@thatoneguy I move thic topic on a corresponding thread.
This is incorrect.
Secular humanism comes from the Enlightenment humanism, I would say even from Renaissance humanism (drawing upon a rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy), which was rationalist, materialist or deist, and hedonist. This is the humanism I adhere to, and this is the secular humanism as defined and defended by CFI, see their humanist declaration A Secular Humanist Declaration | Free Inquiry.
This declaration absolutely does not say things like “just vague ideas, e.g. be nice to others, live life to the fullest”. On the contrary. They are consequentialist, they are not here to moralize people.
There is another tendency in humanism called religious humanism, which comes, indeed, from a liberalization of Christianism (Catholicism at the very origin).
Religious humanism is the movement embodied by the American Humanist Association, organized at the beginning by protestants (Unitarians).
I think they are indeed more around ideas like, “e.g. be nice to others, live life to the fullest”.
In France, there is very brutal split between the “science emphasis” aspect of secular humanism (which was taken by French humanist associations caring exclusively about the defense of modern science, like “L’Union rationaliste” and “Association française pour l’information scientifique”), and the “philosophical” aspect of secular humanism which was taken charge of by the state (see Jules Ferry, the 1905 law, etc.).
So rarely “humanist” (ethical aspect) people in France will first an foremost self-identify as “humanist”, rather, they will self-identify as proponents of “laïcité”, “universalisme Républicain”, etc. See the Franc-Tireur network (Fourest, Enthoven, etc.), or ConspiracyWatch (Rudy Reichstadt, etc.), even Charlie Hebdo to some extent. In general, these public intellectuals have ties with the government (something which also greatly differentiates these French “humanists” from their Anglo-Saxon counterparts). See also the political movement Printemps Républicain. And so there, it’s almost like humanism goes really from being a philosophy, an ethics, to being a political philosophy (separation of Church and state, how which which phenomenon (e.g. the veil) should be tackled politically, etc.).
Personnally, I think humanism is a philosophy, so I suscribe to the Anglo-Saxon secular humanist movement, in particular the American one, that of Paul Kurtz and the CFI. But I am also interested in the French fringes I describe above. I have nothing to see with religious humanism.