At age 12, I was a devout Catholic boy who considered becoming a priest.

For various reasons, this devout religiosity didn’t last. Within a few years, I was embroiled in a crisis of faith. By age 16, my Catholicism was crumbling. I tried to hang on, but when I turned to clergy with my questions, they were no help. Answers like “That’s a divine mystery,” or “We are not meant to know some things,” were simply not satisfying.

The more I searched for answers, the more unstable the church foundation became. By my senior year in high school, I had stopped attending weekly mass and was calling myself an agnostic.

I drifted through my college years avoiding labels and clinging to vague philosophical notions of an order to the universe. During late-night dorm room bull sessions, I would shrug when asked what I believed about God. I wasn’t sure, I’d say.

Deep down inside, I knew better. I wasn’t just skeptical of the existence of a deity; I had also embraced the position that the universe doesn’t allow for magic and miracles. If there’s an order to things, it’s only that the laws of physics apply. Those laws can’t be arbitrarily suspended by gods. We must be skeptical of those who say they represent gods or anyone who claims supernatural powers.

As a teenager, I remember hearing a psychic on the radio. People would call in and ask about lost items. His answers were vague, and he was pompous, but the callers really seemed to believe he was helping them. I knew it was nonsense, but I hadn’t connected the dots. I was too young to understand that rejection of all miraculous claims could be the basis for a coherent philosophy of life.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was a secular humanist. Why didn’t I know it? Well, I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing! The words “secular humanist” meant nothing to me. I had never heard them before.

And when I did see them for the first time, I wasn’t sure what they meant. Finding information in the pre-Internet age could be a challenge. These days, if you’re a left-handed Lithuanian who’s fond of bowling, a couple of keystrokes on Google will bring you an instant community. Not so in 1981, even on universities. So I remained adrift. Although I talked with my friends about God during my years in college, other matters like classes, socializing, and the school newspaper took precedence.

By 1987, I was making my living as a writer in the Washington, D.C. area. A friend who knew of my spiritual unsettledness passed along a copy of a magazine I hadn’t seen before, Free Inquiry.

As I searched out and devoured issues of the magazine, I realized this was what I had been looking for. But for me, one piece of the puzzle remained: What is the basis of a truly secular system of ethics?

It’s a less vexing question now, but at the time it was a stumbling block for me. Like most Americans, I had been taught that only religion could guarantee ethical behavior. Without some sort of system of divine punishment and reward, people were capable of doing anything.

That’s where Paul Kurtz’s book Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism came in¹. Paul’s book was like a revelation – a secular one, of course – to me. For the first time, someone had explained the basis of a truly secular ethics.

Kurtz outlined what he called the “common moral decencies.” But he did more than simply provide a list. Kurtz framed these precepts against historical and cultural backdrops. Essentially, his argument was that these decencies occur in societies time and time again. Wherever and whenever people attempt to live together in peace, the decencies surface. Their origin is simple: Societies based on violence, theft, and distrust cannot long survive. A moral framework must arise. It can and does. Religions may claim these rules as their own, but they transcend specific faith communities. They are the inheritance of all humankind.

Knowledge of good and evil outside the traditional god concept is the “forbidden fruit,” and Kurtz argued that we must not hesitate to consume it.

But Kurtz did not stop there. He outlined a philosophical argument that I quickly realized had a much broader application. For example, his views struck a powerful blow against all forms of racism: We are bound together by our common evolutionary origins. We may choose to erect artificial barriers, but they are just that: artificial. Our common origins spring from Eastern Africa. Our journey has been a human one. Yes, we may have different features and appearances, but there is much more that holds us together than drives us apart.

I was also drawn to Kurtz’s open and user-friendly humanism. There was nothing bitter or vindictive about the belief system he put forth. Rather, it was optimistic and anchored not in an angry reaction to faith but in a hopeful vision for what humans are capable of achieving when guided by reason and science.

The best thing about Forbidden Fruit, from my perspective at least, is that it is completely accessible to the average reader. In college, I had struggled with the writings of several existentialist philosophers for a required English course. They almost put me off philosophy. Kurtz’s tome, written in clear, straightforward prose, is for everyone. That’s important. Philosophy must be brought to the level of the average reader if it is to have the broadest possible impact. Some of Kurtz’s later works were more challenging, but Forbidden Fruit is his book for everyone. It’s the best distillation of the ethics of humanism that I have encountered.

Of course, there are still those among us who believe that without the crutch of religion, there can be no true morality. They see a secular world as one plagued by violence, a place ruled by fear and gripped by chaos.

Ironically, the world as it stands today disproves their assertion. The largely secular nations of Western Europe and Scandinavia have much lower crime rates than the United States, and strong social safety nets designed to shelter people from the swings of crude market forces and provide a cushion during economic downturns². Many of the nations most entwined with fundamentalist religion – especially hard-line Islamic countries – retain barbaric practices such as public executions and harsh punishments for even non-violent crimes.

Human life is cheap in such places because all life is believed to be the property of a wrathful deity who demands blind obedience to arbitrary rules or some human’s interpretation of these rules. You only rent your life in such places, and this God holds the lease. When life hinges on the whim of a god, it can easily be taken away without guilt or remorse.

Kurtz knew why this was wrong. His secular ethic teaches that life is precious because it belongs to each of us, and to deny it is the worst possible offense. A society that fails to respect an individual’s right to self-determination will not long survive.

The substance of this realization is the forbidden fruit Kurtz offered to me and so many others. After one bite, there was no turning back.