The Heart of Humanism

At this time of year your schedule may be getting a bit lighter, meaning it is the perfect time for some Humanist summer listening, reading, and even viewing.
And in fact, one of the most common questions I get asked as Humanist Chaplain (after issues such as “What is Humanism?” and “What does a Humanist Chaplain do?” which I will address at a later date) is, what books, etc. do I recommend for learning more about Humanism? So here I will begin a very partial list to get you started:

Websites

One of the best ways to learn about Humanism is online– provided you don’t judge a website by its appearance. Numerous Humanist websites provide wonderful content, but graphically range from “not bad” to “fairly bad.” Now, I am a Humanist who appreciates an extremely attractive site, so I hope this will change before too long: if you or anyone you know is a brilliant web designer who would be willing to cut Humanist organizations a major break on price because of your belief in their mission, please contact me.

That being said, the most important thing about a site is content. Any of the sites in my “blogroll” are “labeled” and contain worthwhile information. (I know this is not exactly what a “blogroll” is for, but I am just learning how to use blogging software. “Bear with me” is probably something I’ll have to be repeating for months now.) At some point I may write more about each site, but for now let’s start by highlighting three pages you must read this summer if you’re looking to return to campus in the fall more knowledgeable about Humanism:

1) The Humanist Manifesto III. Several of you may have read this already, but it is one of those documents that can be reread from time to time. Put out by the American Humanist Association, as a 2003 update of their Humanist Manifestoes I & II (1933 and 1973, respectively) this is a one page summary of the philosophy of Humanism. Does it seem obscure? Not to the legions of Conservative Christian bloggers, pundits and yes, Fox News anchors who obsess over the Manifestoes, blaming them for everything pernicious in American society, from abortion rights to church-state separation to…well, Harvard.
(Here’s just one more among countless examples.)

2) The 2002 Amsterdam Declaration of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).This is another excellent one-page summary of Humanist thought, put out by the international umbrella organization for the Humanist, secular, and non-theistic movements. The IHEU represents groups from India to Africa to Asia to the US & Europe, and is currently headquartered in London. Some of you with job/internship-hunts coming up on this side of the pond might be interested to note it boasts a new Bioethics Center at the United Nations in New York City.

3) The Humanist Manifesto 2000, by Paul Kurtz. Paul Kurtz may be the single most important theorist of Humanism of the past several decades. As you’ll notice, however, this Manifesto is not available online. That may be in part because the organizations Kurtz founded and still heads, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry, are fairly marketing-savvy for Humanist organizations: they successfully emphasize selling books and magazines to a greater extent than other Humanist groups. Kurtz himself is now over eighty and has written almost enough to break into the elite “50+” category in Harvard’s Hollis library system; The Manifesto 2000, like most of his writing, is crisply written and offers a blistering challenge to traditional religion. (You can sample his writing here.) Why not list this first, then? Well, the answer would require a separate entry at some point, but the short version might begin by pointing out that not all Humanists would consider themselves “secular.” This is not a matter of theological beliefs: both secular and “religious” Humanists, (or ‘just plain’ Humanists) tend to believe the same things regarding the existence of gods, the nature of the universe, etc. (Granted I could address some of these same questions here in my own words, but as I don’t have time right now…go read the various Manifestoes and find out what those beliefs are!) But there tend to be some differences in the ways the secular Humanist movement and, for example, us American Humanist Association-types relate to religion and to religious believers and communities. Many feel that the AHA -style is more “tolerant” and “respectful” of religion, i.e. willing to build political coalitions with religious liberals on many issues. Non-secular approaches to Humanism also tend to be willing to build communities that serve Humanists and non-theists in some of the same ways that traditional religious communities serve their followers; by creating Humanist Chaplaincies, for example. So people looking for a more actively (some would say angrily) anti-religious Humanist approach tend to prefer secular Humanism, whereas people who are looking to express Humanism as one community within a pluralist world tend to be call themselves Humanists or even religious Humanists. Still, let me caution you that all of this is highly theoretical: many if not most Humanists do not feel bound by and indeed are hardly aware of the distinctions between these two types, just the way that most Presbyterians (much less most Protestants or most Christians) are not at all aware of the finer distinctions between the dozens of types within Presbyterianism as a denomination/movement, such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), the Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Bible Presbyterian Church (BPC), or the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP Synod)– to name but a few.

What kind of Humanist are you? (There are certainly a few other types I haven’t mentioned yet!) Feel free to take as much time as you need to figure that out. The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard was founded to provide a home away from home for all Humanist, agnostic, atheist, and non-religious members of the Harvard community.

Bonus: for those of you looking to do intensive reading on Humanism this summer and that want additional sources beyond these sites, Kurtz’s books, or anything else you might have to drag yourself to a bookstore or library for, check out the Continuum of Humanist Education, which provides high-quality online courses about many aspects of the Humanist world.

Books, Films, etc.

Well, the above exposition on websites took me a lot longer than I thought it would, so I’m not going to elaborate much here. ***For the comments section: what would you recommend to others (or to me, for that matter) in this category? What movies (American or foreign, feature or documentary) are of particular interest to Humanists? What songs/bands/musical artists? What fine artists, playwrights, choreographers, writers, etc.? We should be able to get a good list going at some point.***

Podcasts

Okay, to conclude (and maybe the podcasting “revolution” has thus far passed you by, but don’t underestimate what lengths of procrastination/infotainment/consumption a few moments of unstructured time in these climate-change induced dog days of summer will drive you to) check out an excellent Humanist podcast coming out of the Institute for Humanist Studies in Albany.

This month’s installment is about how Larry Jones, one of the world’s leading Humanists and atheists, posed under ‘deep cover’ as a right-wing leader of the Christian Coalition for four years, getting to meet Pat Robertson and George Bush while doing some espionage against right-wing ‘stealth candidates’ for school boards, etc. You might also try the February segment featuring Hemant Mehta,the young atheist/Humanist activist & grad student who has become a minor national celebrity after selling his soul on eBay, in a brilliant and poignant story broken by the Wall St. Journal and since covered by major media outlets around the world.