Fighting the fallacies of friends
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I have a guilty pleasure: It’s watching my chest-thumping rationalist friends commit the human errors they can’t forgive in others. I do the same thing myself at times (see image at left). Hoo-hoo-hoo-HAAA!
Since Foundation Beyond Belief went public last week, I’ve received a lot of encouragement and a lot of priceless constructive advice. But there’ve also been a few angry sneers — few, but loud — always from the nonreligious so far, always written in the Snark dialect, and at the moment favoring a single whopping logical error.
In the announcement, I said that religious people in the U.S. give away a greater percentage of their income than those self-identified as nonreligious. I said it because it is both true and well-documented by reliable research.1 I quickly followed by noting that this is NOT a question of character, but a natural result of one group passing a plate 52 times a year and the other not.
Still I knew, even as I wrote it, what snarky fate awaited me.
A few folks told me, with great irritation, that my claim is nonsense because most of the money donated by the religious goes to run religious institutions. Their facts are correct — churches absorb 74-78% of the offerings and donations of their members — but it’s irrelevant to the claim that religious individuals give more.
They go on to say that if the money kept by the churches were removed from the equation, the disparity vanishes. This, I’m afraid, is both irrelevant and false. The very same surveys show churchgoers beating non-churchgoers in levels of giving to secular charities.
But whether true or false, this argument’s irrelevance is what kills me. The original claim is about the personal act of giving, not how the money is used by those who receive it. So my chest-thumping friends have responded to one claim by refuting something entirely else — just the sort of thing they can’t abide in the religious.
In a related fallacy, several point out that this or that source is a conservative, or a Catholic, or an evangelical, and therefore not worth listening to. Since I don’t trust ANY secondary source out of hand, I looked at the primary sources. And in this case, Brooks and Barna, et al. were right.
It happens, you know.
I do think we have an opportunity to be better stewards of individual generosity than churches. We have no buildings, choir robes, or parking lots to pay for, no youth retreats, no missionaries. But while we’re acknowledging that church-based donations don’t go very far out the door, let’s restate and underline the original point: Religious folks give away a (much) greater percentage of their personal income than the nonreligious. We do several things better than they do. This is one of several things they do best. It’s not a question of character, but of the need for a systematic means of giving as an expression of worldview outside of those church doors.
Either way, it’s a problem worth tackling. Church attendance is declining rapidly in the U.S., and if churchgoers give a lot more to charity, this constitutes a genuine concern for philanthropy.
It’s time to acknowledge the facts, set our diversionary tactics aside, and learn from anyone who has something to teach us. That, among other things, is what Foundation Beyond Belief is about.
Join the Foundation Beyond Belief group on Facebook Causes, or click here to join our mailing list.
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1Surveys by Independent Sector, the Giving Institute, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, 2002 General Social Survey, American Community Survey of the U.S. Census, and more.
Loving paintings more than frames
I don’t remember the commencement addresses I heard in college, but I’ll bet the University of Portland Class of 2009 will remember theirs.
Part of the problem for my grad speakers was that UC Berkeley is huge, so it holds separate commencements by department. I was a double major, so I had not one but two forgettable events – one for music, one for anthropology. The speakers spoke as and to musicians and anthropologists, I’ll bet, not as and to humans with their toes at the edge of a cliff and a hang glider on their backs.
When it comes to commencement addresses, specialization murders inspiration.
The University of Portland is about a tenth the size of UC Berkeley, so it makes sense that they got ten times the speech – this year, at least. The speaker was Paul Hawken, author, environmental activist, and co-founder of Smith & Hawken, as well as Erewhon and several other environmentally progressive firms.
Though the speech is peppered with religious terminology and ideas – unsurprisingly, since University of Portland is a Catholic institution — I’m struck by the similarity between his ideas and mine. Some excerpts:
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.
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When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.
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The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours.
Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”
____Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.
I respond differently to the religious bits than I once would have. In my thirties, while teaching at a Catholic college, my high wince-factor at lines like “The world would become religious overnight” would have blinded me to the incredible insight of the lines around it (“Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course…Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television”). I might also have failed to notice that he was doing no harm – in fact, that his speech was a call to positive action in perfect alignment with my own values.
Now I’m more inclined to notice that Paul Hawken and I agree on the painting rather than fussing quite so much about the frame.
Full text of the Hawken address
(Hat tip to Facebook friend Debra Hill Frewin for bringing the Hawken talk to my attention!)
Introducing…Foundation Beyond Belief
Being a humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead. — Kurt Vonnegut
I don’t give as much as I’d like to the causes I care about. I consider myself a pretty generous guy, and when I give, I give generously. But I get to the end of each year and realize that I just haven’t given as much as I wish I had. Again.
Another thing: When religious folks give through religious charities and churches, it registers as an expression of their worldview. I want that too. I want my contributions to “count” as a visible expression of my secular humanism.
Then there’s this: Multiple solid surveys by philanthropic research organizations like Independent Sector and the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey1 show that churchgoers give a much greater percentage of their income to charitable causes than non-churchgoers like me. Arthur C. Brooks (author of Who Really Cares) is pretty sure he’s got my number: he says it’s “evidence of a gap in everyday virtue” (p. 40) between the religious and nonreligious.
I think he’s missing something obvious. If people in Group A are asked to pass a plate full of the generous donations of their friends and neighbors and either add to it or not, 52 times a year, while people in Group B have no such regular and public nudge — I’d say something other than virtue is in play.
I think the difference has much more to do with whether or not you have systematic opportunities for giving than some “gap in virtue.” I speak at Unitarian fellowships and Ethical Societies all the time, places brimming with friendly atheists. And when that offering plate passes by, I give, and so do they, knowing that these places will use it to do some good.
The offering plate is also passing through a million mainstream church pews every Sunday, giving the religious an easy and regular way to give and to combine their giving with others as a positive collective expression of their worldview.
I don’t agree with those who insist religious people give primarily out of fear or guilt. That may be in the mix, but most I know give because they are challenged and encouraged to do so, because generosity feels wonderful, and because the habit of giving turns giving into a habit.
I want to do better. It’s time for those of us who are otherwise engaged on Sunday mornings to have our own easy and regular means of giving, one that focuses and encourages humanistic generosity and demonstrates it to the world.
Welcome to Foundation Beyond Belief.
> what it is
Foundation Beyond Belief is a new charitable and educational foundation created (1) to focus, encourage and demonstrate humanistic generosity, and (2) to support a nationwide nonreligious parent education program.
The Foundation will highlight ten charitable organizations per quarter–one in each of ten areas (health, poverty, environment, education, human rights, and more). Members join the Foundation by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, then set up personal profiles to indicate how they would like their contribution distributed among the ten categories. Maybe you’d like to give 25 percent each to human rights, poverty, education, and the environment. We’ll distribute it accordingly. By year’s end, you will have helped support a dozen organizations in the areas you care most about.
The centerpiece of the Foundation will be a lively online community. Active members can join a social network and discussion forums centered on the ten categories of giving, upload videos, recruit new members, advocate for causes and help us choose the new beneficiaries each quarter. We’ll also create and host a multi-author blog of world-class contributors focused on the cause areas, as well as humanism, philanthropy, and the intersection of the two.
Carefully selected for impact and efficiency, the beneficiaries may be founded on any worldview so long as they do not engage in proselytizing. At the end of each quarter, 100 percent of the donations will be forwarded and a new slate of beneficiaries selected.
On the educational side, the Foundation will build the next stage in nonreligious parent education—a nationwide training program for parenting seminar leaders. We plan to have 30-40 people teaching nonreligious parenting seminars in cities across the country within a year.
We’ve begun assembling a stellar cast to guide the Foundation through its infancy. The Board of Directors includes Hemant Mehta (author, Friendly Atheist blogger, Secular Student Alliance board chair), Dr. Wayne Huey (ethicist, educator, author, former Georgia and U.S. High School Counselor of the Year), Trish Hotze Cowan (Sunday School Director, Ethical Society of St. Louis), and executive director Dale McGowan. (That’s me.)
The Foundation will launch in two stages. On October 1 we’ll unveil the pre-launch website, where members can begin setting up profiles and basic donations. On January 1, 2010, we will launch the full site, including the ten featured causes, all profile options, blog, social networking, and the means for members to select and change their preferred distributions.
We’re making no little plans here, and there’s the potential to do something pretty earthshaking. But this is a community thing, or it’s nothing. We’ll need your help.
> what you can do now
There are two ways to stay in the loop as we work toward the Foundation’s partial launch in October and full launch in January:
Facebook users: Click here to join the Foundation Beyond Belief group on Facebook Causes. No donation required — just keeping yourself in the loop.
Non-Facebookers: Click here to put your email on our mailing list.
Either way, sign up and we’ll keep you informed as it takes shape.
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1And the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census…the list goes on. The facts themselves are not in doubt.
Humanism 2009 (4 of 4)
Part 4 of an address to Edmonds UU Church in Edmonds, WA, April 19, 2009.
[Back to Part 1.]
[Back to Part 2.]
[Back to Part 3.]
A recent post I saw on a humanist discussion board framed the issue very well. “Religious communities,” it said, “are often filled with social events, music, poetry, inspiration, and life advice. It can be very difficult for some people to give all of this up for a few science books, Internet forums, and an arsenal of ammunition to use against the religious. Where is the poetry? Where is the inspiration? Although many of us have already found meaning without religion, we should probably try to help those who haven’t.”
This is the sound of Harry reaching out to Sally.
Fortunately, many humanist groups across the country are getting more comfortable with exactly these things. They are expanding their topics, improving the emotional and symbolic content of their meetings, and turning to ever-greater involvement in good works — an area in which UUs have always taken the lead.
But in the process of leading this transformation of humanism, I have seen many UU fellowships so eager to serve Sally that they ignore or even disparage Harry. It’s a delicate and difficult balancing act, but by naming it here today, I hope improve the chances of healing this fault line. If it is going to be healed, I’m convinced it will happen here in the UU denomination, because this is where Harry and Sally meet.
I have ever-greater hope for the rest of the humanist movement as well. They too are figuring out how to do community well, including a greater focus on good works. Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry began a marvelous “revolving charities” campaign, designating one charity each quarter as a spotlight beneficiary. In less than a year, thousands of dollars have gone toward orphan relief, domestic violence support services, medical research, and a residential facility for troubled youth. A few other groups are doing likewise. And from Portland to Albuquerque to Raleigh, humanist parenting groups and ethical education programs for kids are springing up, adding a family focus, more gender equity, and young blood.
I’d like to see this continue and expand. I’d like to see soup kitchen, food pantry, and Habitat volunteering added to the omnipresent freeway cleanup programs. The Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia sponsors an annual Tree of Knowledge during the holidays. I’d like to see a Tree of Compassion right next to it.
When it comes to forming genuine community, humanists have a very mixed record. We fret and fuss over the urgent need for more rationality in the world, ignoring more basic human needs like unconditional acceptance. Most people do not go to church for theology—they go for acceptance. They go to be surrounded by people who smile at them and are nice to them, who ask how their kids are and whether that back injury is still hurting. Until we recognize why people gather together—and that it isn’t “to be a force for rationality”—humanist groups of all kinds will continue to lag behind theistic churches in offering community.
It begins with simple things. I urge humanist groups to designate a greeter for every meeting—someone to grab and shake the hand of every person who walks in the door, new or returning. Select topics that challenge the convictions and humanity of the group instead of always preaching to the choir. Or screw the topic and just get together for the sake of getting together.
I tell them to have a CD playing as people arrive. And not Die Gedanken sind frei.1 Something unrelated to freethought. Read a poem. Take a moment to remember people who are ill or have died. Collect money for the homeless. If you want families to come and stay, offer childcare or forget about it.
These are things UUs have mastered. Now I want to see it spread to the rest of the freethought world. If we make our secular humanist groups less about secularism and more about humanism, more humans will come. And as long as we continue to serve their humanity, they will stay—and they will bring their kids. At that point, you’ve got yourself a community.
“The good life,” said Bertrand Russell, “is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” Thanks in large part to Harry, humanism has knowledge tackled. In the interest of Sally, and the millions of humanists like her, it’s time to match our intellectual efforts with greater emphasis on compassion, emotion, humanity, and love. And a big part of this is recognizing those things—ritual, language, symbolism, community-building, and more—that religion actually does really well, and giving ourselves permission to adopt and redefine what works, even as we set aside what does not.
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1But click this link for a video of Die Gedanken that mixes Harry and Sally quite nicely.
Illustration from The Usual Error Project under Creative Commons license.
Humanism 2009 (2 of 4)
Part 2 of an address to Edmonds UU Church in Edmonds, WA, April 19, 2009.
As I’ve grown in my secular humanism, I’ve begun to value the second word more strongly than the first. And nothing illustrates the reason more vividly than the picture of all those hands racing skyward as Georgia kindergarteners enthusiastically embraced the idea of humanism—if only until dinnertime.
When they hear the definition, most people identify with it on some level. Think of the power in that.
The fault line down the middle of humanism runs right through the UU denomination. And that’s no surprise. When asked to choose one theological label in the Casebolt survey several years back, 46 percent of UUs chose “humanist.” It was by far the largest category of self-definition in this denomination. When given the option of identifying more than one label in the FACT survey of 2001, fully 91 percent of UUs chose “humanist” as one of their identities.
That’s a wonderful shared foundation on which to build.
Yet the fault line persists because we can’t seem to find our way past the first words— “secular” or “religious”— and their implications.
The irony here is that UUs are famously and proudly tolerant of diversity. You embrace and celebrate differences in race and ethnicity. You put other denominations to shame with your Welcoming Congregation Program for the GLBT community. Yet when it comes to being in community with other humanists, the fault line between the words “secular” and “religious” seems to yawn into an abyss.
It’s not just an issue for UUs. I recently spoke at one of the oldest Ethical Societies in the country and learned that two years ago they reached a level of such obsessive and destructive conflict over this issue that they called in a mediation team from the Alban Institute. On a scale of 1 to 5, their conflict was assessed at Level Five: “Intractable—no reconciliation possible.” One third of the Society walked away to form a new group. “We splintered like Protestants,” one person said. And the bitterness over the issue is still tangible.
Today I consider them one of the most successful humanist communities in the United States.
I know why secular humanists often have trouble accepting the idea of religious humanism, even when nontheistic, with its greater interest in ritual, in mystery, and in the notion of transcendence. I know why secular humanists flinch at the use of words like “holy,” “sacred,” “blessed,” “spiritual,” and “religion,” even when the user explains that they are divorced from their theistic origins — because I flinch too.
When I hear religious humanists ask why many secular humanists, especially the older generation, are so adamant in their renunciation of everything associated with religion, I hear echoes of other movements. I hear a young generation of African Americans chiding their parents and grandparents, asking “Why is everything about race with you?” I hear young women, whose mothers and grandmothers fought against an entrenched patriarchy for rights they now take for granted, who roll their eyes and ask, “Why is everything about gender with you?”
Many of us, especially those who grew up in earlier decades, have been wounded by traditional religion. I have met countless humanists who carry memories of betrayal, humiliation, terror, and psychological or physical abuse inflicted on them or their loved ones in the name of religion—often in childhood, when we are most vulnerable.
For these people, these most adamant secular humanists, words and rituals formerly associated with theistic religion carry genuinely painful associations. When other humanists who for whatever reason have been spared that wounding, or who bounced back more readily, insist that the seculars simply “get over” their aversion, that they simply recognize that religion can be redefined — it displays a very real lack of empathy.
But this knife cuts both ways, of course. When secular humanists accuse religious humanists of being “soft in the head,” or “irrational,” or “hooked on fuzzy-wuzzy mumbo-jumbo”—those are all exact quotes—they fail to recognize that God’s empty throne does not negate the many human needs that religion has traditionally served. Thinking hard about what those needs are is among the key challenges for humanism today.
[N.B. The following section is especially relevant to the Charles Blow column “Defecting to Faith.”]
One persistent delusion I hear from secular humanists is that people go to church for God. If we could just break through their belief in God, they say, they’ll walk away from church. It isn’t true, and we need to grasp this, once and for all, if humanist communities of all kinds are to bring people in the door and keep them there. If we don’t have what they are looking for, they will walk right out again.
I mentioned this disconnect to a gentleman in a freethought meeting last year and he scoffed. “Sorry,” he said. “If eternal life and pretty fables are what they need, we’re fresh out.” He didn’t seem inclined to question his assumption that that is what people need—that that is why people go to church. In fact, I’m convinced the revolving door on humanist communities of all kinds isn’t about the absence of God but the absence of something much more human and much more humanistic.
In a recent Gallup poll, only 27 percent of churchgoing respondents mentioned God or worship when giving their primary reason for attending church. They go to be a part of a loving community, for a sense of belonging, to be inspired and supported, to be involved in social justice and good works. One friend told me she goes so she can be surrounded by friendly people once a week. Simple as that. Yet the secular humanists who founded and who continue to run many freethought groups around the country continue to harp and harp on theology and epistemology, then wonder why few come and even fewer stay.
BONUS: Look, you’re already at the computer. Take two more minutes and read this fantastic (and brief) post at the Lucky Atheist. THIS is exactly what I mean by transcendence of the everyday!
Not that it’s a competition, but…
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…we have a winner.
In the past seven years or so, I’ve seen quite a few humanistic organizations from the inside — freethought groups, Ethical Societies, Congregations for Humanistic Judaism, UUs, etc. Met a lot of wonderful people working hard to make their groups succeed. All of the groups have different strengths, and all are struggling with One Big Problem: creating a genuine sense of community.
I’ve written before about community and the difficulty freethought groups generally have creating it. Some get closer than others, but it always seems to fall a bit short of the sense of community that churches so often create. And I don’t think it has a thing to do with God.
The question I hear more and more from freethought groups is, “How can we bring people in the door and keep them coming back?” The answer is to make our groups more humanistic — something churches, ironically, often do better than we do.
Now I’ve met an organization founded on freethought principles that seems to get humanistic community precisely right. It’s the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture (above), host of my seminar and talk last weekend, and the single most effective humanistic community I have ever seen.
So what do they have going for them? My top ten list:
10. A great space. Not every group can meet in a neo-Jacobean mansion with lions guarding the stairs, dark woodwork, high ceilings and art-glass windows—but too many groups meet in sterile, fluorescent-lit common rooms full of metal folding chairs and free of even a scrap of inspiration or warmth. Budgets are tight, but every group should do whatever it can to warm up the spaces in which they meet—curtains, wood, carpet, tablecloths, art, etc.
9. Music. When I walked into the Brooklyn Society, a member was playing showtunes on an old upright piano as people stood around chatting and laughing. Twenty minutes before the gathering began, they switched on a CD of jazz standards. Think of what music does for a dinner party, filling in gaps in conversation and casting a glow around the room. EVERY GROUP should have music playing 20 minutes before the meeting begins.
8. Food. Everybody loves to eat. All meetings should start with yummy food. Not a box of pink frosted cookies. Food, glorious food.
7. A call to action. Have a prominent display calling members to collective social action—a donation box, a chart tracking funds raised, a signup sheet for the next Habitat for Humanity day. Keep social action as prominent as any intellectual content. And make sure to include human-centered social action, like soup kitchens, food pantries, battered women’s shelters, etc. — not just trash pickup and book sales.
6. Ritual. (Uh oh, I lost half the audience.) Ritual doesn’t have to mean fuzzy-wuzzy woowoo. In the case of the BSEC, leader Greg Tewksbury started the gathering by yanking on a tubular wind chime that hung at the side of the lectern. He tugged it again at each dividing point in the gathering. Gives a nice sense of rhythm and structure.
5. Emotion. Freethought groups naturally like their intellectual content, but it frequently happens to the complete exclusion of emotional and inspirational elements. BSEC managed to include a constant feeling of emotional warmth without the slightest theistic feel. Since my talk was on parenting, Greg opened by asking those present to turn to the person next to them and share a time they nurtured someone or were nurtured by someone. Five minutes of discussion followed, centered not on debunking this or that but on human emotion.
4. Symbolism. Like the UU chalice, the two candles on the lectern were a clear reference to light, warmth, knowledge, and life. Adds a very nice touch.
3. Diversity. Most groups I’ve visited are 80 percent white male. They don’t want to be, but they don’t know what to do about it. It helps to live in a place like Brooklyn, which made for the most diverse crowd I’ve addressed in years. If you are elsewhere, do some outreach and networking to invite folks from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to a meeting.
2. Multiple generations. I know, chicken and egg. But I cannot begin to tell you what a fabulous sense of community the Brooklyn Society gets from 20 kids running in and out among the legs of the adult members in the half-hour beforehand. And with kids come parents—people in their 20s-40s, another demographic missing from many freethought groups. Attract families by building community. Build community by doing what’s on this list.
Especially the next one.
1. A warm welcome. This is #1 on the list for a reason. It’s no surprise that we rational freethinking types aren’t generally good at sticking our hands out to welcome strangers into a room. I’m terrible at it. But there is no less welcoming feeling than entering a new space full of strangers without anyone saying word one to you.
This happens to me alllll the time as I travel around. I show up, walk in, and am promptly ignored. Ten minutes of awkward pamphlet reading later, someone finally walks up and asks if I’m new to the group.
Not at the Brooklyn Society. No fewer than five warm and pleasant people welcomed me in the first five minutes and chatted me up BEFORE they even knew I was the speaker.
The difference this makes is enormous. Every freethought group should find the person most comfortable with greeting fellow mammals and assign him/her to watch the door and enthusiastically usher newcomers in, show them around, introduce them to others.
And it needs to go well beyond one greeter. EVERY MEMBER of EVERY GROUP should make it a point to chat up new folks—and each other, for that matter. And not just about the latest debunky book. Ask where he’s from, what she does for a living, whether he follows the Mets or the Yankees. You know, mammal talk. (Now now…I joke because I love!)
Can’t manage everything on the list? No problem. Start with #1, then add what you can when and how you can. Before you know it, you’ll have a thriving, warm, humanistic community where people visit and then return, bringing their spouses and children and friends and neighbors. If I lived in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture would get my sorry butt out of bed every single Sunday.
And that’s saying something.
Petition: Thank Politicians Who Say “No” to Creationists
I am occasionally asked by religious friends why I make such a fuss over evolution. Some have suggested that secular types beat the drum for evolution only because it sticks such a sharp object in the eye of theism. One went so far as to suggest that “If you guys would just let that one go,” we’d have a lot better luck building bridges with the religious.
The question is a good one. Fortunately the answer is even better. And it’s nothing so trivial as making Churchy Eyeball Kebobs, nor nothing so grand and simple as “I champion evolution just because it’s true.” It’s also true that George Washington had no middle name, but I’m unlikely to devote much of my life force opposing someone who insists that yes he did, and it was Steve, and that only Martha called him George, and only when she was drunk. Even if this hypothetical Stevist insisted on teaching the middle name in American History classes, I might think it daft, but I’ve other fish to fry.
Evolution is a fish I choose to fry. It’s an idea that I want my children and as many others as possible to know and care about.
A list of reasons to champion evolution education, each building on the last:
First, it is an everything-changer. If knowing about evolution by natural selection hasn’t changed almost everything about the way you see almost everything, dig in deeper with the help of the great explicators and know that I envy you the journey.
Second, it inspires immense, transcendent awe and wonder to grasp that you are a cousin not just to apes, but to sponges and sequoias and butterflies and blue whales.
Third, it annihilates the artificial boundaries between us and the rest of life on Earth.
Fourth, it puts racial difference in proper perspective as utter trivia.
Fifth, when taken as directed, it constitutes one of the four grandest-ever swats of humility to the pompous human tookus.*
Sixth, it contributes enormously to our understanding of how and why things work the way they do.
Seventh, that understanding has led in turn to incredible advances in medical science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, and more.
The list goes on.
I’ll turn it over to Clay Burell, education editor at Change.org, for the call to action. Hit it, Clay.
Petition: Thank Politicians Who Say “No” to Creationists
by Clay Burell
First appeared 18 February at Change.org
WE COUNT OUR INJURIES far more closely than our blessings, the old saying goes. That might be especially true in our dealings with politicians. They surely hear far more complaints than thank yous. Let’s change that for once.
Let’s say thanks to these two in Texas:
It takes courage for a politician in Texas to speak out against religious fundamentalism. Texas state Senator Rodney Ellis and Representative Patrick Rose deserve the thanks of all Americans – or those who value real science, anyway – for showing that courage.
Whether you’re a Texan or not, if you want creationism out of high school science textbooks – and evolution in them – please take a moment to thank Sen. Ellis and Rep. Rose for fighting the Discovery Institute/creationist-dominated Texas State Board of Education (SBOE).
As I reported last week, Rose and Ellis proposed legislation “to place the board under periodic review by the Sunset Advisory Commission and hold them accountable for their performance, just as we do the Texas Education Agency and other state agencies.”
Why? In their own words:
The decisions of the SBOE not only impact millions of young lives on a daily basis, but impact the economic progress of our state as well.
For these reasons and many others, the public has a right to full disclosure and oversight.
The board has escaped such scrutiny for far too long. The disregard for educators, instructional experts and scientists can’t continue. It’s time to take a closer look at the operations and policies of the State Board of Education.
Our state, and especially our kids, deserve better.
Again, please take a moment to send them your thanks in this petition. It will also be cc’d to your own state and federal representatives, asking they show the same courage in your state.
_______________
CLAY BURELL is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he’s married to his wife. According to his wife, he’s married to his Mac.
When you’re done signing the petition, it’s time to support our troops at the National Center for Science Education. These are the heroic and seemingly tireless folks who do the heavy lifting for the rest of us.
*Copernicus, Lyell, Darwin, Hubble.
Blue me away
Just an embedded video today — three years old and no doubt known to everyone else already, but new to me yesterday. I’m a sucker for this kind of combination of wit, originality, and message:
Share with the kids. Mine loved it.
A Krismas potpourri
Austin
The Austin trip was simply perfect. Got to visit with regular Memling and CFI Austin Exec Dir Clare Wuellner once again, met her husband Roger, reveled in the shuttling services and company of Shane and Mark McCain and their fabulous kidlings, and chatted in person with Memling Thranil! The seminar itself was the largest yet at 62 participants, with no less than 31 kids in the daycare down the hall. Easy flights, warm weather, and home in time for a Sunday nap.
Nativity
My meager attempt at reaching across the aisle after the vandalism at Mt. Carmel Christian Church largely fizzled, at least in the short term. I do hope it planted some seeds for later efforts. I sent words of support to the minister, and I know several of you did as well. Only one of the freethought organizations I contacted responded to my message, but that reply was very encouraging:
Dear Dale,
This was a most interesting idea you proposed. Unfortunately, I was out of the office on a speaking trip when you proposed it and your message wasn’t copied to anyone else here. Also, I didn’t read it until just now (7:45 PM Monday) when cleaning up my e-mail backlog upon my return….
So, by a copy of this e-mail to our executive director and my PR assistant, I’m asking that this idea of yours be looked into in order to see if it’s still possible to act and if we are in a position to do so.
Fred Edwords
Director of Communications
American Humanist Association
Through no fault of the AHA, it was indeed too late. As the local media noted over the weekend,
Motivated by devotion to their church, the very same people who donated their time and money for supplies came together again to heal this holiday hurt.
“It’s very disappointing,” said Carlos Guerra, who organized the live nativity scene. “At the same time, it’s good to see that situations like this bring the church together.”
Not just one church. Volunteers from other parts of metro-Atlanta arrived to help.
So what could have been the coming together of people of goodwill across lines of religious difference instead became yet another heartwarming confirmation of the singular power of faith.
Hemant Mehta picked up the story as well and agreed with my suggestion, as did most of his commenters. A good sign. Now let’s get a rapid response mechanism in place for the future.
Distortion
One of the most difficult things about articulating a public position of any kind — especially one outside the mainstream — is that all the careful thought and word choice and message refinement and clarification in the world won’t prevent some yahoo from willfully distorting your position. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris get this all the time, especially in the form of “Dawkins/Harris fails to distinguish between religious extremists and religious moderates,” when in fact they do make those distinctions, with great care and in great detail.
Now an article in The Harvard Salient, a conservative political journal, has done the same with my recent Harvard talk, claiming that (among other things) I equated religious upbringing with indoctrination. As I pointed out in a probably ill-advised comment on the site,
I repeatedly noted that I distinguish between dogmatic and non-dogmatic religion and that many moderate religious parents work hard to reconcile the religious and scientific approaches to knowledge. “I don’t need a world free of religion,” I said at one point. “I’ll gladly settle for a world free of indoctrination.” Does that sound like someone who makes a blanket equation of religious upbringing and religious indoctrination?
The word “religion” almost never appears in the text of my speech without a modifier. I refer to “orthodox religion,” “traditional religion,” “moderate religious believers,” “liberal Christians,” and so on, precisely to avoid the dullard charge that I paint with a broad brush. Dawkins and Harris have also repeatedly made these distinctions yet are repeatedly accused of making no distinctions. It is tiresome.
I am open to all reasonable critique, but it seems sensible to ask that you limit your critique to what was actually said.
I say ill-advised only because I hate to get drawn into gleeful fencing with people who have already demonstrated an inability to set their biases aside and listen carefully.
The PBB.com solstice drive
Four days remaining in the drive to retire the site operation debt that has been accumulating on my tender white shoulders this year — and as you can see in the sidebar, to my grateful astonishment, we are halfway there! I really cannot begin to express my appreciation to each and every one of you who has chipped in. Even if we don’t make it to the full amount, it has been a tremendous relief to have your help digging out of that hole.
Cheers!
Support Mt Carmel Christian Church
You heard me.
One hundred twenty volunteers from Mt. Carmel Christian in Atlanta constructed a drive-through nativity. Wednesday night the scene was severely vandalized. Over $2000 will be required to repair the scene before it reopens tonight at 6pm.
I hope and trust I am not alone in the freethought community in feeling outrage at this news. Whether or not you support the message of the display, vandalism and violence are completely out of bounds. I’ve sent messages to the Atlanta Freethought Society, Secular Coalition for America, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation urging them to take a quick public stand on this. I’ll shortly be contacting the other national organizations as well.
One of our most fundamental shared values — free expression — has been attacked. Secular humanist organizations and individuals should take an immediate and public stand condemning these actions. If nothing else, such statements would make an eloquent counterpoint to the stolen atheist poster in Seattle.
Article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Send a note of support to Rev. Seth Wortman
