Humankind is about to cross a threshold to a potentially fantastic future when we will realize long sought after goals, but before we can get there we must survive the most treacherous part of our journey.
The belief that humanity is inescapably heading to a tragic demise is widespread. But such thinking is flawed, the result of a misanthropic interpretation of the human experience, a cynical view of human nature, and a distorted, truncated sense of the chronological scale on which the human drama is unfolding. Far from the end being near, our human journey has hardly begun, and recognizing this is key to our survival. Pervasive cynicism about our future is perilous and can lead to a disastrous self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is clear however, that humanity now faces the most serious threats to its future it has ever encountered. To not succumb to the existential threats we face, we need to advance our social progress to catch up with the accelerating technological change challenging us. Advancing socially to avoid calamity requires a new way to think about our human experience which is exactly what Naturalistic Humanism provides. Promoting an understanding of human behavior based on evidence and reason, along with an experimental mindset, Naturalistic Humanism is as firmly rooted in reality as is the accelerating technological change threatening us.
The unparalleled success of humankind resulted from being an experimental society — learning by trial and error and inventing ways to share our cumulative knowledge. Eventually, humankind transitioned from a nomadic existence to living in settled communities where experimentation became relegated to specialists. About 500 years ago we developed the scientific method, igniting an acceleration of knowledge that completely transformed us. Naturalistic knowledge acquired by applying the scientific method has given us considerable control of our physical world, enabled us to live richer, longer, healthier lives, and in recent decades, given us significant insight as to why we behave as we do.
Supporting a widespread reinvigoration of the experimental mindset, and applying evidence-based knowledge from social science and neuroscience, Naturalistic Humanism offers a comprehensive approach to achieving lasting personal growth, developing gratifying relationships, establishing supportive experimental communities, becoming a more stable, happier society, and satisfying our spiritual needs naturalistically.