author, his son (born 1930), eventually followed his grandfather's ways, rejecting his father's. In due course he came to write this &quote;apologia pro vita sua&quote; as an atheist humanist. The book presents the view that all human experience, behaviour, thought, understanding and productive activity are the products of or depend on healthy human brains, educated and trained, to some extent, in the arts, sciences and the scientific method. The book proposes that the concept of &quote;god&quote; is unnecessary and differences in understanding or using it are a source of conflict or even wars which continue to threaten human progress and indeed the species as a whole. There is no need to invoke gods as the creators of man, the cosmos and systems of morality. Evolution and history demonstrate that such systems would emerge naturally and progressively without any &quote;divine tutorials or interventions&quote;. Rationality and the scientific method offer insightful and effective understanding and ameliorations of the human condition rather than dependence on supernatural and superstitious principles demanded by gods and their prophets. Humanists may sometimes adopt moral principles from religious precepts, but only if they can be validated by present human knowledge and experience.