Those images from that dark day pop into my head from time to time. That 2nd plane plows into the south tower of the World Trade Center over and over and over again. The images don’t come as much as they did in the weeks after the attack but my feelings have stayed the same. I wrote the following essay five days after the attacks and on the fifth anniversary I wrote the prolog before the essay. The ideas and feelings in both stay with me on this 10th anniversary.
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Category Archives: Essays
“Mind Siege” a Secular Humanist Review
“Unless the 80 million evangelical Christians in our nation wake up to whom the enemy really is, humanists will soon accomplish their goal of work domination” – p. 35
Mind Siege is a book by Tim LaHaye and David Noebel which was published in 2000. It claims to be an update of LaHaye’s Battle for the Mind(1980) that sparked, according to him, the rise of the Evangelical Christian movement we all had to deal with in the 1980′s and today.
LaHaye is a leader of the Evangelicals and is the author of the Left Behind fiction series about the “end times” of Bible prophesies. He also helped found the Institute of Creation Research. He has never been a friend of Humanism.
David Noebel is the founder and head of Summit Ministries and has written many books about the conflict between Christianity and Atheism/Humanism/Marxism/New Age.
I had the chance to read the book when I found out a co-worker had bought it and was reading it at work. He thought I was interested in the topic so he let me borrow it. I read the book so you don’t have to.
I wanted to find out what LaHaye and Noebel had to say about Humanism. I wanted to see if they got their facts correct. They get some of the names and dates correct, but like all critiques like this, they reach the wrong conclusions. It is at most a political book full of propaganda.
Rick Warren and UU martyrs
Reading some of the articles on the blog, you can sense some issues I have with a like minded group. Although Unitarian Universalists are in general supporters of Humanism, there have been problems on some issues. One example came up over the reaction to the invite of Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inaugural of President Obama in January. The other recent issue was in an article about the life sentence given to the killer who shot up a UU church in Knoxville in 2008.
My friend Derrick sent along the following:
Rev. Mark Belletini from First UU [in Columbus Ohio] wrote an editorial for this week’s Outlook newspaper. Here’s a link:
The thrust of the article comes in Belletini’s statement that “I was moved by Senator Obama’s leadership in asking [Rick Warren] to accept this honor” of “leading the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration” (Outlook Weekly, Feb 11, 2009, p. 15).
Nowhere does the article question whether it is appropriate to have prayers at an inauguration. Nowhere does the article question whether it’s appropriate to have someone like Rick Warren to represent our best hopes for change. Instead, the article is a collection of warm imagery, relativism, strawmen, red herrings, and excuse making on Warren’s behalf aimed at shaming anyone who might oppose Warren’s presence. (It’s difficult to politely convey how revolting I find Belletini’s comments to be.)
In contrast, Freethought Today announced on the cover of its Jan/Feb 2009 issue that FFRF has a “Challenge to Inaugural Religion Filed.” We are fortunate to have organizations like FFRF that are willing to reasonably face facts and stand in favor of our basic rights.
Derrick is right. There shouldn’t be prayers at a purely civic ceremony and in the article Belletini glosses over the bigorty espoused by Warren during the Prop 8 campaign. He says:
The Senator knew that this country is made up of people all kinds, including people, like Warren, with distorted and disastrous understanding of people like me. But this guy isn’t going to wake up one morning and suddenly be a pro-GLBT secularist. Picketing his church, writing him excoriating letters, chiding him for his prejudicial biblical interpretations may make me feel good, but its hardly appealing to this man’s humanity.
Rick Warren at the Inaugration? Milk Would Have Approved (Outlook Weekly, Feb 11, 2009, p. 15)
Sometimes people say or think something so vile they need to be called on it and shown their view has no place in a civil society. Inviting the guy to speak at such a prestigious event just ignores that fact.
We aren’t talking about a simple dispute on public policy but plain old fashioned BIGOTRY by people like Rick Warren. You don’t reward it or try to understand it. You freeze it out of the civic arena. You call those people out, shine a light on their hate speech, and make them feel bad for even considering it.
People who gloss those vile ideas over or ignore them give them strength and they will never go away.
There was another troubling thing involving Unitarian Universalists that I read about this past week.
In a liberal blog I read called Crooks and Liars they had an article about the murderer who shot two people at a UU church in Knoxville and how he admitted to the killings in order to rid this country of liberals. He was acting in response to the various hate books put out by Bernard Goldberg, Sean Hannity, and other right wing nut jobs.
In the beginning of the entry was this:
“Progressives around the country can breathe a little easier today: James Adkisson has been sentenced to life behind bars for the deaths of Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger, the Unitarian Universalist martyrs who died during his assault on their church in Knoxville, TN last July.”
Then this:
“Three: The right wing has, as usual, grossly underestimated our courage and our commitment. The members of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist quickly and effectively disarmed and captured this man within seconds after he opened fire. Adkisson expected fear; what we got was determined resistance. It’s why he’s still alive today, and why more UUs aren’t dead by his hand. The TVUUA congregation should be our enduring example of liberal grace under fire.”
Knoxville church shooter’s manifesto leaves no doubt: murders were political terror against liberals
UU martyrs?
That is a bit of a stretch in my view. The victims were UUs and they were killed in a UU church but not because they were UU’s specifically but because they were associated with liberals and liberal causes.
Wikipedia has listed a few actual UU martyrs:
1529: Ludwig Haetzer – beheaded in Konstanz, Germany; believed Jesus was a leader and teacher, not a God due worship
1553: Michael Servetus – burned at the stake after a prison term because of writing a book criticizing biblical evidence for a Trinity.
1942: Norbert Capek – preached religious freedom (including Unitarianism). Was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, and later gassed to death at Hartheim Castle.
The difference is clear. The victims in Knoxville weren’t killed because they refused to renounce their beliefs, they were murdered for gallantly trying to disarm a deranged person.
On Dogma and dogmatism
In the course of a discussion about ideas, philosophy, politics, or the mundane, one description that gets thrown about is saying that someone is being dogmatic or advancing dogma.
Dogma is set of beliefs or doctrine especially of a religious nature that is accepted as truth without proof. For example – the Holy Bible says the earth was created in 6 days. That is accepted dogma by Christians and other religious people who use the Bible.
Dogma can appear in non-religious situations such as believing that all people on welfare are lazy or that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 US invasion. These are ideas that are accepted or advanced with little if any proof and if actual evidence contrary to that belief is found, it is simply ignored or dismissed.
Dogmatic from the root word dogma, involves holding fast to dogma, or set values or beliefs, without considering or respecting other values or beliefs.
What is “dogmatic” is actually open to debate. It is based on the subjective evaluation of the person listening to the discussion and their subjective idea as to what is meant by “respect” and “consideration.” Some people feel that all ideas are equally valid and if someone doesn’t agree then they are being dogmatic. They feel that “respect” must equal agreement or that “consideration” makes the ideas equal.
In a rational discussion, one can reject the conclusions or not agree with the premises and not be dogmatic. Listening and exploring other ideas is showing “respect”. Being disrespectful is preventing or encouraging censorship of ideas opposed to ones own or asking people to ignore logic or ignore false premises and conclusions for the sake of being nice. One way to do that is to accuse someone of being dogmatic.
Focusing on the people making the argument instead of the argument itself makes one dogmatic because you aren’t respecting or considering what the other person is saying. Personalities are different in each person and some can be seen to be passionate about their ideas and they can become an ass about it.
Being passionate about your ideas to the point of being a nasty person still doesn’t make one dogmatic. It isn’t how the person presents their argument that is important. What is important is the content of their conclusions and how they arrived at them.
The Humanist philosophy builds on the foundation that all ideas are open to question, even our own. That doesn’t mean we must accept every new idea and not accepting every new idea or view doesn’t make us dogmatic.
A new idea or change to a current belief is accepted if there is concrete evidence for it and it is based on rational logical thought.
Humanism isn’t based on dogma and if the philosophy is applied as it should be then it also isn’t dogmatic.
Humanism should not be “religious”
An old argument came up the other day with another Humanist. It was related to some of my earlier posts here. It was the debate between religious and secular humanists. The debate was about Humanism and religion.
I’m not religious. I have no use for religion of any form, but I don’t have anything against religious people or religious humanists – unless they disparage atheists.
It got me thinking. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there is something religious about Humanism that I hadn’t considered before, so I decided to review my thoughts on the issue and what has been told to me by people I have debated.
Just a Humanist
By Jennifer Hancock
I am a Humanist. I am proud of that fact and I do not hesitate to label myself as a Humanist. Over the past few years I have met a lot of people who share my values as a Humanist, but who had just never encountered anyone who is willing to talk to them about Humanist values before.
Perhaps the main reason people have never come across the term “Humanist” before is because most Humanists don’t like to call themselves Humanists, preferring any number of other terms instead. And this isn’t just a problem we have in public, it is the basis of an ongoing debate in our movement regarding how best to conduct our outreach and of course, what we should call ourselves.
Personally, I think this internal debate is a waste of time. People are going to call themselves whatever they want regardless. Despite personally finding this debate rather silly, I recognize that it has negatively impacted our ability to share our philosophy with others. If we aren’t proud enough of our philosophy to call ourselves Humanists, we shouldn’t be surprised that the public’s knowledge about our philosophy is utterly lacking.
There are various reasons why Humanists shy away from using the word “Humanist” to describe themselves. First, we often treat words such as “atheist,” freethinker,” and Humanist” as interchangeable even though they aren’t. This co-mingling of meanings only causes confusion and leaves us, as individuals, to wonder which word will have a positive impact on our listeners? In my experience, one of the main reasons Humanists might choose to use another word, like “freethinker” instead of Humanist, is because they incorrectly think that “Humanist” carries negative connotations. And finally, there is the problem of confusing adjectives. Many Humanists are simply unaware that you can just be a Humanist, without the adjectives.
I think Humanism is a truly wonderful philosophy and I am hoping I can help others find peace with the word “Humanist.” After all, if we can’t convince our fellow Humanists to call themselves Humanists, then how can we hope to entice others to join our movement?
Our perception that the public at large regards Humanism negatively is simply untrue. Very few people I have met have heard the term before. And when people do hear the word “Humanist” for the first time, they will do what most people do when encountering an unfamiliar word, they guess at its meaning. You may be surprised to know that when people guess at the meaning of the word “Humanist” they almost always give it a positive connotation. After all, they are humans, so how bad could “Humanism” be.
Telling people I am Humanist has led to many wonderful conversations with complete strangers about all the positive attributes of our philosophy. I have had these conversations in supermarkets, fast food restaurants, bars, and children’s play groups. I have never experienced a negative response to the word Humanist; although mentioning Humanism does then obligate me to answer many follow up questions about the philosophy and what we value. Since most people have never heard the term before they normally just want to know more. For the few people who have heard the term, they are usually just confused about what exactly the philosophy is.
My personal experience with “Humanist” has been so positive that I would definitely recommend to other Humanists that they make it their word of choice when describing their personal views.
When it comes to adding an adjective I advise against it. The various adjectives people use to describe their humanism take the focus off of Humanist values and onto the connotations of the adjective itself. As far as I am concerned, if what is important is Humanism then we should simple talk about Humanism.
The other reason not to add an adjective in front of the word “Humanist” is because they are often confusing and in some cases, scary. “Secular Humanist” is a case in point. I personally think that “secular” is a wonderful word. Unfortunately, while “Secular Humanist” is one of the most popular adjective pairings, it is in reality, one of the worst words you can pair with “Humanist” in terms of its affect on your listener.
I once did some field testing of some phrases for an outreach piece I was working on and I was surprised to find out that not only do most people not know what the word “secular” means, their guesses at its meaning would frighten any Humanist. The people I talked to thought that “secular” is related to “sect.” And when paired with an “ist’ or “ism,” they assume it has to do with some sort of cult. Obviously, cults are not something any rational person wants to be involved with. This mass misinterpretation of the term, “secular Humanism” also explains how the religious right has so easily turned “secular Humanists” into their all purpose bogeyman.
Since most people think “secular” means sect, it is best to avoid it entirely. We certainly don’t want our Humanist movement paired in people’s mind with some sort of cult. For this reason I advocate against using the terms “secular humanism” or “secular humanist” to describe our philosophy or ourselves. Not only will the simpler “Humanist” suffice; it has the added benefits of eliciting very positive connotations for our audience.
We have enough hurdles to overcome without putting self-imposed obstacles in our way. If we really want to talk to others about Humanism we must start talking about Humanist values and not just about “Freethought, or “Atheism” or “secularism.” Humanism is worth talking about in its own. Further, if we are to grow our movement, we need to start talking about what really matters, and that is our ethics and our values as Humanists.
If we are to succeed, we must conduct our outreach in a way that gets people interested in what we are talking about while trying not to scare them or confuse them. Only labeling us as Humanists, plain and simple can accomplish this. Everything else is distracting and potential harmful to our cause. I am a Humanist. How about you?
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Jennifer Hancock is a writer and Humanist activist. Her website, http://www.sumogirl.com/ contains the thoughts, opinions and creative pursuits of Jennifer Hancock, Gentlewoman. Included on the site are her Humanist counter to the advice given by televangelist Billy Graham and a weekly podcast “Humanist thought of the Week.”