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.
____
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.
____
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.
_________________
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.
Leave them kids alone
Orphaned boys were perhaps the cheapest Taliban recruits. An incensed Afghan official in one village presented [U.S. military anthropologist] Tracy with a boy who had wandered into the district governor’s compound a month earlier. The boy wore an explosive vest that the Taliban had told him would burst with flowers and candy, but he didn’t know how to make the vest work.
–from “Human Quicksand: For the US Army, a crash course in cultural studies” by Steve Featherstone, Harper’s magazine, Sept 2008
I’ve discovered something about myself recently: I’m sometimes made almost physically ill by the idea of helpless kids at the mercy of stupid adults. Since “stupid” describes all adults some of the time (yes, me) and some adults all of the time, and we all find ourselves primarily at the mercy of adults for our first 18 years, it’s a not uncommon problem.
Sometimes it’s fictional. Take the unbearable scene from the movie Babel in which a series of bad choices by adults leaves two kids alone in the desert with their terrified nanny, who leaves for help, then returns with said help but cannot find them.
The shot of the empty spot of ground where they had been, followed by the nanny’s anguished face, haunted me for weeks.
Then there are thousands of real-world examples, from the ghastly and bizarre (children drowned in their car seats or bathtubs, kept in underground bunkers for 13 years) to the commonplace (children whacked in the head, taught to hate, deprived of education or vaccines) to horrors both ghastly and common in some places. Children told the C-4 in their vest is peppermint would qualify, as would the estimated quarter million “child soldiers” fighting in conflicts worldwide right now.
(I guess I should have warned you at the top that this post was headed into the darkness. I happened on that Harper’s article again last night for the third time, and it got me connecting loose ends—especially this idea of kids at the mercy of adults at their worst. It lightens up a wee bit now.)
What Shall We Tell The Children?
There’s another piece I come back to again and again—a really radical address by Nicholas Humphrey called “What Shall We Tell the Children?”, first delivered as the Oxford Amnesty Lecture in 1997. In it, Humphrey discusses the idea of children’s intellectual rights in a way both provocative and compelling. His thesis centers on the teaching of beliefs:
I want to propose a general test for deciding when and whether the teaching of a belief system to children is morally defensible. As follows. If it is ever the case that teaching this system to children will mean that later in life they come to hold beliefs that, were they in fact to have had access to alternatives, they would most likely not have chosen for themselves, then it is morally wrong of whoever presumes to impose this system. No one has the right to choose badly for anyone else.
It becomes clear, in the fullness of the piece, that Humphrey is referring not just to teaching about a belief system, but indoctrinating a child into it. So how do we determine whether they would have chosen a belief/value/action for themselves? Sometimes it’s easy to know, and sometimes it’s difficult. So when in doubt, don’t impose a belief.
Here’s a dry run—some beliefs, values, and actions I could impose on my children:
Committing murder-suicide with an explosive vest
Being circumcised
Disliking a given racial/ethnic/religious/political group especially much
Liking a given racial/ethnic/religious/political group especially much
The importance of avoiding prejudice
The importance of self-respect
The value of honesty
The value of thinking for one’s self
Believing/disbelieving a given worldview
For each of these, picture your child at age 30, looking back on childhood. If you can easily picture the child saying, “If I had the freedom and ability to make my own choice at that age, I wouldn’t have chosen x,” you’ve probably identified a value that should not be imposed.
Start easy:
“If I had the freedom and ability to make my own choice, I wouldn’t have chosen to commit murder-suicide with an explosive vest.” My confidence is pretty high on this one. For this reason (and others, I suppose), I don’t send my children into governors’ compounds with explosive vests.
“If I had the freedom and ability to make my own choice at that age, I wouldn’t have chosen to be circumcised.” Youch. The number of uncircumcised adults who choose the procedure (somewhere around 1 percent, if I remember correctly) speaks for itself on this one.
Liking or disliking Swedes, Republicans, accountants? I can certainly see my child’s likes and dislikes differing from mine, so I take care to avoid inculcating. But it’s hard to imagine someone actively resenting the fact that their parents taught them not to pre-judge others (“When shall I escape from this damnable tendency toward tolerance?”).
Then it gets even easier. Picture them saying, “Damn them for teaching me self-respect!” or “Curse the day they forced me to think for myself!” I teach my kids self-respect, independent thought, honesty, and a whole raft of values they are almost certain to appreciate rather than bemoan as adults.
Ah, but now we’ve arrived, have we not. How does the inculcation of a given worldview—any given worldview—stand up to this test?
Answer: It’s all too easy to picture an adult wishing that a single worldview had not been forced on him or her as a child. I wish I hadn’t been forced to consider myself a Catholic. I wish I hadn’t been forced to consider myself an atheist.
I’m proposing an even higher standard than Humphrey’s “most likely.” With some probable exceptions, a reasonable doubt is enough for me to refrain from imposing a belief or value on my child.
Humphrey suggests that the protection of our children’s lifelong intellectual rights demands that we not indoctrinate them to any given worldview—that we allow them to experiment with belief, try on different hats, and weigh different influences until they themselves can make an informed choice. And I agree.
Interview with Amanda Metskas
Amanda Metskas — whip-smart and Obama-cool executive director of Camp Quest, contributor to Parenting Beyond Belief and co-author of Raising Freethinkers — was interviewed about Camp Quest last week over on Science-Based Parenting by Skeptic Dad.
In case you don’t know (and haven’t clicked on the big blue button in the sidebar), Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp designed for the children of atheists, freethinkers, humanists, brights, or others who hold a naturalistic (as opposed to supernatural) worldview.
The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government.
BONUS: There’s a lovely review of Raising Freethinkers at one of my favorite blogs ever — Motherhood Uncensored. On second thought, don’t go. Once you read Kristen Chase, you’ll never come back to my insipid drivel.
Laughing matters 7: Mr. Deity
I am always the last to discover cool and interesting things. Hat tip to Facebook friend Beverly Emond for helping me deduct one more dollar from my Shameful Ignorance account by introducing me to Mr. Deity.
Mr. Deity is a brilliant and hilarious series of satirical shorts on YouTube that proves once again that comedy beats the keeeey-rap out of every other means of enlightenment.
We think of comedy as entertainment, which is about like saying sex is exercise. Sure, comedy’s fun, but it also reveals the truth more head-top-removingly than any argument could — especially when the purveyor has his head on straight. In the case of satire, that means understanding and, if you can manage it, empathizing with your targets. Brian Keith Dalton, the creator and star of Mr. Deity, does both, and we get the benefit.
Wanna grapple with the Problem of Evil? You can read volumes of treatises and apologia on theodicy and the Epicurean paradox. Or you can watch this:
You can lunch with Benedict XVI for a week to explore substitutionary atonement — the idea that one person can atone for the sins of another — and the dual nature of Christ. Or you can watch this:
And you can ponder and argue how and whether God answers prayers, and the implications of the conclusions you reach. Or you can watch Bruce Almighty, a smart and worthwhile comedy. Or watch this:
I know why these things soar the way they do here. Dalton is uncovering inconsistencies and problems and nonsense, but he is not sneering. He gets religious belief, empathizes with it, respects the impulse, even though he doesn’t share the conclusions. That’s essential to the comedy. My own religious satire falls flattest when I am least understanding of my targets and soars highest (imho) when I get where they’re coming from — because the latter is more likely to be rooted in the truth.
This from Mr. Deity’s FAQ:
I am a formerly religious person (non-bitter), and as such, have great sympathies for the beliefs and feelings of religious people. I love the fact that they are concerned with the big issues like Good and Evil, Existence, Creation, etc… I don’t always agree with the answers they provide to these questions, but I deeply respect their concern. Our goal here is not to mock religion, but to use it as a foundation for the humor. I’m thrilled that so many religious people have written to tell me that they love the episodes. In future episodes, I intend to turn the tables a bit and poke fun at what I call the “angry atheists” (of whom I am not fond). We’ll see if they take it so well.
As for his implied question….
We’ll see if the [angry atheists] take it so well [as religious folks have]
…with a few notable exceptions, I’m not even one tiny bit optimistic.
Mr. Deity’s YouTube Channel
MrDeity.com
Read the complete Laughing Matters series
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.
_______________________
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 (3 of 4)
Part 3 of an address to Edmonds UU Church in Edmonds, WA, April 19, 2009. This part will bore regular blog readers, since it’s stolen from an earlier post, which was in turn swiped from an article I wrote for Secular Nation. So y’all can play at the sand table while the rest of the class catches up.
[Back to Part 1.]
[Back to Part 2.]
Okay, let me spin a scenario here. Any resemblance of the characters in this scenario to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional.
A young woman named Sally sees a notice in the paper about a local humanist organization. She has always considered herself a religious humanist, completely nontheistic but longing for human community that doesn’t require her to park her convictions at the door. One Sunday morning she decides to skip her mainstream church service and check it out.
Sally walks in the door of the meeting with a nervous smile. A few men are setting things up. No one acknowledges her. Ten minutes after milling about awkwardly, reading scattered pamphlets and counting ceiling tiles, she crosses paths with one of the men. “Visitor?” he asks. “Yes, I am, hello!” she replies. “Hello, good to meet you,” he says. “Help yourself to coffee and nametags over there.” And off he goes to set up the chairs.
Sally has just met Harry.
Secular humanists come in every color, gender, age and size, but after many years speaking and belonging to humanist groups, and at the serious risk of stereotyping, I’d say there is a prototypical secular humanist, and Harry is it. If the police were profiling secular humanists, the profile might read something like this:
Scientifically-oriented, well-read white male, late 60s/early 70s
Grey-to-white hair and beard
Driving mid-sized vehicle with multiple incendiary bumperstickers
Officers cautioned to expect an argument
Suspect may be armed with syllogisms
Aside from the car, they’re essentially looking for Socrates.
Harry is the backbone of organized secular humanism, and most secular humanists fit most of that profile. Harry was there when Madeleine Murray O’Hair challenged prayer in schools, and he’s still here, staffing the tables, giving the talks, bringing the cookies, and just showing up, even when the rest of us have turned into the humanist equivalents of Christmas and Easter Christians.
I love Harry. Without the dedication and courage of Harry and those like him, humanism and the freethought movement would never have made it this far.
But what do we need to do to move further? For one thing, we need to also serve the needs of people who are quite different from Harry.
Harry was a freethought pioneer because he did not have the same needs as most other people. He was able to leave the church behind because he was exceptional in this way. I’m with him on this. When people talk to me about the need for community or wax poetic about “something larger than myself” or seeking the “spiritual side” of life, frankly my eyes glaze over a bit. The truth is that I don’t feel these needs in quite the way I hear others express them. That puts me outside the norm — something I need to recognize.
As a result of our relative lack of the mammalian desire to snuggle, I and all the rest of those with Harry personalities get together and talk quite happily about science and truth and reason. It’s not me I’m worried about—it’s Sally, who has been standing awkwardly by the coffee urn for ten paragraphs now.
Desperate for something to do, she ambles over to a table of books for sale. Every book without exception is about science, philosophy, critical thinking, or the debunking of religion or the paranormal. She meekly drifts to a group in conversation. Some religious dogma or other is being debunked with a flurry of critical argument and a smug, chuckling sneer.
Rather than being welcomed into an accepting community, she has the distinct feeling she’d better watch what she says. Most of all, she is painfully aware that the sneer is directed at who she was the previous week.
The meeting begins to coalesce. After a few announcements, the speaker is introduced. And what will our new visitor hear for the next 45 minutes? Here’s a quick sampling of recent meeting topics for humanist groups around the country:
Jesus of Nazareth—Historical, Mythical, or Some of Each?
Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Revelation Trumped by the Constitution
The Enlightenment and the Self
Who Wrote the Gospels?
Church/State—Strict Separation or Accommodation?
Debate: “To Believe or Not to Believe”
I’m interested in every one of these topics. Of course I am—I’m Harry. But Sally, not so much. If she comes again and has the same experience—an indifferent reception, an atmosphere of critical disdain, and a debunking lecture—the third time will rarely be a charm.
I’ve heard it said that the comparison isn’t fair. Humanist groups don’t want to be churches. I’m comparing apples and oranges. But if our prospective members seem to be allergic to oranges, might it not be wise to take a closer look at them apples? Might it not be wise to think about what it is that people are really looking for, and to even look to traditional religion as potential inspiration?
A recent post I saw on a humanist discussion board summed this up 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.
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!
Humanism 2009 (1 of 4)
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The column by Charles Blow in which I’m quoted is in today’s NYT. Among the many points is one of my favorites: “The nonreligious could learn a few things from religion.”
He’s right, you know.
He starts the column by quoting nonreligious friends who say “Most people are religious because they’re raised to be. They’re indoctrinated by their parents.” Blow seems to reject this idea in favor of the spiritual need argument, and supports that with the poor “retention rate” of the nonreligious.
But I think that’s only half the picture. It also makes sense that the worldview that does the least indoctrinating would end up with children who choose many different paths. I think that’s what’s up with kids raised outside of religion. And on the other side of the coin, the high “retention rate” for religious denominations could just as reasonably be interpreted as evidence of a high level of indoctrination.
Anyway.
One of the concerns I hear most often from nonreligious parents is “How can I keep from indoctrinating them to MY opinions?” I love hearing that. Give them a foundation of basic values — like humility, empathy, courage, honesty, openness, generosity, and gratitude — then let them decide what it adds up to. That’s freethought parenting.
Some of our kids will remain nonreligious, and others will choose religion, including some perfectly benign expressions. Still others may drift into religion and out again. As a parent, I’ll respond to my kids’ chosen identities on the same grounds as everything else: Are you happy, and are you making the world a better place?
At any rate, since Charles has thrown the ball in the air, it’s time as promised to post the talk I gave at Edmonds UU near Seattle last month, since the topic is the same. It’ll be in four parts. You’ll hear echoes from several other posts, since I use the blog as a farm team for my ideas. As always, thanks for listening.
Humanism 2009
by Dale McGowan
First delivered at Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Church, April 19, 2009
Despite the rather grand title of my talk, I don’t expect to offer any epic overviews today. I’d like instead to focus on one aspect of humanism today—the wonderful fault line currently running down the middle of the humanist community.
I call it wonderful because I think this fault line is a symptom of our growth and success as a worldview. Last year’s American Religious Identification Survey didn’t have a category for humanists, but fully one in five respondents claimed no religious identity. Most of them can be safely assumed to share the humanist or even secular humanist worldview. And when, within 20 minutes of assuming office, the President of the United States chose to include “nonbelievers” in a list of those to whom this country belongs—well, despite those who quibble with his word choice, it’s a pretty significant indication that nontheistic Americans, by whatever label, are gaining a greater place at the table.
But with that success come some challenges. Unity was less difficult before. When a group is small, huddled on the margins and threatened with extinction, there’s a tendency to worry less about what divides you than what unites you.
I remember a high school social studies teacher of mine describing the usual course of revolutions in these terms. While the revolutionaries are storming the castle, they tend to set their differences aside and unite against the common enemy. But if they are successful at gaining power, they immediately fragment into at least two factions, with the more radical accusing the other of “selling out” the ideals of the revolution.
It’s hard to find a revolution anywhere that hasn’t followed this pattern.
Though humanism is far from breaching the castle wall of our culture, I do think the fault line can be seen as a sign that we’re not quite so huddled on the margins anymore — that we’re beginning to reach a level of viability and maturity unthinkable just a generation ago.
Before I support that claim or elaborate on the fault line, we’ll need to define humanism.
I had to do this on the spot last year when my daughter Delaney, who was then six, read the word “humanist” on the spine of a book on my shelf and asked what it meant. You’d think that, given my current work, I’d have been ready for this, but parenting is all about being overprepared for things that never happen and surprised by things that do. The big surprise to me in that moment is that I not only answered her, but gave her what I continue to think was a really good answer.
“A humanist,” I said, “is somebody who thinks that people should all take care of each other, and whether there is a god or there isn’t, we should spend our time making this life and this world better.”
She immediately embraced the term herself and announced to her kindergarten class the next day that she is a humanist. When her teacher asked her what that meant, she gave the definition that I had given her—and several of her classmates in that Georgia school enthusiastically declared that they too are humanists.
Oh what I wouldn’t have given for a God’s-eye view of some family dinnertables that night.
Now I’m a humanist of a particular kind. I am a secular humanist. I believe that there is no supernatural being watching over us, and that’s all the more reason for us to care for each other and this world. No one else seems to be available for the job.
Many others call themselves religious humanists, including many UUs. Some of these use the word “religion” in the traditional way, which Webster’s defines as “belief in a divine or superhuman power to be obeyed and worshipped as the creator and ruler of the universe.” Others claim and redefine the word “religion” in ways that transcend theistic belief, building instead on shared values, community, and the desire to be and do good.
When I first discovered the label for what I had essentially always been – secular humanist – I considered the first word to be the more important. I had renounced not just theism but all of the institutional accretions that have built up around theism these many centuries, doing untold harm to the very world and people I care so much about.
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.
Six bits
Wrote to Laurie Goodstein at the New York Times to thank her for the terrific piece she wrote about atheism in America for Monday’s edition. She replied, letting me know that she knows me and my work. That never fails to surprise me, even when my mother says it, not that she has. Laurie apparently considered interviewing me for the piece and hopes to do so for another down the road. We’ll just see if I’m available.
Three years after Penn Jillette and I locked horns over one noun and its conjunction in his PBB essay, it apparently still cheeses him off. He has now posted a YouTube video — part of a new video series called “Penn Says” — in which he flogs this even further (at 1:07-2:45). Again, for the record: aside from spelling out an abbreviation, here’s the only edit I made to Penn’s piece. It’s on p. 32 of Parenting Beyond Belief (*flip flip flip*):
We don’t have any friends who are
christards orinto any kind of faith-based hooey…
That’s all, folks. I deleted a gratuitous slur. Everything else is precisely as he wrote it. And we discussed it before I submitted the manuscript, and (though seriously miffed) he agreed to allow it.
I never bring this up unprovoked (apparently I never even blogged it until now), but Michael Dukakis taught me two things about life: (1) If someone takes a picture of you in a tank, FIRE!” and (2) Don’t allow slander to go unanswered.
I’m fine with Penn keeping this one alive. That way I can keep refuting this idea that juvenile namecalling is a necessary or useful way for atheists to engage the world.
Now there’s one spot in the video where Penn and I agree completely:
“I should be agreeing with Christians and Muslims because they’re right about something as opposed to agreeing with atheists because they’re wrong.”
Exactly right, Penn. That’s why you don’t broadbrush them all as “christards.” Because sometimes they’re not. The defense rests.
Raising Freethinkers is apparently now available in the Kindle format on Amazon! Not sure why PBB isn’t, but it may be coming soon. If it does, I’ll be the last to know. (In other news: Darth Vader is Luke’s father!)
Subscription is now open for the PBB Channel on YouTube. Just a placeholder video for now. On June 15 I’ll begin posting short videos based largely on the PBB Seminar.
Got a phone call from New York Times columnist Charles Blow, a fascinating guy who among other things is largely responsible for the increasingly creative use of graphics to tell stories in the Times (flash charts, word concordances, interactive maps, etc). He’s at work on a story about a Pew study released Monday about changes in religious affiliation. He called to get my reaction to one finding, captured in this paragraph:
At the same time that the ranks of the unaffiliated have grown, the Landscape Survey also revealed that the unaffiliated have one of the lowest retention rates of any of the major religious groups, with most people who were raised unaffiliated now belonging to one religion or another. Those who leave the ranks of the unaffiliated cite several reasons for joining a faith, such as the attraction of religious services and styles of worship (74%), having been spiritually unfulfilled while unaffiliated (51%) or feeling called by God (55%).
I told him I wasn’t surprised by the finding. The group that does the least indoctrinating will naturally end up with the lowest “retention,” and that’s fine. A wide range of outcomes is an indication that kids raised nonreligiously are more likely to think for themselves. They find their way to a wide variety of identities, including a number of liberal religious expressions that are compatible with 95 percent of the secular worldview. Nothing wrong with that. And some will find their way back to the worldview of their youth, just as lapsed Catholics often do.
I also offered my opinion that kids raised in complete isolation from/ignorance of religious ideas or experience are the most likely to end up emotionally hijacked by fundamentalism — just as fundamentalist kids who are taught to despise and fear all things secular often end up the most virulent atheists I know. Interesting, these symmetries.
Kids raised in nonreligious homes often head for church as they grow up because churches offer community and connectedness and transcendence of the everyday — things that organized humanism has ignored for too long and is now finally, finally attempting to address. They’re doing it through family programming, community-building, good works, and engagement with emotion as much as intellect. The more we offer what humans need, the more humans we’ll attract and retain. Until then, we don’t deserve ’em.
There’s something else coming — something terribly big and exciting, in my humble, and I can’t tell you yet. Nope, not a third book, nor Raising Freethinkers: The Movie. And I’m not pregnant. It is both legal and ethical. I daresay you’re gonna like it (except for you in the green shirt, who will shake your fist at the darkening sky, then meet a tall stranger). I can’t tell you what it is until I leap a few tall buildings to get it on track. Leapt the first one Tuesday. Should have the rest of them leapt in time for a June 1 announcement.
At that point I will need your help. Every one of you, even greensleeves over there. Until then, feel free to wonder what the heck.
