The Majesty of Being

Lobbying for Reality-Based Government

2011-10-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

I recently gave a talk to the Secular Alliance at the University of Chicago. I thoroughly enjoyed this group of passionate, smart, young secularists and look forward to seeing how they work for secularism in their state.

The Politics of Interfaith

2011-08-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest post for NonProphet Status: http://nonprophetstatus.com/2011/08/22/the-politics-of-interfaith/

Loving the Humanist Body

2011-04-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

My daughter was the fattest baby I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding. She weighed 20 lbs by the time she was three months old. And no, we weren’t feeding her bacon; her diet was 100% breast milk. Once she started walking, she began slimming down and is now perfectly proportioned, but for quite awhile during her toddlerhood, she was the rolly-polliest-looking girl around. The thing I remember and love the best about my daughter’s fat toddlerhood is how she used to mock me about it. She’d stick out her belly and pat it and say, “Daddy and I both have bellies! YOU DON’T HAVE ONE! HA!” She loved her body, and loved that she and her daddy were both members of a club I didn’t belong to.

Both of my kids have belly fetishes. My two-year-old son in particular likes to climb up in my lap and rub my stomach under my shirt. Sometimes he just walks up to me in public and yanks up my shirt, with no inkling whatsoever that maybe I don’t want the whole world looking at my flabby, stretch-mark-ridden stomach. This happened to me recently when we were hanging out with some other moms and, responding to my clear embarrassment, one of the sage moms said, “Isn’t it beautiful how our children love our bodies?” And that sort of shocked me. Because it’s so simple—and so lovely and true. Our children DO love our bodies because our bodies are the tools we use to hold them, to nurture them, to protect them. And my body is really, really good at doing those things. My body is a wonderful, capable mother-body…stretch-marks and all.

Several weeks later, I ran across this video, which was made by the students of Arts and Ideas Sudbury School:

I was in tears within the first few seconds. It’s so obvious! What are our bodies for?! For aesthetics? Sure, a little—but for the vast majority of our day, we are using our bodies for more tangible things: to be creative; to think; to work; to play; to have sex. When we’re unhealthy in a way that limits our abilities to do these things, we need to take better care of our bodies. But the way we nitpick things like stretch-marks and crooked teeth and wrinkles…what the hell? It degrades the amazing wonder of the human body. It degrades the glorious things we can do with our bodies.

The Humanist philosophy is a joyous worldview that celebrates what human beings can do. When we allow ourselves to get hung up on the aesthetic aspect of our bodies to the exclusion of all the other marvelous things about the human body, we are doing a poor job of living out that philosophy. Of course, having this realization doesn’t mean I’m going to immediately be completely comfortable with the way childbirth has ravaged my body, but I can at least choose to spend more energy focusing on the ways my body serves me—and the world around me—very, very well. So, maybe it’s a little cheesy to say we should love our bodies, but it’s an important message. Our bodies carry us through our lives; they are the way we experience life. Our bodies allow us to exist. We spend too much time thinking about what’s wrong with the way we look and not enough time thinking about how the marvelous experience of being alive is facilitated by our marvelous bodies.

For the way it provides me with the ability to solve problems, to care for the people around me, to type a blog, to make love—for all these things and many, many more, I love my body! And I love the bodies of the wonderful people who are using their own bodies to improve the world around us.

Making Peace with Religion (gasp!)

2011-04-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

I spent a lot of time in the atheist blogosphere this week and really enjoyed the diversity of voices within our movement, the exposure to new ideas and approaches, and the passion of those (particularly the young people) who are out there doing things and writing about it. But I also grew tired of reading about how much we have to hate religion if we want to be good at atheism. I struggle with the way Sam Harris-nicks advocate that we speak out against all religion, period.

It is not specifically religion I oppose as an atheist. I oppose fanaticism—and the way certain kinds of religious tenets seem to make people more vulnerable to it. I oppose spreading the idea that knowledge is gained by authority or revelation to the exclusion of the scientific method. I oppose the dehumanizing in-group versus out-group dynamic many religious communities create. But if a progressive religion (Unitarian Universalism or Ethical Culture, for example) does not entail that kind of thinking, then I fail to see how its existence perpetuates the kind of harm fundamentalism does. In fact, such progressive religions are in a unique position to criticize the harmful aspects of wrongheaded religious thought. This is a vitally important role.

Further, many religions are moving toward more critical, reason-based thinking in general, and I support that. United Methodists, for example, emphasize a fairly balanced approach to belief that involves weighing experience, scripture, tradition and reason, and are doing a better job of being engaged in the world in an ethical way as they continually re-evaluate their conclusions using this method. This is not so different from the way I approach my beliefs about the world—particularly in ethical decision making. I often begin with having an emotional experience that tells me something feels wrong about the world. I’ll read more about it—not from religious scripture, but from writings I find authoritative (such as particular philosophers, scientists, or humanitarians whose credibility is evident in their work). I look at history and how progressive people in the past have responded to various ethical challenges (these progressives constitute my tradition) and then I make, as best I can, a reason-based assessment. If more people adopted this kind of well-rounded analysis, it would benefit our world. And I do not think it would matter whether those undertaking such analysis were religious or otherwise. As atheists, we should be clear about what we oppose within religion, and not seek to oppose all religion simply because a community of people chooses to use the word.

I am particularly concerned about the baby-out-with-the-bathwater tack because we are clearly damaging our ability to effect change when we refuse to work with progressive faith communities. We need to stop being antagonistic to all people of faith and to all values that motivate people of faith—and in fact, where those values align with our own (and they often do; we are all people, after all) we should find ways to work toward living out those values together. Obviously, where religious people advocate for ways of thinking that cause detriment to the well-being of our human family or our planet, we need to boldly speak out. If someone is doing something good and is motivated to do so by religious values that themselves cause harm, we cannot ignore that harm. For example, while the Catholic Church does some of the most amazing, compassionate and effective charity work on the face of the planet, the Church also teaches ways of thinking and ways of viewing oneself as a human being that cause serious pain and damage. And when evangelicals do compassionate charity work but at the same time lobby to keep real science education out of schools, thereby undermining the ability of the future generation to cope with the major challenges they will face (climate change, overpopulation, poverty)—challenges that cannot be solved without creative scientific thinkers—we cannot allow the religious perspective that empowers the erosion of science to go unchallenged.

But when we are willing to work with people of faith, we gain a credibility with them that allows us to speak out against the harmful aspects of religion—and religious people are willing to dialogue with us in ways they would not if we wrote them off entirely. When we become utterly dogmatic in our anti-religious stance, we are undermining our own values of reason and compassion. And we are undermining our ability to see religious human beings as human; the dehumanizing “us” versus “them” mentality causes too much harm to the human family for us to entertain it. We can do better—but we have to be willing to think clearly and compassionately and perhaps even take some risks in trusting that religious people, if we give them the opportunity, can do better, too.

More of the Same Difference

2011-04-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I just get mad. This afternoon, The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) posted on their Facebook page an AP article about the FFRF lawsuit opposing the National Day of Prayer on constitutional grounds. Underneath the article, someone posted the comment, “Humanism equals satanism. Period.” And for some reason, I’m taking it personally.

Humanism means something to me. It’s positive. It’s compassionate. It’s infinitely hopeful. Humanism is not some sort of evil, self-indulgent, depraved cult—and when people make the assumption that I am motivated by something so ridiculous, it deeply offends me.

I try very, very hard to dialogue and collaborate with people of faith. I often defend interfaith projects and religious people against the more militant nontheists who believe we’re perpetuating something immoral when we engage positively with religion in any way, shape or form. So when I’m called a satanist and no religious person says, “Hm. Perhaps we should look at where the disagreement lies rather than making disparaging remarks based on perceptions that might not be entirely correct…” it pisses me off—because I would have defended that person of faith against a disparaging remark from a nontheist.

Despite the thousands and thousands of years we’ve spent as a species communicating with one another, we’re still pretty terrible at separating a difference of opinion from a difference in the quality of our character. We can disagree about ideas and still validate the inherent value we all have as human beings—and the fact that we are all human beings means that we have much more in common than we have separating us. Doesn’t it?

Back to Reality (In Which Serah Returns to Arizona after Five Amazing Days in Cambridge)

2011-04-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

I just spent the most glorious five days in Cambridge at the American Humanist Association conference this past week where I met hundreds of high-quality Humanists, listened to diverse voices creating a vision for our movement, and was constantly inspired. There was something particularly magical about spending time with a huge group of people in which nontheism was the standard—where it was celebrated and affirmed as both beautiful and true. And then I came home.

It took about three days for the culture shock to set in, but it happened. After getting back to the grind of facing (with SC Arizona) the harmful, religiously motivated legislation that is raining down on our state like a flood straight out of Genesis, of once again waking up to the realities of living against the grain in a religiously conservative town and state, of knowing my nontheism is always going to be a fight here…I’m quickly dropping off of my conference high.

It is not as if I am hopeless—how could I be? I met dozens upon dozens of young, talented, motivated student leaders at the conference who are working hard for change all across the country and who will guide our movement into a more compassionate, more rational future. I met older leaders still fighting hard for our ideals with no signs of growing tired. I heard new ideas, new strategies combined with seasoned wisdom and a mature clarity—an intergenerational dynamic that creates a wonderfully hopeful vision for Humanism. I have great confidence in my colleagues and what we can do together.

It’s just that….it’s hard. And, in my conservative town in Northern Arizona, it’s sometimes lonely. So now, I’m back to the lonely, hard work. Back to building my loving, nurturing, social-justice-seeking community on an island of reason in the Arizona sea of religious ideologues who aren’t afraid to tell us we’re going to hell. But I’ll do it knowing that there are brilliant, competent, idealistic leaders doing the same work all across the country and that, while we’re divided geographically, our goals are transcendent in that they belong to all of us and they unite us. We are building something shared—a safer, saner, more satisfying world for all of us. I have a sadness that the culture of reason and compassion I experienced when all of these wonderful Humanist minds were in the same place at the same time isn’t the dominant culture—and I miss it. But it was so beautiful, so very much what I want our world to be like, that I will work more passionately for it—and I know I am in good company.

It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To (An Atheistic Approach to Grief and Birthdays)

2011-03-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

The circle of life is not a beautiful gift from the universe. It doesn’t illuminate some secret about the meaning of existence or justify the pain of loss. The circle of life is a poetic reframing we use as a tool to deal with a world where we’re constantly losing what’s most important to us while at the same time trying to enjoy whatever we’re left with.

As if the universe has a mind (which it doesn’t) and is trying to give me a message (which it isn’t) my Grandfather died this morning, on my birthday, on a day when I woke up enraptured with the fact of my existence and grateful for the ineffably beautiful experience of being alive. The universe isn’t trying to teach me a lesson about symmetry or cycles or anything else. It’s just a universe. It’s not a mind. But I am a mind, and even though there’s no message, I have the amazing, enlivening ability to make meaning from whatever happens to me in the mindless universe.

There is a symmetry to all of this for me. My body hurts, feels pushed down by the weight of grief. I want to call my mom and tell her everything, to cry with her, to hear her voice...but of course, she’s dead, too. So I take this pain, and I do what I do with pain: use it to remind myself that I can only know how painful it is to be alive because I am alive...so gloriously, inexplicably alive despite the overwhelming odds that say I should never have existed at all. And knowing that all human beings experience pain much like I do, I can use my life to eliminate as much of that hurt from the world as possible so that this wonderful life can be a little better for everyone.

Thirty-two years ago on this day, my mom was giving birth to me, holding me for the first time in her arms, smiling and thinking about all of her hopes for my life. And what a life! I can’t tell you how much I love my life! I love all of it, every inch of it. I love simple experiences like food and wine. I love complex experiences like falling in love and mothering contrary children. I love the part where I’m knocked off my feet by the hurt of losing my Grandfather—because it is entailed in the fact of having a Grandfather. And I had the best, the very, very best Grandfather. He filled my life with an impossibly huge amount of love and blessing and care. He and my Grandmother were instrumental in raising my little brother who is my very best friend and one of the most hard-working, talented, compassionate people on the face of the planet. My Grandfather loved and nurtured my aunt and uncle who in turn loved and nurtured my outstanding cousins—all of whom improve the world by being in it. I love all of this. Of course, it is hard; it hurts very much to be alive. I hate being motherless. I need my mother. I hate that I’ve lost friends I need. I've lost my Grandparents. And I’ve lost opportunities and hope and dignity and ideas about who I am and what I'm capable of. I am not grateful to the universe for its mindless, unrelenting greediness for things I want to keep. But how I love that I can hate the universe for this! How I love that I exist to love every inch of my life!—to love even the experience of hating.

And so, here I am on my 32^nd birthday, a puddle of joy and tears and birth and loss and enveloped in a profound sense of awe at the majesty of being.

Where Atheists Go to Die: Preparing for Hospice Care as a Nontheist

2011-03-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

As the organizer of a community group of nontheists, many of whom are older and have ongoing medical problems, I have the opportunity to hear a variety of personal stories about the experiences of nontheists in hospitals and hospice care. None of these stories is ever good. They are always stories of an atheist in a position of vulnerability being approached by a religious staff person who tries to reframe the atheist’s experience in religious language. And unfortunately, when facing a horrifying diagnosis, a dangerous surgery, or a weighty medical decision, most atheists I know just don’t have the emotional energy to protest. Everyone deserves nurture and consideration during these times—and there shouldn’t be a religious monopoly on this kind of care.

End-of-life care in particular is rarely provided in a way that would satisfy most atheists; I witness this constantly in my work with hospice. While the idea of hospice and the foundational principles of the model are indeed secular, the language hospice workers use when addressing end-of-life questions, fears and decision-making is at best couched in nondenominational but highly supernatural terms. We speak of going toward the light. Of letting go and becoming free. Of the beautiful metamorphosis that happens when we leave our earthy bodies. And most hospices do not employ a psychologist or a philosopher who can help us work through our concerns about the dying experience in a naturalist way. They employ a religious chaplain.

I am a passionate advocate for the hospice model of care; for people who are near death, the opportunity to die in your own home surrounded by the people you love is the best possible approach to facing the cruel reality of death. I don’t want to pretend that death is lovely, or that you will not suffer pain or indignity or fear. But hospice offers a way to do this together with the people who love you and who want to be with you through the very precious last moments of your life.

That said, hospice care presents unique challenges for atheists, and I want to take a moment to offer some practical suggestions to nontheists who wish to receive hospice care so that you won’t suffer the ridiculous imposition of having your last moments of experience filled with the voice of a nurse or other well-meaning worker telling you to go to the light and be with Jesus.

First and foremost, be clear with your caseworker and the hospice social worker about your naturalistic worldview. Make sure appropriate notes are marked in your chart for the nurses, aides and volunteers. Hospice workers are generally trained to be sensitive to different religions and cultures; while atheism may be completely foreign to them, their training should enable hospice staff to be sensitive to beliefs they don’t agree with. I hope one day nontheistic perspectives will be included in the training hospice workers receive (I have offered this training at the hospice for which I volunteer) but until then, we have to do a little extra work to get everyone on the same page about your needs. Be straightforward but take care to be respectful, because many theists associate atheism with arrogance, depravity, anger...well, you know. You don’t want to get into a situation where your caregivers feel hostile toward you or are afraid you’ll be antagonistic.

Secondly, in addition to comprehensive medical directives, consider filling out a Five Wishes form. You can probably get the forms free from your hospital or hospice, but you can order them here: Aging with Dignity. While the Five Wishes form is biased toward theism, it is very easy to edit it to suit your own perspective and needs. As an advanced directive, the Five Wishes form is legally binding in most states, but it differs from traditional directives in that it goes into detail about care measures beyond those that are purely medical—so for example, you can include what kind of music you find comforting, what kind of literature or poetry you might like read to you when you are no longer responsive, etc. You can specify that you don’t want people to pray aloud near you, play religious music, perform any kind of religious rites or proselytize in any way—and along with what you don’t want, you can offer meaningful alternatives. What would you like someone to tell you when you’re actively dying? Consider Ann Druyan’s account of sitting with Carl Sagan as he died in (I cry every time I think of it). Druyan writes in the afterword to Sagan's book Billions and Billions: For days and nights Sasha and I had taken turns whispering into Carl's ear. Sasha told him how much she loved him and all the ways that she would find in her life to honor him. “Brave man, wonderful life,” I said to him over and over. “Well done. With pride and joy in our love, I let you go. Without fear.” This is a beautiful example of how we can use the language of life to be present with someone who is dying, and how we can offer soothing words without saccharine lies. You may want to cite examples like this one. Make sure the hospice staff reads your Five Wishes and any other directives you may have.

I encourage you to find ways to create a satisfying legacy. For example, many atheists in my local group will be donating their bodies to scientific research (myself included). You can also honor an organization that is meaningful to you in your will (my first picks would include Secular Coalition for America and the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard) and ask that donations be given in your memory to these organizations. Another way to attend to your legacy is to write notes to your family/friends about your hopes for them and your values; this helps the people you care about feel connected to you after you’re gone. You may find it reassuring to know that there are many very tangible ways that who you are as a human being can continue to have a meaningful impact on the world even after you can no longer participate in it.

Next, connect with your local atheist community such as a chapter of the American Humanist Association or a nontheistic Meetup. If your state or metropolitan area has a Coalition of Reason, this is a great place to find such local groups (find your area's CoR here: UnitedCoR). Local groups sometimes have lists of atheist-friendly services and might be able to help you find an atheist philosopher, psychologist, social worker, etc., who would be willing to meet with you and make sure any questions or existential crises you may have are adequately addressed.

Finally, while I am by no means an expert on death and dying, I am more than happy to help atheists in this situation track down additional resources and offer suggestions/support based on my own experiences in the hospice community. Please don’t hesitate to email me if there are ways I can help: serah(at)secularaz(dot)org.

I hate that we must die. I think it is absolutely vile that the most beautiful people I know and love will cease to exist. I do not approve. And religious intrusion into this intimate dying time adds insult to injury. For those of us who care for the dying and for those who face death themselves, let’s work together to make sure that no one has to fight for a secular death.

The Importance of Community

2011-02-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

I’ve had some excellent conversations over the last few days with other nontheists about the idea of community. Surprisingly, this seems to be a somewhat controversial subject amongst atheists, many of whom have a strong distaste for agreeing to any kind of uniting principle for fear that this will morph into dogma. But for those of use who envision a freer, fairer, more secular future, we must be clear that community will have to play an essential role.

The most pragmatic reason for building nontheistic communities is that if we want to effect political and social change, we have to be a visible constituency. We can’t do this without organizing. And organizing means community.

But I think there is a more important, less strictly rational (but still sensible) reason we need to build communities. The idea of community, at its most basic level, simply means that we make something shared—ideas, values, our joys and sorrows...and this kind of sharing fosters empathy and compassion. Nontheists seem to be really, really good at promoting reason—at forming logical arguments and advocating for rationality...but we’re less good at nurturing compassion, or even seeing the need to nurture compassion. The problem with this is that logical arguments rarely encourage people to take action; in order to act, we must be inspired. And inspiration comes from caring. We need to teach ourselves to care more, and then we guide our caring acts with our reason. Logic doesn’t inspire us to be ethical—it only tells us what ethical behavior means; the inspiration to act ethically comes most naturally from a feeling of compassion. The simplest, most effective way to learn how to care is to form relationships—and this is what happens when we come together in community.

A little over a year ago, I started a nontheistic community in my town. I included intellectual discussion, lectures, reading, etc., in the kinds of activities we would participate in, but the primary focus of the group has been simpler: fellowship. And our most successful events aren’t the discussion groups or lectures. Our most successful events are things like our kid-friendly potluck, our Rational Sunday School for children and our weekly night eating out at a restaurant together. Beyond this, the people in our community have formed supportive relationships with one another—bringing food to sick group members, providing rides to doctor’s appointments, trading childcare. I believe that we’re better people because we’re growing our capacity to care; our sphere of ethical concern is stretching farther beyond ourselves all the time. And I think we’re better advocates for nontheism when we demonstrate this to the world around us.

Fellowship may not come naturally to atheists who are used to swimming against the tide, but this capacity for community is such an amazing part of the human experience. The things that can happen when we learn the art of participation—when we think together and feel together—are big. Collective brainpower and collective heartpower! Our secular vision can’t work without inspiration—and communities create opportunities for us to inspire one another.

We don’t have to create some kind of dogma in order to come together and help one another bring out the best of our humanity—we just have to be willing to share the best of ourselves.

Happy Hanukkah!

2010-12-01T09:05:00.000-08:00

It is easy for me to identify with Festivals of Light. As a Humanist, I believe in celebrating our inner human light which inspires us to do justice and create a more compassionate world out of the rather brutal one nature handed us. So Happy Hanukkah, all! Light those candles--literally or metaphorically. Or both.

Saying Grace

2010-11-09T10:04:00.000-08:00

Humanists tend to be very grateful people. We feel grateful to be alive considering the mind-boggling odds which indicate no one of us should be here at all. We feel grateful to be human and to have the ability to experience and to contemplate and to create. We feel grateful that love exists and that it is something we can produce and participate in. And as humanists who live in the developed world, we feel grateful for our lives of comfort and plenty in comparison to the much harsher realities of so many other people in our world. Cultivating this sense of gratitude helps us to understand our relationship to the world and our resulting responsibilities. So it shouldn’t surprise me that a pretty substantial number of folks who come to my blog find it by doing a Google search for “humanist grace.” Unfortunately, that takes them to my post on Easter, which really has very little to say about cultivating gratitude or saying grace; thus, this current post.

In our house we don’t believe that a supernatural being has brought us our meal and will bless it or bless us, but we do believe that a lot of people and processes worked together to make us and our food possible. We believe we are right to feel grateful for the hard work that goes into food—and we are right to feel awe at the marvel of existence!

We’ve started a tradition in our home of raising our plates at dinner and saying thank you to everyone who made our meal possible. And we’ve made a game of figuring out who all is involved in the meal. Obviously the people who cooked it—but it goes so much farther. Innumerable people worked very hard to grow and harvest our food, to transport it, to market and sell it, and so on. Innumerable people were involved in the research to develop agricultural techniques that make it possible for food to be plentiful. Innumerable people were involved in the design, manufacture and sale of our plates, our pots and pans, our appliances, etc. It goes on almost infinitely—and this exercise reminds us how reliant we are on so many others for even the most basic things. We need to value each other—because we're dependent on each other for the good life.

Another grace my daughter sometimes sings at dinner is a naturalistic version of the traditional “Johnny Appleseed” grace. This is a sweet little grace that reminds us how much we need the natural world, and perhaps inspires in us a sense of responsibility to take good care of an earth that we depend on so completely. It goes like this:

The earth is good to me

And so I thank the earth

For giving me the things I need

The sun and the rain and the honeybees

The earth is good to me.

Saying grace at dinner certainly isn’t essential to humanism, but it is a nice opportunity to meditate as a family on the many wonders and gifts that surround us in our journey through the human experience. It is important to feel connected to nature, to the science that helps us survive nature, and to other people. Living in awareness of these connections helps us to be kinder, more reasonable, more just, and overall better.

Rational Sunday School, Take Two

2010-11-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

The following describes our second session of the Prescott Freethinkers' Rational Sunday School, our nontheistic, Humanism-inspired children's program. Following the lesson plan is a brief critique of some ways in which this lesson could be improved.

Rational Sunday School

(Preschool – 4^th grade)

Lesson: Imagination

Time: 1 hour

Equipment:

Box of unisex dress-up clothes

Puppets

Blank Notecards

Pens

Magazines with pictures

Scissors

Glue

Blank paper

Introduction

Group Check-In: To open, we gathered in a circle and each said our name, and something we wanted to share about our week.

Topic: Imagination

Kids don’t really need to much help figuring out how to use their imaginations, but we wanted to validate its importance. Besides being fun, thinking imaginatively is essential to solving problems. Some of the most exciting advances in all of the sciences, in engineering, in conflict resolution and so on, have come from people who were able to use their imaginations productively.

Book: Starry Messanger, by Peter Sis

This children’s book about Galileo Galilei describes (with beautiful and evocative pictures) how Galileo utilized imagination to think about what he saw the skies, and how his perseverance and bravery changed everything! We read the book to the kids, and then talked about the pictures and the story.

Imaginative Games

We played several games to encourage the kids to use their imaginations, and for them to learn how to encourage one another as well.

Imagine a Story:

To prepare for this game, we had cut out several magazine pictures and glued one per sheet of paper for each child, and a few extras. The children each drew one picture (not showing it to anyone else) and looked at it carefully, then put it in a pile to be mixed up again. Then, using any available props or dress-up clothes, each child silently tried to act out what they saw in the pictures, so that the group would be able to correctly identify which child was communicating which picture. After each child did their pantomime, we turned over all the pictures, and the group had to guess which picture was being represented. Some examples of pictures included a man sleeping on a pile of bananas, fractals, a bus, several women in a line carrying baskets on their heads.

Making Words Come Alive

Each child was given a blank notecard and a pen, then asked to write down the first word that popped into their head (pre-literate children were given assistance). The notecards were then mixed up and each child drew a card. One child chose a puppet, and incorporating the word on their card, began a story. Then each child took a turn, using a puppet of their choice, adding to the story and in some way incorporating their word into the story.

Snack and Social Time

Imaginative Free Play

For the rest of our time, the children enjoyed playing imaginatively together using the puppets and dress-up clothes.

****

Critique of this lessons and tips for others:

We had a lot of fun with this, but without modification these games would be better suited to older children; our preschoolers struggled a bit with figuring out what we were doing. Fortunately, the older kids were great about helping the smaller ones.

Also, I think I could have done a better job creating a lesson that made more explicit the relationship between imagination and science, philosophy, conflict resolution and problem solving in general. I plan to work on developing this idea further and trying another imagination-related lesson in the future. As always, your suggestions are encouraged!

We've Told Them: "It Gets Better." Now Let's Make It Better.

2010-10-29T10:20:00.001-07:00

The voices of reasonable, caring people from all over the country have succeeded in pressuring Clint McCance to apologize and to resign. I am grateful to everyone who sent a letter or made a phone call to McCance or to Arkansas’ Midland School District, and to everyone who has participated positively in the dialogue about how we as a society can (and must!) support and affirm LGBT kids and keep them safe at school.

We have succeeded in making sure this rogue school board member will not represent his district with his vitriolic message of hate. But our work is not done. We must all do more to ensure that LGBT teens do not ever hear the message that they are unworthy of full participation in our communities. This post is a “to do” list for humanists and others who know we have a responsibility to these kids.

First and foremost, we need to talk about LGBT issues in our daily lives. This is important because many of the people who are adamantly opposed to full human rights for LGBT people think the “Gay Rights Movement” is an extremist faction led by immoral, weird sexual perverts. And they believe in these mythical gay extremists because they’ve been isolated from real gay people—and from real people willing to defend gay people. We need to talk about the kind, loving, good kids who are kicked out of their homes and abandoned by their churches because they are gay. We need to talk about the suicides. We need to make it safe for LGBT people to “come out”—so that they can live their lives authentically, and so that our straight friends and neighbors can see that LGBT people are just regular people. We need to make this personal; it’s not an abstract issue. Real children are suffering deeply because we are not protecting them. Real families are torn apart. Real communities are not benefiting from the full participation of LGBT people who are afraid of being exposed and rejected. This must end.

We need to talk about religion’s involvement in LGBT rights—which is that religion has no right to disenfranchise LGBT people. We need to be clear that ultimately, LGBT rights are not about who's gay but rather about who's human. LGBT people are human beings. They deserve human rights. It doesn’t matter if you believe God thinks homosexuality is a sin, because in the United States of America, you shouldn’t lose your human rights over any religion’s concept of sin. Think about it. If you’re a biblical literalist, there are tons of things you believe God says are sinful, and you still grant human rights to people who sin; we don't disenfranchise people who eat pork, women who speak in church, people who divorce, people who covet, people who, like Christine O'Donnell, dabble in witchcraft. In this country, we protect the human rights of people who have different religious beliefs than our own.

We need to lobby for equal marriage laws—both at the legislative level and in the hearts of our friends and neighbors. Maybe we can’t make religious people understand that homosexuality is a valid way of being (although many religious people are taking a stand on this), but we need to make them understand that their religious belief cannot dictate law in the United States. Marriage, from a legal standpoint, is a state-recognized partnership contract that makes two consenting adults responsible for one another; it offers certain legal and social benefits that help these adults fulfill their contracted responsibility. This arrangement is good for our communities. It provides stability. It protects children. It helps the economy. There is absolutely no secular reason to exclude two same-gendered people from entering into this legal partnership. And if you belong to a religious community that believes God sanctified marriage between a man and a woman, you have a right to that belief in this country; and you can choose not to enter into a same-gendered marriage, you can choose not to perform such a marriage, and you can choose not to attend one. But you cannot choose to make your religious belief the law of the land.

In addition to the issue of the unconstitutionality of legislating a religious sacrament, denying LGBT people the basic human rights of marriage and family is sending a dangerous message—one that is killing our LGBT teens. We are, as a nation, telling our children that if they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, then they are not valuable human beings deserving full human rights. We are telling them that their sexual orientation negates any positive contribution they may make to their world. We are telling them that being a loving, compassionate, responsible member of the community is not enough to warrant full inclusion in US citizenship and the rights and benefits therein. How can we reasonably tell a suicidal LGBT teen that their life is worth living if, at the same time, we are telling them that their life is worth nothing?

We must, together, change this message. And in particular, straight people must not sit in the complacency of privilege and let this be someone else’s problem—because this injustice belongs to all of us. It’s harming all of our children. It’s harming all of our communities. It’s tarnishing the values of this country.

I hope you will help me be part of the solution. We need to start fighting for LGBT children. We must fight for their right to grow up and participate fully in adult life. We must fight for their right to marriage, we must fight for their right to equal employment, we must fight for their right to serve in the military, we must fight for their right to be safe. I hope you will contact HRC’s Welcoming Schools or the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to help make schools in your district safe for LGBT students. I hope you will contact Secular Coalition for America (or in Arizona, the Secular Coalition for Arizona) and find out how you can help make marriage equality a legislative priority. I hope you will find ways to tell the LGBT kids in your life that it does get better, and then please, take action to make it better. Don’t let these kids down. They need us—and we need them.

Clint McCance: Model Love and Uprightness by Resigning Today

2010-10-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

My letter to Midland School Board member Clint McCance:

Mr. McCance -

I am writing to encourage you to resign. Regardless of your religious views on homosexuality and sin, it is an unequivocally heinous, evil thing to encourage any young person to commit suicide for any reason. Teenagers across the United States, gay and straight alike, have been deeply hurt by your words, and by the idea that a school board member anywhere in this country could consider it acceptable to be so hateful toward the students he is supposed to support and represent. As I'm sure you well know, gay and lesbian teens are already vulnerable to bullying and their rates of suicide are much higher than other groups of young people.

I am the director of a nonprofit organization that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth in rural Arizona. My husband and I have long been passionate about supporting this demographic of young people because they are so vulnerable to higher rates of drug use, teen pregnancy and suicide. They are so often rejected by their families, friends and communities of faith. It is imperative that these kids are safe at school. You have failed to promote safe schools, and have therefor jeopardized all the youth in your district. I hope you will do the right thing by apologizing and stepping down. Young people across America are looking to you now; this would be an excellent time for you to model the religious values of love and reconciliation.

Thank you in advance for setting an example of righteousness by courageously choosing to apologize and resign.

--
Serah Blain
Executive Director
QsquaredYouth, Inc.

Dear Harry: The State of the Nontheistic Movement

2010-10-24T10:18:00.001-07:00

The following is from an email I wrote to my friend Harry Lonsdale, who's ready for things to change for nontheists in America, and who wanted to know what we're going to do about it. So here's what we're doing:

1 - Rational Sunday School. This is something our Prescott group is doing, but in addition to our group, Dale McGowan's Foundation Beyond Belief is working on building secular parenting groups around the country and supporting similar Sunday Schools. This is such an important move, because I think parents sometimes stay in religious communities knowing that community is so important in nurturing responsible, well-adjusted and moral children--and previously there have been very few alternatives for secular parents. Atheist communities such as Ethical Culture have not been terribly successful in providing programs for parents, and so I think families have stayed nominally theistic in order to provide community for their children. Not the case anymore! We'll be seeing a lot more families coming out as nontheistic as more and more of these family-oriented groups spring up. I'm working on developing curriculum for our group, and in sharing it with the wider nontheistic community.

2 - Secular Coalition. Secular Coalition for America is working on developing state groups for all 50 states. SC Arizona is the first, and our kick-off went extremely well. We packed the house for the event, and for our follow-up lobbying workshop we had a few dozen nontheistic Arizonans come to learn how to influence their elected officials. Our organization has several registered lobbyists (myself included), and we intend to cultivate citizen-lobbyists as well. I believe that this organization has the potential to lend real legitimacy to nontheistic voices--and I think it is particularly powerful that we have such a wide demographic involved in the coalition including families, women, people of color and so on. The stereotype of the angry white male atheist (no offense to any angry white male atheists, of course) is on its way out! I believe we ought to focus on substantive issues that affect our families and communities: real science education; access to sex education based on facts not on religious moralizing; marriage/adoption/family equality and so on. Making ourselves visible on these issues is a way of saying clearly that nontheists care about issues of morality; we care about our families and our children and we're dedicated to improving our world.

3 - Chaplaincy. I had an excellent conversation last week with John Figdor, the Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard under Greg Epstein, about the humanist program at Harvard Divinity. HCH has been working hard to make sure humanism has a respected place at the table of inter-religious dialogue, and that nontheists in places like the military, hospitals, universities and so forth have access to nontheistic/humanist council. I think this is another crucial aspect of the movement, because people need real sources of consolation during difficult times, and if the only available options are religious ones, then people come to believe that nontheism cannot be relevant to daily life. Humanism and other forms of nontheism CAN be relevant, and Harvard Divinity's humanist program, which is training humanists to help people in their communities work through questions of meaning, value and ethics in a nontheistic way, will help make that relevance clear. We need to have coherent answers to questions about how to be moral and how to navigate through suffering--and regular people need access to these answers, not just ivory tower academics who read tons of philosophical books and write esoterically on the big questions. The chaplaincy movement can help make that happen, and I feel passionate about this work. I'm continuing to volunteer for hospice with this in mind, and come spring I'm planning to finish my undergrad and then work toward chaplain credentials.

This is Serah Blain's three-pronged approach to saving the world. And now, off to change diapers!

Rational Sunday School, Take One

2010-10-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

One of the things I’m very proud of in my nontheistic community is our work to create a Rational Sunday School; the Sunday School focuses on character-building, scientific thinking, philosophy, religious literacy and (most importantly) FUN—all in a secular context. When my husband and I began working toward creating a nontheist group in our community, it was very important to us that children be valued and included, and that programs to nurture them be a priority—and it’s happening!

Currently our Rational Sunday School meets twice a month, and includes six children ranging in age from preschool to fourth grade. In many ways, we’re just winging it, although Ute Mithchell’s article on Rational Sunday School has been very influential, and when one of our Freethinkers contacted her, she offered a ton of resources. We meet for an hour in a community room at the public library, and do not charge anyone to attend. Money for any necessary materials is drawn from donations to the Prescott Freethinkers.

Because I know that communities of Humanists and other nontheists are springing up around the country, and because I know children’s programs are so essential to these groups, I’m going to try to post our “curriculum” (such as it is) and notes on our experience so that anyone interested in this kind of program can learn from our attempts. And I’d love suggestions from other nontheists as well!

Below is a brief write-up of our very first Rational Sunday School this past August. It went surprisingly smoothly, and the kids loved every minute of it! We have since done lessons on imagination and on gratitude, which I’ll post when I get them written up. We are also encouraging different members of our group to create lesson plans in their areas of expertise (upcoming examples will include evolutionary biology and debunking magic). Any and all ideas are encouraged!

Rational Sunday School

(Preschool – 4^th grade)

Our First Lesson: Community

Time: 1 hour

Equipment: Hula hoops; Blind folds; Tennis balls; Rope

Introduction

To learn one another’s names, we went around the circle with each child saying his/her name along with the names of the children introduced before him/her. The children all helped each other if someone couldn’t remember a name.

Topic: Community

Since much of the purpose of our Rational Sunday School is to build community, we thought it was important to talk about what community is and why it is so important. We asked the kids to explain what they understood community to mean, and talked for awhile to clarify the definition and significance. We emphasized that we were working together to build our own community to support one another and learn together. We all tried to think of examples where working together in community accomplishes what we cannot do alone.

Cooperative Games

We played several silly cooperative games to get to know each other and learn to work together.

Knotty Hands:

“To play this game, ask the children to stand in a circle. Next, instruct each of them to bring their left hand forward and with it catch hold of any other child's left hand, except for the ones who are standing immediately next to them. When they are done, ask them to do the same with the right hand. Now, the fun part begins. The children have to untangle themselves from this self created web without letting go of each other's hands! You will find many of the kids instructing others on how to go about it, while others try various means such as climbing on top of the hand-web to untangle the knots.”

Hula Hoop Pass:

“Form a circle and all join hands. Put a hula hoop around the grasped hands of two players. See how fast you can pass the hoop around the people in the circle without letting go of hands. You can add another hoop and make it go the other way.”

Snack and Social Time

Mine Field:

Use the rope to create a large square, which marks the boundaries of the field. Spread the tennis balls around to create the mine field. First, one child volunteers to attempt to get through the mine field without touching any of the balls—while blindfolded. After a few failed attempts, the children each find a partner and go to opposite sides of the minefield. One player is blindfolded and the other verbally tells them how to go through the field. If a mine is blown up (touched), the child must start over.

Wrap Up

Because this was our first attempt at Rational Sunday School, we took time at the end to ask the kids what they liked best (Knotty Hands!) and what they didn’t like (they liked EVERYTHING)! We also asked them what kinds of things they’d like to do and learn in the future, and compiled a list for future lessons.

In which our humanist hero discovers that death is natural. And natural is bad.

2010-10-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

“Caring for the dying is such life-affirming work.” Hospice workers bounce around saying it to each other all the time, happily and vociferously. And, although it’s cheesy, it is by and large true. When my first hospice patient died a few weeks ago, I didn’t yell at my kids for days. I savored my coffee more. I even enjoyed doing dishes. Another patient slept the entire time I sat with her, and her labored but regular breathing dominated the room. It made my own breath sound soft and elegant; I consciously treasured that sound all week. There are so many things that a dying person must say goodbye to, must give up the hope of enjoying. As a witness to this loss, it is impossible not to feel grateful for everything I don’t yet have to give up.

But despite the fact that I am having this gratifying, life-affirming experience, I am very uncomfortable with the cliché. And the bounciness of people repeating the cliché. Despite the fact that I am receiving wonderful gifts from the dying, I don’t feel comfortable celebrating those gifts joyfully (and loudly) as many hospice workers do. Telling ourselves how wonderful and life-affirming and invigorating it is to be with the dying sounds suspiciously like an attempt to comfort ourselves with the lie that there’s something good about death—that it’s not a total loss of every experience, the negation of being and permanent separation from those we love most. Don’t get me wrong: I believe in the philosophy of having the opportunity to die well. I believe that because we have to die and because the people we love have to die, it is essential that we work together in community to create a dying experience where relationships can be healed, pain can be eased, and those who have to die can do so surrounded by comfort, love and peace. But none of that makes the fact of death good.

People say all the time that death is natural, which is essentially the argument that death is natural, natural is good, and therefore death is good. And this argument fails. Natural isn’t good. Sometimes it is really bad. Like when a tsunami kills thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent people—that’s pretty bad. Natural, but bad. Also high infant and childhood mortality rates are natural. And parasites. And life-expectancies of thirty-something years.

A large majority of the time, nature is trying to do horrible, horrible things to us, and we have spent thousands of years as a species trying to get nature under control so that our lives don’t have to consist of work work work work pain pain death. And to a large degree in the developed world, we’ve succeeded. We have carpet and eye glasses and indoor plumbing and vaccines and polyester and telephones. None of which are the least bit natural.

I’m not denying that there are a lot of glorious, awesome aspects of the natural world. I respect the natural world. I like to look at it from my deck. But I think we’re all in agreement that when it tries to kill us in horrific ways, it makes good, compassionate sense to tame it. Part of what is so marvelous about being human is that we often can do better than nature. Our consciousness and creativity enable us to make lives better—and where we can, we should. And this goes for the natural fact of death as well.

I hope that science will soon give people a much larger degree of control over their own deaths. People should have the choice to live longer and die more gently, with more options regarding when and how. It’s tragic that this is not the case today, and it’s useful to affirm the tragedy of death—particularly when we are with someone facing it. It’s important to acknowledge the awfulness of it and allow grief to run its course. We don’t have to gloss over it and try to make it feel better. We can sit with the terribleness of it, and come to terms with it anyway. And I think this is important work to do—to come to terms with death. Being honest with death frees us, as human beings and as communities, from the dangerous activity of manufacturing beliefs in order to cope with reality. And cliché or no cliché, it has the added bonus of being a life-affirming process, even for the dying.

Prescott Does Racism

2010-06-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

It is a privilege to live in Prescott, Arizona at this moment in history. Prescott, as you probably know, made national headlines when, supposedly, artists were pressured to lighten the faces of ethnic children depicted in a mural on the side of Miller Valley Elementary school—children who were modeled after actual students (Mario and Elijah) at the school. The decision was made, apparently, after Prescott City Councilman Steve Blair discussed on his radio show the inappropriateness of having a big picture of a “black guy” (Mario is actually Hispanic) at a prominent intersection in Prescott. Blair went on to say that the mural was an example of diversity being “shoved down our throats.” He was promptly fired by the radio station that carried his show. (The "supposedly" and "apparently" are inserted because there's more to this story involving some unfortunate posturing, but that's for another post...)

In response, we gathered up a few hundred residents of our town to affirm diversity and protest the move to lighten Mario and Elijah’s faces, which was perceived by the town as capitulating to a racist councilman. Saturday, school officials faced a crowd of nearly 400 citizens and apologized for asking for the changes, reversing their decision to have the mural altered. We are now planning to attend the next city council meeting on Tuesday to call for Blair’s resignation, as he has sullied Prescott’s reputation nationally, and has made clear that he is not an advocate for reason and compassion in our local dialogue.

Much of what has happened over the last few days is sickening: the fact that kids in our community heard one of their city councilmen publicly promote the idea that skin color is a valid characteristic by which to judge the worth of a child; that racist slurs (“Get that nigger off the wall!”) were screamed from a car or two at the rally where children (including Mario and Elijah) were present; the fact that there are people in our town who hate the idea of diversity—it’s gross.

But I think also that the story is triumphant. We all know racism exists—it’s not unique to Prescott or even Arizona. However, it’s not all that often that racism, which is so commonly couched in euphemism and hidden, simmering, beneath the surface, is outed in the public arena and then addressed with rational discourse and responded to effectively. I’ve lived all over the country, in cities and towns of varying sizes, and racism is present everywhere. I’ve also attended protests and rallies for all kinds of causes, none of which did much beyond “rallying the troops” and raising public awareness. Never has it been this easy to solve an immediate problem and at the same time work toward an overall improvement in the way we relate to each other and respond to our differences.

Racism was publicly brought to light in our town. We did not ignore it, but rather, countered it with an affirmation of diversity; we joined together as a community and repudiated it. It’s not gone from Prescott, but it’s not hidden either. We can work on it. We can, as a community, keep it in the light and openly model a better way. At a time when racially charged issues are being debated all over the country, I’m proud of the way Prescott is handling the presence of racism, and hopeful that other communities across the country can participate in a similarly positive process.

And now, Arizona, can we please start producing some national headlines we can all be proud of?

Dying a Secular Death

2010-04-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

I recently read an article written by an atheist hospice nurse, Lisa Mais, on the need for 'spiritual' care at the end of life. Mais was clear that she was not using the word 'spiritual' to mean something supernatural, but rather to refer to the state of "awe or wonder in to response that which [we] hold in the highest value." She quotes an atheist patient who confided in her a need to discuss spiritual matters, and who defined spirituality as "the intermix of emotional and philosophical perspectives of that within and out of ourselves--our place, our connection within the physical world." In short, 'spiritual' questions are the big ones: Why am I here and what does my life mean? How do I understand meaning in the context of dying? The patient Mais writes about even admitted that he regretted listing himself as an atheist on his intake form "because he would have welcomed the chaplain's presence."

This is terribly tragic. Lacking religion is not the same as lacking a need to explore questions of meaning. Absence of faith in the supernatural does not equate to absence of faith in love and hope--and it is important to find a way to affirm these sacred values in the face of our annihilation. A non-theist should not have to compromise the desire for a secular death in order to have someone with whom to discuss philosophy and meaning.

From what I understand, hospice chaplains are trained to work with people from all different faith backgrounds--but they are still coming from a perspective of religious faith. The chaplain who visited my family frequently while my mom was in hospice was a Unitarian Universalist minister, and was very respectful of my atheism, my sister's ambivalence, my mom's Orthodox Judaism and my extended family's conservative Christianity. She was a good fit for my family's mish-mash of beliefs, but even while she never directly challenged my atheism, she retreated to supernatural language when talking about meaning and loss, and seemed uncomfortable with my stance that this really is all there is. She occasionally offered up lines like, "Well, there really is no way to know for sure what happens when we die."

Obviously, I disagree completely. We've observed pretty definitively that our personalities, our memories, our being, is housed in the physical brain and is a result of the activity that happens there. When the brain is damaged, memories can be lost, personalities completely altered, people changed into someone entirely new. When the brain dies, memories die, personalities die, the experience and reality of 'being' ends. And then the dead body goes into the ground, decomposes, and its constituent parts are absorbed into the earth, becoming something entirely new.

I'm not alone with this viewpoint. There are millions of other secular people worldwide who share it. But like religious people, secular people need reassurance at the end of our lives--just not false reassurance. And like religious people, many of us fear death--just not eternal damnation. And like religious people, many of us want to share our questions about meaning, to have our fears addressed, to find true reassurance--just not from religious clergy.

The hospice community is dedicated to helping people have what they call a "good death." I believe my mom had a "good death." It was awful that she had to die in her early fifties, but because it had to be done, we all rallied to make it the best death possible given the circumstances. She had the support of her husband and her religious community to address questions of meaning. She had her family around her to reassure her with love.

Giving this kind of care and compassion to people at the end of their lives is sacred work--not religious work, but sacred in that it goes to the heart of our most treasured human values. This kind of care and compassion needs to be extended to non-theists as well as religious people. I am not, of course, saying that non-theistic people aren't well cared for physically in hospice; but I don't think I'm off base here when I say there really aren't good resources for the spiritual care of dying atheists. And spiritual care is a key component in a good death.

In searching around online, at the library, and in various databases, I have found very, very few references to secular dying--one journal for the hospice profession, for example, recommends hospice workers read the Oct/Nov 2007 issue of Free Inquiry. But even that Free Inquiry issue really only addresses approaches to dealing with the death of a loved one; it does not have much for someone facing death. I checked out a couple dozen books from the library on hospice care, caring for the terminally ill, and facing death, and virtually none of them is completely secular. Even those that aren't explicitly religious (Kubler-Ross's books, for example) talk about the transformation that will take place when we "cross over to the other side," and most mention faith, God and spirituality (in the context of the supernatural).

What this says to me is that there is a huge market for humanist chaplains--in hospitals, hospices, universities and other places where theistic chaplains are usually found. There might even be a place for me in this work; I am deeply concerned with questions of meaning, and I strive to be compassionate and fearless in the face of death. I have just signed up to volunteer with a local hospice to see what I might learn about how to care for dying people, how to hear and understand their spiritual concerns, and perhaps come away with wisdom on how non-theists can care for one another when we face death ourselves.

Pray any day you like!

2010-04-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

News this morning: The law (enacted by congress in 1952) establishing a National Day of Prayer has been ruled unconstitutional. I am definitely pleased about this ruling--but I also hope that non-theists will tread carefully and most of all, not gloat. We need to celebrate this as a victory for all thinking people--a victory that keeps the government from regulating the marketplace of ideas.

I'm already pretty disappointed with the headlines for this news, which seem to all read as some variation of: "Day of Prayer is Unconstitutional." The point of the ruling, and it's important that we emphasize this, is not that a day of prayer is unconstitutional, or that associations of religious people recognizing a National Day of Prayer like some kind of holiday is unconstitutional, or even that the President of the United States himself participating in a religious day is unconstitutional. Rather, it is the law establishing a day on which the president is to issue proclamations for Americans to pray that is unconstitutional.

Atheists value freedom of religion as much as the next guy--in fact, we seem to fight for this freedom with much more passion than religious people...because at its heart this freedom is the freedom to think for yourself, to be accountable to your own conscience, to have and share ideas. This ruling simply validates our fundamental right to have our own ideas, to be free from government endorsing a particular religious belief (the belief in a God who hears and answers prayer) and it protects the ideas of religious people as much as it protects the ideas of non-theists. It is important from a practical standpoint that we emphasize this, because when spun as "Prayer=Unconstitutional," this ruling will feel to the masses like some kind of communist outlaw of religious practice. Not so!

Religious people still have their right to pray, to pray together and to have a National Day of Prayer--but they are not free to use our shared government to endorse their religious holiday. And we non-religious people have our right to celebrate reason, to celebrate it together and to have a National Day of Reason.

A Month in the Life of a Rapturous Humanist

2010-04-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

It turns out that blogging consistently is a challenge, what with all the exciting and amazing things happening around here...Being a passionate Humanist is, as it turns out, very time consuming. So here is what has been happening around here the past month:

Humanist Passover
We hosted an unbelievably lovely Passover Seder at our home this past month. Nearly 20 freethinkers and their children joined us for this celebration. While in many ways our Seder honored tradition (right down to my vegan attempt at Gefilte fish!) we also reclaimed it for Humanism beautifully. The emphasis of the Humanist Haggadah we used was on freedom, justice and the awesome light of the human spirit. We can do such great things together when we validate our shared goodness, when hand-in-hand we "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with one another" (to "Humanize" the old passage from Micah).

It got me thinking about the many non-theists among us who wonder (often loudly) why some of us choose to organize into communities--after all, didn't we leave religion to get away from that kind of thing? The answer is simply: no. We (allow me to speak for my fellow organized freethinkers here) left religion (or never bothered with it in the first place) because in its insistence on the impotence of humanity in the face of the greatness of God, in its call of subservience to the will of outside authority, in its emphasis on faith over reason, religion hampered our ability to realize our great and glorious human potential and thwarted our attempts to live our best lives.

We are a social animal. We are powerful and wonderful and creative--and all of these qualities are amplified when we gather together and encourage one another. This was the beauty of our Seder: we reveled in the creativity and resourcefulness of the Jewish people and their traditions over time; we acknowledged the great injustices present in our world today; we affirmed the human potential to right these injustices, and we presented the call to do it. This is the kind of holiday we should all celebrate!

Humanist Easter
We didn't stop at Passover...we kept the humanistic reclamation of holidays right on rolling through Easter. We hosted a secular celebration of Spring: of growth, renewal, community and food! It was an amalgamation of traditions--with good old Catholic staples like hot-cross buns and mimosas alongside the neo-pagan egg hunt. The Easter baskets and eggs were filled with non-candy items like books, wildflower seeds, pencils and pencil sharpeners--because the Humanist Easter bunny values bringing the mind to life as the rest of the natural world begins to bloom! All vegan of course--no bunnies were harmed in the making of our Easter. Once again, we had a couple dozen freethinkers and their kids come and delight in the pleasures of Spring!

Star Trek Marathon!
O.k., this was just because we're nerds. But it was really fun to get together with other secular adults and kids and hang out for a very full day of eating, Star Trek-watching, discussing and gaming.

OneProm
As the volunteer director of a local LGBTQ youth organization, I had the great honor and pleasure of helping to organize a non-discriminatory, inclusive prom for teens in our county. What was so very, very marvelous about this experience was that people from all religious traditions and political ideologies offered time, money and other resources to create this lovely, affirming event for the youth in our community. This exemplifies what I believe is the existence of many shared values across all ideological lines: we want the best for our families. We want our children to be nurtured, and to grow up knowing they are loved. There were many people who assisted with this event that I think are probably uncomfortable with homosexuality from a religious perspective--but with the shockingly callous behavior of certain other communities toward LGBTQ students and the whole fake prom brouhaha, I think parents and community members here wanted to go on record as saying: that kind of disgusting discrimination is not acceptable in Prescott. The success of OneProm is an example of what can be accomplished if we stop disparaging one another for our differing beliefs and start encouraging one another to be compassionate, conscientious citizens. In our small, conservative town, in the middle of nowhere, more than 50 LGBTQ youth and allies came to prom and had the time of their lives. I am so proud of my community.

And so, in a nutshell, my month has been filled with community-building, social justice, fun and gratitude. Life is good! And instead of thanking God, I'm thanking all of you: my human partners on this majestic journey.

What Happens in Vegas...

2010-03-13T08:27:00.001-08:00

...probably won't be staying in Vegas. This is because small children have a marvelous talent for being able to remember in great detail things you would much, much rather they forget.

My husband's company provided an all-expenses-paid trip to Vegas this week as a business incentive and we, being all family-oriented, didn't dream of going without the kids. (Actually, we dreamed about it, but in the dream the kids were in their twenties and my husband and I were rich and clearly had been working with a personal trainer. It was a good dream). Anyway, in reality, before we left I searched for family-friendly activities in Vegas and put together a nice lineup of roller coaster rides and pirate shows, and decided we were going to have an awesome time--which we are, it's just that I forgot about all the drunk people, and therefor didn't anticipate having to have this kind of conversation with my 7-year-old:

L: "What's a drunk pig?"
Me: "I'm not sure honey. What's the context?"
L: "That lady called a guy a fucking drunk pig."

The most difficult thing has been addressing issues of sexual morality. There are naked women EVERYWHERE. I want to avoid covering L's eyes or turning her away when a parade of strippers goes by, because I don't want to give the impression that there's something gross or wrong with naked bodies in general (I affirm the naked body! Naked bodies are beautiful and natural and can be used for such healthy, wonderful things!) but there is something a little gross and wrong about having to explain to a young child the concept of sex as a commodity. Keeping my cool is essential; if I overreact to all this nakedness, I'm only drawing attention to something L probably isn't noticing--or at least isn't registering as an issue.

Case in point: The first night we arrived, I took the kids for a walk down to the Bellagio to watch the fountain show. On the way there, I noticed the sidewalks were littered with business-sized cards showing pictures of totally naked women in sexually provocative poses. Initially, L's attention was on all the glittery signs in the sky, so I was very hopeful she wouldn't notice the sex-pot cards on the ground. But alas, L suddenly pointed down at a pile of the cards and shouted "Ewwwwww! Gross!!!!" I panicked briefly, then collected myself and decided to follow her lead as far as what her concerns were, and to answer any questions she had regarding them.

Me: "What's wrong, sweetie?"
L: "LOOK!" (Pointing some more).
Me: "I see what you're pointing to. What do you want me to know about that?"
L: "It's soooo gross!"
Me: "Why is it gross?"
L: "There's litter EVERYWHERE! Don't they care about the earth? I hate it when people throw things on the ground like that!"
Me: (Relieved that L had identified an ethical issue relevant to her age and understanding, and not one that may be yet beyond my age and understanding), "Ya, that is pretty gross. It'd be nice if people had decided to recycle those instead of throwing them on the ground everywhere."

My terror related to where these questions might lead is largely because I'm still figuring out the relationship between sex and morality. Without a religious viewpoint that attaches moral importance to sexual purity, ethical issues about sex are really questions of whether people are being hurt or exploited--and then it's the hurt and exploitation that are immoral, sex aside. And while the commercialization of sex is sometimes distasteful to me, I don't know that it's inherently immoral, and I think if we weren't distracted by questions of purity in our moral reasoning, we could better navigate issues of sexuality and how to develop a healthy, affirming, adult approach to sex.

For example, prostitution isn't wrong because sex outside of marriage is wrong. It's wrong because labor practices aren't regulated, sex-workers are treated badly and paid poorly, and prostitutes often come to the trade out of desperation, lacking life-skills and real options to support themselves and their families. In other words, people are hurt and exploited. And there may be other reasons it's wrong (maybe because it's depersonalizing, maybe because it cheapens human sexual relations), but it's difficult to identify and address those reasons when we're distracted by the question of the morality of sex itself. Similarly, subjects ranging from dressing provocatively to birth control have been misidentified as issues of sexual morality and purity (the idea that it's wrong to show so much skin because lust is bad, non-procreative sex is bad, women's bodies are bad) rather than looked at through a lens of humanistic ethics.

I'm sure that much has already been written about the topic of a secular sex-ethic--and I for one am going to read up so I'm prepared when L actually notices all the nakedness.

Glenn Beck Reads My Blog

2010-03-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

Serah's Angry Blog Post

2010-03-08T09:49:00.000-08:00

As I have been out and about in the blogosphere, it has become quite clear that the blogs with the highest readership and the most energetic comments tend to be those that are really, really pissed off about something, and in one way or another flash metaphorical teeth and nails.

So, in the interest of drawing more readers to my humble blog, I've decided to give this whole pissed-off thing a shot. And because I'm new at this, I'll start with an easy target. Glenn Beck. What has he said now you ask?

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!

Really, Mr. Beck? You're asking people to leave their churches if such churches preach social justice? Really?!? What are churches supposed to preach? Aside from sexual purity, obviously. I'm not an expert on New Testament theology, but it seems to me that one of Jesus' more admirable qualities was his tendency to advocate for the poor, often speaking up for the disenfranchised and calling for a redistribution of wealth. The early churches as described in Acts and the Epistles required members to surrender their belongings so that everything could be redistributed to each as they had need. Perhaps Mr. Beck is asking churches to throw out the bible and start over--which I'm all for. Am I both defending Jesus and agreeing with Glenn Beck? Astonishing.

Economic justice is not anti-biblical. So what is Mr. Beck's real problem with a gospel of social justice? It provides way too much common ground for liberals and the religious right. Jesus' message of ending economic disparity, of including social outcasts among friends and peers, of peacemaking and compassion--well, that just sounds like it's coming straight out of one of Obama's stump speeches. We might actually end up as some kind of progressive, love-crazy land of truly equal opportunity if we started taking that message seriously.

Look. We've got to stop chipping away at the common ground and start building more of it. The truth is, many, many religious people have become religious because they are seeking a place of belonging and some guidance on how to be ethical people. As far as I'm concerned, religion offers not only the wrong answers but also the wrong way of seeking answers, no doubt about it. However, many of the questions religious people and non-religious people are asking about goodness and meaning and belonging are the same. Many of our deeply rooted values are the same. If we strip away the dogma and the constant bickering and the arrogance, we could work on holding this common ground and constructing something truly majestic on it. That is what Mr. Beck is afraid of: that his voice, which is encouraged because it resonates with the discontented, will be drowned out by the sound of a happy, healthy society.

I Want My Easter Cake, and My Humanism Too!

2010-03-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

Holidays. Unequaled in their ability to bring about stress, family conflict, and indigestion. Also, holidays sometimes turn into a litmus test for how hardcore an atheist you are. A TRULY hardcore atheist would NEVER lie to their children about the existence of Santa Claus, or support the proliferation of religious sentiment through religious holidays. Luckily for my kids, I'm a softcore atheist.

Star-stuff on the Seder Plate
Holidays are beneficial in so many ways...for one thing, they utilize the language of symbols to communicate the things that are important to us: candles and lights as beacons of hope and warmth; flowers and eggs for life and renewal; food and gift-giving for generosity and care. This is poetry, and it enlivens the human heart! Humanists are people of reason, but we must not shy away from the poetic. Beauty and sentiment inspire us to be better, to dream bigger, to want a more meaningful life. Science itself is poetic--and I think more people would embrace science if it were communicated in a way that resonated with our innate longings for meaning and wonder. Carl Sagan was a master of communicating science in this way, and his writings are full of elevating symbols. Maybe a Sagan-inspired Haggadah is in order...

Holidays also connect us to our past, our families and people all around the world. As Humanists, we need to foster this spirit of connectedness if we want to be able to cooperate in shaping a better future. This doesn't mean that we blindly follow the traditions of our ancestors, or participate in some frivolous ritual because everyone else is doing it--but when we understand what others are doing, when we take what is good and productive from what we have been taught and build upon it, we are perfecting our culture and creating something of value.

The Truth About Santa Claus
And as for the "lies" we tell our kids, I have to say that in general I'm not opposed to exposing my kids to stories of magic and make-believe. I strongly believe that the process by which children uncover the truth about Santa Claus/the Tooth Fairy/the Easter Bunny is very beneficial to their development of rational thinking. Kids begin by unquestioningly buying into it--they believe and delight in the wonder of it all. As they get a little older and more sophisticated, little hints pop up for them that perhaps this doesn't all add up--they begin asking questions: How can Santa get to all the kids in the world in one night? If it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere, that means it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere and where does Santa's sleigh land down there without snow? And so on. These questions are similar to those that children in religious households ask: Why don't miracles happen today like they did in the bible? Did God create evil? If everybody descended from Adam and Eve, where did Cain's wife come from? A parent who values rational thinking will not come up with more fairy tales to justify the stories, but will encourage their kids to try working it out, to continue questioning, to find their own solutions. Usually, in the childhood debunking of Santa Claus, this process involves first hypothesizing about bigger, better magic: Maybe he freezes time; maybe he creates thousands of copies of himself; maybe he shrinks the world so he doesn't have to travel very far. (This is the stage my daughter is in right now). Eventually, kids just put it together that there is no solution--the necessary magic doesn't exist, and there is no Santa.

I've heard from many parents who have concerns that all this trickery will damage their children's trust and is ultimately confusing--but my experience wasn't one of anger at being lied to, or sadness because the magic had died; I distinctly remember a feeling of glee for having figured it out--for having become too smart for the grown-ups to trick anymore. After succeeding in coming to the truth through our own reasoning, aren't we are more confident in our own minds? Won't our children be less likely to take someone else's word for it--particularly when it comes to supernatural claims? When encouraged properly, I believe children who debunk Santa will be more easily able to make the connection between this story and religious stories of magic.

A Tomb, An Equinox and a Creme-filled Center
This morning I was online searching around for some ideas pertaining to celebrating a secular (but not consumption-oriented) Easter. Easter is sort of a tricky holiday because it has such diverse and mixed-up origins, and the resulting traditions are a big mish-mash of Jesus, fertility, and chocolate. I'm a little stumped on the best path to a Humanist Easter. But in my searching I came across an article by Sherwin Wine (the founder of the Society for Humanistic Judaism) on Humanist Holidays. While a supporter of holidays, he wrote that he was opposed to Humanist attempts to co-opt religious holidays, because any celebration of such holidays only reinforces the religious identity with which they are associated, no matter how you secularize them. I'm going to go ahead and say that's crap. After all, the versions of Christian holidays people celebrate today are co-opted versions of pagan holidays...and who would argue that celebrating Easter reinforces worship of Eastre, the Gaelic goddess of spring and dawn? Humanist culture has to start somewhere--why not with holidays that are already dear to us? And anyway, Rabbi Wine's own Secular Humanistic Jews have been doing it for decades with Pesach.

I'm not sure yet exactly what my Humanist Easter will look like, but I think it might be a good time to remember people of importance we've lost (exemplified in the Easter story of death and the tomb) and to acknowledge the ways in which these people still bring hope and peace into our lives and our world (the story of resurrection). Some lovely examples might include Sherwin Wine, Martin Luther King, Jr., my mom, my grandparents. And we can celebrate the good and fruitful things we bring to life when we behave ethically (symbolized with flowers, eggs and bunnies)! Now if someone will explain to me the symbolic meaning of chocolate, I think I'll have this thing figured out...

Well, the universe is everything, and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart and...

2010-02-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

I keep starting a blog post and then tossing it, but I think I have to give up on coming up with the final word on death and just post. I mean seriously, Serah, the final word on death? Pshaw. How about a few opening words on death? No final words yet. I'm only 30, people. Sheesh. Anyway, my opening words are kind of long, so if you just want to get straight to the meaning of life, you can skip to the bottom.

So, You Really Believe We Just Decompose?!
This is the biggie that people ask about when they encounter non-theists. They either ask about death or ethics, and if they ask about ethics, it's probably because they're afraid to ask about death. There is this idea amongst religious folks that non-theists must be nihilists, because if we don't believe in some ultimate, supernatural meaning to our lives, then when we die, everything we have done in our lives becomes meaningless.

And of course, death is frightening. It can be gruesome, painful, wasteful--and even if it's peaceful, it still ends our conscious existence. Belief in the supernatural can, at least on some superficial level, quell our fears about death and perhaps ease the pain of being separated from a loved one.

There are no easy answers for how to approach the question of death--and any easy answers offered by religion are often very unsatisfying. But here goes. Serah's attempt to explain meaning in the face of death.

Life: "Serah, meet Death." Serah: "Oh, hi. Howd'ya do?"
My Grandma, my mom's mom, died when my daughter L. was a toddler. Grandma was an awesome, smart, remarkable woman, and lived a good life. We were able to take a photograph with her of four generations of women: Grandma, Mom, Myself, and L. It was the third picture in the sequence; we had taken one of me as a baby with my Mom, Grandma, and my Great-Grandma--and one was taken of my Mom as a baby with my Grandma, Great-Grandma, and my Great-Great-Grandma. It is an amazing thing to be able to see this unbroken chain of generations; I hope I will live long enough to be the great-grandma in the picture.

Several months before she died, I had an opportunity to talk to my Grandma; she told me she had no regrets about her life--that she was proud to go on in me and in L. I was still mildly theistic at the time, and wondered how that could be enough for her--and how I could possibly live up to being a representative of my Grandma's life if I, and not heaven, was her afterlife? Besides, even if her lineage continued for eons, eventually we would face the death of the universe--and what did it all mean then?

My dad's mom died the next year...she was more religious and had a dream about her parents waiting for her on the other side just before she died. She had lived to see many great-grandchildren, and didn't seem to have any anxiety about dying. I was able to be there when she died, along with many members of the family and it was a lovely scene--if you can call a death scene lovely. Other than the fact that it was in the hospital, it was pretty much exactly the way I would want to go...surrounded by family, listening to music, being held and hugged and kissed.

So far, death doesn't seem so bad, right? The circle of life, and whatnot.

Then, a dear friend of mine lost her husband at the ripe old age of 34. He literally dropped dead while on a family vacation. Just dropped. Turns out he had an undetected faulty heart-valve and it blew. So my friend became a widow with two little kids (I think they were 4 and 2 at the time), and I learned about being angry.

Life: "Serah, meet Natural Evil." Serah: "Wow, you're
kind of a dick."
It sounds sort of naive doesn't it? Like I hadn't realized life was unfair before that? To a certain extent, that's true. Certainly I was aware there was horror and injustice in the world...My husband and I were, at the time, very involved in trying to draw attention to the genocide in Darfur for example, and lobbying for LGBT rights. The difference was that I saw these as solvable problems. These were man-made wrongs that we could work toward righting. They didn't have much to do with the inherently grotesque nature of life--with unavoidable, natural evils. There isn't much I can do to solve for what evolution has wrought--for our bodies experiencing physical pain, for cancer, for aneurysms and anecephaly. How do we live our lives in the face of this?

Rather than becoming angry at a morally imperfect or impotent God, I was finally willing to face the facts that had slowly been sinking in over the last several years, and I nixed the God hypothesis.

It's a good thing I did, because it wasn't long before my mom came down with a nasty case of cancer. I would have been SO PISSED at God about this, except fortunately for me, there isn't a mean-spirited God up there letting 34-year-old husbands and fathers drop dead of faulty heart-valves or 52-year-old wives, mothers and grandmothers die of cancer--there are just the cold, value-neutral, imperfect forces of the universe. I had the formidable, awe-inspiring opportunity to face life as it really is--no supernatural beliefs to bar the way.

So how do I deal with the fact that my mom will never get to be the great-grandma in our picture series? That she won't get to meet my pregnant sister's new baby? That she won't be there bake a vegan cake for my little brother's wedding? How do I deal with my own eventual death, and the heat death of the universe? Is it all meaningless?

It's All About the Pie
I miss my mom very, very much. I dream about her a lot (and very realistically, too: I recently had a dream that we were screaming at each other about Middle Eastern politics. I don't miss the screaming, I guess, but I miss the hugs that followed the screaming). And my daughter misses her a lot. Just this morning, L. was telling me that breakfast at Bubbe's was better than here because usually Bubbe had chocolate.

I think I deal with it the way most people do. I cry. I hurt. I eat pie. I make pie for other people who cry and hurt. I think it's a very honest way to grieve. I'm not doing anything to try and blunt the pain--by saying, for example, that there was a divine reason for it, or that I'll see her again someday in heaven. I am facing head-on the emptiness and sadness, because this is the reality of life. And it's hard. But there is pie. Delicious, life-affirming pie. And my mom would want us to spread the love with pie. It's the Jewish way.

My mom's life had meaning. She loved a lot of people, cooked for a lot of people, and taught a lot of us about the importance of compassion and justice. These are the principles of my life; her hand is in every good thing I do. (It's also in some of the yelling I do, and in my messy house, but hey, nobody's perfect). None of this make it o.k. with me that she died so young, but it keeps her close to me, and moves the value and legacy of her life into an endless future...or at least, until the death of the universe.

Now, about that.

"What has the universe got to do with it? You're here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding!"
The problem with ultimate meaning is that it assigns a disproportionate amount of importance to the future. If time is really a dimension, it exists as one whole entity, with no moment in time being more important than any other. Why does the meaning of our lives depend so very much on what happens next, instead of what's happening now? In fact, given that we are only able to experience time as one moment of "now" after another, it really should be the present moment of experience that is given greatest weight.

I will never experience the death of the universe. But I am experiencing this moment...the one where I'm trying to type and my son is climbing up my leg and wiping snot on my pants. This is the now moment. I will never experience being dead, either. The present is the only moment I can experience--and there will be no present for me after I'm dead.

My mom is present for me in this now moment. And she experienced many, many of her own moments. It's true that those moments have ended, but they did exist--and that means just as much as the fact that eventually, there will be no more existence for anyone.

The Bottom Line
I don't like the fact that the universe will eventually die. I don't like the fact that I will die, and my children will die. I don't like the fact that there is suffering and misery. But I do like this moment. I like that I am conscious and can appreciate the amazing fact that I have a now moment. And I like all the potential I am offered in each moment for furthering compassion and love, for alleviating suffering and pain--that into the cold, value-neutral, imperfect universe, I can bring hope and happiness; that with what I have learned from my mother, and what she has learned from her mother, and what she has learned from her mother, I can be a source kindness, gentleness and goodness. This is how the universe, with what time it has, becomes warm, becomes valuable, becomes perfect.

Whiny Yavapai Atheists: 1; Less Whiny Yavapai New Humanists...um...1.

2010-02-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

This past December, the Yavapai College newspaper ran an article on atheistic students, and the article really irked me--or actually, it was the atheists who really irked me. The students who were interviewed for the article had nothing positive to say about their atheism, and in general just seemed like they had drifted toward atheism out of apathy. You can read the article here (it's on the bottom half of the front page):
The holidays don't have religious meaning to all people

So I wrote a letter to the editor, which surprisingly was printed. The text of the letter follows, or you can view the whole Feb. edition of the paper here (Letters to the Editor are on page 5):
Yavapai College Rough Writer

To the Editor:

I appreciate that your paper made an effort to explore the reality of atheism among Yavapai students, but I must say I am disappointed that the students you interviewed for your article (The holidays don't have religious meaning to all people, December 2009) articulated their atheism so negatively!

In fact, defining oneself as an atheist is really just telling people what you do NOT believe rather than what you DO. If I asked a Christian what his or her beliefs were, it would be silly and somewhat baffling if he or she answered, "I'm a non-Muslim," or "I don't believe in Zeus." Likewise, someone whose ethics and traditions don't rely on theism very likely has a positive set of ethics and traditions nonetheless.

Personally, I am a Unitarian Universalist, a proponent of employing the scientific method in discovery of truth, and I more-or-less adhere to a utilitarian code of ethics. I love and nurture my husband and children, and believe that we are obligated to help one other to be compassionate, conscientious, fulfilled human beings. I am involved with a strong community of freethinkers who care about one another, engage in charitable acts, and are deeply concerned with promoting the common good. My family celebrates many cultural holidays, including Christmas, because such holidays are beautiful traditions that emphasize goodness. Those are things I would tell you if you asked me about my beliefs. If, on the other hand, you asked me what I do NOT believe in, the list would include an infinite number of things, only one of which would be God.

Serah Blain
Organizer of the Prescott Freethinkers' Meetup
www.meetup.com/prescott-freethinkers

Our story

2010-02-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

I've read the ramblings of many a theist who seems to think it's incredibly unfortunate that atheists don't have a bible...as if without it, we have no history, no stories that tell us who we are and what we're here for. But religion doesn't have a monopoly on stories of meaning and purpose--just better marketing. (The power of religion to get folks to read confused, anachronistic literature is astounding).

Frankly, many of the most popular religious tales are unhelpful at best or ethically dubious at their worst. Noah's Ark for example. My daughter L. actually came across a children's book about Noah's Ark sometime last year, and as I am not much for censorship, I begrudgingly agreed to read it to her. "What?!" she kept interrupting me, "Noah even let the babies drown?! Why didn't he try to save the kids? Did his wife try to save any of the babies? You wouldn't have let someone drown all the kids, would you mom? You would have tried to save them." Word.

I am certainly aware that there are some marvelous, mystical interpretations of Noah's Ark and other bible stories, interpretations which convey some powerful truths about the human condition and our relationships with ourselves, each other, and our world...but I don't think we need to reinterpret a bad story to get the point across. I vote we just tell a better story.

I will admit I do have an affinity for liberal bible re-tellings; for example, I love Catholic theologian Matthew Fox's interpretation of the biblical creation myth. Fox rejects the Augustinian notion of "original sin," and tells us instead that the Genesis story is a story of original blessing. Original blessing conveys the idea that all people are innately divine--and in this way is quite similar to the humanist notion of the inherent dignity and worth of every human being. But while I see Fox's theology as aligned in many ways to humanist ideology, there is also much in the Genesis story that can be used hurtfully against women, that can lead to misunderstandings about science, that denigrates knowledge and truth. And so rather than pick and choose the pieces of the Judeo-Christian story of creation that affirm humanism, I believe we should tell a wholly humanist creation story.

In our story, there was, in the beginning, nothing. Then, in this nothing, an amazing something happened! We call this something the Big Bang, and from this explosion rushed forth all the matter in the universe. It happened intensely quickly, and it was probably very awesome and very beautiful--but there was nothing in all that fresh matter to know it was awesome and beautiful. This continued for ages and ages, with stars and planets being born and space continuing to rush forth...but for ages and ages, there was no knowing.

But over a great, great span of time, sentient life came into being and eventually evolved into humankind. And, as Carl Sagan puts it, we are a way "for the universe to know itself!" Human beings have the magnificent privilege of being able to look up at the stars and to know that those stars are beautiful--and to know that we are made of the same material as those stars.

And in the great, cold, value-neutral universe, we have a glorious opportunity to bring forth love and compassion; in fact, if we are alone in the universe, we are the only sources of love and compassion! So let us love! And let us be compassionate! And kind! And joyous! Let us continue the creation that began with the Big Bang by bringing forth endless goodness! I'm going to start with hopping off the computer and hugging my children. What will you do?

The new humanism escapes me at Wal-Mart

2010-02-05T16:50:00.001-08:00

Yes, I know what you're thinking: Serah shops at Wal-Mart?!? How can this be? Well, for one thing, Wal-Mart has the cheapest tofu for 90 miles. But I'll save the shopping discussion for a later post. This is actually about Boy Scouts.

So there I was, innocently running into the Wal-Mart yesterday afternoon to pick up some Ghiradelli chocolate chips for an amazing vegan pie, when I suddenly found myself accosted by a swarm of boys with boxes of milk chocolate asking if I would like to "support the Boy Scouts with a purchase of delicious chocolate candies."

Number 1: I'm a vegan and wouldn't buy their chocolates even if the BSA wasn't a homophobic, anti-atheist organization. Number 2: I'm an atheist. Number 3: I'm the executive director of an LGBT youth group. Nothing about this set-up is right.

So what did I say to the offending 12-year-old who asked if I wanted to buy his evil chocolates? I said: "But I don't support the Boy Scouts." And then I walked off leaving him with a baffled look on his face.

I would like to catalog the experience as the least effective moment of protest ever.

After I was safely inside the Wal-Mart, the guilt set in. I had, after all, just written a blog about the need for a more positive dialog, a more affirming atheism, a more constructive way of being, and then I went straight up to a 12-year-old Boy Scout and basically told him I had no respect for him and didn't value what he was doing. D'oh. And as I shopped for cheap tofu and vegan chocolate, I tried to think of a more productive response. After all, this kid was probably having a very positive experience in the Boy Scouts. He was probably learning a great deal about honor and responsibility. Hopefully, the experience will help him turn into the kind of man I could have a constructive relationship with in trying to build the better world I envision... I have no right to diminish what he is doing by walking around with my anti-Boy-Scout-baggage and letting my frustrations spill out onto his attempt to be a productive member of the community. BSA: 1; Serah: 0.

Ultimately, I decided the parking lot of the Wal-Mart was not the place, and a 12-year-old kid was not the person. On my way out, I just said, "No, thank you," to the swarm of little people and candy. And now I am contemplating a letter to the Boy Scouts. I want to tell the BSA how boys from non-theistic families are valuable too--how they have much in the way of honor and responsibility. I want to tell the BSA that gay men can be good and just and compassionate, and the organization as a whole is being deprived of a huge source of skill and wisdom by rejecting atheists and gays. I'm guessing my letter won't have much impact, but it sure beats heckling a little kid in a parking lot.

The virgin post

2010-02-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

I've had this blog forever...really, FOREVER, but have been slightly intimidated by the grandiosity of the title. It's a little lofty. Actually, a whole lot lofty. But the time for cowardice has ended. So here goes.

The last few weeks have been difficult and negative, both for me personally and for the world at large. As a world community, we have witnessed an horrific earthquake in Haiti (footage of which reminded me of the Holocaust); we continue to be subjected to destructive public political dialogs; and we see religion used hurtfully in nearly everything that happens (apparently Haiti made a pact with the devil...) In my own community, I found myself and my 7-year-old daughter rejected by dozens of local homeschooling families because of my work for a local LGBT youth organization; a friend of mine just lost her 29-year-old brother to cancer; and another friend was diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer.

I think it's important, particularly as an atheist, to begin contributing to the body of positive responses to the things that are difficult and negative in this world. A lot of what we hear from "the new atheism" is too angry, too cynical, and overly antagonistic; we hear much from atheists who seek to tear down religion, religious ethics and religious traditions, but little from those who seek to build something positive in its place. Aren't there positive values we can affirm, rather than just negating those that are God-based? Can't we build compassionate communities to fill our common need for care and fellowship?

I believe many atheists have a beautiful and life-affirming approach to questions of meaning. I believe we do have something to offer people who face grief, illness, pain and death. And I believe the time to begin offering this approach is now. Welcome to my blog. Let's build a better world.