Back to the Enlightenment roots
The original Enlightenment included a range of ideas centred on the pursuit of happiness, sovereignty of reason, and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
We believe those values never faded away and are, in fact, as foundational today as they were three hundred years ago.
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious
enemy justice can have.”
James Baldwin
1924-1976
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
Margaret Atwood
1939 –
“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry”
Richard Dawkins
1941 –
“Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group”
Steven Pinker
1954 –
“Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing”
Hannah Arendt
1906-1975
Welcome to civilized debate
A group of Canadian humanists have created a space where people can freely discuss subjects of concern in civilized debate. The New Enlightenment Project website contains information on enlightenment principles and invites forum discussion about their application and modification.
While the sovereignty of empiricism and reason along with advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, and fraternity have universal application, what deserves to remain universal and what is best left to particular cultures is the raging debate of our time. This forum allows such discussion.
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- Two Solitudes of Secularism
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