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/

Atheism for the New Millenium

by Naima Washington

In his autobiography, Mirror to America, Dr. John Hope Franklin writes, "From the very beginning of my own involvement in the academy, the goal I sought was to be a scholar with credentials as impeccable as I could achieve. At the same time I was determined to be as active as I could in the fight to eradicate the stain of racism that clouded American intellectual and academic life even as it poisoned other aspects of American society.... While I set out to advance my professional career on the basis of the highest standards of scholarship, I also used that scholarship to expose the hypocrisy underlying so much of American social and race relations." During his career, John Hope Franklin encouraged his students and colleagues to embrace both scholarship and activism. On October 7, 2011, I thought about his words while listening to Sikivu Hutchinson, author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars, as she made her presentation at the 4th Annual Texas Freethought Convention in Houston, Texas. I have no doubt that Dr. Franklin, who is the recipient of hundreds of awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a prominent historian and noted African American scholar, would agree that Sikivu is using her own scholarship, credentials, and professional career in her fight to eradicate the stain of racism that is clouding the vision of the intellectual, academic, and secular communities.

The content of her talk presented a secular audience with a historical as well as a contemporary picture of America, and it is not a very pretty picture. The grim unemployment figures, the housing crises, the lack of access to a quality education, an abysmal health care crisis, and the frontal assaults on the human rights of people who are denied access to even basic services, have all served to further marginalize the already oppressed or under-served segments of our society: people of color, women, children, the poor, sick, elderly, and disabled. In the most professional, eloquent, yet no-nonsense fashion possible, she delivered some very bad news to her audience. I was proud to be in that auditorium and to witness a presentation that met every standard of excellence. Here was an activist and a scholar who was at her best, yet privately she expressed doubts as to whether the audience, which was virtually all-white, really heard and understood what she said, or if her message, had in fact, fell on deaf ears. She said the members of the audience appeared to be uniformly unresponsive; that their faces were blank and expressionless. I have tried to picture an audience as it listens to the recounting of the social, physical, and economic horrors inflicted on human beings who lived in the past. I’ve tried to picture an audience that has also been made brutally aware of the continuation of those horrors even in the year 2011, and frankly, I can only imagine faces that may appear to be expressionless. Even the audience members who were already aware of some of the things she spoke of were certainly confronted with a new awareness as she explained with a new clarity how race, class, gender, and religion are issues that are connected, interwoven, and are literally devastating hundreds of millions of people in America and throughout the world. Whenever these issues are raised, I’m reminded that I must assume both the collective and personal responsibility for aiding and abetting in the ultimate dismemberment of anti-human power structures. The content of her presentation failed to mirror that of the usual hand-wringing lectures concerned with the religiosity of African Americans. Instead, her presentation put each member of the secular community on notice and let them know that beyond the challenges to theism, they also have the responsibility to challenge all anti-human power structures. I happen to believe that the members of her audience were serious people because the frivilous non-thinkers of this world won't attend, no less pay to hear, thoughtful discussions. If the members of the audience were hearing for the first time a genuine 'state of the union' address spelled out for them in unapologetic language, then they had good reasons for looking expressionless. There was much to think about, and there is even much more to do!

Religion has certainly taken a toll on humanity. The cultural and psychological wounds will remain long after the stranglehold of religious instutitions on society is broken. But religious institutions clearly have not functioned without assistance of nearly every corrupt secular institution; for over time, religious institutions have interacted with, replaced, and certainly worked in concert with secular institutions whenever possible and whenever necessary. Yet, only breaking the religious institutions’ stranglehold on society (which will indeed be a cause for celebration) will also leave much of our ethnic, gender, and class issues unresolved. Currently these issues are scattered throughout the social landscape just like landmines that are hiding in plain sight and readily exploding as though connected to motion-detectors. A presentation that notes how most forms of oppression reinforce one another; that cites historical data; uses contemporary models, and points to an even more horrific future should we fail to address all power structures designed to deny social justice and universal human rights, certainly delivers the psychological equivalent of physical blunt force trauma.

We must have a total transformation of values that informs all relationships―a system that evaluates and improves how we deal with societal ills; a system that leaves little room for the exploitation, violence, and inhumanity that is currently taking place. We must all elevate our private and collective consciousness if we are to effectively answer this urgent call. Having open, respectful, and honest dialogue in the secular community would be a good place to start; educating ourselves about the issues is a must; collaborating, working in concert with people both inside and outside of the secular community is also a must; and continually developing a collective leadership within the secular community. There are no easy answers and no shortcuts for transforming our society. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, and the process will last as long as humanity lasts.

Soon after our boldest and most influential critical thinkers in the secular community have confronted and confounded the enemies of reason; after they appear to have said all that there is to say, Sikivu Hutchinson has stepped forward to demand the expansion of the discussion beyond the separation of church and state and has illuminated the conditions that exist in America especially with regard to oppressed and marginalized people. She is a disciplined, first-rate intellectual and speaks with authority on the issues of race, class, gender, and religion. She represents the role model for the atheists of this millennium who are ready to work towards a total societal transformation and who reject a piecemeal approach. With respect to her ability to accurately articulate the totality of the problems that we face as well as outline what must be done to move towards the achievement of social justice and universal human rights, Sikivu Hutchinson has no equal.

Naima: Washington, DC