Humanism Resurrected?

Rev. Peter Friedrichs

January 27, 2008

My friends, I have good news and bad news. God is dead. That's the bad news. And the good news. God is dead. Again. Or still. Or if he isn't, he should be, if you believe the writings of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, the three authors whom a friend of mine calls "The Unholy Trinity." Dawkins is the author of The God Delusion, Harris wrote two pieces, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, and Hitchens's book is titled god is not Great, with the wonderfully unsubtle subtitle "How Religion Poisons Everything." This triumvirate of anti-religionists, each in his own way, blames religious belief – fundamentalist, radical and moderate alike – for all the ills of our modern-day society, from suicide bombings to the downfall of the democratic system.

In an age of al-Qaeda and Hamas, of family planning clinic bombings and so-called "creation scientists," it's easy to be tempted by authors who assert that religion does more harm than good, and who present compelling evidence that the God of our fathers and mothers is a fiction of our imaginations. When we witness the destruction of great works of art like the Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists, or we hear televangelists blame the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on the gay and lesbian population of New Orleans, we are hard-pressed to deny that God and religion can be wielded like an axe, severing relationships and separating us from our shared humanity. Over the past couple of years we've seen, both in the United States and other western countries, the emergence of a new atheism, a movement that that seeks to gain a meaningful voice in society, a movement that denies the existence of God and any supernatural force that cannot be scientifically verified. With the support of authors like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, atheists are entering into the public dialogue in ways that we haven't previously seen. In his essay "Atheism – The Other Closet," David Silverman draws the parallel between atheism and homosexuality when he claims that "Many of us, like many gays of previous decades, hide in the shadows due to fear of hostility and aversion to confrontations… Only a small portion of atheists are out of the closet about their atheism, and as a result we are viewed as a much smaller percentage of the population than we really are."[1] The emergence of this movement in opposition to the prevailing power of the Christian right is reminiscent of an earlier time.

At least from the time that Friedrich Nietzsche's mad man declared the death of God, and with it the loss of all grounding for Christian morality, western cultures have struggled with the question of whether, and how, we can be good without God. In the mid-twentieth century, a group of scientists, sociologists, theologians, and Nobel laureates gathered to seriously examine these questions, framed in the context of modern scientific discoveries, and together they produced the first Humanist Manifesto. It was the height of the Great Depression, when Christian clergy were urging their congregations to accept the suffering of economic loss as Christ had endured his suffering on the cross, trusting that God would make things right again. Over and against this doctrine, the signers of the Humanist Manifesto, in the words of former UUA President Bill Shulz, "sought to construct 'a religion without God,' shifting the focus of religious faith from divinity to humanity. Clergy and journalists, philosophers and scientists banded together, refusing to believe that human beings could not be saved and insisting that they themselves would be the instrument of salvation." The Manifesto rejects the role of a supernatural power in the world and places responsibility squarely in the hands of humankind for its success or its failure. The signers succinctly state their motivation thusly: "Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task."

Although they perceived the traditional religions of the world as inadequate, rather than rejecting religion outright, the signers of the Humanist Manifesto sought to establish a new religion. A religion that was responsive to the problems of modernity and that reflected our ever-widening knowledge about how our world is structured and how it operates. The Manifesto contains fifteen statements or "affirmations," and I'm not going to quote them all here. In fact, I've made copies of the entire Manifesto that are available in the lobby after the service. But I will list a few of the most important statements it makes. The signers rejected the traditional dualism of mind and body, and asserted that human beings have grown out of and are a part of the natural world. We are of the world, not apart from it. You'll note that this is a precursor to our current Seventh Principle that states we are all part of the interdependent web of all existence. Relying on the discoveries of modern science, the Manifesto promotes the use of reason and scientific inquiry to explain the natural world. While they accepted that there is much that is not known, they reject all supernatural explanations for natural phenomenon. "Religion," it states, "must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method." In what is perhaps the most inhumane statement of the Humanist Manifesto, the signers reject emotionalism in response to human tragedy and need, stating that "Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom. We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking."

The Humanist Manifesto has undergone two revisions since it was first signed in 1933, once in 1973 and then again in 2003. In its latest incarnation, the Manifesto tells us that humanists are "guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience." This kinder and gentler Manifesto seeks to soften the earlier version's reliance on scientific discovery, something for which it was often criticized. While affirming the practical uses of science as "the best method for solving problems and developing beneficial technologies," it acknowledges that human experiences such as love, envy, hatred, and jealousy cannot necessarily be explained by science. Hence the inclusion of concepts like compassion and cruelty, wonder and awe. You can see why so many signatories to the third Manifesto are Unitarian Universalists. Listen to this familiar language: "We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility."

You are not alone if you find that the language of Humanism resonates with you. In some surveys, more than half of the members of Unitarian Universalists churches self-identify as humanists, and when this congregation began its ministerial search process in 2005, a large majority of you put yourself into this category.

One of the more notable signers of the Third Humanist Manifesto is none other than Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion. I find this curious, for a man who writes that "I do everything in my power to warn people against faith itself, not just against so-called 'extremist' faith. The teachings of 'moderate' religion, though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism."[2] Although a scientist by training, Dawkins' screed against religions of all sorts takes a most unscientific approach to the question of God's existence. While I'm not going to try and argue against his thesis, I feel that it's important to point out that he does not, nor does he purport to, undertake an unbiased examination of the topic, and his conclusion is foregone from the start. Through the use of sometimes-tortured logic and quasi-science, he concludes that "there almost certainly is no god."[3] And he does it in a smarmy, sarcastic tone that castigates Christians, mocks Muslims and even offends agnostics. At what is probably the low point of the book, he attacks the peace-loving Amish, referring to them as "you quaint little people with your bonnets and breeches, your horse buggies, your archaic dialect and your earth-closet privies."[4]

Now, don't get me wrong. I personally don't disagree with Professor Dawkins' conclusion that the God of the Abrahamic religions probably does not exist (and we both agree that it is impossible to absolutely prove the non-existence of anything). I don't believe in a supernatural being that is all-knowing and all-powerful, who has the power to, and often does, intervene in our lives. But I've got some serious problems with Dawkins' thesis. As I've mentioned, his approach is sarcastic to the point of hostility. But more importantly, I'm just not sure why his God is so small. While there are certainly millions of people on this planet who believe in an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent supernatural being who plays an active role in what happens in the Universe, there are also many others, like myself, who discarded this definition of the Divine long ago. Even notable Christian theologians have acknowledged that the God of the Old Testament is antiquated and obsolete. I am reminded here of Forrest Church's response to a hospital patient whom he had approached while working as a chaplain. When the patient declined a visit by telling Church that he did not believe in God, church responded: "Tell me about this God you don't believe in. I probably don't believe in that God either." Dawkins reduces God to the lowest common denominator, and completely ignores more progressive and relevant descriptions of Divinity. The God of Dawkins' delusion is an easy target to attack and dismiss, but he fails to address the inquiries of serious, contemporary theologians who have described God in terms of relationships, associations, energies and the ground of our being. I suppose had he done so, he would have sold far fewer books.

Christopher Hitchens, the author of god is Not Great, ramps up the volume and the vitriol even higher than Dawkins. He claims atheism as the height of evolutionary development, debasing all religious practices and experiences. He writes: "There is no need for us to gather every day, or every seven days, or on any high and auspicious day, to proclaim our rectitude or to grovel and wallow in our unworthiness. We atheists do not require any priests or hierarchy above them, to police our doctrine. Sacrifices and ceremonies are abhorrent to us, as are relics and the worship of any images or objects."[5] It almost makes me feel sorry for the guy. Like Dawkins, Hitchens holds religion to be the root of all evil, taking as his examples the extremisms that have periodically and perniciously dotted the human landscape throughout recorded history. Religion, he says, is a "wasteland of rant and complaint and nonsense and bullying" that "comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species."[6] As such, Hitchens claims that our evolution in both thought and knowledge has made religion obsolete. We know how the world works, from the composition of atoms to our genetic make-up to the existence of black holes and quasars. So, who needs religion to make up stories about such things?

Like Dawkins, who attacks the existence of a simple and simplistic notion of God, Hitchens sets up the straw dog of religious understanding, only to knock it down. True, we don't need religion to call back the sun as it looms low on the horizon at the time of the winter solstice. But I cannot agree with Hitchens when he states that "Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important."[7] I believe that we need religious concepts to help us face the bigger, unanswerable questions of our own mortality, of heart-wrenching grief in a time of loss, of the purpose of our living, of the salvific power of love and forgiveness. These are issues that no level of scientific inquiry, rationality, or logic can ever satisfactorily address.

The last of our advocates of atheism is Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith. Like Dawkins and Hitchens, Harris lays the blame for most of the world's man-made calamities at the feet of religion. Provocatively, while making many of the same arguments against religious extremism made by the other two members of the "Unholy Trinity," Harris specifically takes on the role that religious moderates have played in perpetuating the evils of religion. "[R]eligious moderates," he writes, "are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others…[T]he very ideal of religious tolerance—born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God—is one of the principal forces driving us towards the abyss." Harris blames religious liberals for their role in allowing extremism to flourish in the face of reason and scientific discovery, and he calls on them to speak out against destructive religious impulses and practices. In an interview last year, he had this to say specifically about Unitarian Universalists:

Herein lies my primary objection to these three works, and to the so-called "new atheist" movement. I find it to be every bit as intolerant as the fundamentalist religions it criticizes. What, exactly, do these authors mean when they say that we cannot allow religion to continue to exist? Are they urging an atheist jihad against religionists of all sorts? If you take them at their word (despite their protestations to the contrary), they seek nothing more that the eradication of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the religions of the world from the face of the planet. Is there another way to interpret the words of Sam Harris, when he writes that "Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world."

As a Unitarian Universalist, I am committed to the principles of religious tolerance. Does that mean that I condone the violent practices of religious extremists? Not at all. Harris, Dawkins and their ilk set this up as a false dichotomy. I believe it is possible, even necessary, to promote diversity, tolerance and acceptance of religious beliefs without accepting violence as a tactic to religious conversion or theological domination. In fact, that is exactly our calling as Unitarian Universalists.

In the end, this new atheist movement that we're witnessing seems to me a far cry from the religious humanism that is so much a part of our Unitarian Universalist faith. This particular brand of atheism negates the very real human desire for reconciliation and understanding. It promotes the primacy of its perspective over that of other very valid viewpoints, leaving no room for diversity or dialogue. Whereas humanism calls for us to deepen our relationships with one another, the new atheists stand apart from (and, they would assert, over and above) those who place their faith in unseen forces. As the third and most current version of the Humanist Manifesto states, "Humanists are concerned for the well-being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views." I don't get the sense that our advocates of atheism stand in support of that principle.

As Unitarian Universalists we are called to live into the proclamation of one of our greatest prophets, Frances David, who more than 400 years ago reminded us that "we need not think alike to love alike." As Unitarian Universalists we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, even those whose actions and beliefs are antithetical to our own. We welcome the atheists among us, just as we welcome the agnostics and the Humanists, the Buddhists, the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jews. This principle is both the source of our rich heritage as well as our sacred duty. It is this religion, our religion, the voice of tolerance, acceptance and diversity, not the end of all religions, that will be the saving grace of all humankind. May it be so.

^[1] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 306.
^[2] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 306.
^[3] Dawkins, 111.
^[4] Dawkins, 331
^[5] Hitchens, god is not Great, 6.
^[6] Hitchens, 12, 64.
^[7] Hitchens, 282.

Closing Words:

The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

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