Remembering Freethinkers and Secular Humanist Lives

by Gary Berg-Cross
One of the 5 founders of WASH died in August, 2015. It got me thinking about how to celebrate a freethinker’s life and what we learn from the lives of people deep into the values of Secular Humanism and a reason-based life. So I looked up a few of the reflections people have made on a few of them and some their own thoughtful expressions

A starting point for me was a childhood influence, Bertrand Russell, describe in and OBIT as:

“Philosopher, mathematician, academic, and campaigner for intellectual, social and sexual freedom, and peace and disarmament, Russell was a prominent atheist. He wrote about his worldview in Why I am Not a Christian, and was a member of the British Humanist Association’s Standing Advisory Council, as well as President of Cardiff Humanists, until his death.”

When the NY Times wrote at length on his passing they included this:

Unlike some generative thinkers, Russell epitomized the philosopher as a public figure. He was the Voltaire of his time, but lacking in the Sage of Fernay's malice. From the beginning to the end of his active life, Russell engaged himself with faunlike zest in the great issues of the day-- pacifism, rights for women, civil liberty, trial marriage, new methods of education, Communism, the nuclear peril and war and peace-- for he was at bottom a moralist and a humanist. He set forth his views on moral and ethical matters in such limpidly written books as "Marriage and Morals," "Education and the Social Order" and "Human Society in Ethics and Politics."

Russell like others mentioned here helped build useful organizations and they often contributed in multiple areas as Renaissance people - philosophers, natural philosophers (scientists), intellectuals and writers.  They are thus remembered also in their own words on topics they held forth on important topics such as in  the quote from BR below:

A 2^nd such poymathic person, also from my childhood, was Isaac Asimov.

On his passing STEVE ALLEN wrote this still relevant observation noting the avoidance of his humanistic and atheistic stance in some OBITs. Mainstream culture often values things differently than the innovator does.

 A Tribute to Isaac Asimov

It is interesting that even so prominent a newspaper as the Los Angeles Times, in running a long and complimentary obituary story, one that started on the first page, referred to Isaac Asimov as a “science fiction virtuoso” and made no mention of his achievements as humanist thinker and writer.

I have the impression that the Times intended no slight whatsoever to the humanist movement in this matter but that its lack of reference to something so important to Asimov himself is an indicator of the general lack of attention paid to humanist philosophy by the American mainstream mindset. Indeed it has occurred to me that if it were not for daily attacks by right-wing fundamentalists, who are given to using the term secular humanist as they might use the phrase Satan or Communist, the non-theistic humanist movement would get almost no publicity at all

More friendly was this letter on his personality:

Isaac Asimov was not merely a great and prolific writer, but also a very funny and warm and friendly man ("Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction Virtuoso, Dies, April 7). He was always bubbling over with the most amazing wit and had more energy than any three normal men his age together. No matter how deeply involved he might be in some project or how pressed by some publishing deadline, he always enjoyed giving generously of his time and experience to help and encourage young writers of promise.

The media attention following his death was on his amazing output of publications and their influence. But for those of us who knew him, his written work is dwarfed by the challenge of his personality. Just to know him was to become a deeper and wiser person. BEN A. TUPPER Ramona

More recent is the memory of Carl Sagan. Joel Achenbach provided a tribute to him in THE SAGAN FILE which included this characterization of something familiar but something remarkably balanced by cosmological perspective. Freethinkers require many adjectives:

 He was your basic progressive liberal, a college professor, a peace advocate. But he saw our human obsessions as trivial in the grand scheme of things. The universe isn’t about us, he would say. He railed against human arrogance, against “our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe.”

And yet the voice in the file is that of a person who liked human beings, who rooted for them. Perhaps because Sagan had seen so many desert worlds out there in our solar system, so many cold, airless, sterile planets and moons, he appreciated the one place where we know life has proliferated, and where intelligence has somehow appeared.

   

   And much more recently, but just as complex we have the life and remembrance    of Christopher Hitchens.  The AHA remembrance started with:

Humanists and atheists are saddened by the death of the prolific writer and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens, who died Thursday, December 15 at the age of 62...

“Humanity has lost a powerful stalwart for atheism,”

We feel a deep lose when the person has made us think and feel deeply and made us proud to be of the human species.

 On Saturday November 21, 2015 from 10:45 AM to 12:45 PM at the Wheaton Public Library, 11701 Georgia Ave., Wheaton, MD WASH will  remember another Secular Humanist Life  -George Porter on of the five founders of WASH.

Speakers include:

Fred Edwords (former AHA Director & former national director of the United Coalition of Reason) will moderate and our speakers include:

Ron Lindsay (president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry)

Rob Boston (Director of Communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Editor of Church & State magazine)

Stuart Jordan (past WASH President, emeritus senior staff scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, past President of ISHV, served as Science Advisor to the Center for Inquiry Office of Public Policy.)

Ken Marsalek (WASH Cofounder, 6 years as early WASH president, coauthor of WASH bylaws, early WASH Board member)

Pete Lines WASH Cofounder, coauthor of WASH bylaws, early WASH Board member, secretary and treasurer) 

Bill Creasy (WASH Board member and Baltimore Chapter coordinator for 16 years, 6 years as WASH president, current WASH secretary)

Mike Reid Reid (WASH Board member for 10 years, editor of WASHline for 6 years, WASH president for 5 years.) 

Aaron Porter (son of George & Lois Porter, musician, and administrator for the Navy Band in Washington, DC)

There will be a small reception afterwards.

Please come and honor George Porter's  Secular Humanist Life as people who knew and loved him reflect on his life and contributions.

http://www.meetup.com/humanism-218/events/226418573/

Do They Contradict Themselves?

By Gary Berg-Cross

They say that “Mother Nature Never Shaved with Occam’s Razor.” And it is not just physical reality that is complicated.  Humans and their positions are too. Mayor Koch, who died Feb. 1 at 88 of congestive heart failure, was many things and some of them complex, puzzling and perhaps paradoxical.

Early a crusader against Communism and the Vietnam War, he was elected as a Democrat but  later campaigned for George W. Bush. He opposed unions (denouncing transport union sympathizers as “wackos,”) although they helped rescue the city when the teachers' union furnished $150 million from their pension fund to buy Municipal Assistance Corporation bonds. He self described himself as a sane libreral but  became more hawkish over time and berated Obama for timidity in attacking Iran or confronting the Muslim world – “"President Obama is showing weakness to the Muslim world." Ed Koch Reverses Position, Slams Obama's "Weakness" on Muslims

Koch was a known for outrageous, antagonizing and unapologetic pronouncement such as reported by Joseph Berger in the New York Times," needlessly by saying Jews would be "crazy" to vote for Jesse Jackson for president because Jackson could be (like Koch himself)  outspoken, to many people’s annoyance and use outrageous language such as slurring NYC as "Hymietown".

Still I was a bit knocked back to hear a recent Koch clip from the Piers Morgan show where he mused about his secular-religious views this way:

"I'm secular but I believe in God. I believe in the hereafter," he said. "I believe in reward and punishment. And I expect to be rewarded. God gave me a very good hand to play over my 88 years. I have no regrets."

OK, so maybe this is another politician having it both ways and wanting to be loved by both sides. To be fair maybe he is talking about secular government and religion and bounding his secular to what is Caesars' and his religion to what is God's.  It would be nice to draw out such politicians so we know what type of values they have and what type of government we can expect and who they might heed on what issue.


Or it is easy to say that a Mayor Koch was a one-man anomaly: a self-declared secular Jew who harbored a strong belief in God, but he is not alone.  As I noted in “All Mixed Up: Perplexing Hyphenated Identity, 50-50 Concepts and Mixed up Ethnicity,” American has not only an ethnic hyphenated label phenomena like Irish-American, but one that mixes religion and ethnic identity such as the self-label Atheist Jew. Does it make sense to say that one is an atheist Catholic? It doesn’t seem like it. I can be an atheist who is a White, English person, but atheist and Catholic are both in what seems the “religion” dimension with no overlap on the Venn diagram. It can seem confusing since terms for Jewishness and Catholicism seem like religious identity, but they also have ethnic-historical identity too. This can be accepted as part of human complexity and people labeling things on their own terms, but it can make understanding what people, such as declared “secularists” stand for.  In what we variously call the Near or Middle East there is much labeling of secular government, Turkey and Israel come to mind, they are very religious nations too. And what claims to be a secular government can drift over to religious pressures such as the rising influence of ultra-orthodox  in Israel.

 For more confusion and having it your own way like Mr. Koch see Can a secular humanist believe in a god?

I guess some people can think this way, but it seems like they are floating in some see of definitional relativism that relies on the rest of us to tolerate their having it their way. Still I have some concerns that having it both ways without a better understanding leads to situations such as we have on the debt, deficit & economy.  Conservatives agitate for a cut in government spending to handle the "debt problem."  But this hurts the economy and so they can complain about slow job recovery.  If you stimulate job growth with spending they can complain it increases the debt.  It's one equation with 2 unknowns and a guaranteed complaint. Sometimes this hyphenated view of cultural identity (secular) or religious identity seems like that type of variable equation that can flip back an forth as needed.  The result may be confusion..at least in the hands of people not trying to understand or pursue a clear definition of secular in a world of religious cultures.

Or perhaps they are more in the spirit of Walt Whitman in his Song for Myself:

“I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself.....

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. "

Houston launches a Freethinking Community

By Gary Berg-Cross

Earlier, in the days of the Reason Rally (March 2012), MSNBC’s Up w/Chris Hayes aired an episode on non-believers/Atheism. The guests included Susan Jacoby, Richard Dawkins and local favorite Jamila Bey, but also Pastor Mike Aus who publicly came out of the atheist closet on Chris Hayes’ show.
Aus said that he'd long had doubts about his faith and beliefs, but never abandoned the idea that Christianity provided for basic human needs for support and community.

"Regardless of theological orientation, there is some kind of deeply ingrained basic human need for community. Homo sapiens are a tribal species that need support from others, that cannot be denied."

Well, Up with Chris Hayes had an update in October.  According to the Houston paper Aus, along with several other atheists, freethinkers and secular humanists in Houston, launched Houston Oasis - a community that offers sanctuary for freethinkers. Houston Oasis is a community grounded in reason rather than revelation, celebrating the human experience as opposed to any deity.  

The Houston Chronicle's profile on Houston Oasis called it a “church” which did prompt the Oasis folks to  clarify that they do NOT see themselves as an:

‘Atheist church" nor do we use the term "church" as a descriptor. We are simply a community of freethinkers--atheists, agnostics, deists--and even theists-- dedicated to understanding life through reason and promoting humanistic values. We attempt to avoid labels and accept people wherever they may be.’

The first Houston Oasis Sunday morning gatherings was held in early September and featured live music by local artists, personal testimonies, a message and time for fellowship and  for “those who do not want to be part of organized religion...but who do want to be part of organized-something.” 

More music was featured in later gatherings. Now it has a Facebook page.

It’s probably a good place for some of what has been called Nones and, of course, secular humanists. Perhaps a  good spot for WASH folks to stop by on there.

Thoughts from A+ to eupraXsophy passing through Secular Humanism

By Gary Berg-Cross

At a recent Atheist MeetUp I attended the topic a A+ (‘Atheism Plus‘)came up. The women explaining it to me provided a small history to it, initially by feminists as a reaction, in part, to the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins and the other 3 horsemen.

Jen McCreight, self described as a “liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted feminist atheist; kicked some of this off with an article called “How I Unwittingly Infiltrated the Boy’s Club & Why It’s Time for a New Wave of Atheism” in a Freethought blog. In effect if the New Atheism is the 2^nd wave then A+ is an attempt at a 3^rd wave. An apparent motivator for Jen and others is what they describe as various attitudes they associate with folk like the horsemen who are described as ‘old’ ‘white’ ‘male’ and ‘privileged.’ You can read much of the thinking in New Statesman article frequently quoted by the Freethought bloggers involved. Here is one way they describe Atheism+

“at its most basic, an attempt wrap things together more formally, to create a movement that prioritises issues of equality and does so from an explicitly non-religious perspective. Some would say that such a philosophy already exists in the form of humanism. Others prefer the label Skeptic.”

I’m new to this debate topic and as an old, white male not motivated to argue the fine points of the debate. There is already a counter attack. I would like to pursue the idea which struck several of the people at the Meetup, that some of the founding principals of ‘Atheism plus’ are a version of Secular Humanism – just with a catchier A plus title and icon to match.

You get some of this from the writing of Greta Christian who principles and values for A Plus include:

• we care about social justice,
• we support women’s rights,
• we protest racism,
• we fight homophobia and transphobia,
• we use critical thinking and skepticism.

I like a focused positive stance and exchanges using optimistic language and perhaps we will see more discussion like this out of the A+ thinkers. I would welcome a connection to what Paul Kurtz has written about captivatingly in his succinct and to the point book Affirmations: Joyful And Creative Exuberance and earlier in the Secular Humanist. One of the principle is:

• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

Below are some others:

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.
• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.
• We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
• We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.
• We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
• We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.
• We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.
• We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
• We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.
• We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.
• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
• We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.
• We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
• We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

Another connection might A+ might make down the road is to the new concept coined by Paul Kurtz in 1988 using the term Eupraxsophy. Composed of Greek roots, eu (good, well); praxis (practice, conduct), and sophia (wisdom)—eupraxsophy literally means "good practice and wisdom." Eupraxsophy characterizes nonreligious approach to life that involves commitment to a good life that is passionate while also being tempered by wisdom and guided by scientific, practical skepticism.

I note in passing that Nathan Bupp, who will be one of the panel members to discuss Kurtz living legacy at the Sept WASH MDC meeting, has edited a book on this topic called Meaning and Value in a Secular Age: Why Eupraxsophy Matters - The Writings of Paul Kurtz

Image Credits

eupraxsophy gearhead: http://www.instituteforscienceandhumanvalues.net/

A+ logo :http://lfab-uvm.blogspot.com/2012/08/a.html

Transhuman:eupraxsophy: http://chart.state.md.us/