I'm a secularist. I teach Sunday School at a Secular Humanist institution. But I'm not an atheist and I am certainly not immoral or amoral.
There are so many misconceptions about what Secular Humanism is, I thought that I would clear the air. We are not atheists. You can be an atheist and a Secular Humanist, but you can also have strong religious beliefs. In fact my group is a Jewish Secular Humanist one. We do think that an individual's relationship with God (or lack thereof) is a private matter. We are willing to accept without question people from a variety of different backgrounds. But we are not atheists.
I teach a class that deals with the history and meaning of the Bible. We perform acts of Tseddakah (anonymous charity, what Maimonides defined as the highest form) that include fund-raising and community service. That hardly matches with the "amoral" definition that some people have.
When I read the Bible (and this applies to the Old Testament and the New Testament both) I find two things: A moral message and stories that are intended to reinforce and to explain that message. But the morality and stories are not the same and one can accept the one without the other. Sometimes the stories jibe poorly with the message. So, in the Ten Commandments, we are commanded not to kill. "Thou shalt not kill" seems pretty straightforward. Yet one Moses comes down from Sinai and finds that his brother Aaron has shaped a Golden Calf, Moses commands the Levis "Draw your swords, and go through the camp, and kill every one whom you find bowing down to the idol. Spare no one. Slay your friends and your neighbors, if they are worshiping the image." Does that seem a wee bit inconsistent to you?
Secular Humanism would say that the lives of the 3000 Hebrews slain on that day (according to the Bible) should have been spared, that they were more important than the religious dispute. Organized religion would tend to take the position that purity of belief is the higher priority. So we find gentle Catholics embracing the Inquisition, the soldiers of Martin Luther murdering priests and nuns during the sack of Rome, which perhaps killed as many as 45,000, and certainly we find this concept of religious purity alive and well in the Jihadists today.
Secular Humanism had it's roots in Europe after centuries of religious persecutions and wars. There may some who believe that the blood of thousands of innocents is a small price to pay for religious purity. If so, please don't bother posting it here. There is no moral message in the Auto De Fe, in the sacks of cities, in the rape and murder of children.
Some may contend that Hitler and Stalin and Mao were secularists. They were not. They worshiped the gods of National Socialism and Communism. They never defined themselves as secularists and certainly not as humanists. An article contrasting Secularism and Fascism appears at http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm and is well worth reading.
There is no question to me that religion was instrumental in the formation and adoption of moral principles among primitive man. Man is not born moral and has to learn to defer gratification. Religion provided the carrot and the stick for reinforcing moral behaviors in the form of Heaven and Hell. But, while linked, religion and morality are not the same. Secular humanism takes the position that morality is intrinsicly better, in a Darwinian fashion. Individuals that have a moral code are more likely to succeed in the long run. That's not a consequence of divine intervention, but a fact of life. Lying, cheating, other immoral behaviors. are self-defeating in the long run..
So there it is.