Washington Area Secular Humanists on Wikipedia

By Gary Berg-Cross

Just as Humanlight commenced in December, 2013 and the year was ending we got word that WASH now has a. entry on Wikipedia - see our page. Thanks to  WASH Board member Phil Kalmanson for taking on this effort and hanging in there thru several seemingly contradictory directions to add or delete details to satisfy the Wiki criteria.  We tried not to take it personally.

The page is a nice summary place and will perhaps help build the community. It’s much bigger than pages for things like Humanlight.  Bu there are still things to do.  Now that we have a page I added WASH to the list or secular organizations listed under Secular Humanism.

Perhaps others will find some things to add and places to add info.

Remembering Humanist Walt Whitman (& his friend Bob Ingersoll)

By Gary Berg-Cross

It is wonderful to celebrate May 31 as the birthday of poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892).  Like many other non-DC natives (Ingersoll for one & WW was very much a native New Yorker), he spent time here in later life.  No fluke that one of Bethesda's HSs is named after him.

Like Ingersoll there is even a DC tour of his life here (see map at end of article).
Whitman’s DC-time occurred during the Civil War and is notable for many reasons, including the fact that Lincoln served as a kindred spirit and Robert Ingersoll as a friend. To his friend, Horace Traubel, Whitman said of Ingersoll:

“I consider Bob one of the constellations of our time—our country—America—a bright, magnificent constellation.”

It's a bit like what Emerson had said earlier of Whitman. In turn, as one might expect Ingersoll, the orator, could entertain people on Whitman virtues and we have a record of some of this. In his testimonial of Whitman Ingersoll said of his first publication Leaves of Grass:



At this time a young man—he to whom this testimonial is given—he upon whose head have fallen the snows of more than seventy winters—this man, born within the sound of the sea, gave to the world a book, "Leaves of Grass." This book was, and is, the true transcript of a soul. The man is unmasked. No drapery of hypocrisy, no pretense, no fear. The book was as original in form as in thought. All customs were forgotten or disregarded, all rules broken—nothing mechanical—no imitation—spontaneous, running and winding like a river, multitudinous in its thoughts as the waves of the sea—nothing mathematical or measured. In everything a touch of chaos—lacking what is called form as clouds lack form, but not lacking the splendor of sunrise or the glory of sunset. It was a marvelous collection and aggregation of fragments, hints, suggestions, memories, and prophecies, weeds and flowers, clouds and clods, sights and sounds, emotions and passions, waves, shadows and constellations.
 

Like Ben Franklin WW spent early years in the print business and publication, including one run by Edgar Allen Poe. (They met in the offices of the Broadway Journal at 304 Broadway Street, New York City, where Poe was editor in 1845.) The result was a liberal & lusty mind like Ben’s that was able to analyze early American life. Leaves of Grass is an American epic that celebrated the common man and captures some of it growing immigrant-worker experience in contemplative poems like "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever
so many generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a
crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh'd,

Whitman was by all measures a freethinking Humanist – “There is no God more divine than yourself”. This is evidenced in his first, great work Leaves of Grass as well as his later advice dealing with problems like slavery and women's lack of freedom: “Resist much, obey little” and ““Be curious, not judgmental.” This free voice of the common man had  his classic Leaves poem banned in Boston, as they say, in the 1880.  It was deemed ‘obscene,’ ‘too sensual,’ and ‘shocking’ because of its frank portrayal of sexuality including women's sexuality.

All of this independent spirit is amplified in details in a famous passage copied below, which remains among the best of advice even unto our age:

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem

(Links to books by WW )

Images

WW as an old man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman

Whitman Tour in DC: http://washingtonart.com/beltway/whitman2.html             

Ingersol on Whitman: http://www.robertgreeningersoll.org/?attachment_id=284

Abelard's Early Humanist Reasoning

by Gary Berg-Cross

At a recent conference a lunchtime conversation turned to examples of sound reasoning and the scholar Peter Abelard was raised as an interesting example.  Abelard is better known to most of us as a tragic love story.  Abelard and Heloise remain one of the more a celebrated couples of all time, in part from their writing and in part from the classic tragic events that eventually separated them:

1.    two well-educated people, brought together by their passion they fell in love;

2.    Heloise became pregnant, so

3.    they married secretly in 1118.

4.    Her uncle Fulbert, a canon of Paris,  had Abelard castrated by thugs believing that he had abandoned Heloise,

5.    after which he became a monk and

6.    Sent to a convent by her uncle, Heloise later became a nun

In a letter to Abelard, Heloise reflected on her loss:

"You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you."

This part of the history I knew a bit, but Peter Abelard (1079-1142) as an12th century medieval French philosopher, theologian, and logician I had heard less about.  After all these are the Middle Ages, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn the history and form of his thinking.

It goes something like this. A bright boy he rapidly jumped from school to school gaining an easy rise to fame. He wound up in a pre-University of Paris setting to study under William of Champeaux, head of the cathedral school and archdeacon of Notre Dame. Along the way his brilliant reasoning and debate were matched by a Chris-Hitchens-like arrogance. As with Hitch he generated many foes as wells as admirers. His mentor William, for example, was famous for a realist stance on the nature of universals, while pupil Peter took a nominalist and soundly won a series of debates. This success lead to a following, among students who provided a core for what was late to become the great University in Paris. Abélard's deep understanding of Aristotle's theory of knowledge surpassed anything widely available in 12^th century Europe, which he cultivated in his Paris students. His was an example of great teaching that came to live as a Liberal Arts curriculum and style of teaching when universities were formally founded.

One of his important contributions was a work on ethics which took as its title the Socratic admonition, "Know thyself." In this work Abelard veered from the established course of strict commandments to stress the importance of intention in evaluating the moral/immoral character of an action. This was a step towards more nuanced reasoning about moral action.

Some of his early persuasive arguments swayed leaders like Pope Innocent III, who accepted Abelard's Doctrine of Limbo – children are innocent before the age of reason. But reasoned debate about reason itself was his real forte and passion - outside of Heloise. A famous debate was with Bernard of Clairvaux over the conflicts of reason and religion.  This conflict that made him a hero of the Enlightenment.

In Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian Abelard plays a combination of a Socrates and Swift like character as he debated religious dogma. Abélard juxtaposes apparently contradictory quotations from the Church Fathers & the Bible on many of the traditional topics of Judeo-Christian theology (he was the first to use ‘theology’ in its modern sense) only to “discover(ed) the Jews to be stupid and the Christians insane.”  As you can imagine making common folks reasoning look foolish does get noticed. His teachings backed by sound reasoning were controversial, and he was repeatedly charged with heresy. His book on the Trinity was condemned to be burnt at Soissons in 1121.

One can see the controversy in one his works on Logic Reasoning "Sic et Non," an early scholastic teaching text whose title translates from Medieval Latin into a simple “Yes and No" dichotomy (for more on limitations of dichotomy see my article on Binary Thinking). As in his previous “Dialog” we see what happens when we apply reason to the teaching of revelation or at least questions that come out of revealed truths.

In the Prologue, Abélard outlines logical rules for reconciling contradictions but the core of the book is a list of 158 philosophical and theological questions.  The first five questions give a sense of these:

1. Must human faith be completed by reason, or not?
2. Does faith deal only with unseen things, or not?
3. Is there any knowledge of things unseen, or not?
4. May one believe only in God alone, or not?
5. Is God a single unitary being, or not?

Abelard laid down four basic principles of reasoning:

• Use systematic doubt and question everything
• Learn the difference between statements of rational proof and those merely of persuasion
• Be precise in use of words, and expect precision of others
• Watch for error, even in Holy Scripture (danger Will Robinson!!)

Wonderful advice even today.  Maybe especially today.

One can why Peter got in trouble as the rational arguments on the non-doctrinaire side seem as good as the Church’s position. And rational argument is still getting freethinkers in trouble.

Abelard was probably not the forerunner of modern atheism as some have argued. He seems more comfortably fit into a proud humanistic tradition–extending from Socrates. He takes a  bold Medieval step towards human centering in ethics by taking moral authority and responsibility away from gods and their servant. Intentions and reasoning make it our responsibility.  Bravo Peter A for your love of reason and balance along with the worthy Heloise.

Images

A & H : http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2012/04/sic-et-non-why-the-title.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_philosophy

A Dialogue of a Philosopher With a Jew, and a Christian: http://books.google.com/books/about/A_Dialogue_of_a_Philosopher_With_a_Jew_a.html?id=j6lLgt-bhBAC

 

Sic et Non: http://www.amazon.fr/Sic-Et-Non-Critical-Edition/dp/0226000664

 

Capturing Non-Belief in Fiction

by Gary Berg-Cross

Interesting ideas can often be explored through the lens of fiction. If Huck Finn was an insightful character from the 19^th century Holden Caulfield, the 17-year-old protagonist of author J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is one from the 20^th read in school.  Young Caulfield is widely recognized as a figure resistance to growing older in an irrational world manifest in an attempt to protect childhood innocence. As a 50s publication, catcher’s Holden quickly became an icon for estranged teenage rebellion and James Dean-style angst.  And, by the way along with Huck he seems very much a skeptical if not atheist figure. "Catcher" is very much about the detection of hypocrisy in American life and religion as Twain’s Huck found earlier in his trip down the river of American Culture. Religious piety about what is right and how to lead a good life is very much part of a hypocritical web. Twain, as discussed in Tom Flynn’s excellent The New Encyclopedia of UNBELIEF, held a Calvinist view of life and God as a trickster that spins a web that traps most of us in a personal hell on false belief.

Wikipedia has sort of a list of noted atheists and agnostics characters .”  in the broad category of “Fiction” who have, “either through self-admission within canon works or through admission of the character creator(s), been associated with a disbelief in a supreme deity or follow an agnostic approach toward religious matters.

It's mostly a list from TV and such.  For example, Kurt Hummel is listed from the musical comedy-drama Glee.  People like Dr. Allison Cameron  on House is obviously an example of a skeptical, free-thinking character. We might see more in pop culture as the Nones-way-of-life proceeds.

A bit more interesting is Rebecca Goldstein's (Steve Pinker’s wife) contemporary novel (36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction).   This uses the New Atheism as a driver of contemporary issues such as celebrity and influence raised by the NA movement.

Goldstein's protagonist is Cass Seltzer, a psychology of religion prof who gets pulled into the spotlight by the surprise success of his book called, after William James, The Varieties of Religious Illusion. Both Seltzer's fictional book and Goldstein's actual novel contain an appendix, -  36 Arguments for the Existence of God. The appendix is not actually an argument in support of god, and Matthew Goldstein (aka Explicit Atheist), often a blogger here, would have a field day in shooting down the arguments.  Maybe he has already.  These arguments are really more conversational points and the lightness of position (reflecting the lightness of what earns popularity in today’s culture) is partly what gives the Seltzer character his path to fame and media access- an atheist with a soul. It’s a bit like former Mayor Koch and the people I discussed in by blog “Do They Contradict Themselves?”

Nobel Prize literature has some atheist and freethinker characters.  One is in Ferit Orhan Pamuk’s (aka Orhan Pamuk) early 80s work called Silent House. Pamik  is a multi-talented Turkish novelist/ screenwriter,  and received the Nobel Prize in Literature (2006). After winning his proze more of his work has been translated and getting reviews in English language outlets.  One of this is Silent House whose main character is a bitter, bereaving 90-year-old widow Fatma.  The silence of the book is about important issues that are not talked about directly.  The story takes place somewhere in Turkey's violent summer of 1980. The Turkish Armed Forces were about to restored order via a coup after violence had broken out between right-leaning nationalists and communists. This coup was to transform Turkey from its fading economic to a more explicit secular if very military state.  

Pamuk uses a house locale and a ritual summer visit from grandchildren to hold up a bit of mirror about the noisy, dissipation and dissonance of Turkey in that era of political and cultural change. As one reviewer noted Fatma's life is, “just like her house, isn't silent. Instead, it's pensive and nearly bursting with lament, shame, sadness, and squashed hopes.“ The widow Fatma herself is silent about the deeper things but bemoans the outer disorder:

When all that horrible hullabaloo lets up, when all that noise coming from the beach, the motorboats, the wailing kids, the drunken cursing, the songs, radios, and televisions, quiet down, and the last car goes screaming past, I slowly get up from my bed and stand just behind my shutters listening to the outdoors: nobody's there, they're all exhausted and have gone to sleep.

Fatma's shushing, keep-the-world and its problems out of here is a great part of the silence, it is her deceased husband, Selahattin the local doctor that is the atheist, intellectual voice that speaks through her. It is some of his political, rational and intellectual hopes that have been squashed and silenced.  We learn of this family patriarch as Fatma recalls him to us wile alone in her bedroom. Her monologues ruminate on their joint past and we learn that Selahattin has been exiled from Istanbul for his leftist politics. Madden the doctor doubles down on a self-and-family-destruct course by proclaiming (Nietzsche style) that God dead. For good measure he throws in darts about Eastern vs. Western/scientific values. 

Isolated in an illiberal backwater and fortified by drink, Selahattin dedicates himself to an encyclopedic task – comprehensively rewriting the world to bring secularism and the scientific method to the Turks. It’s doomed to failure and passes on the burden to  grandson Faruk, who following his grandfather (and father) in working on a manuscript whose goal is to disprove the existence of God, offer a rational if reductionist explanation of Turkey and the universe too.

The shape of the atheist doctor’s struggles is somewhat familiar from other fiction.  It is like a Russian novel (Turgenev was apparently an influence).  But his shadow casts a feeling some of us may recognize even in the West that he idolizes a relative bit.  And perhaps we see some of the doctor's questions echoed when groups of free thinkers meet in the 21^st century . We wonder why science has yet to triumph over various hardened forms of superstition. We may wonder why there passive acceptance of much that is wrong and be improved on.  We may identify with lonely pioneers who struggle to organize thought around them and reason things out in times when intellect is sequestered by ignorance a conventions of hypocrisy.

For a review of “Silent house”  see Marie Arana, in WaPO October 08, 2012

Images

Holden Caufield: http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Holden_Caulfield

36 Arguments: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6734417-36-arguments-for-the-existence-of-god

 

Silent House: http://www.blackcatbooks.com.au/index.php?cPath=1&&page=2