I went to a humanist meeting once. It featured a pseudoscientific presentation on why a very specific learning disability made people functionally incapable of being truly atheistic (I went with somebody who had that learning disability, who was an atheist, and who was very-not-amused). The only other thing I remember was an older gentle…
I went to a humanist meeting once. It featured a pseudoscientific presentation on why a very specific learning disability made people functionally incapable of being truly atheistic (I went with somebody who had that learning disability, who was an atheist, and who was very-not-amused). The only other thing I remember was an older gentleman, who was dying, who asked if anybody had any advice on dealing with death as an atheist. (I had advice, but opted not to give it; it'd be like somebody who has never had alcohol trying to counsel an alcoholic on how to overcome alcoholism. I'm not there. Probably never will be, as my curiosity about whether or not quantum immortality is valid is pretty strong, and I can't be disappointed by the answer.)
Also the two of us were the youngest by twenty years.
This was when the internet was still mostly "email", mind; the few subcultures on the internet at the time were quite unusual.
So I don't think the question is what happened to the humanist community today. The question is what happened to the humanist community around 1980, when, apparently, they stopped getting any new members. And, personally, I think the answer is fairly obvious. An increasingly mobile society. I've observed a similar phenomenon with a number of other social groups; Rotary Clubs, Loyal Order of the Moose, the Masonic Order of the Temple. All seem to have suffered greatly over a forty year span, which has recently, seemingly, finally ended.
I went to a humanist meeting once. It featured a pseudoscientific presentation on why a very specific learning disability made people functionally incapable of being truly atheistic (I went with somebody who had that learning disability, who was an atheist, and who was very-not-amused). The only other thing I remember was an older gentleman, who was dying, who asked if anybody had any advice on dealing with death as an atheist. (I had advice, but opted not to give it; it'd be like somebody who has never had alcohol trying to counsel an alcoholic on how to overcome alcoholism. I'm not there. Probably never will be, as my curiosity about whether or not quantum immortality is valid is pretty strong, and I can't be disappointed by the answer.)
Also the two of us were the youngest by twenty years.
This was when the internet was still mostly "email", mind; the few subcultures on the internet at the time were quite unusual.
So I don't think the question is what happened to the humanist community today. The question is what happened to the humanist community around 1980, when, apparently, they stopped getting any new members. And, personally, I think the answer is fairly obvious. An increasingly mobile society. I've observed a similar phenomenon with a number of other social groups; Rotary Clubs, Loyal Order of the Moose, the Masonic Order of the Temple. All seem to have suffered greatly over a forty year span, which has recently, seemingly, finally ended.