The author's approach of explaining what is humanism is to contrast it against other schools of thought. This author did so in a concise way with clarity, which is quite rare amongst philosophers. I have been confused for the longest time what IS humanism? Not to mention materialism, naturalism, unitarinism, universalism, Deism...etc, which were not covered in my two college level philosphy classes. The level of discussion in this book is simple enough that someone with my background can understand.



The 6th edition I own contains the author's introductions of previous editions, which could actually be interesting and entertaining to read. They are basically the author's sometimes condescending, sometimes logical, defense against the smearing of humanism by different religous groups. Although this book is quite old (1960s), given the increasing level of religious conservatism in US, this book still have relevance.



The reason why this book would not get a 5 star from me is that a large part of this book is devoted to proving why God does not exist and that only scientific method produces Truth. Such topic for this intro text is just too ambitious and the arugement used is probably less sophisticated that other books that attempts to disprove the existence of god. It feels like there is cherry picking of examples. The author used examples, perhaps too many of them, to explain why things like natural moral law, miracles, after life, mysticism..etc does not makes sense. I agree with one reviewer that the author's tone is dogmatic. I expect this author, as an academics, to sound less opinionated and more open minded.



After understanding what humanist means, I agree with the author that many forms of beliefs has qualities of humanism. However, I am not persuaded by the author that other forms of beliefs are necessarily wrong. I think I am 50% athetist and 50% agnostic. This book did not manage to suade me to the athetist camp.

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