Welcome

Welcome to Humanist Lives.

The course is broken up into six weeks:

Week 1: Life stories
Week 2: Freedom
Week 3: Global goals
Week 4: Hard times
Week 5: More to life
Week 6: Making things better

Throughout the course, you’ll meet many different humanists and, through their stories and experiences, you’ll learn what it means to be a humanist today.

This week, we’ll begin by meeting humanist celebrants who conduct humanist naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals. The way humanists approach these important moments in our lives will help you to develop an understanding of the humanist approach to life more generally.

In Week 2, we’ll meet humanist campaigners in the UK working to defend individual freedoms and battling against what they see as the injustices present in modern society.

In Week 3, we’ll take a more global perspective, hearing from humanists around the world, including some whose beliefs put their liberty and lives in danger.

In Week 4, we’ll meet humanists who work with people facing challenging circumstances, such as the loss of their health, freedom, or support network.

In Week 5, we’ll hear from humanists describing how they believe curiosity, creativity, and connections can provide a source of joy, wonder, and meaning in our lives.

Finally, in Week 6, we’ll meet humanists who believe their work will help to make the world a better place.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to…

• Investigate and explore different humanist approaches to life
• Identify where there is diversity between humanists and where there are shared beliefs, values, and goals
• Evaluate the choices and actions of different individual humanists in discussion with other learners
• Summarise what it means to live a humanist life
• Reflect upon one’s own approach to life

About Humanists UK

At Humanists UK, we want a tolerant world where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We work to support lasting change for a better society, championing ideas for the one life we have. We do this because we’re humanists, people who shape our own lives in the here and now, because we believe it’s the only life we get.

​​We’re committed to putting humanism into practice. Through our ceremonies, pastoral support, education services, and campaigning work, we advance free thinking and freedom of choice so everyone can live in a fair and equal society.

Our education work helps raise awareness and understanding of humanism as an ethical and fulfilling non-religious approach to life. It is informed with the support of over 150 of the UK’s most prominent philosophers, scientists, and other thinkers and experts, it seeks to promote mutual understanding between people of different beliefs, and it supports people to make their own free choices about what they believe.

For more information, please visit humanism.org.uk.