August,
Thank you for your valuable insight on this important issue of ritual in freethought. Like you, I believe that we need to encourage or at least tolerate some ritual within our movement, but your article brought home the pitfalls.
I hope there is much more discussion of this issue in our community.
Bobbie Kirkhart

[quote]It was the suggestion that I should state words that have been conceived of by another person without first deciding if I agreed with them. [/quote]

I'm sure you'll know what I mean when I say you may now understand how I felt when words were put in my mouth to the entire local media ;)

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Otherwise, I strongly want that community feel that most religious groups have. When a person doesn't have anyone else to turn to, they can count on their religious group. I envy that most of all. I figure for that to happen, there needs to be regular meetings to discuss issues and provide guidance or support (or whatever you want to call it) to members. Most meetings need to happen in a building, one that they can use any time. Discussion is what would happen though, rather than one person preaching.

The biggest difference would be freedom of expression, an understanding of personal differences, and a humanistic viewpoint.

That is why the unitarians are ahead of the game (they are organized and have meeting places), but even they are not as free of religion and magical thinking as I personally hope humanists are.

I am happy to see more focus trying to be put on what humanists are, rather than on what they aren't. Are we all even sure what humanists are though? I sometimes fumble there, in trying to describe humanists as a whole, since we are all individuals. So I try to focus on the principles.

So, we need some of what religion has, but also need to define what would happen to get that community feel that most of us seem to desire. Some of our own music, buildings, and evidence based worldviews mixed with community and compassion. How do we do that? How is it being done in the larger centers with Humanist groups established? Are there any established guidelines at all?

-Twy

August, it's about time you commented on this. Fortunately, it took me about this long to figure out how I feel, too.

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I was very uncomfortable that Saturday as well, and did exactly the same thing as you did, although I did not berate myself for not remaining seated.

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I think, however, that most of our reaction was because the 'New Humanists' suffer from the same malady that the atheist movement does: lack of communication. If there was some warning, some explanation, I would have been far less uncomfortable. The same would hold if we had stripped naked and painted ourselves blue, I think.

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The atheism movement need a different set of psychological tools. Atheists and secularists typically want to build resistance to propaganda, we want to encourage people to critically think. As rational people in an irrational religious world, we fight against dogma.

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Humanists, on the other hand, are trying to build a community. They are using a set of psychological tools that atheists usually see misused by religion. This is why we were uncomfortable. I have no problem with these tools, they certainly do make people - humans - us - feel better about ourselves. Perhaps we can come to enjoy these "religious trappings" once we aren't so nervous about them being misused. (I guess we aren't virgins anymore...someone tell Greg Epstein to be more gentle next time!)

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*My best example and source of mind-blowing psychological tactics is the War Against the Chtorr science fiction novels. Book 3, a Rage for Revenge, has the Mode Training in it. I recommend the series.
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**How the heck do I get paragraphs to break properly?!

I wish we would free ourselves from the mindset of framing everything in terms of religion. Religion is a set of ways to obey and appease one or more supernatural authority figures. The New Humanism Conference wasn’t religious; it was undemocratic. August noted that the problem with the benediction was the expectation that we unquestioningly obey a human authority figure. For most of the conference, we were lectured at, usu. on topics w/ which we were already familiar. Like most conferences, we had no control over the programming. To compensate, most conferences have a time slot where you can choose from two or more events which one to attend. At the NHC, our choices were…staying seated or leaving. I had expected more discussion, networking, and strategizing. Some interactive entertainment would’ve been nice. Still, I appreciate the work that Greg Epstein and others put into it so that we could meet all those distinguished people. (And thank you SSA for the interactive training!)

Just because religions have things like songs, beautiful buildings, and celebrations doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy such things. There’s no ethical or scientific problem with songs, buildings, or celebrations per se (not to mention that religions aren’t the only institutions with these things). But there is an ethical problem with not allowing people to make their own decisions, and religious organizations are not the only ones that can commit this violation of human rights and integrity. “We share,” as August put it, “a dedication to the intellectual dignity of all people,” not an opposition to everything religious organizations have or do.

As for “humanism,” I’m afraid that labeling basic values with an –ism can mislead other people into thinking that our values are different from theirs. Most humans have humanistic values due to our genes (though humans might not follow those values under certain circumstances), so what’s the point of calling ourselves humanists, as if other people are not humanists? If you use the word “humanist” in a conversation with someone like me, you’d might as well be saying, “I’m a member of the American Human Association, and I go to human meetings. Are you a human?” Freethinking, science, and ethics—now those are some concepts that I would (and do) advocate and organize around. We’re not born freethinkers, scientists, or ethicists; we have to learn and practice freethinking, science, and ethics.

While I agree with August here, and we talked about this very topic quite a bit on our drive home from the conference, I want to make two quick points that didn't make it into the article.

1. August and I both had a chance to talk with Greg Epstein after the conference and give him some feedback. I mentioned that I was uncomfortable with the benediction, and explained why, and Greg agreed that there should have been more context provided for it, and it should have been clear that it was optional to participate in the benediction. I personally would have felt a lot better if it had started with something like:

"This is a ritual the Beth Adam Congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio uses in its Humanistic Jewish services. The members of their congregation wrote this liturgy. As an example of that liturgy, we are going to do a benediction. If you want to participate, please stand and read along with us on page 10."

I think the big thing that made me uncomfortable about the benediction, and also the more "preacher-like" speaking styles of a few of the presenters is that it felt like one person was speaking FOR everyone in the room, as though we all agreed with him or her. What I normally feel like at humanist gatherings that one person is speaking TO the rest of us, with the expectation that there will be dialogue and debate about what he or she said. What might be even better than that is us speaking WITH each other about our ideas, but failing that, I'm much happier being spoken to than being spoken for.

2. The benediction was on Saturday morning as one of the first events of the conference, and as such kind of set a tone for the conference. Most of the other conference events didn't actually have the same feel to me as the benediction, and I really enjoyed them. Although there was much more discussion of blending Humanism with the ritual from various religious traditions than I was used to at conferences, I found that discussion to be interesting, and it did not feel coercive the way the benediction felt.

I agree with August and the other comments here that Greg Epstein ran a great conference, but I also think that a few tweaks like those suggested -- more time for discussion and less lecture, and more context for the ritual -- would have helped.

Coming from a religious background myself, I have kind of a gut reaction against a lot of the ritual. Getting past that gut reaction, I think that the amount of ritual you want is an aesthetic thing, as long as the ritual doesn't short circuit the intellectual. One of the things I really value about humanism is that we don't do anything mindlessly. Ritual in religion as I've experienced it often becomes mindless repetition of something without thinking about what it means. That rubs me the wrong way. I'm also turned off by the "shepherd and flock" model that congregations often seem to have. I'm not a sheep, and I don't want to be shepherded, I want to be engaged with as an equal. As long as we avoid those two problems, I could maybe even grow to like a little more ritual with my humanism. ;)

****stupid line-break problems. Grrrr****

I suppose I should start with a disclaimer that, while I was at the New Humanism conference, I was not around on Saturday morning and did not see the benediction. Had I been there, I probably would have shared the opinions of my colleague and fellow UD student Frank, who made the comment that seemed to prompt this article.

The subtitle for this article talks about mixing four elements of religion into the humanist movement: buildings, ceremonies, benedictions and singing. Regardless of whether or not they borrow from religion, I do not see why most of these things are necessary or beneficial to humanism as a movement or humanists as a group of people. Benedictions and ceremonies especially seem odd to me. What purpose do they serve? Why are we doing them in the first place? Do they have anything at all to do with our naturalistic worldview, our conviction of the importance of science and critical thinking, our opinion that the world would be better if we had faith in ourselves and in humanity instead of God?

As for buildings, I love architecture as much as the next person. But secularism isn't nearly as well-funded a movement as our rivals in the Christian right, and I have to wonder if building opulent edifices isn't a waste of time, money and manpower, which are probably in fairly short supply for humanists. The singing is probably the least objectionable element to me, but that's a personal preference, and singing is no less manipulative than recited prayers.

I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that we don't need ceremony, it doesn't serve any real purpose, and if the commenters here are at all representative of humanists as a whole, there are as many people bothered by ceremony as there are uplifted by it. So why bother with it at all?

Another point, and one I can't stress enough, is that manipulative persuasion by groupthink and aesthetic beauty will be especially effective to young children. We can't have children arriving at secular humanism by this childhood indoctrination. If humanists do keep any of these ritual elements, we shouldn't involve children in the ceremonies.