Bill sent this to me via email.
I'm putting it on the website to encourage discussion from members.
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Recently the IHEU donated a considerable sum of money to help the victims of the earthquake disaster in Haiti. This would seem to be a laudable ethical act of assistance to our fellow human beings. Unfortunately, this may in fact simply be an act that may help to guarantee greater disasters and misery for humans in the future.

The following article by author Dorothy Rowe was published in our print journal.

Dorothy Rowe is author of the book
“What Should I Believe” published by Routledge…………………………...Ed.

As scientists prove that faith can relieve pain, distinguished psychologist Dorothy Rowe examines the case for and against religion.

Laaden Fletcher has written this short history of the Humanist movement in WA from its inception in 1965 to 2005.
It gives a very good idea of what the Society attempts to do.
We can only hope the next chapter will show that we have continued to build the Society and justified the efforts of our predecessors.

This is really LAADEN'S BLOG.

What is Humanism? What do you Humanists do?
These are the troublesome questions because we need a short simple answer and it is counter productive to frame it in negative terms.
It is terribly unsatisfactory to say what we are not yet this is the temptation.
We say that we live without recourse to supernatural beings and we find this necessary in a world in which so many define themselves in terms of religious belief: they are Christian, Islamic, Hindu etc.
Since we hold none of these beliefs should we define ourselves as not doing so?

Speech made to Perth Rostrum Club No 1 many years ago

I want to explain some fundamental disbeliefs that I hold.

1. I do not believe that there is a God separate from the universe, who created the universe.
The basic argument used by all religions to demonstrate the existence of God is the argument of the first cause.
i.e. Every event has a cause.
Here is the universe.
Something or someone must have caused it.
That something is God.
God didn’t need to have a cause because God is a pure spirit who always was and always will be.

I don't worry about the fact that some other people believe in a supreme being who created this universe and that a man executed 2000 or so years ago came back to life.

I don't worry if they believe holy water can cure cancer even if it can't restore an amputated limb. That's quite OK. Its OK if they pray to this god and to various dead people declared to be saints.

As long as they confine themselves to these beliefs and prayers they are harmless enough.