Humanist organizations, sites, writings are the most available indicators of the wide range of persons who identify as “humanist.” Those are also the best correctives for humanists’ many hostile critics. Some of us are “religious,” some “secular.” But our values are typically “secular/modernist,” stemming from the Enlightenment, emergent from reasoning, enlarged by the sciences, enhanced by the arts, fostered by the emergence of democratic societies.

In contrast, the values of traditional religions are conservative, resistant to progress from cultural status quos. For humanists, there is but this world; values are human-made -- and tested by consequences: will they promote human well-being.

The Paul Kurtz legacy trumps that of any academic I have known: scholar, activist, publisher, organizer, fundraiser, international facilitator, manifesto stylist and mentor to many successors. On a few occasions his humanist pioneering led to institutional rejections, from which he recovered. The humanism he shaped and lived was indeed planetary.

The Human Prospect is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, scholarly and professional journal founded by Dr. Paul Kurtz to advance society’s understanding of the juncture of science and values in the form of humanist ethics. The journal focuses on contributions addressing the tasks of: (1) understanding the implications of recent scientific discoveries and conclusions for daily life, (2) discerning how refinements in naturalist epistemology support, or compel refinement of, specific humanist values and ethics flowing from them, and (3) with the tools of reason and science, deriving pluralistic ethical rules on specific issues that implement humanist values based in scientific understanding.