(Click to view our Statement of Principles)

“Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable; not by bowing the knee, whether to gods or to men.”

-Salman Rushdie

Re-formed in the spring of 2008 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, UB Freethinkers is a non-partisan student group dedicated to the defense of human reason and ethics, scientific thought and education, liberty of conscience, religious skepticism, and freedom of inquiry throughout all areas of our human condition. We aim to create a vibrant community of freethinkers, skeptics, atheists, agnostics, secularists, humanists, and all other non-religious students at the University at Buffalo in pursuit of these goals.

We are deeply committed to the secular, humanist, and democratic principles that transcend Greek classical antiquity, the Enlightenment of 18th-century Europe, the founding of the United States of America, and the boundless human cultural and scientific progress of the modern era.

As our fore bearers did in the United States during the late-19th and early-20th century “Golden Age of Freethought,” we seek to champion rational human understanding and ethical standards against the forces of orthodoxy and dogmatic unreason still so prevalent in contemporary society.

Associated with Center For Inquiry: On Campus and the Secular Student Alliance, we aim to host presentations, discussions, debates, speakers, and panels to promote a distinctly naturalistic, human-centered, and secular worldview at SUNY Buffalo.

Free Inquiry

We hold that absolutely nothing is above question, investigation, and criticism via human reason and utilizing proven rational principles.  All ideas — be they political, religious, economic, philosophical, born of a human mind or supposedly “revealed” to one —  are simply hypotheses, and they demonstrate their worth to us based on the evidence that does or does not support them, and the consequences they elicit.

Religions — all the thousands known to exist — are simply a culturally diverse assortment of human-created hypotheses about how the world works and how it should work, and they should be investigated and examined just like any others.  Their numerous “holy” books, proven to have been written by humans, not gods, are like any other work of literature from the past or from now:  Full of good ideas, full of bad ideas, interspersed with both tales and truths — and fully able to be criticized, revised, accepted only in part, and to have their content improved and expounded upon by future generations.

Nothing is too sacred to be questioned.

Humanism

A concern for the well-being of humans — not gods, dogmas, or church hierarchies and their belief systems — should be held first and foremost when deciding all of our actions.  This goal in mind, for ethics and values to be truly humane, they should be based on shared human reason and experience in this life, not on ancient sectarian religious dogmas, cruel superstitions, and unproven revelations of any so-called “life to come.”

In this proudly rational and humanistic sense, human rights are inherent to all individuals based upon our shared — and evolved — ability to reason and empathize with one another.  These rights exist regardless of the religious moral codes or political and legal regimes those people may live under.  Indeed, these principles are the products of human conscience; although they may overlap with some dogmas, they come before and from outside the prescriptions of religious belief. Freedom of speech, expression, religion, conscience, and dissent are the rightful liberties of all human beings because we as a social species, in cooperation and dialogue, determine it to be so, and they should be advocated for — and defended by — all of humanity.

Humanism is a term which has, in past centuries, been linked to “Christian Humanism” or “religious humanism.”  Although such views regard human beings as important and share a great many ethical principles with us, they ultimately place their emphasis on a faith and fealty to unproven gods and dogmas.  They claim that the dignity of human beings, our rights, and our very existence itself comes from those supernatural entities.  We steadfastly deny those beliefs as unfounded, unproven, irrational, and self-defeating.

In relation to the rest of our principles, our humanistic ethic and worldview is explicitly and inseparably secular, an important term which will be explained lastly below.

Science

Science has proven itself to be our best tool for examining the universe we live in and for improving the human condition worldwide.  For humanity to flourish and progress, public policy and science education must be based on observed fact and empirical evidence that survives the scientific method, not on the unproven supernatural claims of religious dogmas and myths, and the false claims of subversive pseudosciences.

We as human animals are incredibly curious; we like to figure out the world around us, we like to have explanations for phenomena, and we often feel quite uncomfortable when we don’t have answers.  However, where science has yet to find these explanations we so desire, we need not make the overzealous assumptions of our ancestors and recklessly insert unproven (and unprovable) supernatural conclusions like gods and spirits and miracles just to make ourselves comfortable with any answer.  Instead we must simply say “we don’t know yet” and turn our minds and our instruments towards the mystery.  The process is sometimes slow and it leaves a great deal unexplained in the meantime, but that is how scientific knowledge — how human knowledge – progresses:

It assumes nothing without evidence.

Science itself is amoral: It prescribes no certain way for human beings to act — it is simply a process, an invaluable tool for us to use for whatever ends we choose.  Indeed scientific knowledge has been used for both good and evil; A testament to the darker side of our evolved human nature if there ever was one.

Yet from every corner of our planet, from the depths of our seas to the surface our own moon, and from the microscopic to the very edges of our known universe, science has proven its overwhelming power to do good — and inform an unquenchably curious humanity.

Religious explanations and superstitious thought have not.

Secularism

Derived from the Latin word saecularis, meaning “of the age”, secularism is the belief that as human beings we should concern ourselves with this life, in this time, here on this planet.  Simply put, based on the evidence we have, this is all that we are certain exists.

It is an inherently humanistic concept:  We should concern ourselves solely with this known existence and condition, and strive to do the greatest good here and now, for one another and for our home — Earth.  We must not worry over or expect escape from this life into mythological afterlives, or expect unproven deities to come and save us from our circumstances here.  These things both lack absolutely any basis for belief, so instead we must face life honestly and rationally, and with confidence in our proven abilities as human beings — and deep respect for our failings and limitations.  It is up to us alone to help ourselves and each other.

Thus, to facilitate this goal and to avoid conflict within our modern pluralistic society, and to protect the sacred right of all individuals to express themselves freely and openly in the public square, our democratic governments, public civil institutions, and public educational systems must remain secular: Neutral in regards to religious or atheistic advocacy, and in law and function be strictly, entirely, and completely separate from any and all religious sects.

For further information on what we stand for, UB Freethinkers also supports the following declarations:

The Humanist Manifesto II
The Secular Humanist Declaration
The Amsterdam Declaration 2002
The Affirmations of Humanism
The International Humanist and Ethical Union Minimum Statement on Humanism
The Center for Inquiry’s Declaration in Defense of Science and Secularism