I try to follow Burn's practice, especially the last part, but today will be hard because this is a huge and complicated topic.
How many of you identify as humanist? (hands)
Some of you might not be sure what a humanist is, so let me make it more plain. How many of you would say that ours is "a religious movement that emphasized human capabilities, especially the human capacity to reason; that adopted the scientific method to search for truth; and that promoted the right of all humans to develop to their full potential."[1] Those are the words of Bill Schultz, a former UUA president and writer on humanism. Hands?
I'm not surprised. In a survey of this church a few years ago, over 80% of respondents agreed that they ‘feel that goodness and meaning in our lives are a result of our interactions with each other and the natural world’[2]. Sounds like humanism to me.
Humanism is about knowing, how we know and what we can know. The free and responsible search for truth and meaning is a central principle of our religious humanism.
Rev. Kenneth Patton, one of our great humanist ministers, wrote,
If there are any secrets in the world, they are not hidden.
They are everywhere.
If there is any reason why the universe is,
why it is the kind of universe it is,
why there is this strange eruption of life,
that reason can be found anywhere,
as soon in sand as in a galaxy,
as loud in a leaf-tip as in a forest.[3]
Religious humanism has long been a central part of Unitarian Universalism. As Unitarians became more religiously diverse in the 19th century, many began to move the locus of religion from god in heaven to god all around us and then to us as humans. This led to controversy and nearly to schism, in the post-Civil War era, as the conservative east-coast Unitarians took on the more liberal Westerners. But things eventually settled down into just low level disagreement. In the 1930’s new energy flowed into the religious humanist movement, and several Unitarian ministers and philosophers issued a document called “The Humanist Manifesto”, delineating key points of humanism. Here are some of statements in that manifesto (and I quote):
'man is a part of nature, and ... he has emerged as a part of a continuous process';
'Religious Humanism considers realization of human personality the end of man’s life'; and
'the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism, and the several varieties of "new thought".'[4]
I left the masculine language as it was -- we’ll return to that.
Humanism became ascendant in both the Unitarian and Universalist strands of our movement, to the point that today nearly half of UUs identify as humanist. The tension between humanists and others in the movement has heated up in the past few years in some of our churches. Ministers often groused about having to be careful about using the ‘g-word’ -- God -- lest they be accosted at coffee hour. On the other hand, some, including ministers I respect, respond with derision, lashing out at what they call ‘flat earth humanists’.
It seemed to me like a no-win kind of argument, one that could just go on and on as each side was assured of its own "rightness." I began to wonder if there might be a third way.
As I was preparing this sermon, I had a chance to talk with Rev. Roger Brewin, who is editor of the magazine Religious Humanism. He steered me directly to the work of William Murry, who was president of Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. Murry is the author of the book Reason and Reverence. Murry extends religious humanism into what he calls humanistic religious naturalism, (which I know is a bit of a mouthful). Let’s explore a few of the concerns he has had with religious humanism and how he addresses these with humanistic religious naturalism.
In distinguishing a new form of humanism from its precedents, Murry points to the study of religion, where a distinction is made between mythos and logos. Logos is rational, factual religion, which Murry suggests is today based on a scientific-empirical worldview. Mythos is religion based on myths, which, Murry tells us, ‘are stories with meanings.’[5] He continues,
I believe that myths were never meant to be taken literally but were probably understood even by a pre-scientific people as metaphorical attempts to describe a reality that was too complex and mysterious to comprehend in any other way. It is only in a scientific age, with its emphasis on factual knowledge, that myths have come to be understood as facts. By taking myths literally, fundamentalist religion transforms mythos into logos.[6]
Murry notes that modern science has its own mythos, stories with meaning. These stories are not wrong, but they may not tell the whole truth. For example, we understand the universe began some 14 billion years ago in the Big Bang. We visualize that creation event as best we can, perhaps as a flash, after which the universe immediately began to cool into the various fundamental forces and then matter and then leading to the formation of stars and galaxies. But of course that Big Bang understanding is complicated by ideas of cosmic inflation and the possibility that universe creation is ongoing. Such theoretical ideas fit some of our observations, but they haven't become part of our common story or mythos, for they are too new and difficult to grasp.
What I find lacking in our more traditional religious humanism is the lack of emphasis on mythos, on the importance of stories with meaning. Stories can have multiple interpretations; they are by nature unresolved. When we emphasize logos, we emphasize the truth, and have a tendency to claim prematurely that we have found the one truth. We can become, in a word, fundamentalists.
So mythos, stories, are important. Our task is to update the stories to fit today’s reality. Ursula Goodenough, a biologist, reminds us:
Humans need stories -- grand, compelling stories -- that help to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos. The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context. Moreover, responses to this story -- what we are calling religious naturalism -- can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions.[7]
Murry makes the point that humanism is strongly rooted into the modern age, and it has yet to take the leap into the postmodern age. The worldview of modernity suggests that we can understand everything through scientific rationalism, that we can apply logic and reason to solve any problem. Post-modernity suggests that there are things that we cannot know, and that the knowledge we have is incomplete and provisional. Because we have incomplete knowledge, the knowledge we do have is filtered through lenses of our culture and ethnicity and other identity groupings. Humanism is modern, using logic, but not yet post modern enough to realize logic isn’t the whole answer.
Let me give you an example. All thirty-four persons who signed the Humanist Manifesto were male.[8] I bet they didn’t even notice the use of male-gendered language in that document. As far as I know, all are white. A third were university professors, and half were Unitarians. Postmodern critique would suggest that these identities would lead to unconscious bias, if not in the language itself, then in what was included and what was left out.
So if humanism is to be fit for a post-modern age, it needs to be willing to listen to more voices. It needs to be more tolerant of uncertainty, of provisional views, and of the possibility that our very rational efforts, even our careful use of the scientific method, may not save us from unconscious bias.
As Sarah reminded us in the chalice lighting this morning, “we sure make a living hell for ourselves when we generate assumptions, harbor prejudice and play at ignorance.” In short, we need to be more humble about what we know and how we know it.
We Unitarian Universalists and religious humanists sometimes focus over-much on nature as a source of inspiration. Nature is not always inspirational, but it is often instructive. A recent New Scientist article described a ‘bloody ten-year [chimpanzee] dispute in the Ugandan jungle [that] ended in mid-2009 with the victors seizing territory held by the vanquished. The episode represents the first solid evidence that chimpanzees kill their rivals to acquire land’.[9] While some of the on-line commentators were unwilling to use the word ‘war’, it’s hard to see how this organized and murderous conflict should not be labeled ‘war’. And yet there is much emerging evidence that altruistic behavior is innate in many animals including humans, for it conveys evolutionary benefit. Even these primate wars may foster a sort of comradeship and altruism that benefits the group at a cost to the individual.[10]
On the other hand, ethologists in Guinea have observed the evolution of a new cultural grief practice among a group of chimpanzees. ‘In 1992, [one of the researchers] reported the death of a 2.5-year-old chimpanzee (Jokro) at Bossou from a respiratory illness. The infant's mother (Jire) carried the corpse, mummified in the weeks following death, for at least 27 days. She exhibited extensive care of the body, grooming it regularly, sharing her day- and night-nests with it, and showing distress whenever they became separated.’[11] ‘Corpse-carrying may have become something of a Bossou "tradition"’, according to the lead researcher.[12] In these examples, we are reminded that we are not all that special in the natural scheme of things.
Understanding the natural world also may offer some answers to other big questions that have normally been outside the realm of science. Just this week, an article by David Brooks in the New York Times noted recent research into the evolutionary origin of morality.[13] It seems that moral understanding is innate. Babies just six months old understand, at a basic level, right and wrong as well as punishment. Perhaps we can build on this innate emotional response to morality with our intellectual understanding of morality and ethics; certainly we should not ignore the fact that we do have this innate emotional response.
Part of finding the heart in humanism is broadening the emotional experiences that we enjoy in life. Humanism’s long suit has been the recognition of a sense of awe and wonder at the universe and the natural world. Who among us hasn't experienced some depth of feeling on looking up at a dark sky full of thousands of stars. As we learn more about the night sky, our wonder just increases, as we begin to identify the faint smudges as distant galaxies.
Can we extend that wonder into a place of humility, a sense of smallness and relative powerlessness before the universe? How about praise? We do not have to respond by offering praise, for many of us doubt that there is anyone or anything out there listening for our praise, but if praise makes us feel whole, then let us praise this wondrous creation.
When we walk in the woods or on a beach, do we feel like we truly belong in this world, that we are created from it and are a part of it? Do we love it? This love invites us into a caring relationship with the natural world, rather than dominance and separation.
I’m reading Bill McKibben’s recent book, Eaarth, spelled E-A-A-R-T-H. He suggests that with global climate change, we have already created a planet that is no longer the Earth, but something different. Although the global ecosystem will survive, it will be transformed into something far less hospitable for humanity. It will be less hospitable for other existing species, too, but that’s a different story.
Perhaps if we respect our deep interconnectedness with the natural world we inhabit, and learn to accept the limitations that this interconnectedness brings, perhaps then we can then find ways to tread more lightly on this world, for our sake as well as for the sake of the planet.
Finally, what emotions does humanism encourage in our relationship with one another? How do we respond to injustice? For many of us, a righteous anger drives us to act to protest injustice and to fight for social change. In the coming years, even more may be asked of us. We need to respond to those who suffer injustice not only with righteous anger but with compassion, so that we open up and share their pain as we attempt to understand their situation.
In the end, the presence or absence of god is not a critical question to humanistic religious naturalism. If there is a god, that god seems not to be the micromanaging kind, always messing with our lives and demanding constant ego-stroking.
Perhaps, as our Jesus Seminar translation of John 1 offers, there is a god that is wisdom. In it is life, that is the light of humanity. If we accept this as mythos, then perhaps wisdom, and creativity is our light.
If there is no god, may we rejoice in our improbable good fortune in living in a universe and on a planet like ours, so finely tuned to support sentient life. Earth teach me that we are blessed, and we do well to respond with care for each other and this planet. Earth teach me that we live in a holy place, and our heaven is what we create here on earth.
As in the Ute blessing, earth teach me suffering, earth teach me resignation, earth teach me limitation, but earth also teach me courage, and caring, and kindness. May a new humanism allow us to learn these things, may a new humanism allow us to know our hearts.
References
1 William Schultz, "Our humanist legacy", http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/27168.shtml
2 UUYO Survey Summary, undated, probably 2008.
3 Kenneth L. Patton, "All Blessedness", 1975, p. 20.
4 "Humanist Manifesto I" http://www.americanhumanist.org/Who_We_Are/About_Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_I
5 William Murry, "Reason and reverence", http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/6558.shtml
6 ibid.
7 Ursula Goodenough, "The Sacred Depths of Nature", 1998, p. 174.
8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_Manifesto_I
9 "Chimpanzees kill to win new territory", New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19064-chimpanzees-kill-to-win-new-territory.html
10 "Why altruism paid off for our ancestors", New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10750-why-altruism-paid-off-for-our-ancestors.html
11 Current Biology,"Chimpanzee mothers at Bossou, Guinea carry the mummified remains of their dead infants", http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(10)00218-6
12 Christian Sheppard, "Ape Pieta", http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0513.shtml
13 David Brooks, "The Moral Naturalists", http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23brooks.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
