After putting up a billboard that told all of Charleston that if they didn’t believe in God they weren’t alone, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry group received an overwhelmingly positive response from the town. There wasn’t that much hostility, if any; it was quite the contrary. People showed up to support the group’s public symposium. Many people had finally found a group that they could identify with, where they could be with people who thought like them. It makes people who typify humans as simply social animals stop in their tracks. Apparently, we’re not just social animals—we’re something more.
Cultural animals have “an organized, information-based system” and “[use] language and ideas to organize social interactions into a broad network that includes many people, including some who are not related to each other” (Baumeister 39). If humans were only social animals and nothing else, it wouldn’t matter to non-believer parents that there were no family-oriented programs for non-believers and their children—they’d simply be happy to be in a society with other people of the human race, regardless of religion. They would always look for a connection between themselves and others in their environment, and they’d most likely find some sort of link. However, just living, working, and playing with other humans is not enough; humans want to use a uniform way of doing things, as well as shared beliefs (such as atheism), not just any beliefs. And aren't atheist parents using language to try to establish social interactions into a broader network--to encompass as many non-believers as possible, even though they aren't related?
Beings who are only social don't care about non-related organisms in their culture as much as their own kin. So much for humans as social beings.
All in favor of humans being recognized as cultural animals, not just social animals, say I!
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