Humanism is the tradition that insists human beings can find meaning, purpose, ethics, and community without reference to the supernatural — that the values of compassion, justice, beauty, and love are not diminished by their human origin but made more urgent by it. It is not new: Confucius oriented an entire civilization around human relationships and moral cultivation without appeal to a creator God; Stoic philosophy built a complete ethical system from reason and nature alone. Secular humanism inherits this tradition and faces the genuine challenge of building institutions — rituals, communities, rites of passage — that can carry what religion has carried without the metaphysical architecture religion provides.
Rumi