Transcript of Pat Colucci's conversation about HumanLight
with RICHARD LUI, CNN ANCHOR on December 24, 2008
And some people are making the holidays less about God and more about the good of mankind. A humanist joins us live in the NEWSROOM to shed light on HumanLight, an alternative to Christmas.
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LUI: Celebrating humanity, reason and hope. It's an atheist alternative to Christmas, Hanukkah and Ramadan. HumanLight is a secular holiday observed in late December that commemorates human achievement. Patrick Colucci from the New Jersey Humanist Network joins us right now.
Let's start with this if we can, Patrick. HumanLight celebrates the idea of humanism, right? What is humanism to you?
PATRICK COLUCCI, N.J. HUMANIST NETWORK: Humanism is a philosophy of life. It's not a religion. It's a secular philosophy and it's based upon human needs and interests.
We believe in using science and reason to understand the universe, and to solve human problems. And humanists believe in practicing the common moral decencies and the personal responsibilities, social responsibility. And we believe that working together, drawing upon the best human capacities, that we can build a better future for each other in the here and now, not in an afterlife.
LUI: And you celebrate, each year, HumanLight? That's the equivalent of saying a Christmas day, per se.
What do you do during that celebration? Which happened I guess, on the 23rd of this month, right?
COLUCCI: Yes. HumanLight Day is the 23rd, but most people celebrate it on or about that time, not exactly that day, necessarily.
LUI: And what do you do to celebrate? We were looking at some of the pictures on your Web site. We did see what looked to be doctors or scientists speaking with some of the people that are at the celebration.
COLUCCI: Yes. They were entertainers, actually.
We have -- it varies quite a bit. There's no rules or rituals about how to celebrate HumanLight. And so it can vary depending on whatever group is doing it and how they want to have it.
I think what you're seeing there is one of the children's entertainment shows we had that was based around science demonstrations. LUI: OK. Science demonstrations. So you do have some people of a science background during this period.
So, I wanted to go to something that I found in the "Wall Street Journal," Patrick. The "Wall Street Journal" saying that the American Humanist Association spent $42,000 on a bus ad saying, "Why believe in God, just be good for goodness sake."
Now, this is a picture of that ad, if you can see it.
COLUCCI: I barely see it.
LUI: Is HumanLight anti-religion, then, would you say? Or just --
COLUCCI: No. One of the things that's important about HumanLight, is it's a holiday that's very positive. Now, there's not -- I can't explain everything here, but we have a humanlight.org Web site. But there are certain principles we, who formed HumanLight, want to strongly recommend people use when they celebrate the holiday. And one of them is that it not be negative or critical of religious people.
You know, it's a positive, upbeat celebration of our humanist values and we're not there to be negative or critical of others' holidays.
LUI: Understood.
COLUCCI: And we also think it's very important to have a celebration that's a social-type gathering and that's friendly towards kids and has family-type entertainment and that's fun.
LUI: Right.
And last question for you, Patrick.
COLUCCI: Sure.
LUI: Just want to squeeze this is in before we run out of time. How many people celebrate HumanLight Day?
COLUCCI: Well, we don't know exactly how many people because it's spread around and there's no rules about reporting to us at the HumanLight Committee who's doing. So -- but we do know each year that there may be 20 different celebrations in different cities around the country. And how many people, it's hard to say.
But the number of humanists can vary. Up to 10 or 11 percent of people say they have no religion or don't believe in God, and I think a large part of those people are humanists.
But part of what HumanLight is is to reach out to those people and provide a venue or an event where if they are of like mind they can see this and it's out there in the community. It's a community- oriented event. And on our Web site, humanlight.org, we do provide suggestions. But again, they're just suggestions, about how people can celebrate their HumanLight holiday.
LUI: Patrick Colucci, thank you so much for stopping by. So I guess Happy HumanLight Day is appropriate.
COLUCCI: Happy HumanLight to you. I don't know if you celebrate it, but thank you.
LUI: OK. Thank you so much.
COLUCCI: All right. You're welcome.