Natural Humanists do not believe in any God, and do not believe in any other type of ‘creator’, ‘higher power’, omni-potent or supernatural being, heaven, hell, devil, demon, or in a ‘mother nature’.
They acknowledge that our human species has existed for around 300,000 years[i], but for 98.2% of this time we didn’t follow any religion at all, and we have only followed most of the world’s current religions for less than 0.7% of this time[ii], with Judaism and Vedic Brahmanism, which is linked to Hinduism, being the only current religions that date back more than 4,000 of these 300,000 years[iii]. They also recognise that, in Britain, which has traditionally considered itself to be a Christian country, there are now more atheists than those who believe in God.
Natural Humanists do not believe in reincarnation, or an afterlife, and believe that this is our one chance to make a difference to the world and to live a truly happy, meaningful and fulfilling life, because, when we die, we only continue to exist in people’s memories, and in the legacy that we leave behind.
Natural Humanists believe, passionately, that all human beings, throughout their lives,should always ‘live as one’, not only with other human beings, but with all other species of living thing on Earth. They recognise that we’re all connected by the same common ancestors, all share the same planet, and all have a moral duty to live our lives without ever unnecessarily causing each other harm, and, wherever possible, supporting and nurturing each other, to make the very most of our short time on Earth.
Natural Humanists believe in the ‘Big Bang’ theory of how the world was created, which is that it suddenly came into existence approximately 13,700 million years ago, when all matter existed in a tiny amount of space, but then suddenly expanded, explosively, to create our vast universe[iv].
They believe that all human beings evolved, over thousands of millions of years, from primitive life-forms, to sea creatures, which gradually evolved the ability to live on land, to walk with 4 legs, and eventually to live in trees, and to walk upright with two legs, before, finally, after billions of years of evolution, they developed, around 300,000 years ago[v], into our own unique human species, called ‘homo-sapiens’, at which point every single human being on Earth lived in the Rift Valley region of East Africa, which, today, includes Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire[vi].
Natural Humanists acknowledge that, from East Africa, Humans gradually migrated to inhabit most parts of the world, with some research[vii] suggesting that they inhabited Southern Africa (150,000-260,000 years ago), Western Africa (130,000 years ago), Western Eurasia (Europe and Asia) (115,000-130,000 years ago), the United Arab Emirates (125,000 years ago), parts of China (111,000-139,000 years ago), Oman (106,000 years ago) and to southern China around 100,000 years ago[viii].
Sadly, many of the human beings who migrated up to this point in our history eventually died out [ix], and it wasn’t until around 50-75,000 years ago, that migrations from Africa began, that would lead to permanent settlement of the world by human beings, including migrations to Yemen and the Indian Subcontinent 75,000 years ago, to Australia around 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, to South Asia by 55,000 years ago, to Polynesia and Siberia around 52,000 years ago, and to Europe, including Britain, Germany and Italy, around 40,000 years ago[x].
At this time, Northern European temperatures sometimes dropped to −20 or −30 °C, and humans could only survive by wearing animal skins, building primitive homes with fires, and burning animal bones for heat[xi], however, a volcanic eruption near Naples in Italy, eventually covered much of eastern Europe with ash, which killed off these first European migrants[xii], so today’s Europeans are thought to have derived only from humans who migrated to Europe after the effects of this eruption, and after the ‘ice-age’ that occurred 36,000 to 38,000 years ago, so humans didn’t permanently inhabit Europe until as recently as 25,000 years ago[xiii].
Humans also migrated to Siberia, Korea and Japan by about 35,000 years ago[xiv], tothe islands of Southeast Asia, which, at that time formed one land mass called Sunda (20,000 years ago), and from there, across the sea to Sahul, which at that time was a land mass that incorporated Australia and New Guinea, from where they eventually migrated into North America[xv].
They also migrated from Central Asia to the Americas, reaching North America at some point between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago[xvi], using the natural land bridge between eastern Siberia and what is now Alaska, before then migrating throughout North and South America by the end of the last ‘ice-age’ [xvii].
After the last ice age, about 9,000 years ago, humans started migrating into areas previously covered by glaciers, and also migrated to the Caribbean, both 5500 to 6000 years ago (from Central America) and 4000 years ago (from South America) [xviii], and they also migrated to North America’s central and eastern Arctic around 4500 years ago[xix].
Migration didn’t start to happen by sea,until humans from Austronesia, sailed from Taiwan, to the islands of Southeast Asia (3000 to 4200 years ago) [xx] and humans also migrated to Micronesia (3000 to 4200 years ago), Melanesia (3000 to 3600 years ago), Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji (3200 years ago), Samoa and Tonga (2800 to 2900 years ago), the Cook Islands, the Society Islands and the Marquesas (1300 years ago), Madagascar and the Comoros Islands (by 1500 years ago), Hawaii (1100 years ago), Rapa Nui (1000 years ago) and New Zealand (800 years ago) [xxi].
Natural Humanists recognise that all this migration, was an incredibly important part of our human history, and that humans have continued to migrate ever since, for a variety of reasons. Consequently, they believe strongly, that migration will always be an important part of what it is to be human.
Natural Humanists also acknowledge that, although our own unique human species, homo-sapiens, has existed for only 300,000 years[xxii], every human being on Earth, of every race, colour, religion and culture, has many of the same direct ancestors, dating back hundreds of millions of years, and, very importantly, all other living things on Earth, also evolved from the same common early ancestors that we did. Natural Humanists therefore recognise and celebrate the fact that all human beings, and every other living thing on Earth, are effectively related, and so are one massive, global ‘extended family’.
Despite the fact that human beings have existed for as much as 300,000 years[xxiii], on average, we only started to live beyond 30 years old about 30,000 years ago, which was the first time that human beings had ever lived long enough to see their own grandchildren[xxiv]. Even in the Palaeolithic era (12,000 years ago and earlier), life expectancy was still only about 33 years[xxv] and, 40% of people didn’t even reach 15 years old[xxvi], whereas in Classical Greece, about half of people died before puberty and, in Ancient Rome, only about half of people reached 10 years old[xxvii].
From the 1500s, until the early-1800s, life expectancy throughout Europe was around 30 to 40 years, and around 25% of all children died before they were 5 years old[xxviii]. Even at the beginning of the 1800s, no country in the world had a life expectancy above 40 years, and it was still 40 years in England, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1840.[xxix]
However, due to improved access to clean water and nutritious food, and improvements in healthcare, immunisation and sanitation[xxx], average life expectancy, worldwide, finally increased from around 31-32 in 1900, to around 45.7 to 48 in 1950 and finally to around 72.6 to 73.2 in 2020, and it’s even higher than this in some places, like Hong Kong, where it’s 85.3 [xxxi], and some human beings can even live to be over 122 years old[xxxii].
Natural Humanists recognise that life expectancy is expected to continue to increase, although some researchers believe that obesity, which is due in no small part to immoral over-consumption of animal products, may stop or reverse this increase, including in the USA, where 2/3 of the population are overweight or obese, and so are at higher risk of conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes[xxxiii],[xxxiv].
Natural Humanists recognise that this increased life expectancy, combined with the already massive human population on Earth, are a direct threat to all the other species of living things with which we share the planet, so unfairly.
Our planet and its millions of species of living things may have been able to survive when the world’s population was similar to that of a small city, but now the population is 8,200 million,[xxxv] the only moral option is to drastically how human beings interact with and use our shared planet.
Abusing the Planet
Our own human species, ‘homo-sapiens’, first came into existence 300,000 years ago[xxxvi], and for most of the time we’ve existed, we’ve been hunter-gatherers, so, like all other living things, we’ve lived in ‘natural balance’ with all other species on the planet, without owning or destroying any part of the Earth.
However, a mere 13,000 years ago, we started to domesticate and ‘farm’ previously wild animals for their meat, skins and other body-parts[xxxvii], at first sheep, around 11-13,000 years ago, and then cattle, around 10,500 years ago[xxxviii], at which point we ‘stole’ land, from all of the thousands of other species of plants, animals, fungi and algae that had previously, for millions of years, called it their home.
We used this ‘stolen’ land solely to graze, house and grow feed for these captive (imprisoned) animals, and later to also grow plants as food crops, purely for our own benefit, either to feed ourselves, or to feed these farm animals, which we later killed for our own food.
It was this switch to a secure, reliable and plentiful supply of nutritious food, from these imprisoned and enslaved animals, and from this ‘stolen’ farmland, which allowed the population of human beings on Earth to sky-rocket from 4 million (12,000 years ago) to 1,000 million in 1800, and finally to a massive 8,200 million today[xxxix],[xl].
Natural Humanists recognise that, in addition to ‘domesticating’ or enslaving animals on farms, human beings also have a long history of immorally imprisoning, enslaving, degrading and abusing animals as their ‘pets’.
The first animals which human beings domesticated, were dogs, in Siberia, 19,700 to 26,000 years ago[xli], which was before agriculture even existed, when humans were hunter-gatherers. Today, there are about 471 million pet dogs worldwide[xlii], all of which evolved from a type of wolf that’s now extinct, whose nearest living relative is the modern grey wolf[xliii].
All domestic cats evolved from African wild cats, in Egypt and the Near East, and although they first lived with humans so that they could hunt rodents, they were eventually fully domesticated around 3,525 years ago[xliv] and, today, there are about 600 million domestic cats worldwide[xlv].
Because of our selfish decision to domesticate, control and abuse animals for our own needs, human beings and their enslaved pets and farm animals now take up most of the land on the planet, and 40% of the non-frozen land on Earth is now non-biodiverse monoculture[xlvi], for example, fields of crops planted by humans for food, or pasture-land for humans’ farm animals, or grass in fields and gardens intended solely for human leisure activities. Consequently, worldwide populations of wildlife have reduced by a massive 69% in just the last 48 years[xlvii]
Shamefully, of all the countries on the planet, the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted and least biodiverse countries of all[xlviii], for example, research suggests that the UK and Ireland have lost at least 90% of their wetland habitats in the last 100 years[xlix], often due to human beings draining them, or building dams or flood barriers, or allowing them to become polluted by untreated sewage, and so over 2/3 of freshwater and wetland species in the UK are now in decline and over 10% are threatened with extinction[l].
Natural Humanists recognise the huge importance to our planet of biodiversity, which is the huge variety of different plants, animals and micro-organisms that exist, or are capable of thriving, in a particular area, or in a particular climate, as well as their genes, and the ‘ecosystems’ that they’re part of[li].
They acknowledge that these ‘ecosystems’ are combinations of different species, which coexist and support each other’s existence, by providing each other with things like oxygen, water, food and numerous other benefits[lii]. For example, trees provide a habitat for algae, birds and insects, produce fruit which feeds animals and bacteria, and discard leaves and branches which provide food and habitats for a wide variety of living things, as well as forming part of the nests of birds. Trees also turn the CO2 that human beings and other animals breathe out, into oxygen that’s essential for the survival of human beings and many other species[liii].
Incidentally, Natural Humanists believe, passionately, that all human beings, throughout the world, should try to work together, and to support each other, in the same way that diverse species do within ecosystems. They also believe that it’s always better for human beings to live, and to work together, than to selfishly try to meet only their own needs, while ignoring those of other human beings or other species, something that, sadly, is at the core of many human beings’ existence in today’s world.
In nature, biodiversity is important to allow ecosystems to adjust to threats like fires and floods, and helps to prevent the spread of diseases[liv], but, today, as many as one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction[lv]and as many as around 1/3 of all of the world’s known species could become extinct, including 12% of birds, 21% of mammals and 29% of amphibians[lvi].
Natural Humanists recognise that human beings, and all other species on the planet, have always been an important part of these ecosystems, with each species helping to meet the others’ needs, until human’s started to farm land and animals for food, at which point, both all human beings, and all of their domesticated farm animals and pets, started to exist almost entirely outside these ecosystems, hardly contributing anything to other species at all, while also permanently stealing their land, and their sources of food and habitat, all solely to meet human beings’ own needs and, increasingly, to satisfy human beings’ unnecessary, and hugely selfish ‘wants’ and desires as well. Consequently, in the modern world, human beings often feel disconnected from the ecosystems of which they’ve always been part, as they no longer obtain their food from wild plants, or hunt wild animals, and even their own waste is treated, on an industrial scale.
Natural Humanists acknowledge that only about 75% of the world’s biodiversity still exists, whereas, in the UK it’s only 50% [lvii], which, arguably, is significantly down to the deep scars left on the UK by both the industrial revolution and by capitalism.
They recognise that biodiversity is now declining faster than at any time in human history,[lviii] and, since 1970, the population of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians has reduced by an average of 70% [lix] and, today, almost a quarter of all the world’s mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians are thought to be threatened with extinction[lx].
Today, there are perhaps as many as 30 million different species of living things on Earth[lxi], although some believe there may be as many as 100 million species[lxii], but biodiversity is not just about the number of species, as there is also huge variety even within any particular species. For example, dogs all belong to one species, but there are a huge variety of different breeds, most of which we’ve unnaturally bred to be our slaves, from Pugs to Great Danes[lxiii], and there are also a huge range of different trees, from oaks and pines to apple trees, with each of these having hundreds of different varieties.
Tropical areas of the world are more biodiverse than areas with a ‘temperate’ climate, like the UK, or than ‘boreal’ areas, which are in northern parts of Asia, Europe and North America, have a sub-arctic climate and are particularly vulnerable to climate change[lxiv],[lxv].
Themost biodiverse regions on Earth are along the equator, in tropical rainforests and coral reefs, with the Amazon Rainforest having the greatest biodiversity of all, including 1/3 of all the world’s known species of plants and animals[lxvi], including 40,000 species of plants, 3,000 species of fish, 1,300 species of birds, 427 species of mammals, 427 species of amphibians, 378 species of reptiles, and more than 125,000 species of invertebrates[lxvii].
In all areas of life, Natural Humanists value diversity far more than uniformity, and they believe passionately that human beings have a strong moral obligation to gradually rewild the planet, and to massively increase biodiversity, worldwide, so that all of the world’s species, all of which share common ancestors, can thrive.
‘Sharing all the World’ [lxviii]
Natural Humanists may not believe in any God, but they do believe passionately in love, kindness, tolerance and freedom. They’re hugely romantic, believing in sharing deep and meaningful love and affection with large numbers of people throughout their lives, as well as loving and valuing everything about the natural planet on which they live, and taking every possible opportunity to meaningfully connect with the natural world, of which they consider themselves to be an equal and integral part.
They share, passionately, the views expressed in the song ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon (of The Beatles) and Yoko Ono, which may have been written around half a century ago but is still highly relevant. The song imagines a world that’s completely at peace, with no barriers or borders, where people aren’t separated because of their nationality, or their religion, and are, like Natural Humanists, not concerned about material possessions.
To quote the song: “Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace…You may say I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one, I hope some day you’ll join us, And the world will be as one. Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people sharing all the world…You may say I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one, I hope some day you’ll join us, And the world will live as one”.
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References
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[lviii] BBC. “Biodiversity: UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries”. 11 October 2021. bbc.co.uk. 6 June 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/58863097
[lix] BBC. “Biodiversity: UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries”. 11 October 2021. bbc.co.uk. 6 June 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/58863097
[lx] BBC. “Biodiversity: UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries”. 11 October 2021. bbc.co.uk. 6 June 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/58863097
[lxi] National Wildlife Federation. “Biodiversity”. nwf.org. 6 June 2025. https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Biodiversity
[lxii] National Wildlife Federation. “Biodiversity”. nwf.org. 6 June 2025. https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Biodiversity
[lxiii] National Wildlife Federation. “Biodiversity”. nwf.org. 6 June 2025. https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Biodiversity
[lxiv] Wikipedia contributors. “Boreal ecosystem.” 25 May 2025. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 May 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreal_ecosystem
[lxv] National Wildlife Federation. “Biodiversity”. nwf.org. 6 June 2025. https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Biodiversity
[lxvi] McKnight, Maurice. “What is the most biodiverse place on Earth?” Updated June 19 2024. ncesc.com 6 June 2025. https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-faq/what-is-the-most-biodiverse-place-on-earth/#:~:text=The%20Amazon%20Rainforest%20is%20considered%20to%20be%20the,known%20plant%20and%20animal%20species%20in%20the%20world
[lxvii] McKnight, Maurice. “What is the most biodiverse place on Earth?” Updated June 19 2024. ncesc.com 6 June 2025. https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-faq/what-is-the-most-biodiverse-place-on-earth/#:~:text=The%20Amazon%20Rainforest%20is%20considered%20to%20be%20the,known%20plant%20and%20animal%20species%20in%20the%20world
[lxviii] Lyrics from the song, “Imagine” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.