It may be mid-January, but I'm still thinking of Christmas.
The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve just might be my favorite of the year. It is the one time that my entire family gets together. We spend several days eating our favorite foods, catching up and playing board games.
I'm the only member of my family who doesn't live in Minnesota -- I moved away several years ago -- so that week is particularly special for me. While the snow piled up outside, I stole my 7-month-old nephew from his doting grandmother and smooshed his face into mine, worked on an unsolvable puzzle with my siblings and ate way too many cookies.
As I was getting ready to leave for the airport, my dad's girlfriend stopped me at the door. "I've been wanting to ask you something," she said, leaning in. "I know you're an atheist, but is it OK for me to say 'Merry Christmas' to you?"
It seemed like a silly question, but she had a reason for asking. She explained that she was nervous about atheism and the holidays thanks to a man she had dated in the past. He had identified as an atheist, and refused to come along to her family Christmas. "As he put it, he'd never celebrate a 'hol-lie-day' for a made-up god," she relayed with a sigh. "And it wasn't just Christmas; he hated all religious holidays. Frankly, it was one of the things that ended our relationship."
In hearing her concern, I recalled the recent controversy over atheist billboards targeting the holiday. Dave Silverman, President of the American Atheists, made the press rounds to explain that their "You KNOW It's A Myth... This Season, Celebrate Reason!" billboard -- the most attention-getting of the bunch -- was intended to persuade atheists who "go through the motions" of celebrating Christmas to stop doing so. Many religious people decried it as blasphemy; like Susan Jacoby, I just thought it was a self-defeating case of misplaced priorities. We cannot promote Humanist values when we expend our energy lobbing simplistic critiques at the religious, or demand that people stop participating in practices they enjoy simply because they're associated with religion.
As the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, I am working on the ground to build up positive Humanist community. Just a few weeks before I visited my family in Minnesota, the Chaplaincy threw a Humanist holiday party, replete with a lighted tree, seasonal music, a donation drive and gift-giving. The sense of community was palpable. Three days later, we gathered to make 120 scarves for the New England Center for Homeless Veterans. We weren't "going through the motions" -- these activities fulfilled our natural human desires to congregate, to seek solace in one another's company, and to help those in need. As my boss, Harvard's Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, has said: "Lectures and debates are important, but we must also sing and we must build. I mean that metaphorically and literally."
I may not be much of a singer, but I can build. To build, literally and metaphorically, a Humanist community that is healthy and sustainable, we must get over this sense that provocation should be our number one goal, and that positive engagement with others is unimportant.
The week following Christmas has passed and we find ourselves in a new year. With a new year comes new work. One of the projects I am most excited about is "Challenge the Gap," a new initiative of the Foundation Beyond Belief, an atheist and Humanist charitable foundation, which aims to find common ground between the religious and the secular. It is, to my knowledge, the first time that an explicitly atheist and Humanist foundation is funding interfaith cooperation.
It is a new Humanism for a new year: one that looks forward in hope, not back in anger. I believe that ethics and engagement are central to what it means to live in the world as a Humanist, and that Humanist community and identity require an affirmative foundation, not one structured in contrast to ideologies we disagree with.
Secular Humanism should not be defined as a rejection of religion; otherwise, we risk living our lives looking for ideas -- and people -- to rebuff. Rather, Humanism ought to be seen first and foremost as a desire to be the best people we can be, to commune with other humans and live ethically and humbly together. It should not be vindictive or oppositional. Instead, it should seek to build bridges whenever possible, with whomever possible. Let's not let our differences destroy the essential social bonds that will facilitate cooperation and understanding.
Walking out the door, I reassured my dad's girlfriend that I will always celebrate Christmas with my family, but I am reminded by her concern that we have a lot of work ahead of us to reconcile the religious and nonreligious in America. The American Atheists may be continuing their wasteful, tone-deaf strategy with a new billboard stating "You KNOW they're all SCAMS," but the future of Humanism isn't blasphemous billboards, bombastic rhetoric or even blogs; it's reaching out, reciprocity and relationships.
This year, my resolution isn't to eat healthier (though I should) or to finish my book (which I will). It's to foster understanding between people of different religions and creeds, and to do what I can to build up a compassionate Humanist community -- in other words, to embody Humanism and challenge the gap.
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Provocation is all one seems to see on the Net, at least (going both ways, of course). Those billboards just read like they were written by a miserable killjoy with a superiority complex. I am not Christian (or any other religion) and don't celebrate Christmas, but having a go at other people for doing so is pathetic. Apart from anything else, it's none of the billboard-writer's business, and all it does is reinforce the "dismal atheist" caricature-stereotype - like the "hol-lie-day" man you described. There are many reasons people gather and celebrate, like the holiday parties you describe (they sound wonderful!).
Thank you again for the article, I enjoyed it very much. :)
The religious have had too much monopoly, so roll on atheists paste the billboards up everywhere and to hell with the Humanist begrudgers. Their suppressive stifling diatribe take on atheist radical enthusiastic doings is - not helping at all. The pot calling the kettle black shenanigans is so utterly pathetic. I’m getting the impression that Humanists are kind of like the Jesuits or the Benedictines of the secular world. Waterford Crystal vs ordinary glass. Too grand and delicate and very easily breakable against the rough and tumble hard-wearing genuine gnu glass. Upstairs/downstairs syndrome.
a rational argument of there is no purpose or meaning to life? or it is rational that we are a grand accident? or there was nothingness before the big bang? wait! there are infinite universes that way we can keep our nothingness all rational and reasoning. :-)
a better term would be dialog together. here is why.
“Those that think they are above deception are the easiest to deceive”. Universal law of the pitfalls
of pride and arrogance.
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. G. K. Chesterton.
someone stated on here everyone knows what one plus one equals to prove the power of reason.
really are we sure one plus one equals two. maybe one plus one equals one. I know that went way over most materialists heads but reason is dependent on our paradigms. and a materialist paradigm would find it impossible to see that one plus one equals one. ie do do most religious paradigms. ie two sides of the same coin religion and scientism.
as someone very smart once stated our theories determine what we shall observe in our experiments.
1. Some atheist ads that are pushing it and are offensive (for example the "You know its a scam." ad).
2. There are some other ads that challenge religion while still remaining clever and not too offensive, such as the Stiefel Freethought Foundation ad campaign.
3. There are some ads that aren't offense, like "Good without God? Join our club."
I think if we are to raise awareness that atheism exists, that its okay to be an atheist, about what atheists think, we need ads Type 2 and 3. To be effective (and since we'll be criticized anyways), edgy Type 2's definitely need to be done. Edgy Type 2 for some is Type 1 for others. My point is, I think all the ads have merit. I think the charge of atheist billboards being offensive is too often unwarranted. I praise all the atheist ads for publicizing atheism.
Religion goes into retreat when it is understood in broad society as an embarrassing lapse in judgement, similar to astrology. It has to be made unfashionable for anyone wishing to appear to be a serious thinker, that is the only way to keep it out of the public square and policy decisions. This can only be done with head-on debate and ridicule. Atheists have tried to deal respectfully with religions for centuries, only to be silenced, oppressed, vilified and ignored at every turn.
We atheists know that no religion can stand up to our rational arguments. This is precisely why we want to sit around a table and reason together, and why religious leaders will never put themselves in a position to do this under any circumstances that matter. The political game is what it is, and we have to go ahead and get dirty if we want to fight the fight that needs to be fought. The Christian Right figured that out back in the '80s. Time for us to follow suit.
or the philosophy of there is no purpose or meaning to human life.
or that life is a grand accident and the universe came from nothing and will return to nothing.
or that all the matter in the universe was contained before the big bang in the size of a pin head or wait even smaller.
or that gravity created life; with some natural selection and some random stuff going on.
sorry just playing with ya. :-)
Being emotionally unequipped to deal with the consequences of a statement does not make that statement false.
The main disadvantage I see in the rhetoric of humanism is that it doesn't have the excitement that comes from the idea that The World Isn't What You Thought It Was -- that there's another dimension to life behind the mundane everyday appearances.
This "hidden dimension" sensibility can be achieved through secular philosophy, which can reveal that our moral position requires more thought than we have given it, that languages function in ways we aren't aware of, and that reality has a subjective as well as an objective side.
So my question is, does your humanism have a philosophical component, beyond the mere assertion of values nobody can disagree with?
For an example of the kind of humanistic philosophy I have in mind, there's a good HP article on nihilism in the Books section right now.
One of my favorites quotes from the deist Voltaire says, "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too."
IMHO, a truly rational person can disagree strongly with someone's beliefs, whatever they are, without resorting to obvious contempt and ridicule simply because they think differently.
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth. -- Voltaire
"If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it. -- Voltaire, quoting himself and then expanding on that thought.