Lesson video

Hello everyone and welcome to our RE lesson for today.

My name is Miss Harrison, and I'm going to be teaching you for this RE our unit all about humanism.

And humanism isn't actually a religion.

It's a non-religious world view.

And throughout the course of this unit, we are going to explore some of the key beliefs that humanness hold.

So let's get started.

In our first lesson today, we're going to be thinking about a big question.

And that question is, what is a human? Because humanism and humanist beliefs are all founded on that idea of what we as humans are.

Now in our lesson today, we're going to think about that big question what is a human? We're going to think about where humans come from and then we're going to have some new vocabulary.

We're going to look at what does it mean to be a theist, an atheist, or agnostic.

Now don't worry if you haven't heard those words before because we're going to go through them in our lesson today.

And then finally, we're going to think about what makes humans so special.

Now, before we get started with our lesson today, you are going to need these things ready in front of you.

So you're going to need some paper or a notepad to write down on.

You're going to need a pen or a pencil to write with, and you are going to need your inquisitive human brain.

Now, if you haven't got one of those things or if you'd like to just find a quiet space without any distractions before we begin our lesson, then you can pause the video now so make sure you're ready.

Perfect, let's get started.

So here is our big question.

What is a human? Because we are all human.

So a human us, we are animals who have evolved to be able to learn, to make our own choices and to have our own beliefs.

Now that's a humanist view of what humans are.

So we've evolved over millions of years and we're now able to learn.

We're able to make our own choices and have our own beliefs.

But where do we come from? Now humanists do not believe that we were created by God.

That's a big difference between humanism and non-religious worldview and lots of the major world religions that you might have learned about already.

So many religions believe that humans were created by a God or by another supernatural power.

Humanists don't believe that.

They don't believe we were created by God.

They believe that we evolved over millions of years.

And this belief is based on scientific fact and evidence.

For example, research done by scientists like Charles Darwin who was the first scientist to publish his theory on evolution and how humans came to be.

So one of the main beliefs of humanist is that they don't believe we were created by God.

They believe in the scientific fact that we have evolved over millions of years of time.

So my first challenge for you I have a true or false question.

Humanists believe that we were created by God or another supernatural power.

Is it true or is it false? Pause the video now and write your answer down.

Let's see how we did.

So do we think it was true or do we think it was false that humanist believe we were created by God or another supernatural power? Let's have a look.

It was false.

So humanist don't believe that we were created by God or a supernatural power.

Humanists believe that we don't have a creator, that we've evolved from animals.

And we know this by studying the science of evolution.

Now it's important to remember that lots of people who have a religion and lots of different religions also believe in evolution.

It's not just humanists that believe in the theory of evolution.

Lots of people who have faith and are of different religions also believe that we evolved over a long period of time.

But some religious people believe that God set the conditions for that evolution.

So it's not just humanists that believe in evolution, many people of different cultures and different faiths believe in evolution as well.

But some religious people believe that God provided the conditions for evolution whereas humanists don't believe that God had any part in creating human life.

So that leads us on to our new vocabulary section.

What does it mean to be a theist, an atheist, or agnostic? Let's have a look at those three key words.

So first of all, we have the word theist.

Now a theist is someone that believes that there is a God or gods.

For example, a creator who created the world or created human life.

If you believe that, you might consider yourself a theist.

Then an atheist is the opposite belief of that.

So an atheist believes that there is not a God or gods.

So they don't believe that humans were created by any kind of supernatural power.

And then we have the term agnostic.

If you are agnostic, that means that you believe that we cannot know or prove whether God exists or not.

So a theist believes that there is a God.

An atheist believes that there is not a God.

They don't believe in God or gods.

And an agnostic person believes that we can't really know or prove whether there is a God or not.

Those are our three pieces of vocabulary and I'm going to test how well you remember them now.

So have a look down the left-hand side we have those three bits of vocabulary, and on the right hand side we have three definitions.

What I would like you to do is write down these three words that we have just learned theist, atheist, and agnostic.

And then I would like you to find the correct definition that matches that word and write it down.

So pause the video now, see if you can match the word to the definition.

Let's see how well we have done.

So first of all a theist believes that there is a God or gods for example, a creator who created the world.

If you have got that right, give yourself a big tick, well done.

Next up, we have an atheist.

An atheist believes that there is no God or gods.

They don't believe in a God or any gods or supernatural powers.

Give yourself a tick if you've got that definition right.

And then that leaves us with the word agnostic which means someone who believes that we cannot know or prove whether a God exists.

Give yourself a big tick if you've got those right.

If you need to fix them, that's okay you can fix them now.

Fantastic, so humanists are usually atheists or agnostics.

They could be either one.

So they don't believe that we were created by a God or any other supernatural power.

Instead, humanists believe that we can use reason and evidence to find out more about the world.

So they don't believe that there is a supernatural power changing things or creating things on our planet.

That's not what they believe.

They believe that we can find evidence and use reason to find out more about our world.

And they also believe that human beings should try to live full and happy lives and help others to do the same.

So for humanists, the most important thing isn't whether or not you believe in a God, but it's how you live your life.

So they don't believe that there is a God or they might be agnostic and believe that we can't prove that there's a God.

And instead they use reason, science, and evidence to make out things and to find things out about our world.

Now there's a famous quote here from David Hume who is a philosopher and he's also a humanist.

And this matches one of the main beliefs of humanism.

And it says a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

And that's what humanists do.

They want to find evidence and use reason and scientific explanations for things rather than believing in a God or supernatural power.

So let's move on to our next question.

What makes humans special? Now, I think that everybody has something special about them.

And humanists also believe that.

So what makes humans so special? I want you to have a think about someone in your life that means a lot to you.

And I want you to think about the qualities that that person has that make them special.

So if I was thinking about someone in my life, somebody very, very special to me is my mum.

And my mum is really special because she has qualities like kindness, like fairness, like compassion, which means she can relate to other people's feelings but also she is a very sensible person.

So if I'm ever worried about something, she is a very good person to speak to.

I want you to have a think about somebody in your life who's really special to you and what qualities do they have that make them so special? Pause the video now, use the sentence starters on the screen and write me some sentences about someone who means a lot to you and what makes them so special.

Off you go.

Okay, fantastic work.

So let's see what humanists believe make us as humans so special.

So humanists belief that humans aren't perfect.

Nobody is perfect, but there are lots of things that make us special.

And humanists really value human life.

And so they believe that everybody is special and everybody deserves to have a really nice life.

And they also value human achievements because there are loads of things that humans have discovered or invented throughout history.

Now, humanists believe that they should ask questions about life and can investigate.

So using things like science and research to answer those questions.

So they don't believe that we're special because we were created by a God.

They believe that we're special because we have curiosity and we can investigate and find out answers to things.

And humanists believe that we have evolved to have freedom of thought.

Which means that we can believe or think whatever we want and we can make our own decisions.

Now, humans are also different from other types of animals because we have a very sophisticated language and that helps us to communicate with each other.

Human beings also have evolved to develop empathy, which means we can read facial expressions and body language to help us understand how other people are feeling and to show kindness to one another.

So those are really important things that human beings have which make us really, really special.

And that's something that humanists really like to celebrate.

So I want you to have a think now throughout history what amazing things have humans achieved? You might want to think of things that have been invented or places that have been explored or things that humans have done or created that is really, really extraordinary.

So humans have achieved many great things throughout history including let's see how many of those things you can think of and write down.

So you've got your sentence start on the screen, pause the video now and write me your sentence.

Awesome work everybody.

Let's have a look.

I'm sure you've got loads of examples written down on your page.

Let's have a look of some that I thought about.

So humanists really celebrate all of the achievements that human beings have made.

And throughout history, the human race has achieved so many different things.

These are just some examples that I wanted to share with you.

So things like finding medicines and cures for diseases is a really, really amazing thing that humans have discovered and improved throughout history.

We then have things like travelling the world.

If you think back 100, 200 years, then we wouldn't have had aeroplanes , we wouldn't have been able to travel to different places as easily as we can today.

We then have essential inventions.

There are thousands of millions of inventions that have been created and thought of by humans.

Things that we use every day like light bulbs didn't exist maybe 200 years ago.

Things like learning how to use electricity, learning different power sources that we can use, things like computers and technology weren't invented kind of hundreds of years ago.

And so that's an amazing thing that humans have achieved.

And then we've got other things like helping others and making the world fairer.

Now I would argue that this isn't something that has been completely achieved all over the world but it's something that lots of human beings and lots of people are working really hard to do all the time and have been throughout history.

And that's another really great quality of humans.

So these are just some of the qualities that we've thought about today that make humans so special.

So curiosity being curious about the world and wanting to find out more.

Empathy being able to relate to other people's emotions.

Creativity learning to create works of art or think of new ways of doing things.

Kindness and being really kind and fair to each other.

Our ability to learn new skills, our adaptiveness means being able to change depending on different environments that we come into contact with.

Communication and language is a really, really important one so that we can communicate with other people.

And our imagination being super creative and thinking of all of the different stories or books or films that have been created by human beings.

So these are just some of the qualities that humanists like to celebrate.

Which of these qualities do you value most? Which is the most important to you out of these examples? I want you to pause the video now, have a thing and write down a sentence.

The most important value to me is, pause the video, have a go.

Well done everybody.

I would love to find out what the most important quality you think is that makes humans so special.

Now that's all we've got time for in our lesson today team.

Well done for all of your hard work.

I really enjoyed our first lesson on humanism and I hope you have too.

Now, if you are feeling really proud of the work you've done, and if you'd like to share your work with the Oak National team, you could ask a parent or carer to take a photo of the work that you've done and upload it to social media tagging @OakNational and with the #LearnwithOak.

That way some of your teachers from Oak Academy might be able to see some of the wonderful pieces of work you are doing at home.

So well done for all your hard work today everyone.

I hope you've enjoyed it and I will see you for our next lesson on humanism.