This I believe – A Humanist Speaks

Keith Johnson

For presentation to the congregation of All Souls Community Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan

June 28, 2009

I believe in the reality of the world.  I believe that I can observe and experience that reality, and learn to comprehend some portion of it.  And I believe that you can too.  I believe that we all share the same reality.  We don’t always share the same hopes and fears, abilities or ambitions, causes or concerns, but we DO share the same reality.  We share that reality, but not necessarily the same experience of it.

I believe that the rational and scientific investigation of this reality is one of the crowning achievements of our kind, one of the defining aspects of our shared humanity, one of the features that distinguishes us from the other creatures with whom we share our planet.

What I want to try to do this morning is to share with you some of the reasons why I have this set of beliefs, and why I feel so positively about the role of science in my life, in the modern world, and in relationship to religion – especially as religion is practiced by Unitarian-Universalists and more particularly as it exists here in OUR religious community.

I believe that there are intellectual, moral and practical advantages to embracing a humanist philosophy, and that both our church here in Grand Rapids and the larger U-U community might benefit from actively seeking to find common ground, and common cause, with Humanists.

Humanism as a label and an idea

Unlike Roger Ebert, I will put a label on myself.  I’m a humanist.

Humanism is a philosophy which share many features with our Unitarian Universalist Principles.   If you visit the UUA website, you can find a page where various beliefs within our tradition are discussed.  The page for Humanism says, “Humanism is a philosophy that stresses the human aspect of life here and now, and puts the responsibility for ethical behavior upon each individual.  Humanism also focuses on rational rather than supernatural religious explanations…Almost half of Unitarian Universalists today define themselves as Humanists.  They (we) comprise the largest spiritual identity group within Unitarian Universalism.”

The American Humanist Association website states, “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”

I believe in that kind of philosophy.  And whether you also believe in that philosophy or not, I think that there are several good reasons why people like me should want be present here at All Souls, and I think that there are some good reasons for All Souls to welcome Humanists like me.  Remember, in recent surveys of our denomination, people who identified themselves as humanists were actually the largest subset of U-U’s.  I believe we need to know that, and to remember that, and benefit from that knowledge.  I think we can be good for one another.  I believe that we need one another, and that the Unitarian Universalist movement is a natural home for people such as myself who hold naturalist or rationalist philosophies, but who would like to be part of a church community. 

Unitarians and Humanists in the 20^th century

In the past century, our U-U tradition has embraced many aspects of the Humanist perspective.  Of the 34 signers of the first Humanist Manifesto, written in 1933, at least 16 were Unitarians and one a Universalist.  One signer of that document was born right here in Grand Rapids.

So we U-U’s were present and very active at the birth of modern Humanism, and strongly shaped its course.  In return, Humanism and humanist ideas have shaped our U-U tradition in myriad ways.  I believe that it serves us well to know ALL the history of our denomination, and to examine where we have come from, not only in the distant past, but also in the more recent history of our culture.

Humanism is a movement which came much later than Darwin’s great idea, and which extended his theory of evolution by natural selection to become a central tenet of its philosophy.  The Humanist movement was born in the early part of the last century.  In 1933, members of the Humanist Fellowship, a group of University of Chicago and Meadville students suggested the creation of a summary statement of Humanist principles - the Humanist Manifesto, signed by 34 men, including 16 Unitarians and one Universalist.  This Manifesto asserted, among other ideas, that:

HUMANIST MANIFESTO I

First: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

Second: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a continuous process.

Fifth: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values…. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.

Sixth: We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, [and] deism, modernism, and the several varieties of "new thought."

Seventh: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious…. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.  Let me repeat that: The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.

Eighth: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist's social passion.

So, I hope that you can see and accept that humanists look at the world in ways that are very familiar, and which are similar to the ways we U-U’s do.  In fact, the overlap between the claims in the Humanist Manifesto and our 7 U-U Principles is striking.  Many people, including myself, consider themselves BOTH humanists and Unitarian Universalists.  These people CAN find a natural church home in U-U congregations, but that is not guaranteed.  For many humanists, “supernaturalism” is a stumbling block to feeling fully a part of some U-U activities.

Because humanism is nearly always associated in a naturalistic worldview, most humanists do not believe in God or other supernatural beings.  In short, many of us, including me, are atheists.  And we have a problem in walking together with atheists in our country and even in this church.  Many people see atheists as the “other”, as foreign, as scary.  I believe that we need to overcome that fear and concern.  I am heartened that there is now one single member of the US Congress who is a self confessed “non-theist”.  He is Rep. Pete Stark, of California.  It is worth mentioning that he is also a member of a U-U church.  And, the fact that President Obama’s mother was an atheist and that he was raised without traditional religion for the first 20+ years of his life, may further help make it less scary and more acceptable for nontheists to participate fully in American political life.

Role of science and rationalism in my version of Humanism

"Be it life or death, we crave only reality." —Thoreau

I believe in both a Unitarian and a Universalist version of Humanism, and indeed of reality.  I believe that the universe around us is a single, interacting and evolving reality.  And I believe that the rational, scientific method describes and explains that reality, at least better than any other method of describing and explaining it has ever done.  In my professional career, I deal with the chemistry of water.  I have been fortunate enough to travel to many parts of the world, including Trinidad, Belgium, Holland, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Canada and Mexico as well as in almost all 48 of the continental United States.  One of the insights I have gained from that experience is that water has the same characteristics, everywhere I’ve ever been.  Water freezes or boils at the same temperature wherever the conditions are the same, and the changes in boiling point or freezing point can be modeled from a relatively simple set of rules, embodied in chemistry texts and physical processes. 

There is not a “higher reality” or invisible plane such that some water is Buddhist, some Christian, some Muslim, some secular.  Water is water, everywhere.  No edict or fatwah or injunction can change the behavior of water.  But changing the pH of water can change how it behaves, and we can predict how the behavior of water will change based on changes in its pH value with a very high degree of confidence, anywhere in the world, in the presence of any government or religion.  That is both Unitarian in the sense that there is one set of rules, and Universalist, in the sense that those rules apply everywhere. 

Conflict between science and religion

Many people believe that science and all religions are locked in an embrace of “Mutual Assured Destruction”, that one can be religious or scientific but never both.  I believe that that view is false, and harmful to progress in the world.  One can be both – if one is open to new and different understandings of the world.  But in America, we all too often see people of faith REJECT a scientific and rational worldview.  I believe that is a grave error, which can only harm our future.

The Dalai Lama wrote,

“As a child in Tibet, I was keenly curious about how things worked.  When I got a toy I would play with it a bit, then take it apart to see how it was put together….    At one point I became particularly intrigued by an old telescope, with which I would study the heavens.  One night while looking at the moon I realized that there were shadows on its surface.  I corralled my two main tutors to show them, because this was contrary to the ancient version of cosmology I had been taught, which held that the moon was a heavenly body that emitted its own light.  But through my telescope the moon was clearly just a barren rock, pocked with craters.  If the author if that fourth-century treatise were writing today, I’m sure he would write the chapter on cosmology differently.

If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change.  In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality.  By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.”

This enlightened view of the interactions between science and religion- from a person who can scarcely be called irreligious - is certainly refreshing.  The willingness of the Dalai Lama to acknowledge the discoveries of science in explaining the natural world is echoed and shared by representatives of many other religious traditions.  Recently, the Pope has acknowledged the role of evolution in changing the life forms present on Earth over the long, long period which life has existed here. 

But many, particularly many Christians here in America, hold to a faith which cannot and/or will not learn from science.  Many evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians refuse to acknowledge that evolution has occurred, and is occurring in our world.  Many believe that the age of the Earth is only about 6,000 years.  This is a form of religion which is NOT compatible with science.  And I believe that this type of religion is incompatible with a free and responsible search for truth.  And ultimately, I believe that this type of religion is bad for the way we live our day in and day out lives, and for our children.  And so I must say that I believe that those forms of religion are wrong and dangerous.

As theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies told the undergraduates at Chapman University during his commencement address, “Somehow the universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Not only is your body literally made of stardust cooked in the nuclear furnaces of a bygone stellar generation; your brains are wired to make sense of it. … Your great asset, then, is your mind, and its extraordinary ability to comprehend the world and to be creative. Please don’t take it for granted!”

Evolution as a centerpiece of a scientific understanding of the world

An understanding of evolution is important in getting to know about the world, the real world.  But I don’t really want to offer a lecture on evolution, even though I think it is a truly fascinating field to study and try to grasp.   I’m proud, though, that many Unitarian Universalists are outspoken defenders of the truth of evolutionary processes.  I believe that we have a responsibility to ensure that our public schools are enabled to teach biology through the lens of evolutionary theory.   As President Obama said in the first reading, “science forces us to reckon with the truth as best as we can ascertain it.”  I think that most U-U’s stand on the side of truth, and therefore, on an essentially scientific worldview.

There seem to me to be two clearly different ways of understanding the presence of all the intricate and beautiful evidence of design in living things in our world.  One is that it was all caused, as Roger Ebert said, and therefore there must be a Causer.  This I will call the Supernaturalist worldview, and in America we often understand religion to be about supernatural issues and ideas.  The other way of understanding is that living beings have been shaped and transformed by natural processes, such as evolution, rather than by a divine act of creation.  This is a Naturalistic worldview, and ever since Darwin, liberal religion has tended to hew to this way of understanding the design of the world.

U-U Principles and an evolutionary understanding

We sang a hymn a few minutes ago, one that you probably aren’t all that familiar with.  It was written by a man named Minot Judson Savage.  Savage was born in 1841, so he was a young man when Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in 1859.  Savage was a minister, first for several Congregational churches and then in 1873, he became a Unitarian, becoming pastor to Unitarian churches in Chicago, Boston and New York City.  He was an active advocate of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and was, I believe, the first minister in America to give a sermon on the subject of evolution.  He was a director of the American Unitarian Association, and in 1896 he was granted an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Harvard University.  So there is a long history of Unitarian thought being influenced by evolutionary theory as well as by rational thinking more generally.  Evolutionary thinking has a lot to tell us about things like the interdependent web of all existence, and informs my perceptions about my place in the universe.  In large part, U-U’s tend to fall on the Naturalistic side of the fence.  Humanists are nearly unanimous in that worldview.

The greatest lesson that evolution (that most consoling of all the sciences, as Roger Ebert says) gives us is that populations and communities must adapt to changing conditions. Or else they will die.

Religious community is important to me

So, you might be wondering, “What is an atheist doing in a church?”  Fair enough question.  My answer is that I don’t come to church to find God.  I don’t come to church to find revelations about God, or how God wishes me to live.  I come to church to find YOU...I come to church to find US.

Studies show that people who attend church tend to be happier, and healthier, and more socially active than non-churchgoers.  At first glance, that seems like pretty strong evidence that my atheistical ways are wrong, and that I’m likely to pay a price for them.  But when you look a little closer at the data, you see that beliefs or theology in a church has NOTHING to do with the benefits of church attendance.  Jews and Catholics are just as happy and healthy and socially active as Muslims or Presbyterians.  Community seems to matter a great deal, but evidently, specific religious beliefs really...just don’t.

I believe that churches are a great place to celebrate and acknowledge the great passages of our lives – births, child dedications, Youth Roots Coming of Age graduations, high school graduations, weddings, deaths.  I’ve enjoyed those parts of our church community enormously over the past several years, and they are just as enjoyable to me as an atheist as they would be if I were a theist.

So, for most people, church is a tonic.  But the kind of religion practiced seems not to matter so much, at least for the benefits of churchgoing.  I guess I’d have to say that I interpret this as good evidence that all forms of religion bear pretty much the same relationship to divinity.  Does anybody here remember reading an essay by John Wolf, the one in which he wrote, “I have a theory that religion is the enemy...On the other hand, I love churches,...it distresses me greatly when they get too involved with religion.”?   I could not put it better myself.

So, I believe that it is good for me to be here.  It is good for me in some very selfish ways.  I believe that I can be healthier and happier inside a church community than outside one.  Moreover, I believe that in community with others, I can accomplish more to benefit the world than I ever could alone.

President Barack Obama gave a wonderful speech this past February in Springfield, Illinois, commemorating Abraham Lincoln’s 200^th birthday.  In the speech, the current president quoted the former president,

“The legitimate object of government,” he wrote, “is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, by themselves.”

To do for the people what needs to be done but which they cannot do on their own

– [T]his man, our first Republican President, knew, better than anyone, what it meant to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. He understood that strain of personal liberty and self-reliance at the heart of the American experience.

But he also understood something else. He recognized that while each of us must do our part, work as hard as we can, and be as responsible as we can – in the end, there are certain things we cannot do on our own. There are certain things we can only do together. There are certain things only a union can do.

… [T]here isn’t any dream beyond our reach, any obstacle that can stand in our way, when we recognize that our individual liberty is served, not negated, by a recognition of the common good.”

And I too believe that often, the cause of individual liberty can be served more readily by a union, by a community, by a church...by this church. 

That is why I am here - that is why I come to church.  I can’t do much religious education on my own, now that my children are grown.  But here, I CAN help teach young people about the history of our denomination, about the ways Unitarians and Universalists have acted to make the world better.  And I hope that somehow, that small action can help improve the world in turn.  We don’t hold weddings or do child dedications in our home, but we celebrate those things here.  I don’t know how to build a house for someone, but by acting together, we can work with Habitat for Humanity and really build one.  I can’t solve the problems of hunger or homelessness alone, but together, this church HAS made - and will continue to make - a difference in the world around us. 

But I also believe that there is even some possible benefit to All Souls - and to the larger U-U community - in attracting and welcoming and walking together with atheists...with people like me.

I have learned that we are a “seeker Sensitive” church, a church which seeks to make itself a home for people with a wide variety of beliefs.  And the recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has some interesting statistics.  Unitarian Universalists DID show up as a small blip on the American religious landscape, composing 0.3% of the population.  We may be small, but we can be mighty!

One very interesting fact that the Pew research showed is that America has a LARGE population of “unaffiliated” people – people who are NOT associated with a religious denomination.  When I say large, I really mean it – 16.1% of the US population falls into the unaffiliated category.  That means that there are about 50 unaffiliated Americans for every Unitarian Universalist!  There are even more self-reported atheists in America than there are U-U’s (1.6% of the population report themselves to be atheists).  So, there are 5 atheists for every UU.  And, if you toss in the agnostics (2.4% of the population) there are at LEAST 12 people who DON’T have a strong belief in a supernatural deity for every current UU.  Just imagine if we were to be seeker sensitive to THAT part of the population – if we could make our congregations welcoming enough to them to attract 1/10 of those unaffiliated atheist and agnostic folk, our denomination could more than double in size!

There are a lot of people in America who change religious affiliations over the course of their lives.  Many people who were raised as Jews, as Protestants of one sort or another, or as Catholics find themselves building a home in a U-U congregation.  And that has been a great source of strength and diversity for our churches!  But we are THIS CLOSE to the humanists of the world, by tradition, by shared history, by intellectual and philosophical inclination.  We’d have to do a little work to adapt our customs to become more welcoming to this demographic.  But I believe that our emphasis on reason, our respect for science, our lack of dogma, our openness to a wide variety of ideas makes us the closest match to these unchurched people of all the diverse array of religious traditions in America – and maybe in the world.  I believe that we might become a natural place for all those unaffiliated, agnostic and even atheist people.  A place for them to find a church home where they CAN build a union, CAN make a community, and CAN realize that their “individual liberty is served, not negated, by a recognition of the common good.”

Maybe Minot Savage was onto something after all when he wrote that hymn, “Search Not Afar for Beauty”.  Maybe he was helping us see that a possible key to our growth, to our strength, to our future, lies in the millions of young and unaffiliated people who are not only unaffiliated with a religious tradition, but who appear to agree with John Wolf that religion has been their enemy.  Maybe the people who need us most are NOT afar, but are right here, near us.  Maybe WE can become sensitive to that population which is not served by ANY other religious tradition.  Maybe WE can build our religious community to attract people who aren’t looking for God, but who could use a loving community in which they can liberate and cultivate their spirits.

I believe we can. 

I believe we should.