In-Sight Publishing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/10

Mandisa Thomas, a native of New York City, is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence today,” she recalls.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.

In 2019, Mandisa was the recipient of the Secular Student Alliance’s Backbone Award and named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethought Heroine. She was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association’s Person of the Year 2018.

As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa encourages more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

“The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”

Here, we talk about one human species.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There can be flare-ups in American politics and American social life. One of those is around the idea of “send them back.”

This has a long history of various forms. How do you deal with individuals who use that rhetoric? How do you clarify to those who have not thought about the issue much?

Mandisa Thomas: Yes, the people who make those claims are ill-informed and ignorant of American history. They don’t consider the number of white people who were once immigrants to this country, as well as the number of the Africans who were brought here involuntarily.

If one truly studies American history, then we should ALL go back [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Thomas: There were many of us born here in the United States. Many who were born here tend to reflect their parents’ cultural and ethnic origins. While my first name is South African, my parents made an effort to connect with African culture, and this was a popular trend in the 1970’s Black community.

I am a New York City native. If someone looked at my name, then one might say that I should go back to “where I came from”.

Unfortunately, many people tend to be very ignorant. They are woefully misinformed about public policies, as well as historical and current events. It is the ridiculous notion that anyone who does not reflect or represent the majority is automatically foreign.

It is prejudicial, and can be/has been racist. Astounding is probably the mildest way to describe it. 

Jacobsen: How do these genetic kits people have an interest in help with better understanding the situation of one species? The idea that there is no pure anyone, probably. Outside of evolutionary theory, how can a lay knowledge of these genetic kits like 23andMe help with this better understanding?

Thomas: Those, of course, are very helpful. YouTube also has a lot of interesting and informative videos that can explain things very simply.

If someone doesn’t have either the time or inclination to read published books or journals, then they can click on YouTube video that offers good information on genetics. Of course, it’s always best to have literary references and read more, but that’s a good start. 

There are also some podcasts, though I cannot name them offhand. They discuss history and scientific inquiries. People can listen to them to get a better understanding of how this all has progressed over time.

Jacobsen: What would you hope for a future dialogue in America? One more informed by science. And one more informed by mutual understanding.

Thomas: It needs to be both. There must be an educated and informed perspective when it comes to dialogue; these two aren’t mutually exclusive. The scientific method is the most crucial part. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always show people how to be empathetic and understanding. Also, the notion that there must be a divine premise to show understanding is absolutely ridiculous. This is actually more humanist in nature; we are curious beings, and we can also be nurturing. Compassion is not the enemy of reason and logic, I always say. 

In this country especially, the educational systems are so fragmented. All information is not given to us, especially in our formative years. Education is a lifelong process, and there are some who are more aware and informed at different stages in life than others.

We must understand the disparities that are at stake here. But also, it is having a better understanding of what people go through that will be important to furthering the dialogue.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/09

Bart Campolo is the Humanist Chaplain at the University of Cincinnati. He is the host of the Humanizeme podcast. He is a former Christian and became a secular humanist circa 2011, at least in public.

Here we talk about his (well-documented) life, work, and views.

Scott Jacobsen: So, this is an interview with Bart Campolo. Let us start from the top, what were some pivotal moments in terms of your own humanist intellectual and life-stance development?

Bart Campolo: Wow, that is a big question, man, tell me the story of your life. What is interesting, I am at a stage in my life. My story is ridiculously documented. I wrote this book with my dad called, Why I left Where I Stayed, which is a chronicle of my journey into humanism, out of evangelical Christianity, which is where I grew up.

My dad’s a big, big time Christian leader to this day, and so a dialogue between us. This is what happened while we were writing that book, a friend of mine who is a documentary filmmaker, recorded some conversations between me and my dad. Because we thought that might be helpful for the book.

He ended up trying to make a documentary about it. Then they ended up making this documentary called Leaving My Father’s Faith, which was an interesting project. I did not make it, but it has been interesting to watch the final product.

Because it has Christians and atheists in it. Because it may be a certain model, for sure, in how it portrays how you can have an authentic relationship with somebody across those lines. The story of my life is fairly well documented.

I would say that the crucial moments are when I got into Christianity. I was a 15-year-old kid in high school who got swept up in a youth group. I had this experience of walking into this big, megachurch. Feeling I had walked into a club with nice people, it was the nicest people I had ever met.

People who are interested in making the world a better place. It had me at “Hello.” I was so attracted to the community. Since I grew up in a Christian family, I knew the line.

But I may not have been fanatical at that point, in the community, so I hang around. I found: if you hang around with a group of people who are so far sharing that worldview, loving you, and then you are doing good work together. Then you turn on to stuff.

Eventually, I am up on a retreat with the group. We are all out there one night. 300 kids sweating in music with our candles, saying, “I love the Lord.” I lift my voice. I felt something transcendent, what you would call a transcendent moment.

That moment I felt I got swept up into something bigger than myself. They had me. I was in. At that moment, feeling those feelings. I was like, “Oh, there is something happening here. That is God.” So then, I believed in God. I love the community.

So, once I believed in God, I was down for the program. That began my Christian journey, a hero to atheist people. People thinking, “Oh, he must be so embarrassed pretending that he felt the Holy Spirit or pretending that he heard the voice of God or something.” I do not know if I would explain it differently to you now.

I would explain that experience differently. But to any atheist, he says, “I do not believe the transcendent experience.”

“Wow, I am sorry. You must have had something. You have been locked up too” [Laughing]. “You used to do drugs. You have not fallen in love with the right partner.” It is well-documented. People would say they are happening in your brain.

But the narrative you are in when they happen, it confirms that narrative. So, if I would have had one of those transcendent moments, with all my Islamic friends in Afghanistan, I would probably be going, “Oh my gosh, that is Allah.”

I would have been in as a Muslim because, when you are in the community, it creates this plausibility structure around you, where it becomes possible to believe those things.

But then when you have experience in that context; it is easy. Christianity itself may be an irrational worldview. But becoming a Christian or believing in God isn’t irrational at all.

If you grow up surrounded by people who believe in God, and you have experiences that seem to validate that that worldview is rational as well. So, of course, it is evident here. Everybody will burn me and tell me that God is real to them.

So funny, that was the first thing or experience, which was entering a youth camp. For the next thirty years, to put it in short terms, my experience was that I became more and more committed to those values, loving relationships to make the world a better place for other people to build community.

I became less and less able to believe in the supernatural narrative. For acts of God and the Christian church, people rising from the dead and eternal heavens and things like that. So, that I thought was the second big moment within me; I was an involved Christian in the inner city missionary projects for many years.

I was a guy who spoke at large Christian events. So, I had this whole career as a professional Christian, as I am passing through every stage of heresy, trying to stay Christian because I love the community. I want to be a Christian.

But slowly changing my theology, and eventually, I had a bicycle accident in which I almost died. I had a pretty traumatic brain injury. It took me about a month to be able to think straight again.

When I recovered from that bike injury, I remember looking at my wife and saying, “I am going to die. I almost died out there.” My personality right here in my brain smashed against the tree at 40 miles an hour, which will change that when we die.

I won’t exist anymore. My identity will be gone. This is all we get. “You are right about this,” she said. “You should be getting a job. I do not think you can be a professional Christian anymore. There is nothing left.”

When I told people that when I told her, I told my friends, “I am not a Christian anymore. I am a post-Christian. I am done.” They are all acting as if I was coming out gay, “I do not believe in God.” They were like, “We knew you did not believe in God. We wondered when you’d figure it out.”

“You are trying so hard to stay in; you have not believed in a God that does anything for a long time.” So, that was my moment of realization. Then the question that comes, “Do you still love loving relationships, and community building?”

If you still believe in making the world a better place, if you think that is the best way to live, how do you do that in a secular way? Where the secular community of people, of nice people, that want to get together and help each other, become more loving and do more good and make the world a better place, I went looking for that community.

That was the beginning of my humanist journey.

Jacobsen: How did your way of looking at the world, and speaking about the world, change when you had the confirmation from people outside of you who affirmed that lack of former belief?

Campolo: At that point, you have a choice if you are a guy like me. There are tremendous numbers of Christian ministers, who stop believing in the supernatural God, and take on a more materialistic worldview.

But they continue the Christian language, so when they say, “God, the universal Jesus, the general idea of Love and Redemption.” They wrapped their secular worldview in Christian language, so that they can stay in the church.

Someone has to make a wise decision. You got families. You got jobs. They are not in a position to be openly secular. There are real, and even moral, concerns that devastate people. They will put our people’s lives at risk; they will put themselves at risk.

For me, I was in a position where that is the one option. One option is you. You become one of these people that were there for Rob Bell, or my friend Mike Charge, or people that are in that world like Rachel Held Evans who recently died. She was one of those.

She would even say, “Some days, some days, I do not know.” She loved the Christian community and wanted to stay in it. I knew about those people. I knew there were lots of those people. What I was aware of is, first, that wasn’t going to work for me because I am not a person who does well at holding my tongue, or speaking in the cheerful language.

My rap as a Christian minister was, “Oh, that is the guy who’s authentic. He’ll tell you what he thinks. That is why my theology is always changing. I would change my mind. That is what I am talking about now.”

So, it wasn’t an option for me to extend the radar. But the other thing, as I started to be open about being secular, I would meet lots and lots of people who would say, “I used to be a Christian too. I am secular. I miss it. I miss the music. I miss youth group trips. I miss getting together with a bunch of nice people once a week and encouraging each other to be more loving.”

They missed the community. They miss the community that would say, “Hey man, ‘Couldn’t you build a community like that? Couldn’t you build a church for people who do not believe in God?’” That became a real fixation for me.

There are people who, even tose within the ultra-progressive form of Christianity, who do not believe that supernaturalism is an option for them. Sometimes, they say what they mean. Sometimes, they have been hurt by that structure or marginalized by the structure in a way that feels too painful. They have all sorts of bad associations for me.

So, I was for the one or two people of the secular because I wanted to try to figure out what openly secular communities of people who pursue love as a way of life looks like, as enacted in the real world. That is what I want to work on, now.

100 years from now, the vast majority of people are going to have a hard time believing in that kind of supernaturalism. But those people are still going to need a community. Those people are still going to need pastoral care. Those people are still going to need somebody to help them figure out how and what they believe, as a worldview translates into everyday life: “If you believe this, you should live this way. This is logical. This is the content. If this is true, then this is the only sensible way to pursue something.”

Not everybody thinks that we never figured that out. So, throughout history, people have organized, “You are pretty good at articulating those ideas. That’ll help the rest of us get on with our lives.” So, I was interested in what would it mean to be one of those people that articulates the idea of loving kindness.

Not only have a response to the reality of human finitude, but perhaps the most promising vision. Certainly, that is best for me. But I am sure there is a bell curve and loving-kindness isn’t going to work as a way of life for everybody [Laughing], but the vast majority of people are in that bell curve.

That is human tribalism. We are a pack animal. We do not do well in isolation. We need to feel connected. There are certain practices and techniques and messages that have, historically, not been in Christianity, but across all cultures.

If you research stuff, then you get this stuff that works for most people. People need this ritual. They need some structure. They need a sense of mission, a sense of doing something, within their part of something bigger than themselves.

So, I am interested in trying to figure out how do you organize people in such a way that they thrive. Because human thriving is the thing I care about the most now.

Jacobsen: How does this translate into the work, in terms of the humanist chaplaincy at the University of Cincinnati?

Campolo: I got inspired. What happened to me, I was looking around, “What do you do if you are a minister who no longer believes in God? What do you do if you still want to interact with people in that way?”

Where you are trying to help people get through life, help them work through relationship problems, and help them find meaning and purpose, a friend of mine handed me a book, Good Without God by Greg Epstein.

He was the humanist chaplain at Harvard. I read it. I thought, “Oh man, it sounds like something I could wrap my head around or something. I can get behind this.” I called him up. I said, “Hey, can I come out there and talk to Harvard and spend a weekend?”

It sounded like every youth group. I was around a bunch of nice kids, hugging each other, pulling out books and reading them, and swapping ideas about how these books can be applied to the business of being a good person.

They were going on trips to help those who are less fortunate. Craig was good at this. So, he ended up introducing me to the humanist chaplain at USC campus in the California University system.  That guy said, “Man, we want to have a humanist chaplain here. I cannot pay you, but I can give you an office.”

So, I moved to LA. I became a humanist chaplain at USC for three years. It was a wonderful experience. I loved it. Then ultimately, my wife said, “I would rather live at home with our friends in Cincinnati. Can we do this back home?”

We ended up moving back to Cincinnati. When I first showed up at USC, the religious groups were on campus. I was there to debate them.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Campolo: They thought, “Oh slithered, he comes.” They thought I was going to be an angry atheist club where we get out there and have signs, “Graveyards of the gods,” and make fun of people who believe in God and point out the ridiculousness of that business.

I have no interest in reconverting all these Christians that are running around. Half of the campus does not believe in God at all. I am not sure how to convince Christians to give up their belief in God.

I am here to convince secular people that they should do something more important than making rich people rich for the rest of their lives. If this is the only life that you have, there are implications. How can I maximize life? How can I die if I invested in the most wonderful way?

So, I wasn’t trying to convert Christians to secularism. I was trying to convert secular people into meaning, purpose, and love as a way of life. Our little secular fellowship became a place where the conversation was not, “How do we undermine Christianity?”

It became a place where it is, “How do we make the most of this life? How can we use this to build better relationships? How can we use that to make the world a better place for other people? How can we use this information to help be more thankful and more grateful for the privilege of being a human being?”

Data suggests: people who are grateful, who make a difference in the world, who have loving relationships, end up thriving and having a great sense of well-being and flourishing in every way.

For me, my pursuit of this stuff is driven by my conviction that this life is all we have. I am obsessed with the question, “How do we make the most of this life?” The interesting thing is as my hero Robert Ingersoll once said, “Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.”

There is a set of data to suggest that mirror neurons are natural. We are hardwired. When we feel that we are meaningfully contributing to the tribe, we have a sense of peace, well-being, purpose, and value.

Jacobsen: How do you work within that context now, where the community is more built for humanists on the University of Cincinnati campus?

Campolo: In the simplest analysis, you go out to campus with a table. You put up a sign that says, “Are you a humanist?” Kids walk by and they go, “I do not know. What is a humanist?” You go, “You give us your definition of human.”

When I was in Christianity, I was so embarrassed by the other Christians, sometimes. These Christians are burning down this and they are doing that, because I am not that Christian. I am not one of those.

There are many different kinds of Christians. It is the same with humanism or atheism. There are many different kinds. So, when they say to me, “Are you humanist?” For me, humanism means that you are pursuing all these values, but you do not believe in God. They state the values. Half of the time the kid goes, “Oh my gosh, that is me. I do not believe in God, but those values are important to me.”

We say, “Oh, you should join our gang.” All the data would suggest that you can have the finest values in the world, but you are only to live them now. Whether it is working out, political activism, or losing weight, people need to band together to try to pursue their values together.

They are more successful together than in isolation, “Hey, you should band together with us. If those are your values, let us pursue them together.” It is someone going, “I am too busy for that,” compared to someone going, “That sounds great.”

That is enough, So, ultimately, on a campus like the University of Cincinnati, the main thing needed is putting up a flag and saying, “This is what we are doing over here. Anybody want to do this with us?’

It is Organizing 101. It is not complicated. The question is, “When they show up in the meeting, can we organize a meeting that makes people train leaders?” In that, when somebody walks into the meeting, they feel, “Oh my gosh, I like these people.”

This group with these people is making me a better person. Because, ultimately, whether people do not go to church, mosque, synagogue, or anywhere for long, they must feel some benefit out of it.

Of the secular groups met by me, they say, “We are promoting this idea.” How long can the idea keep people engaged? At some level, people want to be part of something that makes their life better.

So, you have to build a group offering friendship, meaning, and an opportunity to serve, where people think, “Oh my gosh, this is going to help me now. That is going to help me in my life.” It is not hard to provide this for people. Then they have some friend whose life is floundering.

They can say, “You should come to this group. They are nice. It helped me. That is how a group grows organically. It is not by putting up a million posters. It is by pulling people together in a joyful way for them. It is them saying, “Hey, does anybody else want to enjoy the same experience? Bring them along.”

Jacobsen: What are some issues of students who come to the humanist chaplaincy at the University of Cincinnati when it comes to personal problems, academic problems, and worldview problems?

Campolo: They are the personal problems of saying, “My whole life: my mother’s dying of cancer. My boyfriend broke up with me. I do not know what to do after graduation. I am flunking this course. I am struggling with drugs and alcohol.”

It is this human stuff to address those questions differently than a Christian or a Muslim chaplain. A different way of addressing those kinds of problems. “I got raped.” Those happen on college campuses. When you are a caring adult who is hanging out your sign and saying, “I am interested. I’d like to hear about your life.”

It isn’t hard to find kids who do not look for somebody who cares about the life of kids who come from families that are not super supportive. So, that problem is exacerbated if you are growing up in Cincinnati, or in the Midwest of the United States, which is a fairly conservative area.

So, if these kids come to school, and if they come from Christian families, and if they are geeks who do not believe, then when they have those problems; they have another problem, which is the system.

They begin to think, “The way of thinking that I used to use to solve these problems does not work for me anymore. So, I need a new framework for the other things. My parents are talking to me,” or, “I do not know how to talk to my parents.”

“How do we bridge this gap at Thanksgiving this year?”, or, “I am gay. My Christian family does not have a space for me,” or, “I am gay. He does not have a space for me, but they are always praying for me in a way that makes me uncomfortable.”

So, for my students, it is navigating their relationships with believers in a way that is both, loving and kind, on the one hand, but also authentic and not demeaning. Those are challenges. We spent a lot of time talking about that stuff.

Academically, stuff comes up in the classroom. However, the fact of the matter is most classes and most public universities are taught from a fairly secular perspective. Everybody might be a Christian, but when they are teaching macroeconomics or neurobiology; that stuff does not enter into it.

So, most of the academic problems are run of the mill. Their relational problems are often specific to a secular person living in the Christian world.

Jacobsen: How do you expect the humanist chaplaincy at the University of Cincinnati and other American universities to grow into the near future?

Campolo: Very, slowly.

Jacobsen: How so?

Campolo: There is no money in it. Most of the money that is available to people in organized secular stuff is for church and state separation and to bash Christian stuff. It is New Atheism oriented.

This is community building. When I was in the USC, I was trying to raise money for it. People ask, “Why would you want to pay somebody to create meaningful experiences for kids who are already the most privileged kids in the world?”

I can understand that. Eventually, it dawned on me. The only people that are going to support my work, my ministry to students at USC, are humanists who graduated from USC, who were touched by this work.

So, it takes a while before you can have enough graduates that they become alumni donors. However, that is how all campus organizations work in terms of finances. It has always been financed by people for whom the stuff was meaningful while they were there.

Then they turn around and finance it for other people. So, we do not have enough of a track record. Not too many people are looking over their shoulders and paying it backwards. I make my living as a podcaster doing counselling and coaching for people via Skype.

All over the world. People who are going through religious transitions, working through relational issues. I do not make a living as a humanist chaplain. It is an identity that I value. I do it as a volunteer.

So, it’ll grow slowly, but, ultimately, there will be humanist communities that will look at college campuses and say, “Oh my gosh, if there is ever a moment in a person’s life when we should try to influence them, and turn it into a force for good in the world, then it is while they are in college.”

Every other movement knows this. Eventually, humanists will figure this out, “Oh my gosh, if we turn those kids on to this way of life, they would be humanists for life.” They would make a difference in the world.

Jacobsen: Any recommended speakers or authors?

Campolo: Ultimately, the single person that has been the most influential on me as a humanist is Robert Ingersoll, who lived some hundred years ago, the great agnostic around Lincoln’s time. Ingersoll was the first person I encountered that took a secular worldview and made it sing.

He recognized our land has the best story in the world to tell, but hitherto we have not told it in a way that is compelling emotionally. Ingersoll understood that: if you are rational, then you’d be smart enough to realize that you cannot speak to people’s reason.

But the way to move people into different kinds of behaviours is not to speak to the reasons, but to speak to their hearts. So, he was the first person who said to me, “Hey, a guy you who can tell a story, who can hold crowd, and who can throw a party that makes people feel welcome, to touch people and reach them in that way. There is a need for that on the secular side of things.”

Because, ultimately, I do not think you win people to a better way of life by winning the argument and few people are married to doing what they are doing, because they did some cost-benefit analysis and it proved to be that was the rational choice.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Campolo: That is in behavioural economics. People are rational actors. So, if you want to make a difference in the world, if you want to help people into a better way of life, and a better way of thinking, you better learn to speak to their hearts. Ingersoll was my dude for that.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Bart.

Campolo: Hey, thanks for talking to me.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/08

Chris Johnson went out and explored the voices of over 100 famous atheists around the world and published the prominent A Better Life, the book, and “A Better Life,” the documentary.

Here we talk about him and his work.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: As an author, filmmaker, atheist, and humanist, how did you become involved in a humanistic and freethought outlook?

Chris Johnson: One thing I’m very grateful for, is that I’ve always been an atheist. My parents raised both my brother and me (in Seattle, WA) to be curious, inquisitive, and search ourselves for the answers in life. It’s something I’m very grateful for. Since I was never religious, it became an interest of mine at Concordia University in Montreal and I ended up minoring in religious studies because I found it so interesting. This was also around the same time that the new atheist movement really took off, so I began to really identify with that word (atheist) at that time in a way that I hadn’t before.

Jacobsen: You travelled around the world and interviewed famous atheists including Richard Dawkins, A.C. Grayling, Greta Christina, Daniel Dennett, and a host of others. How was this project funded? Over the travelling and interviewing, and photographing, for the year and a half of the project, what interviews stood out to you?

Johnson: I hadn’t really been involved in the humanist/atheist community before I started A Better Life. It was wonderful that the community was so welcoming to me and my to approach this topic. I felt it was important for us not to just talk about what we didn’t believe. It was equally important that we take a stand and talk about what’s important in life from our atheistic worldview. How does not believing in God change one’s life? How do we handle life’s obstacles without religion. There are so many places in the world — even here in the US — where atheists are vilified. It’s important that we change those perceptions and be vocal and outspoken about who and what we are.

I did a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the book (and later the film). It became the second-highest-grossing publishing project at the time and is still something I’m very proud of, though it was probably the most stressful two months of my life!

In my conversation with AC Grayling, he talked about having less than 1000 months in your life. Supposing you live until you’re 80 years old x 12 months a year = 960. He said, 300 months of that you’re asleep, and 300 you’re waiting in line somewhere, so you’ve really only got 300 months to do whatever it is you want to do in your life and to make the most of it. That really stuck out to me and shapes the way I live my life.

Jacobsen: What were some of the common themes of the interviews? Do you think those would differ from some themes in a similar hypothetical project with famous religious believers around the world?

Johnson: Common themes in the book/film surrounded making the most in the short time we have together and being proactive in making the world a better place. Unlike many religious figures, I think atheists tend to really own the responsibility of creating the world we want to live in and fixing so many of the systemic issues that cause strife, pain, and suffering in the world. No prayers or God to fix things, it’s up to us to make the change we want to see.

Jacobsen: Your tone and presentation are calm, rational, and compassionate. Why is this tone important to set to present to the internal and external community of atheists? 

Johnson: [Laughing] I’ve never thought of myself as being calming, but people have told me that I sound that way. I’m glad that people think my demeanour and attitude fit in with my message and the theme of my work. At the end of the day though, I’m just myself and hope that calming attitude has a positive impact on others.

Jacobsen: Who did you not get for an interview – but wanted to get for an interview?

Johnson: That’s a tough one. There were so many wonderful people I met. I did photograph Carol Blue, Christopher Hitchens’ widow, but he had passed away before my project. It would have been great to have interviewed him as well.

Another thing is that I met so many wonderful people after doing the book/film that I wish I had known beforehand as I would have loved to include them. Perhaps there will be a sequel someday, but we’ll see.

Jacobsen: What has been some of the feedback on the documentary?

Johnson: It’s been really great. I did a screening tour after I premiered the film where I went to over 120 cities on six continents to show the film and do talkbacks. It was an incredible experience! It’s one thing to just put a film out there in the world for people to see. It’s another to be there in the room with people all over the world to get their immediate reaction and feedback. It was also an amazing opportunity to meet secular groups and people from around the globe — from Iceland, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, Peru, to all over the US. It was great. Sadly, I was never able to get any events off the ground in Canada! Next time!

Jacobsen: When the project started, what were the fears? When it finished, what was the feeling and the reflective thoughts on the 18 month or so journey?

Johnson: Obviously, it was a lot of work putting both the book and film together (as well as the screening tour after). Travel is exhausting, and it’s all a lot of hard work. I was thrilled though that everything was so well received and my work has had a positive impact on people. It’s a humbling experience and I hope to continue to create meaningful and impactful work that resonates with people in the future.

Jacobsen: What interviewees see unique in their background and outlook on the atheist community?

Johnson: I really enjoyed meeting and speaking with rock climber Alex Honnold, who went on to be in the Oscar-winning film Free Solo. In addition to being an incredible athlete, he’s also a kind, compassionate, inquisitive and reflective person. He’s really a great guy.

Jacobsen: Any recommended other speakers or writers?

Johnson: My friend Dave Warnock who has been on his Dying Out Loud tour is very inspiring. We just spent some time together in Seattle working on a project and had a great time. After his recent ALS diagnosis, he’s been using the time he has left to inspire others to appreciate the moments in life and use the most of the time we all have together.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Chris.

Johnson: Thanks Scott! Much appreciated!

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/07

Marc is the Unitarian Universalists Hong Kong Treasurer. Here we talk about some of the community.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let us start on personal and family background. How did they lean you into a Unitarian Universalist perspective and community?

Marc UU Hong Kong: My mother’s side is Baptist. My father’s side is non-religious. Long time ago Jewish but does not practice, German Jews a long time. I did not really believe in Jesus Christ. It was a social thing in junior high and high school.

I am not an atheist. I believe in God. I did not believe in the Christian God. In New England, Maine and Massachusetts, that area has a lot of UUs. They started out as mainline protestants. Now, they do not function as such. In every UU church, they are all different.

They have their own autonomy. It is not like the Catholic Church where everything is top down and organized. UU churches are completely independent.

Jacobsen: What is the flavour in Hong Kong while being consistent with the principles and organizing to the relevant community and culture?

Marc: Actually, very good, we do talks. We have the Hindu temple, the Sikh temple. We have been to Buddhist things. They have a Russian Orthodox Church in Hong Kong [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Marc: Actually, our best event with the most people was a Canadian atheist speaker. He wrote a book. His name escapes me now. That was about 4 years ago. We had a Canadian atheist speaker. He is in Thailand now.

We had a huge turnout to that event. A lot of the people who come to UU Hong Kong, UUHK, have no other home. It started back in 2005 as a place for gay Christians. I am not gay. But I support them. They escaped to UU. They had a straight pastor.

He was administering to gay Christians. We did not call ourselves UUHK for the first couple of years. It was until around end of 2005 that we applied to Boston for the international recognition as UUHK. I would say that it is liberal people, open-minded.

We have had a lot of different things. Hong Kong is the type of place that you can do it because it is international here. Also, the Chinese culture, Western culture is “my way or the highway.” You are either Protestant or Catholic.

Even though, HK has 15% of the population as Christian – season greetings, happy holidays, and so on, are being presented here. Anything to make a dollar. HK is very tolerant with religions. That is part of the trouble here now with HK.

A lot of the religious groups are afraid when China takes over. Until the year 2047, HK has its own autonomy. They are afraid when they look to China with religion as really oppressed. Something not seen since the 1960s. They are really scared.

Jacobsen: How is the UUHK mixing with the local religions? You mentioned it. How is this done in practice?

Marc: We do this in their place. We dialogue with them. We get to know them. We build the bonds. Also, we are like a clearing house. In my neighbourhood, there is a Sri Lankan cultural centre. I helped arrange a trip to them.

Even though, we do not agree on everything. We, at least, want to know where you are coming from. Also, HK is also, geographically, a small place. It is easy to go around to go and meet people around here. There is also a big Indian community here.

India has so many religions [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing] it has a supermarket of gods.

Marc: Yes, we work with other groups. It is Meetup.Com. It is Hong Kong Sacred Space.

Jacobsen: For those who do not know, what is a sacred space?

Marc: Ha! It is whatever you find sacred. They do tours. They visit museums. They go to churches and hikes of places like deserted villages. I am a member of that. But I am not the top person in there. In UUHK, I am the Treasurer. We have another group connected with UUHK.

It is the International Association for Religious Freedom. It started over 100 years ago in Chicago. It is over 100 years old. So, we formed a branch here about 2014. It is not exactly like the UUs. Many UUs were involved or active in setting it up.

Jacobsen: Ideological structures can be defined within the width or range of their degrees of freedom. UU is probably not disliked by many people because it has a very wide range of degrees of freedom. What are the boundaries, borders, the limits, on those degrees of freedom, ideologically, within a UUHK context?

What defines in and out in this sense?

Marc: Actually, I would say that we would be on the left. We do not seek out evangelical churches. We tend to be with the more liberal churches. We do not touch the Mormons.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] why don’t you touch the Mormons?

Marc: I do not know. I had bad experiences with them. Personally, same with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I find them to be very pushy and proselytizing. If you start talking, it does not go anywhere. We just do not involve those groups.

There is another guy here, who is Korean. He says he is immortal.

Jacobsen: Is it Falun Gong?

Marc: Actually, Falun Gong is CIA supported. There was another rich guy from Korea. They approached. We did not reciprocate. We said, ‘We are too busy.’ We did not close the doors. They had conferences with the Sikhs and the Sri Lankan Buddhists. The people that they dealt with were burned and would not have anything to do with them.

Actually, Falun Gong is interesting. A Chinese guy in America. It is like the Scientologists. They are anti-gay. It does not really bother me that the Chinese go after me. There will be counter-protests that say, ‘Falun Gong will come.’ Let us face it.

CIA and other American groups want to disrupt Chinese society.

Jacobsen: Does this make UU anti-dogmatic?

Marc: I am speaking as an individual. I cannot speak for all people in the group. Alex Seto is the top guy. You communicated with him, first. You sent him an email. He sent this or forwarded it to me. We are mixed Chinese.

Most of the Chinese can speak good English. But they felt the only person representing a foreigner better would be me.

Jacobsen: How is the UUHK surviving in the light of the protests when things become explicitly violent?

Marc: Actually, we do not have a permanent church. We have meetings once per month. So, they cannot attack us. We did not do anything against it. It has not affected us. We had a meeting scheduled for tonight. But because of transport, I will not attend it.

It is a meeting about these Pakistani Muslims. Because of the transport situation, I will not go. It has not really affected us. As Alex said, if we go to China, there are three ways. There are the communists and the Christians. We are the middle way.

We do not try to proselytize. A lot of people are anti-communist. A lot do not like the evangelicals. So, we call ourselves the middle way.

Jacobsen: One UU minister noted, in correspondence, to me, that there is no tradition of UU-evangelism. One, a lot of people do not know a lot about them or of them, the UUs. Two, the fact that people generally like the UUs.

Marc: I would say, “That’s spot on. It is 100% true.” There is no proselytizing. That is why a lot of people have never heard of us and agree with us.

Jacobsen: Someone has to be open-minded to find out about them. If they do find out about you, they must be open to you, so would be open to liking you.

Marc: We do not have the money too. We operate on a shoestring budget. Actually, there were separate UUs. In Britain, it just called Unitarians. In the U.S., it is called Unitarian Universalist. In France, it is Unitarian. Unitarians rejected the Trinity.

Universalist does not believe in hell and rejects Jesus in some ways. In America, in 1961, they came together as one. They were so similar. They tried to pool their resources. Until 1961, they were separate churches.

Actually, Unitarians have been around for 600 years. They started in Romania, actually Transylvania. When they were in power, they had some political power in Romania at that time. They were tolerant toward the Jewish.

Jewish shtetls thrived. Unitarian is not a new thing. It is not a new wave religion or anything like that.

Jacobsen: How are they more tolerant towards the shtetls and other marginalized communities?

Marc: A lot of Jewish people are UUs. I am from Maine, New England. They come from a lot of Christian households and pick UUism as a middle ground.

I am trying to think of some famous ones. The famous astronomer from Cornell. Carl?

Jacobsen: Sagan.

Marc: Yes. He was Jewish but Unitarian. The former Secretary of Defense for Bill Clinton, William Cohen. Because they still accept Jewish people. I have been to a number of events here. We have never had a major incident. We have been going on for 15 years. No major incidence with the government. Only about 25 signed up as members with about 10 people per meeting. We visit places.

Sometimes, we have meetings in a restaurant like a vegetarian restaurant or something like that. We are very simple.

Jacobsen: How is the association with Ethical Culture, UU Humanism, and Humanism?

Marc: I am on Facebook with them. But we do not communicate with them. Sometimes, we have visitors from America. We show them around. There was a specific UU meeting in the Philippines. They wanted us to go to have some representation.

It is in association with the UUA. As I understood it, a lot of people from India and some from Australia. Most from the Philippines. It was the first one ever in the Asia-Pacific regional meeting of the UUs. I am still working.

Alex is a medical doctor. We could not take off the last weekend of October to take part in that. The Philippines are the most active with 3,00 members. They have their own churches. Japan is interesting. They have monthly meetings in Tokyo.

India has some in the northeast in a place called Shilling. That is just on paper. Taiwan had a group. It comes and goes because people move out. There is absolutely o sustainability. I heard Singapore had a discussion group. I do not hear about it anymore.

The Philippines is the most active in Asia.

Jacobsen: I know some of the humanists and groups in the region there. What do you hope for the next 5 to 10 years for the UUHK?

Marc: Good question. Increase membership, this is a long story. I was a teacher before. I retired at the age of 62 as a secondary school teacher. It means that I had a lot of time on the weekends. I am working at a language institute, which is a private business.

I work Saturdays and Sundays. It suffered as an organization with my new schedule. I plan to retire soon. I want to increase our events. So, that is what I am looking towards. Something like that. In this recent HK demonstrations, we have not gone as a group.

There are not enough of us. On Facebook, you will see a lot of that stuff. We have not organized to protest together.

Actually, both sides have done awful things. China has a lot of problems. People have a right to protest. But some of the vandalism is absolutely incredible, disrupt transport. Both sides have done atrocities. I think you read about the police shooting somebody.

If this was in America, before they stormed the legislative council, if they tried this in America in Congress, then there would be a lot of dead people. Can you imagine disrupting the House of Representatives?

Canada would not allow that and then to wreck things and spray paint. Generally speaking, there is the violence. Compared to the Western countries, this is nothing compared to them.

Jacobsen: How about the leadership of the UU in the Asian region? How are they working together to keep the community alive and growing, and dynamic?

Marc: Actually, just through email communication, I mentioned the meetup in the Philippines. But not all that much. Before, we had the UUs from Japan visit us. It was an American guy. Gene Reeves helped us. He was a Buddhist scholar. He made a movie.

He lived in Japan for 30 years. He helped us set up the International Association for Religious Freedom. He is a Buddhist UU. He is really famous. We do a lot of email and the Asia-Pacific conference. The outsiders, the Indians and the two Australians both went to it.

We are not that tight. We are not like the Catholic Church, top-down.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts based on the conversation today?

Marc: How did you find out about us?

Jacobsen: Through listings of Unitarian Universalists, I am going through small communities to get those voices out there.

Marc: I was surprised to have the email forwarded to me. I was wondering why some guy in Canada would have an interest in me.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I get that a lot from a lot of different groups. It is a completely independent endeavour. So, fair enough.

Marc: Really?

Jacobsen: Yes. I mean it’s young, old, secular Jewish organizations, the UUs, the humanists, atheists, freethinkers, all of the groups. It is a lot. I saw a gap and decided to do it, then kept at it. It is as simple as that. Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Marc.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/06

Mandisa Thomas, a native of New York City, is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence today,” she recalls.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.

In 2019, Mandisa was the recipient of the Secular Student Alliance’s Backbone Award and named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethought Heroine. She was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association’s Person of the Year 2018.

As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa encourages more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

“The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”

Here, we talk about ethics and cultures.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, there was a recent event, not an uncommon one. It had to do with a pastor. That pastor was caught with another person who is not his wife. He was performing oral sex on this person. This is in America. What does this bring to mind, for you, about general culture, religious culture, and the things that float around that?

Mandisa Thomas: Yes, to give a bit of background, there was a scandal involving a pastor out of Texarcana, Texas. From what I understand, there was a general attempt to expose preachers in that area, however, this particular pastor’s son was allegedly looking to expose his father in greater detail. The pastor, whose name is David Wilson, was recorded performing oral sex on a woman who was not his spouse. From an article I read, once the video was leaked, someone asked the wife if she was the woman in question.

Of course, she said, “No.” What this brings to me is the ongoing [Laughing] hypocrisy of the black church. It becomes, “Oh great, another pastor doing something that they try to discourage other people from doing. They are supposed to follow the cross, but they also tend to be lecherous. They tend to take advantage of the congregation.” It seemed like another day in the life. There was also the question of if he will get away with it. Will his church forgive him? Will his wife forgive him? Many of the jokes were, “Where can I get that healing tongue?” I watched the 1-minute clip (before it was removed online), and from what I saw, the pastor was doing a pretty good job [Laughing]. But that is beside the point. There are still not enough good conversations about sex and sexuality in our communities – what it means to have changing dynamics in relationships, and to openly discuss polyamory in healthy sexual relationships, even among leaders in our communities.

And again, you have these men who preach one thing and then do something else. There is a lot to unpack with this whole situation.

Jacobsen: Why the double standards for men and women, for leaders and laity?

Thomas: I think this double standard comes in an ongoing conversation about male privilege. The idea that “men will be men.” Men have “weak flesh” or what have you. They are expected to be the ones chasing after women and playing around. Even though, they are supposed to be setting examples. They are still entitled to pursue these encounters with women, with little repercussion. Also, of course, as you may guess, if it was a woman at the center of it all, then she probably wouldn’t be forgiven at all. It’s entitlement, privilege, and societal “roles” at the core of it all.

Jacobsen: Do you think that younger adolescent men, and young men, are watching these adult pastors and taking a cue?

Thomas: I think to an extent that is partially true. What is very interesting – I saw a comment on social media about this – it showing how immature many adults are still. There are younger people taking note, and are tired of the church. They are tired of the hypocrisy of the people in the church and the leadership. They are really, really tired of people saying one thing and doing something else. They are really frustrated.

Some young people are also picking up on the behaviour and thinking, “I am just doing what you do.” Others are seeing how messy and how hypocritical and backwards the church can be. Again, this isn’t lost on them. In this age of information, and being able to find different outlets, they’re not taking it anymore. And I can’t say that I blame them.

The scare tactics that were employed years ago, aren’t as effective as they once were. And of course there is nothing wrong with sex, but in such a repressive institution, we know situations will arise. And when you have leaders who engage in reckless behaviour (again, not so much sex itself), it calls for accountability. After a while, they can hold no one but themselves responsible when young people stop listening to them.

Perhaps if they were more honest and owned their mistakes, and said, “This is what happens. This is what people do. I messed up”, then there may be more credibility given. Until that is done, I am not sure things will get better.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/05

Monica L. Miller works as the Legal Director and Senior Counsel at the AHA’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center and as the Executive Director of the Humanist Legal Society.

Here we talk about her current positions and the current issues for secularism in America through the American Humanist Association.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s start with some brief background, so people know where you’re coming from. Although, you are an increasingly prominent name in the humanist community in North America, in the region, as well as in the legal scene for humanists.

What brought you to a humanist outlook on life and then what brought you to the form of humanist community?

Monica Miller: Great question. I think a lot of people would answer it this way, but I feel like I’ve always been a humanist. Even though I went to Catholic school growing up, I was raised in a relatively secular family. I went to parochial school but I think I’ve always been a humanist.

By college, I didn’t believe in god but didn’t have a label for what I did believe. Maybe belief is the wrong word, but I espoused the idea that we should take care of the environment, non-human animals, and other people. All the values that humanists hold I felt resonated with me as well.

Then I came upon the American Humanist Association in law school. I found an internship opening in Washington, D.C. I’d already been very interested in separation of church and state. I’d been working with attorney Michael Newdow who did the “under God” case in the U.S. Supreme Court

I just really found my niche there.

Jacobsen: At the American Humanist Association, you have 2 positions. What are those? What are some tasks and responsibilities?

Monica: It’s really one position. The title is Legal Director and Senior Counsel, our former Legal Director moved on.

I now manage our legal department. We just hired a new staff attorney, so I’m managing him as well. But as far as what I do, I litigate our cases in federal courts across the country. I had a U.S. Supreme Court case this past year so that was a big milestone for us and our legal center.

Jacobsen: What is the scope of the Humanist Legal Society now?

Miller: [Oh yeah], I’m also the Executive Director of the Humanist Legal Society, an adjunct of the AHA. It’s a networking tool for attorneys, other legal professionals, and law students who are humanists and want to engage on a more involved level than our regular members, but more on the legal side of things.

It’s fairly new. So, we’re sort of still evolving our goals, our mission, and our activities. We have an upcoming panel event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on January 13.

Jacobsen: When you’re looking at some of the legal battles that you have fought, including the Supreme Court case, recently, what were some of the outcomes? What were some of the subject matter?

Miller: The subject matter of our cases all surround church and state separation, but the actual facts of the cases differ pretty strongly. We have cases involving school prayer, graduation prayer, schools taking students to religious field trips, that kind of thing, but then we also have our fair share of display cases, which might involve a cross on government property, we’ve had two display cases in Arkansas, then we have some legislative prayer cases. Those are where the government officials are leading prayers before a meeting. We have a case in Florida involving a police-lead prayer vigil. So, it’s a diverse array of issues, but they all surround church-state separation.

Jacobsen: When you’re talking about church-state separation with school prayers, for instance, what are some of the arguments that you put forward to counter this action in public schools?

Miller: There are several. Some of the predominant reasons that the Supreme Court has found prayers problematic is the coercive aspect of it: that school children are impressionable and susceptible to both peer pressure as well as actual coercion; that parents have a constitutional right to raise their children with the religion of their choice or no religion at all. So, when there’s a prayer being given at your student’s, or your daughter’s or son’s, graduation ceremony, they feel compelled to either take part in the prayer or else protest about religion. Either way you have it-it’s coercive. But then there’s also the endorsement issue: that the government is basically putting a stamp of approval on a prayer that’s given at a government control event. Then there’s also other issues of religious entanglement and unconstitutional service, but I’d say the biggest concern is usually the coercion.

Jacobsen: When it comes to tax exemptions for various religious sectors, how does that compare for the secular communities in America?

Miller: It’s tricky. Over the years, the Supreme Court has gone back and forth on tax exemptions and its treatment of religious entities. The secular community has been feeling lately that all must have the same exemptions.That they’re parallel. The American Humanist Association, is a humanist organization, even though we don’t call ourselves a religion, we function in the same way as a real religion would in terms of our programming and outreach. But we have to file certain disclosures that churches are exempt from.

There have been lawsuits and challenges to this. They just haven’t gone very far yet.

Jacobsen: What do you think is most needed in terms of legal battles for further equality for the secular and humanist communities in America?

Miller: That’s a good question. For one, our court system is stacked against us right now. That has a lot to do with who our current president is, and we have lost cases that we absolutely should have won based on the president- solely because we had a judge that was very partial and had an agenda that was against us.

So, elections matter, I think that’s sort of step one as far as other challenges and stuff. It’s like playing whack-a-mole when it comes to putting out violations.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Miller: Trying to get one school prayer out, then the next school, we still make progress. We can set precedent that we can take to the next school. It’s usually a faster legal proceeding in the next case, but it still is something that feels kind of overwhelming.

Especially because the religious right in our country, people feel emboldened right now. Based upon who the judges are, who the president is, they feel like they can get away with more and, frankly, in a sense, they are now.

So, we have to stay vigilant and continue to bring these challenges. Even though it feels like an avalanche, you have to keep that wall of separation high in every area where it’s being breached.

Jacobsen: Different religious groups and individuals take their religions in different ways. I think that’s a truism. By implication, there will be differences in how different religious groups in America will take their particular religious views from the personal life to the public, but, in particular, the political.

In other words, they want to have their religion influence and be integral to, if not integrated into, the general political system, if not the legal system. Who are some of those denominations that are most apt to do that kind of overstretch in terms of the practice of their faith?

Miller: That’s a good question. There is a documentary on Netflix right now. I’ve only started. This has to do with a manipulative non-denominational Christian group called “The Family.”

How much influence that they have over government officials in Washington and the state government? I can’t think of a singular denomination. I can’t think of any that is particularly more egregious than the others.

Maybe, in general, it is probably the baptists in the South, but there are also baptists that very strongly support separation of church and state. So, it just depends where they’re geographically located and whatnot, but that’s been my experience.

Jacobsen: How does this impact ordinary humanists and how does this inequality impact their lives and the trajectory of the lives?

Miller: I think it affects them in smaller communities where they are the minorities, and they feel like they can’t even complain about the church-state violation because they will be a pariah in their community.

So, I think that that’s where the everyday humanists are the most affected, in small communities, rural communities.

Jacobsen: What about some of the typically more vulnerable groups? It might differ for individuals, but as groups, the LGBTI community tends to get a pretty hard wrap from fundamentalist far-right religious groups.

How does this manifest in a legal context? How is the society working against those efforts?

Miller: We’re blending together a lot more with other progressive causes and groups than we did, say, before Trump was elected. We can’t fight these battles alone and we have to join together on issues that might not be our primary issue, but it’s something that’s completely aligned with our mission. So when it comes to the Equal Rights Act and same-sex marriage and all those things we’re thinking of with those marginalized groups.

Jacobsen: In Canada, there is an increased conversation on a number of fronts about secularism and place of worship, or religion, and state separation. One of those has to do with having a single secular public school system. Another has to do with the church tax exemptions throughout the country.

Miller: Right.

Jacobsen: I note the differences between the American and the Canadian legal systems. However, there should be general heuristics, concerned humanists, and secular and free thought citizens in America could take into account for combating this sort of financial, social, and legal privilege throughout the country.

How would you think about this issue with your legal background and training and current experience in a humanist legal setting?

Miller: Great question. I know in our country it has been an issue of standing – the ability to even bring a challenge in court. If we want to challenge the clergy tax exemption, we would need a secular person to be denied tax exemption by the IRS.

That requires the IRS to audit you. Sometimes, they don’t do that. You can’t just go to our court system and bring those challenges. You have to wait until there’s the right group that has standing.

So, I don’t know if that’s the same case in Canada, but that’s always the first step, making sure that you have a group that has the ability to bring this case in court. I guess, the next thing is public awareness, making people aware that there is that sort of an inequity and get the public behind it.

Interviewer: What if municipal councils or provincial governments, collected as a whole, simply don’t want to touch the issue? I note this in some recent reports in British Columbia.

Miller: That is also a good question. I’m not sure if I have a good answer for it. I think it’s something where you definitely want to make sure you have all the support possible. But also, there needs to be some sort of campaign and public support in place to explain why it’s a problem.

The reason [local government officials] don’t want to touch it is because they’re worried that it looks like they’re against religion or against the church. Instead, they should be explaining why it’s unfair to not pass similar situated groups that are providing the same public benefits.

That they aren’t getting the same treatment or highlight some churches’ practices. I think there’s probably a way to garner public support. But from the legal standpoint, that’s sort of a different animal.

Jacobsen: All legal battles require money and time and professional networks and other forms of resources. How can individual American citizens or international organizations support the legal arm of the American Humanist Association in setting a national precedent and an international example as to the battles that can be won in church-state separation and otherwise?

Miller: Obviously, there’s giving donations to support groups like ours that bring church-state separation cases.  

Frankly, if we just hear enough from our members, from people complaining, that they all sort of share the same grievance on something. We’ll, usually, pay more attention to it. Or we’ll put it up on our priority list.

I think it is just a matter of making it clear that in order to advance other secular causes like the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights, you really have to break through this church-state barrier because it’s really standing in the way of our society’s progress.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Monica.

Miller: My pleasure.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/03

Tim Mendham is the Executive Officer & Editor for Australian Skeptics Inc. Here we talk about some recent activities.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What has the Australian Skeptics been up to, lately?

Tim Mendham: The Skeptics started off dealing mostly with the paranormal areas almost 40 years ago. UFOs, psychics, and those sorts of areas, with the growth of alternative medicine as another area. We have grown into consumer protection areas if you like, but always from that scientific perspective.

It has raised a lot more activists. It has made it even more increasingly so. Gradually, we are moving into social justice areas. The issue there is that our basis has always been scientific investigation. So, we are not approaching or overtly approaching those areas, social justice areas, from a rationalist or a humanist perspective, but from a scientific point of view.

We did a report on gay marriage, which was the big gay marriage debate in Australia a few years ago. Gay marriage passed. Gay marriage is now legal with all other forms of marriage. We did a report on that. We looked at the evidence put forward by the pro-gay marriage and the anti-gay marriage lobbies, and assessed how much evidence there was to support their claims.

As it turned out, the anti-gay marriage claims were highly unsupported and really came down to religious objection.

Jacobsen: What religions?

Mendham: Mainly Christian, Australia is largely a Christian country. Islamic in Australia is quite small. It would mainly be religion of all sorts, Catholic. Anglican is a bit softer. Catholics in that area have trouble with gay marriage at the same time as they have trouble with the priesthood, where they do everywhere in the world at the moment.

But the gay marriage debate was very much sided in favour of marriage. It was a given, really, for years. It was being largely fought by the Christian right that had, at that stage, had a big influence in the political scene. It still does to a certain extent, but it fluctuates.

But the people largely, not always, came down in favour of gay marriage. The politicians who are on the Right had to accept it. A lot of those when they finally had to ratify the vote. It was a non-compulsory vote. It didn’t have political or legal regulatory powers.

But it, certainly, indicated to the politicians that these were the ways that people were viewing it. They vote overwhelmingly in favour on both sides of politics, except for a few from the Right – as you would understand from the Canadian system, the Westminster system.

They didn’t vote. They didn’t even enter into the House to vote.

Jacobsen:  Were statements put forward by politicians who abstained or rejected it?

Mendham: There were some politicians. The vote was tallied on the basis on electorates. Each politician knew how his electorate voted. Given the progressive nature of the electorates – some, obviously, aren’t, some electorates had 55% against gay marriage and 45% for it.

Those politicians were in a dilemma. If they agreed with gay marriage, their personal views were against their electorate views. Some of them said that their electorate were wrong and said, “Ok, I will vote in favour.”

Some said, “I agree with the gay marriage thing, but I will follow my electorate.” Others said, “My electorate was for it. But from a moral and religious stance, I can’t vote in favour. So, they did not vote at all.”

In other words, the people of their electorate. The vote wasn’t based purley on electorate, but it was indicative of how people were thinking. Some of them voted against how their electorate voted. But the only ones who abstained were a small number, a handful.

They didn’t enter the Parliament at all. They didn’t show their hand, which was pretty cowardly. Another small handful did sit at the Parliament and did vote against it. They were open about being anti-gay marriage. You’re talking 95% of the politicians who were for it, eventually.

It was a no-brainer. Like I said, we didn’t investigate the rationalist, humanist, or purely religious-based points of view. Because they are, from our point of view, not entirely scientifically assessable. But we did look at the argument being put forward and found that the argument being put forth against gay marriage that gay parents, same-sex parents are not good parents.

The children do not have a role model, and so on. The evidence did not show that this was correct at all. We looked at that. More recently, we looked at a more specific area around gay conversion therapy, which is looking at the religious groups trying to convince their gay members to be un-gay [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: It is through Pavlovian responses mainly. We did look again. But the science is untenable, apart from being morally untenable. We said, “The evidence shows gay conversion therapy was more dangerous than helpful.”

We have calmed down a bit. One thing quite controversially, which is science-based. We put out a strong statement being pro-climate change. That it is happening, created by man, and is an emergency situation

We had people, even within the skeptic community, who have criticized us for doing it. One person has written us out of his will. There are a fair number of people out there, even in the skeptical community who do not accept climate change.

We see the scientific evidence is overwhelming. But most people who are anti-climate change are almost manipulating the evidence to fit their political and financial perspective. We have lost members over it. However, it was a stance that we needed to take.

But again, the vast majority of skeptics accept climate change. That wasn’t too hard on our position. Better still, the vast majority of our work is in the anti-science movements, pseudoscience movements. That means, in Australia, all of the alternative medicine areas through chiropractic, homeopathic, anti-vaccine areas.

Increasingly, we are seeing a bit of a growth in psychics, which brings us back to some of our original areas [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: More organized than they used to be, more professional than they used to be. We are seeing a rise everywhere of ghost hunting and talking to the dead. It has been quite strong lately. We are turning to that as a subject area.

Jacobsen: They phrase it as “talking to” not just “talking at” the dead.

Mendham: “Talking with” or “getting instructions from,” I went to a presentation not long ago on psychics. You always have to put psychics in virtual quotes (‘psychics’). “I am getting a message from Bob, Billy, Michael. What’s his name?” There is always someone to pick on in the audience.

The usual generic topics, there was only one person who had anything close to a detailed response. You got the indication that they might be a current client, the person in the audience might have been a current client. It was unimpressive, very vague, usual cold reading techniques.

From that point of view, they’re really not that much of a challenge, but, from a public point of view, it is a minority. But it is a fair amount who believe in psychic powers and talking to the dead are a thing. It can be done. It can be tapped into.

That’s what amuses me, how readily they can tap into someone’s relative out of the billions of people that have died. It is a bit like Godel. They are quick in their searches to find someone. They happened to find someone in the audience who matches up to them.

It is an area that we are looking at closely.

Jacobsen: What areas seem benign, comical, and simply wastes of financial resources of an individual? What ones seem more sinister of other forms of resources – emotional, intellectual, and so on?

Mendham: There are some alternative medicine areas. The line about alternative medicine. Some of it will not do any harm because it won’t do you any good.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: But if you’re taking away proper science and scientific diagnosis, then it becomes dangerous because you’re not taking advantage of things that can actually help you. That has a benign and a malignant side to it. Most psychics are just a fun thing.

The one who wears a scarf and flips the cards over. In most cases, it is a pretty harmless form of entertainment. But in places where people are taking it seriously, that can financially be an issue, as well as personal spiritual, or even a life decision danger.

There are aspects to that as well. Most of these things have a bit of a two-edged sword. Anti-vaccination has absolutely no good side to it, ever. That is a danger. As we see around the world, it is an increase in the cases of Measles. Australia is Measles-free, supposedly. But we are having cases of people from overseas bringing Measles with them.

Now, doctors who are seeing Measles who never saw Measles before. I am of an age when Measles were common. But it has been removed from most people’s awareness. It is the same for Mumps and that sort of thing. The anti-vax is one movement.

The pseudoscience movements are benign, a lot of them. We still get a lot of perpetual motion machines and free energy machines.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] really? Those ones seem like curveballs to me.

Mendham: What’s a curveball in cricket?

Jacobsen: Something out of expectation.

Mendham: Cricket is a reliable sport. We are still covering some of those pseudoscience movements and investigate them. It is painfully obvious the people putting them forward have no sense of physics. One thing in Australia is dowsing, being a very dry country. It is very agricultural based. Certainly, a long time in its history.

Dowsing is, not wide but, used a lot in certain areas. We have done a number of tests over the years of dowsers, haven’t found any that can do their or show their skill under scientific conditions.

Jacobsen: Quelle surprise [Laughing].

Mendham: [Laughing] we have a $100,000 challenge for anyone who can prove any paranormal skill. We have done this for a long time and probably tested more than 200 people. More than half of them have been dowsers. They are nice people.

They are probably genuine people believing they can do what they say can do. You might wonder why they can have any success in the field. But in all of their tests, none of them have indicated anything else other than chance in what they can do.

That crops up from time to time. I am on the frontline, of course. I am Executive Officer of the skeptics here. It is a paid profession, believer it or not. I am a professional skeptic.

Jacobsen: Huzzah.

Mendham: I am a professional skeptic, which is pretty unusual in the world, actually, these days.

Jacobsen: We need more of you.

Mendham: I will claim myself. Yes, we are paid for by a skeptical group in Australia. So, it is not through donations to podcasts or anything like that. The Australian Skeptics have had some decent bequests, which have allowed us to get grants for good work and to support other skeptical groups, and challenge of course, and to pay people to do the grunt work if you like.

So, I am Executive Officer from bookkeeping to interviews to putting out a magazine. We also have a part-time social media manager.

Jacobsen: That’s helpful.

Mendham: It is. It is very helpful with the whole skeptical movement changing from when I initially joined, which was the magazine only and the meetings to more people involved than ever before. But not necessarily in a formal sense.

So, social media is a vital component of what we do in promoting the skeptical cause and communicating with other skeptics. Other areas of activity, I get questions about astrology, UFOs, and other things. They’re largely benign.

Most people regard astrology as a bit of an amusement. The unknown animals, apart from a few people who are obsessed by them, are amusing entertainments. The strongest areas these days are the pseudomedicine.

That’s certainly the area with the strongest malignant aspects to it, very few benign ones.

Jacobsen: What about areas important for the next generations of biological scientists and medical scientists? By which I mean, the ideas of young earth creationism, old earth creationism, etc., trying to be forced into the public schools.

I mean, the Americans have a very long history there. There have been some issues in Canada. I could run through them.

Mendham: Yes, run through them, I would be interested to know.

Jacobsen: There is an association for all of British Columbia. There is an association for all of Alberta. There is an association for all of Saskatchewan. There is a small one, not quite formal and no website, for Manitoba. There’s another for Quebec. They have speakers.

They have events, usually at churches. They have presenters. They have articles that they publish. Usually, they’re done by a select group of men. So, the one in British Columbia was founded in 1967. And that ran through until about 1995/96 when things came to head in one city’s school district with a court case [Ed. the associations still exist.].

This was in British Columbia. It was in Abbotsford, which is known for a Sikh community, the Mennonite Brethren community, and the Dutch Reformed Church communities. Trinity Western University, which seemed like an equivalent to the Liberty University in the United States as the main and largest Christian university, in particular, Evangelical university, in Canada, one man who was on the school board.

I think the chair during this flare-up of young earth creationism attempting to be imposed in the Abbotsford school system was from Trinity Western. So, it was an admixture, within British Columbia, which was a hotbed of it, of Langley and Abbotsford cities or townships. Abbotsford, in particular, that ended up not going through, of course, properly. In particular, it ended up as a ban in the province.

This is the only province in which this has been done, or territories because it was such an egregious case, likely. So, there are a number of other small individuals running various museums. They are nothing akin to the Petersburg, Kentucky museum by Ken Ham with the $100 million, $120 million, or $150 million, depending on the reportage, Ark [Ed. public taxpayer money as far as I know], where they got the team from Jurassic Park to build animatronic dinosaurs with saddles, as you know.

Mendham: [Laughing].

Jacobsen: There is the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are partially covered up because it is immodest. There is one travelling museum in Canada. They go around and give lectures. Again, these often function through churches. There is another guy who was, and is, a lifelong member of Mensa Canada.

He somehow hornswoggled Mensa International through their need for social interest groups to create a social interest group for “Creation Science,” which is short for just creationism. It attempts to put a veneer of scientific respectability to it.

Mendham: Yes.

Jacobsen: They have different terms for it: Creation Science, Creationism, Intelligent Design, Creation Ministries, etc. There is a connection between the regional, the international, and the national groups. The group that was set up for Mensa as a social interest group has a website from 2005 in the Summer.

It ended around July. So, it didn’t last long. It was present, though. So, it did happen. There are a number of areas of concern. However, I will give them one point. That point is openness. They are very transparent. They’re honest about presentation.

They state, ‘We believe…’ Then they will give their reasons. Almost all of them are based on holy texts, Christianity, etc. They are honest in their presentation of themselves as ‘this is what we believe.’ They become dishonest when they state, “Creation Science.”

They become honest when they state, “Creation Ministry.” Because if they are proposing a religious view based on x, y, and z principles, then it becomes a ministry and not a scientific process. I would only accept when they state creationism or creation ministries.

And it shows. They do the presentations in the churches. We can go on for some time on the issues.

Mendham: Yes.

Jacobsen: The problem is the quietness of Canadian society with regard to it. In recent surveys, about 21% of Canadians, about 1 in 5, will accept the Earth as under 10,000 years old and human beings created in their current form. It comes from religion.

These are standard, boilerplate interpretations of the book of Genesis. It becomes Christian mainly with a little bit of flavouring of, probably, some Muslim communities, but not as many because they are not as prominent as the Christian communities – as you noted in one response in Australia and the issue of gay marriage, same-sex marriage.

It is similar in Canada too. It passed in, probably, 2005. It was a similar issue. The objections would come from conservative-oriented people with the concerns oriented around conservative traditional religion, Christian religion.

So, that’s kind of a general idea of the creationism that we have in Canada. I would have to look it up to get more stuff off-hand.

Mendham: It’s interesting. I am a bit surprised. I thought Canada was a bit more rational. In Australia, they are fairly mild in their religious views. The people who identify as religious are the people who say they’re religious. They have always been religion.

There are churches with very, very low numbers, except in the case of the Pentecostal churches – which are doing well. They are experiencing a strong growth from a small base. I wouldn’t say Australians are apathetic towards religion, but they are certainly not a strong basis in society outside of things like the gay marriage and that sort of area.

As I said, the vast majority of people voted in favour of gay marriage. The religious dominance was not there in terms of the philosophy. The background of Australian Skeptics started in 1981. At that stage, we had a fairly conservative government in Queensland, which is our far north.

In America, you’d call it the deep south.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: A lot of people in country areas of conservativism. The premier of the state who was the then leader of the government was into teaching creation science in science classes, in high school. That was the first real strong activist movement that the skeptics did in Australia. We waged a major campaign.

We put out publications that the ‘science’ was garbage, pointing out the correct position of evolution via natural selection. We had serious academics in a whole range of areas on our side and contributing. It was hugely successful. It stopped the creation movement in Australian schools full stop.

There were a few trying to sneak it into the science classrooms, but it has never been particularly strong in Australia. Creationism in Australia is very, very fringe, as far as we know. You talk about some groups being overt. They do not run universities.

There are a couple of Catholic universities that are not fundamentalist universities. There will probably be some small creationist fundamentalist gatherings, but they are not a stronghold. We don’t have a museum of creationism. We do not have travelling exhibitions.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: There may be some preachers who espouse creationist views. Interestingly, after our big activism, we, actually, exported creationists; some of the people prominent in the creationist movement. They had a philosophical split. I have a scientific point of view on it.

A lot went overseas to America. Ken Ham is Australian. Some of the higher profile creationists in the U.S. are Australian. What seems to have happened, we exported creationists. We imported some anti-vaccinationists [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: I think we lost on the trade. I would rather have creationists than anti-vaccinationists. One woman named Meryl Dorey. She’s made a good product. She has a good talent for media. That is the most recent campaign, activist campaign, going on for a long time and the body for advocating for anti-vaccination in Australian is being wiped out.

There is still a strong formal movement. The group that had free reign for a long time has been severely curtailed by the skeptical movement and by people associated with the skeptical movement, generally. So, no, creationism is not really an issue.

It, certainly, is not proselytized very much in schools or anything. On the second level, because Australians’ religious background and history, there’s always been a teaching of religion in schools, in Australia, called Scripture Classes.

I am not quite sure if you have it in Canada. It is, basically, one period per week or an hour, if that, in which local religious people, whatever religion, come into scripture classes in primary schools, junior schools, and in high schools.

Over the last 10 or so years, there’s been a movement for non-scripture classes, where kids had to opt out of scripture classes. That’s been highly successful. A lot of those places with the schools hardly have anyone going to Scripture class.

But how serious one takes it, it makes a change from doing maths anyway. [Laughing] it is probably a lot more fun than maths. In high school, they haven’t had the opt-out system. My son went through primary school in this no scripture classes, so they brought in ethics classes.

In high schools, they still have scripture classes. Honestly, it is something that kids put up with and ask embarrassing questions by and large, which my son said he quite enjoyed it.

Jacobsen: [Laighing].

Mendham: He asked quite curly ones. One semi-permanent scripture teacher in the school was having a hard time finding all of the heathens in the school. Australian schools, especially in the public school system, are a-religious or non-religious.

There is a strong tendency of Catholic schools and Anglican schools in the independent school area, especially when the state limits resources to independent schools when the government is under pressure. The resources in the public schools is not always up to scratch.

The private schools, some of them are very, very high profile and expensive schools to attend. They tend to be religion based. They tend to be more Anglican. Protestant religion based rather than Catholic; Catholic are usually in poor areas and doing much the same stuff.

Again, you’re not finding creationism taught in those schools or intelligent design, or anything pretending to be creation science, in those other schools. So, it is not an issue, quite frankly, which is a good thing. We have. I know we have creationists who subscribe to our magazine.

A group called Creation Ministries International, which is one of the few creation science groups left in Australia. They look at ours. Why not? I look at theirs. They have a magazine called Creation, which is quite a glossy looking magazine.

It espouses creation science sides, points of view. I do not know how good the circulation is. But they still exist to a small extent in Australia. But judging by what you’re saying in the U.S., in Australia, it is a non-event.

Jacobsen: If you look at some of the events over the years, you can see some amusing items in the news. For instance, there will be items stating ‘Old earth creationists criticize flat earthers for taking the Bible too literally.’

Mendham: [Laughing].

Jacobsen: ‘Young earth creationists debating old creationists for taking the Bible too literally.’ Then you run down the list of theistic evolution, etc. That seems to be the trend. They try, if they’re more sophisticated, to pose this as a freedom of speech or freedom of expression, and open debates, notion found in a sort of John Stuart Mill mode. One who they reference.

They will try to take this as a point of superior intellectual practice to debate these ideas with the premise of them as different, valid views on the world, scientific views on the world. Not necessarily theological, but scientific views on the world, it seems like a huge waste of time to me, of their time. But it is theirs to use as they wish. But these sorts of things pop up.

Mendham: As I said, in Australia, there’s no doubt. In religious groups, in Pentecostal groups, I do not know how literally 6,000 years is a fundamentalist belief. The long earth, they try to blend in the billions of years with God creating the heavens the earth.

It would exist in a number of churches. But it nowhere near as organized or overt as you’re saying. The interesting thing about old earth creationists, which is one of the strangest phenomena of recent times. You look and say, “What?” [Laughing]. Where does this come from?

It is a bit of a fashion believing in flat earth.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: Like a lot of conspiracy theories. I had a recent article with a hollow earth criticizing flat earthers. They don’t understand the science [Ed. They said] [Laughing].

Jacobsen: I give up [Laughing]. I’m being facetious.

Mendham: I think the flat earthers are dying out a bit. It had its moment in the Sun. It will come back as most of these things do. I hadn’t heard much of it, because the people may have been made fun of, quite decidedly.

At a recent skeptics convention, we phoned up and said, “We’re still here. We exist in Australia. We’re in a different time zone.” It’s a joke. I don’t think anyone here takes it very seriously. They had a convention, a flat earther convention. Nobody turned up [Laughing].

Jacobsen: It sounds like the ‘storm Area 51’ idea.

Mendham: Yes, I would agree with that.

Jacobsen: Now, what are some things coming online for Australian Skeptics now, in, basically, the new year?

Mendham: It is business as usual. As I said, as in many areas of skepticism, you feel as though you’re beating a head against the wall. Two steps forward, one step back, and so on, wat the skeptical movement over the years is forced a lot of proponents to get more serious about their claims, less totally flippant.

Not just entertainment value only, some deep justification for their causes is attempted. We continue to fight against that. Anything specific that is new. As I said, it is the social justice areas. Perhaps, looking at more of working on ethical areas per se, the humanist and rational movements in Australia are not particularly strong.

They tend to have an older clientele. We made a point in the skeptical movement of being more appealing to younger people, which I think we’ve done. The skeptic movement would be much more than the Australian skeptics and the magazine.

We act as an umbrella group and as a funding group. We have a strong group in what we’re doing. There is a lot of activity outside of the formal skeptic movement, which is a good thing in a way. So, the anti-vax movement is still strong.

So, that will continue to be a battle, even if it is less against some organized groups. In the region per se, it is not particularly strong. Certainly, not for our areas. The pseudoscience areas, the pseudomedicine areas, it is still strong.

We have a body in Australia designed to vet advertising by medical groups called Therapeutic Goods Association. It is fairly toothless. It does make announcements and does tell certain advertisers to cut all the supplies’ advertising when advertising a certain way.

But by and large, it is nowhere near as effective as it should be because it is nowhere near as effectively sourced as it should be. It doesn’t do testing of medical products. It is about the promotion of medical products.

It is not quite the equivalent of the FDA or something like that. It is a constant source of frustration when it is seen to be by, in a benign way, endorsing traditional Chinese medicine and other areas. If it is traditional, how do we argue against it?

We would argue, “Quite easily.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: In many cases, they’re avoiding the issue in some areas. For instance, they say that there are certain terms that you can use on packaging for products, “This can be used for blah blah blah.” A particular treatment or condition, some of the things allowed through in traditional Chinese areas is ridiculous and laughable: “Unleash the fluids of hope” or something like this.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: The yin and the yang, and the chi, and all this sort of stuff. You say, “Really? You really want people to say this on the packs of the products” [Laughing].

Jacobsen: “Unleash the fluids of hope” is two men drinking at the bar.

Mendham: [Laughing] I forget what some of the terminology was. There were some brilliant ones. Some absolutely brilliant ones, which we absolutely blasted. But they are a joke. Some of the ‘medical’ terminology used for these medical products, especially the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) end of it.

The TCM movement is probably is stronger here in Australia than creation science movement There is a bit of infiltration into medical areas. Things like that of complementary medicine being slipped in under the guise of science and scientific experiments.

There’s one particular body called the National Institute of Complementary Medicine, which is in a university in Sydney. It is largely funded by the complementary medicine industry, especially in the Chinese complementary medicine areas.

That is supposedly doing serious research, which, from our view, we would applaud. The research in these areas. But we think this is heavily weighted in favour of these areas and leaning towards them. A lot of universities, at the same time, are dropping complementary medicine and TCM courses.

Skeptics had a big campaign a couple of years ago showing the huge range of these courses in Australian universities who were not just doing research, which is fine, but actually teaching how to be practitioners of these things.

These had to be the inspiration for the creation of Friends of Science in Medicine that are against teaching the pseudosciences and pseudomedicines, especially in the universities.

Jacobsen: Good for them, thank you for their work.

Mendham: Of course, they’re a cabal being paid for by Big Pharma [Laughing], as we all are [Laughing]. I wish. I would have a lot more money if I was paid for by Big Pharma. I don’t know anybody receiving money from anybody, except in the case of volunteers or bequests.

Jacobsen: It is not to say it doesn’t happen. It is just rare.

Mendham: Yes, I think it is very rare. There may be some researchers in universities who are getting grant funding by pharmaceutical groups. We fund research in universities. That could be see as being biased. But it is very hands off.

In fact, we insist on being hands off, getting the results, doing research of interest to us, it doesn’t necessarily align 100% with what we believe, but it is worth doing. There are no doubts that there are pharmaceutical companies funding research.

There are also complementary groups funding research. There are some complementary groups selling supplements and get funding, and celebrity endorsements.

Jacobsen: Even if we take the fundamental premise of taking those who would take the Big Pharma payoffs, to be fair, let’s say the people are paid off, the medical researchers are paid off. Thus, the research is biased.

But then, the alternative research is not done. Therefore, by their conclusion, the alternative research is more substantiated. All this means, to me, is the alternative research hasn’t been done. So, it’s also unsubstantiated at that same time.

Mendham: Yes. Someone said to me, who was a small supplier of alternative medicines and things, “All this demand for research. We cannot afford to do research.” I said, “You cannot also afford to say ‘It’s true.’”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: They say, “The other side is wrong. Therefore, we’re right.” The university should have a control over the research. The propriety of the research that they do. They are not seen to be just making steps to make the grant supplier happy.

Certainly, in this complementary medicine area, it is designed to influence and get the results, the imprimatur of science that they need to put out there to persuade people and, perhaps, even in the government areas.

We have a system in Australia, where we have private health insurance companies. The health system is free. Hospital is free – hospital and general medical. The things

Jacobsen: Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan set ours up in Canada.

Mendham: Ours was set up many years ago by a left wing government, by a Labour government in Australia. The Conservatives tried to diminish it. It was brought back stronger. Medicare is regarded as a very successful system.

Like the NHS, you still have private practitioners if you want to go to them and pay more – and you pay. So, that happens. But in the specialist areas, and hospital areas, people take out insurance if they want to – if they don’t want to go through the public system.

As under resourced in some areas, they may want a private practitioner. They can get a private insurer. But it is a bit expensive. It is a bit subsidized by the government a bit to take the pressure off the publics system.

What the government said recently, “We will not support any insurance that funds the following areas: homeopathy, Reiki,” and a whole bunch of alternative practices that they say, “Have no scientific foundation.” Therefore, they cannot fund those activities.

It is a pretty radical movement. It certainly put a lot of the practitioners of those things up in arms, saying, “It was a freedom of practice,” essentially. You can still get the treatments. But you have to pay for them yourself.

It is a gradual process to try and alert people and the authorities. These things do not have scientific validity, or, at least, a lot, for the claims in a lot of areas. Alternative practitioners keep saying, ‘We can cure cancer.” It is illegal to say that in Australia.

If you say that we have something that can cure cancer rather than treat cancer, then it is instantly jumped upon by the authorities, fined, and then debarred for saying so. There ain’t no such thing, unfortunately. That works in such a way. That is 100% successful.

There is a movement to control some of these more outlandish organizations or practices. There are a whole lot of other areas that are a whole lot more active. There is still chiropractic and a whole lot of others areas. In fact, the chiropractic movement was trying to portray itself as the primary healthcare movement.

You would go to a chiropractor to diagnose your problems and, perhaps, diagnose medication for it, which is a very dangerous proposal. That is pseudomedicine. It is still the biggest area that we will be looking at.

But it is a continuation of what we have always done. There is nothing particularly new on the horizon, except for the occasional thing that pops its head up in the “whack-a-mole approach” [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Mendham: You hit it here. It pops up elsewhere. I do not know if there is a new thing down the tracks. Except, personally, I would like to ramp things up on the psychic industry because I see that as a danger.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, again, Tim.

Mendham: It’s okay, pleasure.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/02

Rebecca Hale is an American icon of the humanist movement. She is the Former President of the American Humanist Association, Co-Owner of EvolveFISH.com, Co-Founder of the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs, and a current Board Member of Humanists International (formerly International Humanist and Ethical Union). She became a Member of the American Humanist Association in 1996 and then served as Vice President from 2005 to 2012.

Here we catch up and continue discussion on women freethinkers, and more.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What personal accomplishments make you most proud as true achievements – within the secular movement as a woman over time?

Rebecca Hale: There have been a couple of things. The first and the one that really started it all was EvolveFISH. My husband, Gary, and I were watching and experiencing the pressure and influence of the evangelical, radical religious right in our own community. And It was the thing that brought me into view by the American Humanist Association.

What we did with EvolveFISH was really grow the movement into a wider arena, we gave people symbols to use to express themselves and knowledge of the movement and of the ability to be non-theistic, and not be isolated. I often, speak of our early days before www. and the internet, we did print advertising.

That is how long ago. We used 800 numbers. A person would see an ad in Discover Magazine or even Playboy; and they would call us. People were, literally, in their closets. They did not want their families to know. The idea of other people out there who did not believe was starling and lifesaving for many people.

Bringing the movement out of the deep academic institutions where it had lived and putting it into the mainstream where people would see it in magazines, it was a major accomplishment. I did not do this myself. My husband, Gary, was very, very involved.

So, growing the movement, has been something that we have really been very active in. Along with that, when I was elected to the American Humanist Association (AHA) board, was pushing the AHA to be more activist oriented. The humanist movement was largely still an intellectual space while the atheist contingent was more of a common movement of people who had been burned by religion and for the most part, angrier.

The humanist movement was more intellectual and buried in academic institutions. It had the whole elitist kind of aura around it. Can I use “aura” [Laughing] in a secular view?

What I did in AHA was push us to be more activist, more involved on the grassroots level, get out of the ivory tower, and look at how humanism can be applied, and should be applied in everyday life, it is not just a philosophy to think about. It is an active thing.

Humanism is a way people live their lives. I think that the background from Evolve Fish and knowing how many customers we had helped me understand that there were many more functional humanists out in the world than our organizations knew. EvolveFISH had one of the first websites out there. One of the first to use the internet for commercial purposes. We had a website out there before the internet was the great marketplace; and we used it to spread ideas as well as advertise products.

I had a sense of the demand. I had a sense of the growing interest in the United States and in Canada, because we had a lot of customers from Canada – and around the world. I had a sense of the growing interest in secularism.

On the AHA board, I was able to give us (AHA) a bigger vision. That we are not just this oppressed minority. We are where the populations want to go. We must remove the politics and the politicians and to talk about what people are really feeling, really looking for, in their lives.

It is a growing movement. There are vast numbers of unclaimed humanists We had to look at it, again. How do we find them? How do we engage them? Those were the motivations on the larger scale. To identify the vast numbers of people who are functional humanists, people living their lives with humanist values. All the while not knowing that there is a name for their way of bing in the world. And that there are others like them.

As far as being on the board of the American Humanist Association or on any board, when you are on the board, it takes very strong personalities who get involved in this movement.

The average person doesn’t get involved, like they traditionally do with churches and religion. The every day humanist is busy living their life, going to work, spending their energies with their families, often focused on other community involvement. The people who are willing to stand out and, maybe, unthinkingly make themselves a target are the ones who end up on the boards and who end up in the leadership positions, and who end up joining these organizations.

One thing I brought to the AHA board was the ability to weather the strong personalities. Sometimes, you get people who can be almost toxic on the boards – very difficult personalities are on these boards because strong people are in these movements. People with strong ideals and outspoken and sometimes not particularly easy to get along with.

It is important to be able to step back, not take them personally, not get your own ego involved, look at what they are trying to say, look at what they are trying to say, in order to keep the board cohesive and moving forward. I think I was successful at that while I was president. I think those are the primary achievements that I can look at during that time.

Jacobsen: Who have been the most outstanding and outspoken secular women in the last decade?

Hale: This is really a tough one. There are so many women who are active, some with big national profiles and some working on the local level. In my experience, women are often the drivers and I don’t see them as in short supply or underclass. There are women who have been really friends and mentors to me, who did not always agree with them on everything. Bobby Kirkhart who, I think, a lot of people may not know anymore, has been a strong, caring and compassionate leader of Atheists United and Atheist Alliance. She is very much a leader in this movement.

I have a whole list here, more than I will remember or that we have time to discuss. Some that have been here a long time and continue with their head down and continue their work. Margaret Downey is an incredibly effective and energetic person, who has been in the trenches for a long time and has been involved with many of the national organizations.

There are – before the call we talked about philosophers – people like Rebecca Newberger Goldstein with influence more on the intellectual level, and her work is inspiring.

Greta Christina has done wonderful work. She has written books that are straightforward and clear and lectured all over the country. She is writing a column for AHA. Greta has a wonderfully obvious way of addressing the issues that people deal with.

There is Debbie Allen. I think she is going to keep moving forward. Mandisa Thomas and Black Nonbelievers, she is really taking on a big task and doing well with it. Of course, Annie Laurie Gaylor from FFRF.

Sarah Haidar, with Ex-Muslims of North America, that is putting her life on the line. She is soft spoken and delivers a strong clear powerful message.

I am focusing on the United States. I am focusing on the people who I know in the United States. I have seen the local leaders of so many of the chapters of the American Humanist Association. People active in Foundation Beyond Belief, like Noelle George.

Local leaders in atheist and Meetup groups, so many of them are women. They are doing fantastic things. We have these luminary names on the national or international stage. They are out there saying things for the public, their names are often familiar and there are the women whose names you don’t know if you aren’t in the local group.

The leaders of the local groups at the grassroots are, very often, women. They are creating good reputations for the secular community. There is a local woman here. Her name is Crystal Starkey. Her group focuses on charitable events and social justice issues, and thensome social activities.

She has created an entire community, an entire support network for non-theists. It is duplicated all over the country. I am sure it is happening in Canada and in some of the South American countries. Many of these local leaders who are women, who are unsung heroes.

You do not read about them because they have not written books. You do not hear about them because they have not done something that makes headlines. But they are right there making the movement with the people in their communities. They are right there in their communities.

Then you have women like Monica Miller, the AHA attorney, who argued the Supreme Court case on the cross and now leads our Appignani Legal Center. There are hundreds of others.

There are a lot of women in the movement. We will get to that when we get to another question that you have here.

Jacobsen: What initiatives have worked to include secular women more in the public and institutional spaces of the secular communities and organizations? What ones have been abject failures?

Hale: In my experience, which is largely focused on the American Humanist Association, they told the nominating committee to look to get an equal balance of gender and race on the AHA board. They went out and searched for women to be on the board.

Humanists are humanists [Laughing]. We kept voting for women and for diversity. At AHA we may have more than the majority of the board now that are women. I think it is a targeted activity by the nominating committees with the follow through by the membership if it is a voting membership, which we have at the AHA. I think it was very effective.

When we put together our conferences and publications, when we look for the speakers or the awardees, we make a conscientious effort to look for women and people of color to be awardees or to be speakers. It is a targeted, intentional activity.

I think it has been very effective. As a result, AHA does not look – like my husband used to call them – a “bunch of grey beards” sitting around.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] or gray chops like an Isaac Asimov.

Hale: [Laughing] yes, we have put them (women and people of color) up where they can role models and made a space for them. I think it has been effective.

As far as the glaring failure, this is something that I was personally offended by. The Women in Secularism conferences, I was personally offended to have them putting on a conference by men with the theme of “Why are there no women in leadership?”

At the time, I was President of the AHA. The AHA had an equal split of gender on the board. I was very familiar with Margaret Downey and the Freethought Society and Bobby Kirkhart, and Atheists United, and Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Ellen Johnson who had been president of American Atheist, and Mandisa Thomoas had Black Nonbelievers going on at the time, I think Sarah Haider (Ex-Muslims of North America) was active then.

There were plenty of women leaders. It was offensive. It was misogynist to have a group that was largely male proclaiming that there are no women leaders, which only proved to me: they were not seeing us. Because we were clearly there. I would say, “That’s a big fail.”

Jacobsen: In a sense, it does not amount to a standard sense of a failure. It amounts to a failure to take stock and look around.

Hale: Yes, to see.

Jacobsen: The blindness connected to the lack of inquisitiveness were the offensive part of it.

Hale: Exactly.

Jacobsen: For secular women in the 2010s, what seems like the most significant achievement as a cohort or sub-demographic of the secular community?

Hale: I think it is moving the secular movement out of the pure academic and intellectual box. So, we are more relevant to everyday life. Secular women are motivated by practicality and action. I think women tend to be more practical than men.

Jacobsen: H.L. Mencken called women the supreme realists of the species.

Hale: [Laughing] I agree. It is not enough to sit around and talk about the issue. We want to make the world better, and better for our children or better for our friends or better for our spouses or boyfriends or partners or whatever.

Maybe, it is the maternalistic gene. I am not sure. But I think it is the practicality of getting this inculcated into the general society and being activist.

Jacobsen: Any recommended annual events, authors, speakers, or organizations? For instance, international fireworks, I am a huge fan of…

Hale: …[Laughing] I think it is a lot of fun. [Ed. We talked about probably two hours before and fireworks came up. I knew next to nothing before Becky telling me about it.] I am proud. One of the other things that I pushed for when I was the president of the AHA was a conference that would be more accessible to everybody.

The last AHA conference, we did that. It was online. It was far more complex than I had originally envisioned. But I think that it worked out. The speakers were phenomenal. It is going to be up on the YouTube channel. It gave accessibility. So, people who did not have the financial wherewithal or the time to travel and to go to a conference; they could see it. It was free.

Jacobsen: I have seen this done with fireworks conferences and performances.

Hale: I am going to get you [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Hale: It was a very low carbon footprint. Because I am concerned about the environment. It allows people to be involved without having to use carbon to get there.

The other event that I am going to pitch is the World Humanist Congress 2020 Beyond Borders, Our Global Humanist Culture. It will be in Miami, FL, August 6-9

It is a wonderful opportunity to see how humanism or secularism is being practiced around the world. And it is open to everyone, we invite you to come and join in the meetings, festivities and camaraderie.

There will be people from Africa and talks about what they are doing in Africa. There are people from South America. There are people from Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Malaysia. I am not sure if there is anybody in Malaysia.

Jacobsen: Oh! There is, MASH.

Hale: It is wonderful to see what is going on around the world because it is much different than this confrontational thing that happens here in the United States. It is a wonderful opportunity to meet people from around the world.

It is wonderful to see how similar and how different people can be. I did not have a chance to come up with speakers. I know Seth Andrews does a wonderful job as the Thinking Atheist to reaching out to people who are curious as to how to move out of their Christianity or Evangelicalism to secularism.

Aron Ra is more on the science side and a great speaker. Greta Christina, there are a lot of really, good presenters in the movement. People who can help you think about various aspects of it, and how to move it forward in the world.

But I did not get a good list together for you, Scott, too short of a period. My fault; [Laughing] I should have asked you for the questions sooner.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Becky.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12/01

Joe C. comes from Rebellion Dogs Publishing and Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers AA Group. Here we talk about his life, work, and views.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, education, and religion or lack thereof?

Joe C: Grew up with a 2^nd Gen Canadian Scottish father and a 2^nd Generation Canadian Icelandic mother. My father was from a rural Ontario farm and my mom was 9^th of 11 kids of Icelandic immigrants on a Saskatchewan farm. Mom and dad met at Ryerson University. My dad was atheist, my mother was religious, I went to a catholic school in the Montreal area, mostly as my dad wanted to please his catholic parents. I attended church until grade six or seven when I let religion go, along with tooth fairies, Santa, ghosts, etc.

Jacobsen: What is personal background including the discovery or development of a secular outlook on life and philosophy?

Joe C: The best I can recall, I didn’t reject religion; I just outgrew it. I loved music so there were songs about the Devil and the Lord that I might sing along to, but I didn’t treat that sort of storytelling as a literal interpretation or worldview. In my teens, I was increasingly engaged in drugs and drinking. If the topic of Supernatural intervening higher powers came up, I would say, “What’s more likely: that a god created humans in its image, or we created a god in our image?” I don’t know who said it but I would quote, “If there were no gods, man would create one.”

I bottomed out with drugs and alcohol in my teens and I was introduced to AA in Montreal in the mid-1970s. According to AA’s membership survey 1% (approx.. 20,000) of members are under the age of 20)[i].  A lot of the groups would read the 12-steps which refer to turning one’s will and life over to “God as you understand Him.” I was already a pretty committed nonbeliever, but I didn’t take the higher power and prayer part of the package seriously or literally and no one was pushing any monotheistic ideology on me. The early AA literature is of course informed by the Judeo/Christian 1930s America that it came from but in the 1970s in Montreal anyway, the focus of an AA meeting was talking about the characteristics and personal experiences of alcoholism and strategies for recovery.

AA, along with the book Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book) from 1939, published Living Sober (1973) which, to this day, is the most secular of AA literature. Living Sober is practical collective experience about just thinking about sobriety one day at time, how to find a positive attitude about recovery, how to avoid the mental traps and rationalizations that lead to drinking, how to deal with social situations that involve drinking, the evidence of alcoholism as a progressive, incurable disease, finding connections and making a new sober network. The older literature wasn’t a focus of AA meetings I attended in Montreal, certainly not in the mid-1970s. So, the blatant religious language of Alcoholics Anonymous didn’t dominate the meetings. I remember when Star Wars came out and the movies idea of “May The Force be with you” had more influence on how AAs talk about reliance on a higher power than the blatant monotheism of early AA. I was always encouraged to forge my own path in AA recovery and no one’s worldview was foist upon me.

Jacobsen: What is Rebellion Dogs Publishing? What are some of its activities, projects, and its overall vision?

Joe C: I’m a writer—songs and non-fiction mostly. I’d been writing about finance, music, billiards and odds-and-sods and at the turn of the century. As my son developed an interest in music, he and I shared a passion for songwriting – sometimes collaborating. We recorded an EP in 2005 of original songs when he was in grade 10. The turn of century and our adoption of the internet was the genesis of more addiction/recovery forums (magazines, blogs, social media). I started writing more about peer-to-peer recovery communities and the larger addiction/recovery/wellness complex. The Rebellion Dogs tag-line is, “A contemporary look at 12-Step life, now with less dogma and more bite!”

In the 80s I was part of a band with my son’s mother—we were all in AA—and Cathy wrote a song called “Rebellion Dogs” It’s a play on words from a line out of an AA book, Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions which reads, “Rebellion dogs our every step at first.”

I loved her song because she made a verb out of the noun and a noun out of the verb. The song stuck with me and the name, Rebellion Dogs sounded perfect for a forward-thinking publishing company focused on addiction and mental health. My publishing company is where I channel the bulk of my addiction/recovery writing. I write for TheFix.com under a pseudonym, Jesse Beach and I wrote a secular daily reflection book for people in recovery from substance use and behavioral disorders called Beyond Belief: Agnostic Musings for 12 Step Life (2013). These daily reflection books are wildly popular in the recovery community, but they were almost entirely catering to those who believe in a prayer-answering, recovery-granting higher power. There are plenty of those, so I wrote a book for the rest of us.

https://rebelliondogspublishing.com also features links, resources and my podcast. For over ten year’s I’ve done a weekly radio show devoted to Canadian independent music (www.indiecan.com) so a magazine-style recovery themed radio show was something I had the skills for so I thought I would do it. It’s a gateway for talking to other authors, visiting trade shows and conference for addiction treatment professionals, policy makers etc.

In terms of vision, the initial inspiration for Rebellion Dogs was to give more of a voice and legitimacy to the secular approach to mutual-aid recovery. AA and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), while their aim is inclusivity, not exclusivity, it seemed to me—I don’t represent the views of AA as a whole—that AA meetings were getting more rigid and dogmatic while the rest of society was growing more liberal. Insistence on adherence to the Twelve Steps, exactly as written, isn’t the AA I grew up in and, in part, Rebellion Dogs was a vehicle to give a voice to a more secular narrative of AA philosophy.

Belief in God isn’t going out of style anytime soon but there is a healthy and growing secular culture inside AA (and other 12-Step fellowships). Also meeting the demand for an irreligious approach, we see the emergence of SMART Recovery, Life Ring, Women for Sobriety and SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety). James Christopher, who founded SOS in the mid-80s was frustrated by the automaton talk about dependency on an intervening higher power to get sober. He shared with me once in an interview, “AA Is a religion in denial.”

While I don’t think that’s a universal truth; every AA group is free to conduct itself as it sees fit so there are many flavours of AA. Still, I share his frustration as I’ve heard AA members, in so many words, say to a newcomer, “AA is spiritual—not religious. Now hold my hand while we recite the Lords Prayer.”

Today, the options are better than ever, and peer-to-peer groups are meeting the growing appetite for a secular narrative about recovery. At the other end of the spectrum there is Alcoholics Victorious and other fellowships that are very Christian. So, while Rebellion Dogs is still catering to a secular-minded audience, I spend less time legitimizing atheist/agnostic 12-Step approaches within Rebellion Dogs Publishing and I just focus on the issues at hand in AA and the larger addiction/recovery community.  

Jacobsen: As a member of the Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers AA Group in Toronto, what is the community there? How is this important for alcoholics, i.e., a freethought community of alcoholics as a coalition of the supportive?

Joe C: AA isn’t needed or wanted by everyone who’s choosing sobriety over alcohol use disorder. But just like if you want to get in shape, hanging out at the gym will be a better influence than hanging out with your smoking friends. Secular AA groups are like other special purpose AA groups. There are AA groups for the LGBTQ+ community, women only, men only, young people, and sometimes career specific—pilots, lawyers, doctors, for instance. In my early AA, as a youth, I wasn’t so excited about being sober the rest of my life. I didn’t share my ambivalence with fellow AAs but I was planning my exit strategy in the back of my mind while I shared how grateful I was to be sober in AA. At the time, young people’s groups connected me with AA in a way that mainstream meetings hadn’t. Getting to know sober people in their teens and twenties framed living clean and sober in ways that made being an alcoholic seem less like a handicap. Young people’s AA groups were full of people who spoke my language about addiction and recovery. So the idea of secular meetings to help meet the needs for atheists and agnostics made sense to me.

There were six to ten of us who started Beyond Belief in 2009. AA is very regional, some meetings are more conservative, some liberal, some structured, some more spontaneous, attendance might be six people, or six hundred. Formats vary from group to group. There is no mandate from centralized AA about how to run a meeting; any two alcoholics who have an idea can start their own meeting. AA’s Fourth Tradition is “Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.”

In Toronto, at the turn of the century, I felt up against a surging fundamentalism in AA. The majority of AAs are moderate but this louder, dogmatic view of AA was going unchecked and I was tiring from the dismissiveness of some that was directed at a freethinker’s approach. I had been part of an online agnostic/atheist AA community and, at the time, New York City agnostics/atheists in AA’s website posted a list of all the secular AA meetings worldwide. While there have always been AA meetings that were more secular, more liberal than some of the others, the first weekly AA for agnostics and atheists meeting started in Chicago in 1975. Not long after, there were meetings in LA, New York City and by the turn of the century there were over forty of them. In 2019, there are 500 worldwide face-to-face AA meetings + online groups.

In a worldwide fellowship of over 125,000 AA groups (5,000 in Canada), secular AA isn’t taking over but we have always been out there. I decided to go to a secular AA meeting when I was in New York and I brought the idea back to Toronto. A group of us AA members formed a committee, rented a classroom at U of T to hold our weekly meeting and we committed to trying it out for a few months. Well, that was ten years ago; we meet three times a week, now. Another meeting started called We Agnostics and visitors to Toronto would come and check us out and some of them took the idea to their hometown. As of October 2019, of the 500 worldwide secular AA groups, over forty are found spread from Vancouver Island to Halifax.

Some of our early members were outspoken atheists and others were closeted doubters, going along to get along in AA. It was very liberating for me, when it was my time to share, to not have to preface my comments with, “I don’t mean to offend anyone but…” I could just talk about my addiction and recovery in a language that feels natural to me.

Many others feel the same way. Some find a certain microaggression about atheism in some AA meetings. Many meetings pray as part of their format and it’s very popular to read the AA Twelve Steps, written in 1939. To a nonbeliever, you can feel excluded or that you have to bend yourself into the popular higher power vernacular. For those who find that uncomfortable, secular AA avoids all the God-talk. We even have religious people who like our meeting because they don’t want to mix their religious practice with sobriety. Our meetings are neither religious nor irreligious. While the majority of attendees are atheist/agnostic, everyone is welcome.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more touching stories of the individuals who come through secularized forms of AA?

Joe C: I got sober in the mid-1970s. A member who stumbled across our Friday meeting, We Are Not Saints, came to check us out, liked it and came back. As she started telling her story, she’d been introduced to recovery back in the 1970s, too. I got sober in Montreal, and I stayed clean and sober. But Sharon’s Toronto’s east-end experience was different. I found AA members to be indifferent to what I did and didn’t believe; “take what you like, leave the rest,’ was the policy. Sharon found the Toronto meetings alienating with all the God-talk; she never stayed in AA. She’d come to AA when she was pregnant and stay sober for a while but always go back out, not being able to relate to other AA members. In and out she went and when she found an east-end agnostic group over five years ago, she thought, “This could work for me.” Sharon hasn’t had a drink since.

Some of our members started their recovery journey in treatment centers. Some of the Twelve-Step Facilitation based centres can misinterpret a skeptical, questioning client as resisting treatment and some of our members got kicked out of treatment centres or got fed up and left themselves. They didn’t think AA was for them and wondered how they would stay sober. Google searches lead these people to our secular meetings some of the time; hearing how welcome and hopeful they feel, is gratifying. In 2009 we had no idea if we were just a band of rebels or if there was an unmet need for secular AA.

Secular AA groups are better connected than ever before. In the 1970s and ‘80s when agnostic/atheist meetings were started in LA, Austin, Seattle, New York and Chicago, they didn’t have any means in which to communicate with each other. The internet changed all that; we found each other. In 2014 the first International Conference of Secular AA (ICSAA) was held in Santa Monica. In 2016 we gathered again in Austin. In 2018, Toronto hosted ICSAA and in 2020 we’re off to Washington DC to enjoy AA “without a prayer.” An active online secular AA community exists, Zoom meetings, social media groups have formed. A secular AA committee meets quarterly between our biennial conferences to discuss matters of concern for our members. At the 2020 World Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous in Detroit, we’ll have a hospitality suite where likeminded AA members can gather.  

One of our joint efforts has been to encourage AA to offer more secular literature. Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers Groups, along with meetings in Kansas, New York, Seattle and others, all petitioned our district committees to have AA World Services adopt a UK pamphlet (2016) called, “The ‘God’ Word: Agnostics and Atheists in AA.” AA’s 2018 General Service Conference voted with substantial unanimity to adopt the pamphlet and immediately print it in English, Spanish and French. AA’s monthly magazine, AA Grapevine is full of contributions from members. In October of 2016 they devoted the edition to Agnostics and Atheists in AA and last year they published a book called, One Big Tent, a collection of atheist/agnostic contributions from the 1940s to 2017.

Jacobsen: What is an open meeting through the group? What is a closed meeting through the group? 

Joe C: Alcoholics Anonymous is not a secret society but it goes to great lengths to protect the confidentiality of members. The stigma associated with addiction is very real. AA meetings are listed as either “open” or “closed.” Anyone can attend an open AA meeting. Family members, media, students, or curious onlookers can go observe an open meeting. Closed meetings are reserved for people who self-identify as alcoholic or think they might have a problem with drinking. AA talk can get pretty intimate and graphic. Some members would prefer to share their troubles and secrets with others who have been there.

Jacobsen: How can people support the group and become involved?

Joe C: AA doesn’t accept financial support from non-alcoholics. Expenses for room rent, coffee and pamphlets that groups give away are paid for by “passing the hat” at each AA meeting. Only AA members contribute. It’s one of the Twelve Traditions: “AA ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.” Any group that collects an excess beyond a prudent reserve will pass the money on to area committees that do outreach to corrections facilities, treatment centers and the general public, or forward the money on to AA World Services where, unlike at the local level, paid staff are needed to manage publication, communication, etc. So if you’re a non-alcoholic wanting to support an alcoholic in your life, you can attend AA with them for moral support but AA accepts no financial help from the public.

If you’re considering how serious your own drinking is getting away from your control, google Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings. If you specifically want to know more about secular AA, visit https://secularaa.org

According the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Addiction (https://ccsa.ca)  “Alcohol is the most commonly used substance in Canada. It causes more substance use related costs than either tobacco or all other drugs combined.” 80% of Canadians 15 years of age+, report that they drink. While there are 12-Step programs specific to Marijuana, Cocaine, Methamphetamine, Heroin, or Narcotics more generally, AA’s own membership survey reveals that over 60% of AA members have other substance use disorder as well as alcohol.

Jacobsen: What are some good books on secular AA from Canadian authors?

Joe C: Drunk Mom: A Memoir by Jowita Bydlowska if, like me, you enjoy being disturbed by art, Drunk Mom will twist your guts and keep you up at night. Jowita took a beating for writing this book. Critics loved it, but if you think stigma inflicted on persons with addiction is real, there’s a readership who believe there’s a special place in hell for a mother who can’t stay sober. Truth is a pathless land and recovery journeys are no exception. This book will open your eyes to the insatiability of the addictive cycle.

AAagnostica.org has a number of titles published. Not all the authors are Canadian, but publisher, Roger C lives in Hamilton. He’s got a couple of titles of his own. Start with Do Tell! a follow up to Don’t Tell! Both are collections of AA stories. Don’t Tell looks at, how in more conservative AA circles, atheists stay closeted or sometimes face microaggression or discrimination for refuting the cherished idea held by AA’s more religious members that only consciousness with God can ensure a real alcoholic lasting sobriety. Do Tell has a more liberated tone as these stories are drawn from a time where there is growing access to atheist and agnostic AA meetings – here in Canada, at the time of writing BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all have secular AA meetings and https://secularaa.org has several online meetings to choose from throughout the week. Considering there were no active secular AA meetings early in 2009 and ten years later there are 41, AA “without a prayer” may be the fastest growing subculture in the peer-to-peer recovery community. Besides AA meetings, there are regional gatherings starting all the time and secular recovery podcasts, social media groups and blogs available. So, my point is that Do Tell articulates the secular AA journey from a number of different places, personalities and viewpoints. While at https://AAagnostica.com consider A History of Agnostics in AA and The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps – both by Roger C.

Key Players in AA History is by Durham’s Bob K. It’s not about secular AA; it’s about AA’s checkered pasts and remarkable personalities, told through the eyes of an AA heathen with 28 years of continuous sobriety.

Michael Bryant’s 28 Seconds is another memoir that includes a descent into addiction and 12-Step recovery. While Bryant’s worldview isn’t clearly articulated, he does focus his discussion about the secular aspects of AA recovery: fellowship, mentorship, personal reflection and an attitude adjustment. His follow-up, Mere Addiction is worth adding to your basket, too. It’s a critical look the Canadian justice system and the counter productive results of criminalizing addiction. As an alcoholic and a former Attorney General, he’s got most of the bases covered.  

There are some other Canadian authors who don’t faun over the 12-Step approach but they offer an intelligent and independent look at addiction today. Try Ann Dowsett Johnston’s Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women And Alcohol and Marc Lewis, who has two books I’ve enjoyed but for drama, start with Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines his Former Life on Drugs.

Jacobsen: What is the typical internal narrative colouring the journey of alcoholics without supernaturalism?

Joe C: Spontaneous remission is a thing for people suffering from alcohol use disorder (and/or other substances). Many people reach a crossroads with addiction, chose recovery and spontaneously—without outside agency— “put the plug in the jug” and live sober. What peer-to-peer members, like 12-step members, have in common is that their unaided will was insufficient to quit, or more accurately, stay stopped.

In my case, I quit drugs and alcohol on more occasions than I can remember, to pursue my own goals, to win the trust of loved ones, from the shame and shock of unintended hospital visits. In my cases, between the age of 14 and 16, I was brought to hospital on a Friday night three times:

First, having been found unconscious, face-up in my own vomit on a bathroom floor by the Zamboni driver of my high school arena.

Secondly, to have emergency facial reconstruction for a beating taken from Satan’s Choice bikers because I was selling hashish in their territory and my freelancing wasn’t to be tolerated.

My third visit was to have my wrists stitched after a suicide attempt in a drunken stupor. All of these events startled me into quitting for good this time, only to be back to my own behavior before the wounds healed. I could quit; I did many times. I could not stay stopped. No indignity was so great that I couldn’t normalize it and continue my addiction.

I didn’t stay stopped until I was in the company of fellow addicts/alcoholics, I didn’t join AA, signing up for a life of abstinence. I was bringing my cousin whom I thought would die without finding sobriety and I was her sober alcoholic/addict buddy. I don’t recall exactly what my exit strategy was but loosely I thought I would stay until she was stable, she would carry the message of hope to others while I slipped out the back door and died a tragic alcoholic death. I don’t know why I was resigned to death from addiction but when I was new to recovery, I saw sobriety as a punishment for admitting I was alcoholic. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll sounded inseparable. Sobriety sounded to me like a provisional life.

The unintended consequences of helping my cousin was that I began to see value in recovery. Straight-edge people I met were joining bands and going to concerts, mountain climbing, travelling, finishing school, starting jobs and seeing all these things through with integrity and competence. I came to see that recovery might be the key to a more meaningful life—not just the life of a quitter.

What did I need to stay stopped? Outside agency. For me, it was the power of example of other alcoholics, especially the youth who seemed to speak my language and share common goals and dreams. I found connection in positive example and that wore off on me. I felt accountable to someone other than myself. I was immersed in an AA community. So, the times that I got thirsty or sought oblivion, I didn’t want to let others down. I felt that they were counting on me. I don’t know if that was true or not but feeling that way certainly aided my abstinence.  

What I just described is a secular explanation of addiction and recovery. A believer might describe this transformation as being touched by the hand of a loving higher power. When AA was a few years old, founder Bill W wrote, “Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling and powerful. But there is One who has all power, that One is God. May you find Him now.” He would later concede that this binary narrative led to erroneous conclusions.  

I felt a power, but it wasn’t supernatural. It was a power of example. It was hope, it was accountability.

All AA members share the same relatable experience of spiraling alcoholism and how each alcoholic found sobriety. Recovery isn’t a reprieve from troubles, it provides better coping mechanisms to deal with sorrow, anger or self-doubt. This experience of AA is universal. A supernatural vs a secular explanation of addiction and recovery can make it sound like this same experience is two different things. The experience is the same. Explanations vary greatly.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Joe C: AA has some zealots and some outspoken critics. I believe they both share the same myth about AA being a one-size-fits-all solution. That hasn’t been my experience; nothing is sacred, and nothing is forbidden. AA meetings are as varied as drinking establishments. Some might like fancy cocktails served by waitstaff in tuxedos. Others want live music and others prefer a skid row vibe. Secular AA isn’t a better system than a spiritual approach but it’s legitimate AA. It’s been ten years since we started Beyond Belief Agnostics & Freethinkers AA group. Some of our members stick to a strict diet of atheist/agnostic meetings. Others mix in secular AA with mainstream AA, taking what they like and leaving the rest. I first saw AA and living sober as a real possibility from my exposure to Young People’s AA meetings. For other people, LGBTQ+ AA or women’s only meetings were the jam that helped them connect.

AA has an outreach slogan: If you want to drink and can, that’s your business. If you want to quit but can’t, that’s our business; call AA. Abstinence isn’t the answer to everyone and AA isn’t the only road to abstinence, but for someone test driving sobriety, try a variety of things and consider secular AA.

Anyone with questions or comments can reach me directly at secularaa@gmail.com

Scott Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Joe.

---

[i] https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/p-48_membershipsurvey.pdf

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/30

Takudzwa Mazwienduna is the informal leader of Zimbabwean Secular Alliance and a member of the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe. This educational series will explore secularism in Zimbabwe from an organizational perspective, and some more.

Here we talk about Zimbabwean humanists and science, and vigilance.

—

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Zimbabwean humanists, as with other nations’ humanists, will remain a minority for the foreseeable future. Its emphasis on science may limit the degree to which individuals may adhere to the principles of humanism as a complete set. What will be some barriers involving scientific topics into the mainstream of the culture through the advancement of humanism with science component and chip of it?

Takudzwa Mazwienduna: Indeed, scientific literacy is a barrier since many Zimbabweans do not take the discipline as seriously as they do religion. Most of them understand science as a Western concept rather than the universal aspect it is.

Most people see it as a troublesome useless subject that should stay in the classroom and be done only by those crazy enough to be interested in it. Most Zimbabweans also probably can’t tell the difference between science and Scientology.

Implicating science in worldview matters won’t fly in most Zimbabwean circles. If anything, most will see it as Satanism as they do everything else that contradicts their Christian beliefs.

Jacobsen: What does this minority status within the larger religious demographics mean for the humanist community in Zimbabwe in political and social involvement (when that time comes as it must)?

Mazwienduna: It means the Humanist Society in Zimbabwe should remain vigilant and bold if they want to stay relevant in socio-political circles. We should stand up for secularism every time it is compromised and as long as the law is on our side, making sure it is enforced is the best we can do. All the weight we can give it.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Takudzwa.

Mazwienduna: Thank you, Scott.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/29

Dr. David L. Orenstein is a Full Professor of Anthropology at Medgar Evers College of the CUNY (City University of New York) who has authored two books: Godless Grace: How Non-Believers are Making the World Safer Richer and Kinder (2015) and Darwin’s Apostles (2019). In early professional training, Orenstein was a  primatologist, he grew into a prominent national (American) and international humanist and freethinker with a noteworthy civil rights and human rights activist history through the American Humanist Association (AHA). He represents the AHA at the United Nations through the NGO/DPI program. Also, Orenstein is an ordained humanist chaplain who serves on the board of several local and national groups including The Broader Social Impacts Committee of the Hall of Human Origins/Smithsonian Institution, and the Center for Freethought Equality, and The Secular Humanist Society of New York.

Here we talk about the United Nations and humanism.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, there is an older and, I believe, deceased humanist of modest prominence named Corliss Lamont. He talked about the United Nations and humanists as a community, and Humanism as a life stance or a philosophical worldview. [Ed. Also, Lamont invented a wonderful neologism: “Omniabsent.”]

Dr. David Orenstein: I think there’s a lot of ways The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is very strongly related to positivity in humanism at its most grandiose view of the world. If you look at the Preamble of the UDHR, it mentions the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.

That, to me, is the start of the humanist manifestos. If you look at the Humanist Manifesto III, by the nature of being born, we have social, livable rights. That not only should exist but can be impinged upon by another group.

The UDHR defends and declares that people have the right to live where they wish, to receive an education if they wish, and to continue on to be able to speak out freely. The Humanist Manifesto III says the same thing with respect to education and the trust for science.

I think it is doubtful that if you have a respect for education that you would not have a respect for science. I think both of them are human pursuits in order to make the world more livable, the cosmos more understandable.

Jacobsen: What about ideas of freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, and freedom of religion, as a set?

Orenstein: It is the UDHR speaking to those things. They mention freedom of religion. I believe, now; it includes religion or belief. It is the main committee that I sit on. Meaning that, if you choose not to believe that you have an equal right to all those other things, including freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, and to live free from fear of being harmed or harassed by another group because of those things or those belief systems as well.

Jacobsen: What about the freedom of speech or, more generally, freedom of expression, and humanism?

Orenstein: I think you see that. Here’s the thing, the UDHR has been updated several times. The Humanist Manifesto III is on its third iteration. It means that, as time changes, the rules that are applied in the most liberal form have to be re-engineered as we learn more about human nature and as we learn more about protecting the rights of all peoples for all things.

In the United States, there’s the Constitution, which is also saying, “All people are created equal… life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” It was an incomplete document. That is why you have amendments to the Constitution.

That’s why you see a liberal secular democracy, like the United States, was looking to be going through these changes as time moves slower. We see this in the UDHR. You see this happening to the Humanist Manifesto III.

They have in common the trying to find the sweet spot at the same time as being the guidepost as secular humanists; people who believe in the rights of living freely, and so on. The Humanist Manifesto III doesn’t focus on freedom of speech outright.

This document is an aspirational document, certainly. It talks about human beings having ethical values derived from human experiences, to have a life fulfilled by participation in culture. So, while it might not specifically say, “We have a right to free speech,” just like it’s afforded in the Constitution, at least, in the U.S., it does say almost the same thing.

If I can interpret a little bit, it says that this is an add-on.

Jacobsen: Are the American Ethical Union and the Unitarian Universalists represented alongside the American Humanist Association in the DPI-NGO?

Orenstein: Yes, they are represented alongside minority groups. Their freedom to believe or not, or freedom to express or gather, has been, in some way, impinged by another culture or another government, or another group. 

So, they, certainly, exist in the U.N. mandate of the UDHR. In many ways, we  are just degrees apart when we talk about humanism and some of these ethical culture folks, and so on and so forth.

Jacobsen: What is the status of majority faith – much of the Muslim, Hindu, or Christian – communities around the world versus most of the minority religions or belief structures – as found in Humanism, Unitarian Universalism, or Ethical Culture – afforded their rights within the context of the DPI-BGO?

How does this play out in real terms? When, in real life, majority religions hold a lot of sway and minority religions hold little sway.

Orenstein: We know people, because of their faith, will see any other religion or personal philosophy as a threat to their views, and their way of life. If you just read the most recent Freedom of Thought Report published by Humanists International, you find – lo and behold – in the same places where religious intolerance is most active; those who have non-belief face the same threats.

That is a cause of concern because these nations that are frequently called out in the Freedom of Thought Report are the Member States to the United Nations and are supposed to support [Laughing] the UDHR.

That’s why I say, in many cases, that these are aspirational documents. We know that we want to live in a world where people are treated equally and can live and express themselves as openly and honestly as we wish.

But we find that we’re not there yet. We are a species; that, in some cases, remains very, very tribal. We are a species of human that can, in our worse case scenarios, be very brutal to each other.

We see this time after time after time. However, we’re living in a time, in the 21^st century, where the rise of secularism, atheism, and humanism are making leaps and bounds to such as extent that it can no longer be ignored.

Therein lies the threat, but therein lies the possibility to be more inclusive, if we were to look at not just those countries that fear humanists or atheist, certainly, even if you look at the United States, we have our own set of craziness under Trump.

More and more young people are non-believers. Some insane number, like 70%, of Gen Z-ers – 18-to-24-year-olds – do not go to church. We know the trends are on our side. The problem is, is that power does not relinquish itself easily.

So, you have situations where in these nations, especially those that are openly hostile to nonbelievers and will harm them, a real culture war is ongoing now. It is going around globally.

Jacobsen: “Nonbelievers,” in a global sense and in a regional sense, simply means rejection of the dominant faiths for the most part and the denominations of them, sects of them.

For instance, young people may identify as “nonbelievers,” but they may hold fast to other forms of supernaturalism in a more disjunct form rather than as a coherent philosophy.

Although, I would argue on my own point of a “coherent philosophy” [Laughing].

Orenstein: Look, you’re absolutely right. We can’t think everyone who is a “non-churchgoer” is a nonbeliever. There are people who are religious who are deeply secular who want to keep their religion private, and do not want to see this in the political sense.

I know a lot of people who fight for secular freedom and who have the same understanding that secularism is good for everybody [Laughing] because it is so darn inclusive.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Orenstein.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/28

Graham Pierce is the Secretary for the Oxford Humanists. The United Kingdom is one of the hearts of humanism in the world. Here we talk about his life, work, and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, education, and religion or lack thereof?

Graham Pierce: I was born on Merseyside and come from a working-class background. Neither of my parents were religious. Both had experienced distressing deaths in their families. ‘Praying’ had done nothing, so I guess that caused them to let go of what little religion they had. Also my father had been in the army, seen the army chaplains spouting platitudes and felt the church was there as an arm of the Establishment and no friend of the working classes.

Jacobsen: What is personal background including the discovery or development of a humanistic outlook on life and philosophy?

Pierce: The only religious education/indoctrination I had came from school. The grammar school I attended paid the usual lip service to religion. It was an age when people would ask for your ‘Christian name’ and you would automatically write ‘C of E’ in the ‘religion’ box on forms.

I was more concerned about the concept of infinity. The paradox of infinity seeming to be an impossibility. Nothing could be infinite, but if you put a boundary to it there had to be something beyond the boundary; which brought you right back to infinity again. In a similar vein, if there were a god then what came before god? Who made god and what made that? None of this god-stuff impressed me.

When I was in the sixth form we took turns reading the lesson in morning assembly. One day when it was my turn the Head was standing at the lectern announcing that today’s hymn would be ‘God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform’, at which the deputy head who was standing alongside me whispered ‘Too darn right He does’. It summed up the spirit of those times: It’s ok to be a non-believer, but whisper it quietly and don’t rock the boat.

Jacobsen: The milieu of Oxford and the United Kingdom seems more conducive to the population accepting humanist values. Both hold a special valence in the minds of the West.

Pierce: I had lived all my life in the North West of England until, at 57, I came down to Oxford to work at Sir Michael Sobell House, a hospice with an international reputation. Oxford is a city which draws in people keen to work in world-class facilities, whatever their area of work. That’s one thing that makes the city special.

From an incomer’s perspective I notice the vast wealth the Oxford colleges have. Old buildings are maintained seemingly regardless of cost and when new buildings go up only the best will do. This makes it a joyous city to be in if you have a love of great buildings and the built environment.

In amongst that there are reminders that the university’s roots are in a Christian past and to some degree a Christian present. The city’s cathedral after all does double duty as Christ Church College chapel. Thus whilst it is the city of Dawkins it is also a city of church functionaries and even of brown robed monks. I’m told that evensong in the various chapels is well attended, with even non-believers drawn to attending for the beauty of the music and the rhythm of the occasion. It’s ok to be a non-believer, but whisper it quietly and don’t rock the boat.

Jacobsen: What are the demographics of the Oxford Humanists?

Pierce: As a formal group our numbers are falling. Our membership gets older but younger people are not interested in joining a local group. Nevertheless there is a lively humanist presence in the county. For example there is a humanist member of the local hospital chaplaincy and there are several Humanist UK trained school speakers and ceremonies officiants working locally.

Times are changing. Many of our members, being of an older generation, were brought up with religion and found comfort in joining a local group as they grew beyond that and discovered humanism. Younger people seem to be drawn more to joining national groups, which the internet very much facilitates. How we move with the times in order to stay relevant is something our committee has been giving a lot of thought to this past year. Watch this space!

Jacobsen: What is the best short-form description of humanism ever encountered by you? What is the best long-form description of humanism ever found by you?

Pierce: The definition which Oxford Humanists is adopting is one taken from the Humanists UK web-site:

A Humanist is someone who…

• trusts to the scientific method when it comes to understanding how the universe works and rejects the idea of the supernatural (and is therefore an atheist or agnostic)
• makes their ethical decisions based on reason, empathy, and a concern for others
• believes that, in the absence of an afterlife and any discernible purpose to the universe, human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.

The shortest definition of humanism I can think of is “A non-religious philosophy, based on liberal human values”, though there’s a risk of opening up an endless debate about what ‘liberal’ means.

As a strap line I really like “For the one life we have”. My personal pet hate: “Living without religion”. I don’t like being defined by what I’m not.

Jacobsen: What humanists truly impress you? Why? What books or audiovisual materials have been impactful within the humanist community?

Pierce: Well Richard Dawkins has to be at the top of the list. I’m not sure of the tone of some parts of his latest “Outgrowing God” book (a little too acerbic for me), but the ‘Magic of Reality’ is superb. I’ve just given a copy to my grandson for his thirteenth birthday.

I think in general people impress me first and it’s later I find they are humanists. Stephen Fry and Sandy Toksvig spring to mind. Other people I admire, such as comedian and Marxist curmudgeon Alexei Sayle, strike me as humanists but whether it’s a label they’d want to own I don’t know.

Regarding educational materials for adults, I always point people towards the excellent on-line ‘Futurelearn’ courses devised by Humanists UK. https://humanism.org.uk/education/courses/

Jacobsen: What non-humanist organizations seem like natural allies, as in non-humanist but humanistic organizations?

Pierce: We have a lively local ‘Skeptics in the Pub’ group. I believe there is a group called Cafe Scientifique, though I’ve no personal experience of that. We had a Sunday Assembly in Oxford but that flowered only briefly (Getting the non-religious organised can be a bit like herding cats).

Jacobsen: What are some of the more important secular and humanist projects of Oxford Humanists for community-building and community maintenance?

Pierce: Each year we have a summer party and a winter solstice party for members and friends. Each month we have a Friday evening event where we have some very high quality speakers. We have stands at local community events and university events such as freshers’ week and interfaith fairs.

Over the last decade, we’ve also regularly had an open air stand out on the main pedestrianised shopping street. This is very much welcomed by many people, having run the gauntlet of proselytising Christian and Muslim groups along the street. And it gives us a chance to have interesting conversations with international students and visitors, some of whom welcome talking more freely about atheism and secularism than they would dare to do in their home country. Sadly our ageing members are finding it ever more difficult to erect the gazebo which is an essential part of our street stand, so its continuance is currently under review.

Another sign of the times: as recently as six or seven years ago both our universities (Oxford and Oxford Brookes) had thriving ASH societies [Atheist, Secularist & Humanist]. We were very involved in supporting them and for three years helped organise major “Think Week” events. Sadly neither university currently has an ASH, and Humanists UK tells us this is part of a national trend.

I’d also like to mention the Uganda Humanist Schools Trust, a national charity which Oxford Humanists supports, as do many of our individual members. http://www.ugandahumanistschoolstrust.org/

Jacobsen: What have been important means by which to build bridges rather than burn them, and to set a tone of rational self-defence of self-respect and organizational standing at the right times?

Pierce: We have a presence on the local SACRE [Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education], a peculiarly English institution designed to oversee local RE (Not all SACREs welcome non-religious representatives). [The presence of organised religion as part of our national education system is a major issue too big to pursue here]. We also have a representative on the local interfaith forum and thanks to the persistence of our former Chair we now have official representation at the commemoration ceremony at Oxford’s war memorial each November.

Jacobsen: What will be the next steps for Oxford Humanists?

Pierce: Interesting you should ask that! Our committee’s been thinking long and hard. Local groups with fixed membership structures seem to be having a hard time attracting new members. And as the existing membership grows older it gets more difficult to find active committee members, and to find fit members able to perform what used to be simple tasks such as erecting gazebos or moving furniture prior to meetings.

So where do we fit in to what definitely continues to be a lively humanist/atheist local scene? To that end, we’re looking at how other groups work. Skeptics in the Pub, for example, is thriving despite no formal membership structure, successfully relying on people throwing donations into a bucket on the night. I can’t say any more at this point; we are looking at creative answers to these questions but obviously we need to discuss and get approval from our membership before ‘going public’.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Pierce: I think these are challenging times for locally based organisations of any kind. It is much easier now to feel part of a national group or even, via the internet, to get involved internationally. I also get the impression that life is getting more demanding and all-consuming both for those in work and for students. One of our members queried whether Oxford Humanists has “done it’s job”, as a haven for the generations brought up on religion and who welcomed support and companionship when moving toward humanism. I’m not so sure. Hopefully there will always be a place for a local group reminding people that it’s ok to be a non-believer, and you don’t need any longer to whisper it quietly and not rock the boat.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Graham.

Pierce: You’re welcome.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/27

Amy McGrath is part of Humanists Meath. It is one of the innumerable small, informal, community-oriented, and important humanist groups found throughout the world dependent on the base principles of humanists in addition to the local culture.

Here we talk about Humanists Meath within the context of the Humanist Association of Ireland.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

Amy McGrath: My family are Roman Catholic and that is the background I come from in Ireland. I went to a religious school in Dublin and First Holy Communion and Confirmation were big events in my life, as they were in everyone’s lives in my community.

Jacobsen: Following from the last question, how have these factors influenced personal life and views?

McGrath: Being religious was the norm. However, when I went to University, I experienced things that challenged my beliefs, not so much in God, but in the mechanism of churches and religions. I realised that the function of these organisations is authoritarian: to control and maintain order, as perceived by its leaders. This particularly affected me in relation to my feminist beliefs. I saw how religions have functioned to deny women’s rights for thousands of years, whereas, in the pre-Christian era in Ireland, for example, society was friendlier to women. 

Jacobsen: How does a rejection of the supernatural change the way one lives one’s life? How does an understanding of the natural influence views on life and meaning in the light of the aforementioned rejection?

McGrath: I believe in our ability to acquire knowledge and I have a sense of wonder about the universe. However, my life has changed because I am much less accepting of dogma. I believe this is a good thing. I refuse to allow dogma to influence how I treat others. 

Jacobsen: What are your tasks and responsibilities at Humanists Meath?

McGrath: Humanist Meath is a small, informal group of people who are questioning and intellectually curious. We enjoy discussing philosophical questions without the strictures of strict belief. I must mention that our group is part of the Humanist Association of Ireland, which is a wonderful group that organises talks and events across the country. 

Jacobsen: What does a community event look like? How does the maintenance of humanist culture with events and online fora continue the modern tradition of belief communities without the supernaturalism in a 21st-century context with the internet?

McGrath: We are still the minority in the community. In terms of events, the HAI organises lots for anyone who is interested in taking part. They just had a summer school in Tullamore. 

Jacobsen: How is the integration with the larger culture for Humanists Meath? 

McGrath: People know we are here and are free to come and chat if they like. I feel that we are defiant in the face of those telling us what we should think about. I believe that fear is a major factor in those who adhere to dogma. Of course, I have all the same fears of death etc… but I refuse to allow those fears to dictate my thinking. 

Jacobsen: What are some joint activities with other faith/non-faith groups in the larger community?

McGrath: We haven’t done any joint activities as of yet.

Jacobsen: Who are some recommended speakers, authors, or organizations?

McGrath: We have most recently been reading Julian Huxley. 

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

McGrath: It feels strange that the way you think can be a subversive act but it is. I think this demonstrates how religions have become social structures on which people rely. There is a fear of exclusion and rejection. I feel that we need to look at social groupings critically, and examine how they affect members and the people around them. Sometimes I think that adhering to dogma is just an excuse to not think. Acceptance is easier than criticism, particularly when you are not one of the people affected by the rules of the group.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Amy.

McGrath: You are welcome. 

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/26

Rob Boston is the Senior Adviser and Editor for Church and State of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is the monthly membership magazine. He began work at Americans United in 1987 and authored four books entitled Close Encounters with the Religious Right: Journeys into the Twilight Zone of Religion and Politics (Prometheus Books, 2000), The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition (Prometheus Books, 1996), Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State (Prometheus Books, 1993; second edition, 2003), and Taking Liberties: Why Religious Freedom Doesn’t Give You The Right To Tell Other People What To Do (Prometheus Books, 2014). Mr. Boston can be contacted here: boston@au.org.

Here we talk about the voices needing more coverage.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you like at the submissions and the editorial positions with the secular and freethought communities’ publications, what voices and educational backgrounds seem the least represented and, proportionate to the rest of the demographics and educational attainments of the secular and freethought community, require more coverage and support to bringing more colours into the non-religious rainbow?

Rob Boston: The typical demographic profile for many humanist groups in the U.S. is older, white and male – oftentimes someone with a college education or advanced degrees. Folks who fit that profile have led and built humanism for many years, and I’m grateful for that.

But for humanism to grow in America, it needs to become more diverse. Our nation is becoming increasingly diverse, and that trend will continue. Thus, we need to hear the voices of people of colour, women and younger activists.

I’m also interested in hearing more from members of the LGBTQ+ community since conservative forms of religion have been used to suppress LGBTQ rights for centuries. Finally, I think we need to dispel the idea that humanism is only for people who have college degrees or a large amount of formal education.

Humanism is for everyone and must be accessible to everyone. As someone who comes from a working-class background, I’m well aware of what humanism has to offer members of this community. I want to hear their voices and learn from them.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rob.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/26

Kim Newton, M.Litt. is the Executive Director of Camp Quest Inc. (National Support Center). We will learn some more about Camp Quest in an educational series.

Here we talk about major supports and networks for the US wing of Camp Quest, the impacts of different demographics on the functioning of Camp Quest, and financial barriers and overcoming them, and the concrete points of contact in the mission of Camp Quest.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What have been the major supports and networks helping to build the US wing of Camp Quest?

Kim Newton: Our success has been due to the hardworking volunteers who run our programs and who dedicate themselves to advancing our mission in new locations. Our network has grown through the relationships and friendships that our campers and volunteers form at camp year after year. We’ve been fortunate to have some support from other secular organizations, particularly the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky (which founded the first camp in 1996), as well as the Institute for Humanist Studies, the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, and others. Overall, however, we rely primarily on the generosity of individual donors to sustain our year-round operations.

Edwin and Helen Kagin were our founding camp directors and were both members of the Free Inquiry Group. The idea to offer a summer camp program designed for children from atheist, agnostic, humanist, and other freethinking families originated partially in response to the Boy Scouts of America’s increasing enforcement of their policy requiring boys to profess a belief in God.  It became clear that children from nontheistic families needed their own place to belong and enjoy the summer camp experience.

The desire to expand prompted Camp Quest in 2000 to incorporate independent of the Free Inquiry Group, with Fred Edwords, former executive director of the American Humanist Association, serving as the first president.  Over the next several years the Institute for Humanist Studies awarded grants to support the formation of new Camp Quest camps. These new camps were independently operated, but were based on the same mission as the original. We now have camps in 13 states and last summer served 1055 campers. We’ve reached over 10,000 campers served by Camp Quest in our history, which I think is pretty amazing.

Jacobsen: What have been the impacts on different ethnic, educational, and sex-gender demographics with Camp Quest in America?

Newton: The national conversation about diversity and inclusion in the US has, overall, taken a dark turn in recent years in my opinion. This is deeply upsetting to me because, from my Humanist perspective, I want to see a society that accepts and welcomes all people, regardless of their ethnicity, country of origin, gender identity or sexual orientation. Camp Quest has always been a community that is welcoming of differences, whether that is a difference of opinion or belief, or of life experience. As an educational nonprofit, we encourage campers to interact with people from different backgrounds; this is how we help grow empathy and compassion, which I think is sorely needed in these divisive times. In the past several years, gender diversity and inclusion has come to the forefront of our program values, and most of our locations now offer gender inclusive cabins. I think a driving motivator of this is the current generation of campers, who generally view their gender and sexuality as being a significant part of their identity. Camp Quest has already helped to make our society more welcoming and accepting of people who are nonreligious, and our goal is to continue that as well as to make society a more welcoming place for all.

Jacobsen: Does finance present a barrier to participation? How is this being overcome because poor people may be restricted in secular activities for the youth?

Newton: Financial assistance is available for families, and many camps offer early bird and sibling discounts. We try to keep registration costs very low. In fact our average registration cost is less than $600, which is half the average cost for weeklong overnight camps nationwide. We recognize that not all families can or want to send their children to overnight camp, so we’re also exploring ways to expand our reach through day camps and other programs. If you are interested in helping to start a Camp Quest in your area, we want to hear from you! Please write to us at camp@campquest.org.

Jacobsen: The mission of the organization: “Camp Quest provides an educational adventure shaped by fun, friends and freethought, featuring science, natural wonder and humanist values.” How does this become incorporated into the general work with the kids and the training of the leaders of Camp Quest?

Newton: Each of our camps offer activities that directly correlate to our mission in some way, whether they are offering science activities, nature hikes, having discussions in our Socrates Cafe or Famous Freethinkers™ programs, or just spending time making friends and having fun! Every day at Camp Quest is a day that our mission is being put into action and is being experienced by each and every camper. 

Camp volunteers commit many hours to training, both through online videos, as well as in-person training conducted at our camp sites. We are very lucky in that many of our volunteers are highly skilled experts in their fields; some are school teachers, others are scientists, engineers, and other types of professionals who bring their experience to Camp Quest by developing unique and innovative activities.

In one activity this summer, campers had the opportunity to write letters of support (or objection) to their local government and nonprofit leaders about issues they care about. This is one example of how we are helping kids discover that they have the personal agency and responsibility to make a difference in their communities and the world. Acting upon our humanist values is a key component of what Camp Quest is all about. You can learn more about Camp Quest at CampQuest.org, where you can sign up for information about our camps, volunteer, or donate to support our mission.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Kim.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/25

Rev. David Breeden took some time for an extensive interview on the work and theological orientations, and social work, and the community life, of the Unitarian Universalists with a particular emphasis on the Unitarian Universalist community in Minneapolis. Breeden is a Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis.

Here, we talk about his life, work, views, and a whole lot more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let us start from the top. How did you become involved in the humanist and the Unitarian Universalist community?

Rev. Dr. David Breeden: I started attending a Unitarian Universalist Humanist group back when I was an undergraduate in the 70s. The group that I first met with was on campus. They were humanist from the get-go. I became a college professor and stayed with smaller groups.

My entire experience of Unitarian Universalism for 20 or so years was with a humanist group – several of them. That was always my experience with the Unitarian Universalists.

Jacobsen: How did you become a minister? What is the process? How did you form an interest?

Breeden: I was a college professor. I had an interest. I was with a Unitarian Universalist group. I retired after 25 years. I decided to go back to seminary–UU seminary Meadville Lombard in Chicago, Illinois. I got my M.Div. I started serving UU congregations.

Most of those congregations are a mixed group. Eventually I had the good fortune to be called by the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, which was the first congregational humanist congregation in the Unitarian tradition–back in 1916.

So, they have been humanists a long time, over a century now.

Jacobsen: When you are serving community, how do you develop a service? How does this differ from other religions?

Breeden: First and foremost, the great insight of my predecessor in the congregation, John Dietrich, was doing a Sunday morning service without reference to religion whatsoever. Mainline Protestant traditions can be removed from there. He had poems rather than scripture read.

You have a meditation in place of prayer. You have hymns rather than songs. Then you have positive messages. You talk about the positive things of the day. We talk about how to be a humanist in the world. We do not use any materials that have any reference to any religious tradition at all.

It might be much different than you might think.

Jacobsen: If you are looking at communities now, what are some of the positive developments?

Breeden: My congregation has about 450 adult members. We have about 75 children. Like many mainline congregations, though, we do have quite a few younger people there; we still do not have as many young people as we would like in the congregation itself. It is a very dynamic congregation, very alive.

I see it surviving into the future doing what it is doing. We, as an institution, have explored more secular ways of doing things. We encourage other groups, including the American Humanist Association group and Black Nonbelievers. We want them to survive and thrive.

I do not see the congregational model surviving all that well in the US. It is not doing well in other parts of the world. I suspect this will happen in the US as well over time. But for now we have a robust assembly every Sunday. We are looking for other ways of doing things as well.

Jacobsen: How does the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis work? What is its organizational structure? How does this organization structure influence its internal dynamics with community?

Breeden: It has an organizational polity. Its organization is democratic. It is why UU congregations can be explicitly humanist if this congregation wishes to be, if the majority wishes to be. The minister is called by majority vote.

That is what they did in my case. They made sure that I am a humanist through and through; that I represent humanist values. That is why they choose me. I was and will be a humanist. The First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis is an outlier because we are explicitly and completely humanist. Most UU congregations are not.

But that is part of the tradition. It was there in 1916. They have remained humanist explicitly.

Jacobsen: What were some momentous occasions on its centenary?

Breeden: We had humanist celebrations of when John Dietrich came. We had a conference that included some of his granddaughters to indicate the historical aspects of it. We had Tony Pinn come too. He talked about the future of humanism, as it has been over the century – what we should do to look at the future.

We continue to examine it. It is the most important thing for us. The thing is to be innovative and dynamic in humanism. We are going to keep working on that one.

Jacobsen: What are some taboos within a standard UU framework or community? What are some taboos within a UU humanist framework or community?

Breeden: We have a kind of tongue-in-cheek class called “7 Words You Can’t Say at First Unitarian Society.”

Jacobsen: Did it go to the Supreme Court? [Laughing]

Breeden: We really do. We avoid any reference to any religion, which is, in some ways, difficult because so many UUs come out of a religious tradition. They will call it a sanctuary, a church, a hymn, a prayer. We do not do that officially. But it still slips in sometimes.

We do try to stay away from that language. That we are not like the run of the mill or the ordinary Unitarians where Protestant liturgy terms are used with abandon. We try to stand as an example of how you do not have to do that, because I see it as a failure of imagination to have to fall back into that kind of language.

Jacobsen: What are some fringe communities with UU traditions with more strange beliefs? The ones that stand out based on their unique qualities.

Breeden: The congregational polity angle of UUism definitively gives rise to various flavours. It tends to be a regional difference very often. On the East Coast, UU congregations are still vaguely Christian very often in the way that they use language and practice from Sunday to Sunday.

Here in the Midwest, we have people who use theist and non-Christian language. Then there are some who lean more to a more humanist angle. Then there is a grab-bag based on the history of the congregation. Also, the California kind of vibe does seep in, sometimes, to the understanding there.

A humanist like me would consider this New Age. But again, each congregation can have its own flavour. It is really the people who make it up that choose these things. It is a wide range. Anyone who is checking out a UU congregation should check out the website and see how they are going about doing things.

Jacobsen: If we look at the flavours of atheism and their communities, and if we look at the flavours of agnosticism, of humanism, and of Christian and other traditions, there will always be a controversy arising in each period of development of those communities and worldviews, and traditions. What have been some controversies since 1916 with the UU Humanist tradition? How have those resolved in some ways? How have those not?

Breeden: Yes, one of the problems or challenges is if humanism equals atheism or agnosticism or both of those. I often say, “We have to remember that atheists have partners, spouses, kids, etc.” How do we, since we function as a congregation, manage those waters?

In the congregation, there are about 80% agnostics-atheists. Most people do not want to talk about theism and do not even consider it very interesting to talk about. So, we do want to underline, however, that we do not in any way attack or denigrate different religions.

We are not in that mindset. We are, rather, in the view that human agency is important. I tend to say that as long as you as an individual believe human beings solve human problems, then you will be very happy in a UU Humanist congregation.

With people, we always get into our own hobby horses and into our own dogmatic mindsets. I think it is getting better as the US becomes secular. Fewer people are damaged by major religions. Fewer people who are angry at religion and more people who are interested in this old-fashioned flavour of thinking about things and without the emotional attachment that older people have with them.

Jacobsen: You mentioned fewer individuals damaged by the various religions. What are some ways in which people can be damaged by some of the standard or more dominant religions in the world?

Breeden: Myself, I grew up Pentecostal in the United States. It is a thing that you do not get over easily. You must come to terms with what it means for yourself. We have people who call themselves recovering Catholics. We have former JWs. We have former Evangelicals who discovered atheism or unbelief.

There are tough things that people face. They can face job loss or divorce. Religion has not stopped damaging people. That is for sure. So, we see a broad range of everything from people who have lost everything because they have stopped believing in people who have never even heard much about religion.

Their parents may have been something vaguely, but they were something vague, maybe. It is a broad range of damage.

Jacobsen: What about modern adaptations of religions onto modern problems? For instance, those with a New Age form of spirituality connected to traditional religious values with something akin to, or as, Indigenous Christianity for people who, within their worldview, see some reconciliation with “God’s Providence” as Indigenous peoples within the Christian tradition.

Breeden: Right, that is something that we are trying to explore increasingly. Humanism and UUism in American has been in reaction to Christianity. Since things are changing, we really need to get past that. We have increasingly people who have very different cultural understandings of religion. For us, as humanists, the way, I think, to do that is to look seriously at the ideas.

We, at our congregation, are grappling with this in the humanist tradition. It is outside of the understanding of the mainstream American religious tradition. People are trying to figure out how this fits in. I really see this as we are going or moving forward will be something in which there will be many kinds of humanism within the same framework.

It will be the same congregation and same tradition, but it will be various kinds of humanism expressed. We are just at the ground floor of that way of thinking. It is time that we begin to grapple with that.

Here in the US, we have a group called Black Nonbelievers with Mandisa Thomas. Her understanding and witness is that the black church in America is a very particular thing and leaving it has very particular kinds of challenges. Her organization is going to deal specifically with those things.

I can see that kind of developing here in the United States with Islam, for example, etc. I think we are just at the ground floor of that development. We need to keep looking at it. It is the challenge of the future.

Jacobsen: What will be some points that rub up against those movements and as they, potentially, diverge from one another?

Breeden: That is very interesting. I am trying to figure that out in my own mind. We are trying to do this through the AHA and Humanist UU-ism. It is to train the leaders of tomorrow – the multicultural and diverse folk who have the understandings of those traditions to work within them.

It is one thing for seminaries to train people who understand the various kinds of cultural standings that we have. I think that long-term; the walls will begin to fall. We see this in American Protestant denominations.

Nowadays, who knows the difference between a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian?

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: American Protestantism is reflecting that. When you go to the congregation that has the best volleyball court [Laughing], people choose their congregations for very different reasons than they once did. If you were Scottish-American, you went to a different church.

I think it is going to become the same in the future congregations. There will be various kinds of humanisms growing together as we move into a more multicultural world. That is my hope, at least. I think it can happen.

Jacobsen: In the American traditions, we can see the obvious tie-in between the religions and the conservative orientations with an explicit move into the political arena. We are witnessing the live action of this now. I note some in Canada. However, I do not note the virulence in Canada as we see in America. What are some concerns around this in the United States, as you are in the United States?

Breeden: Yes, it is interesting to see the situation of the United States. We have always had the de facto Protestantism, which has held sway. Then that, of course, began to change in the 1970s from a very liberal president Eisenhower Protestantism into the more virulent forms that now support Donald Trump.

It is a very, very different understanding. I talk about the two Christianities. They do not even seem to come from the same root, even though they do. It is very, very strange. The Republican Party makes huge claims in terms of Evangelical Christianity.

Then the Democratic Party, essentially, acts as if it is secular, which is not true because, here in the US, liberal Episcopalians, and other mainline denominations, are very liberal. They just do not talk about or get involved in politics.

In the US, we have a situation in which people who are outside of Christianity think Christianity is only right-wing. Yet, the majority would say that they are, in some respect, liberal. It is very odd in this way. I understand the national Democratic Party has gotten themselves an executive to work on that problem to reclaim liberal Christianity within the party and begin to blunt that tool that the right-wing has used in being the only religious party.

It is an interesting turn because the liberal American religion has taken a back seat for so long.

Jacobsen: What about the political orientation of much of the secular communities? In general, they lean democratic or independent. What seems to explain this? Is it a reaction to some of the things? Or, is it based sincerely on policy, temperament, and beliefs?

Breeden: I think it is all over the map. The Humanist Manifesto came out in 1933. It was signed by the guy who founded my congregation. The first Humanist Manifesto was very explicitly a Democratic Socialist product of the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal.

They were explicitly Democratic Socialist. They were people who explicitly believed in restructuring the systems of society to become more democratic. That system is very much alive. A good many of my congregants and, frankly, myself, have been democratic socialists from the get-go and are happy to see the emergence of the conversation in the Democratic Party in the US.

If you make the argument that every human being has inherent worth and dignity, it is difficult to say, “I do not need to do anything about that,” with the word “dignity.” Of course, in the wider agnostic-atheist world in the US, we have a libertarian edge to folks who see it as a freedom issue of keeping the government out of it and “leave me alone – so I have my freedom.”

I see this as a problem because I know there are oppressed people due to governmental policy. How do we fix that? Especially with the atheist community, there is more of a libertarian turn to things. We (humanists) are pretty much in the liberal political US spectrum.

Jacobsen: Does the superannuated nature and the premise of a greater naturalistic and scientific understanding of the world, and empirical understanding of the world, make Humanism and UU-ism, in some ways, almost an eternal super-minority in the US and elsewhere in the Western world?

Breeden: It certainly looks that way [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: Curtis Reese, who was the partner in crime of Dietrich back in the 1920s who became the first president of the AHA, was calling what he was doing before—before he adopted the term “humanism”–was the “religion of democracy.”

He believed, as with Felix Adler before him with the Ethical Union side of things, that living in a democracy would eliminate the idea of a monarchical god. People would lose the ability to think of a king on a throne.

People would think of a more horizontal and relational world. I do not think that was the case. Christianity came along at a very particular time in the Western world. The emperors were absolute in their power.

That translated into European politics and translated into the colonialism that Europeans practiced and spread all over the world. We are still living with it. If you look at First Nations or African cultures, many are much more alive in the pantheistic view of reality.

In its nature, it is naturalistic rather than animistic, very often. Therein lies my hope, that people will awaken to the pre-Christian aspects of Western society and will wake up to their own cultural roots of pre-Christianity and begin to recapture a pantheistic view of the world.

It fits into religious naturalism and naturalism in general. Because, hey, we are just molecules floating. It makes sense. That makes sense.

Jacobsen: If we understand culture in a broad sense of the arts and humanities, ethics, science, philosophy including epistemology and ontology, and so on, if we look at some of the authoritarian regimes and some of the theocracies today on offer and in history, there seems to be a strong emphasis on powerful ruling classes and elites to keep the rest of the population at a low cultural level.

James Randi noted, to me, that there is, typically, an emphasis on the promotion of traditionalist or fundamentalist religion in societies by, sometimes, governments. Does this seem true to you, too? If so, why? If not, why not?

Breeden: [Laughing] absolutely. I think here in the US. We can track the rise of the Religious Right to Nixon’s Southern Strategy. It has a lot to do with racism in the US as much as it has to do with religion. But everything in the US [Laughing] has to do with racism and religion.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: That tradition continues in the US. The US is not a greatly educated country, popular image to the contrary. We have a fairly poor system of education in the country. As long as that is true, people will continue to look for absolutist answers.

Evidence indicates education is the first way out of a lot of things, including religion and binary politics. I think that is one reason liberals value education. Many of us found our ways out of right-wing ideas via learning and being open to innovative ideas.

Yes, I think it leans on the idea of the strongman, which is all over the world now. It is people looking for easy answers. The line is: All we have to do is do cruel things to people, and then we will be better off. Things run in cycles. It looked that way in the 1930s with the rise of Fascism and Communism.

It is looking that way, again, in a very populist way. My hope is that as these programs do not pan out–as I do not think they can–I hope more and more people will move towards the center and will try to think of more solid problems in the gray areas rather than black and white.

Jacobsen: If we take the split between the supernatural, e.g., praying for help with the spelling bee or to cure some physical ailment through an abrogation of the laws of nature, and the metaphysical, including larger frameworks for understanding the world including the laws of nature and the principles and constants of nature, does the UU Humanist view of the world provide room, not for the supernatural but, for the metaphysical in this sense?

Breeden: That is an interesting question. I talk about it from the angle of the ATM God. Many people think that if they just give the proper PIN number in there . . .

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: . . . God will help them get what they want. That does not work, even in the most fundamentalist religions. Eventually, people are always going to say, “God does what God wants to do.  You may not understand it.”

That is how people get around the fact that you can pray for rain for a very long time and it does not come.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: [Laughing] So, I think that the very idea of asking and donating and promising–this, again, goes back to the monarchical view of the Deity–“If I pray or sacrifice properly, then I will get the ATM to work.” Unfortunately, I think that is almost a basic wiring of humanity.

That we believe in some magic that way. It can be easily encouraged and triggered this way. We, in my congregation, never pray. I am asked to offer prayers publicly at times, for business people and such. When I get those invitations, I always take them because I want to model in a way that I do not have to be asking–begging and pleading–for these things.

My public meditations are mindful of what is happening in the world. I say, “Maybe,” as an aspirational: “Maybe, remember the poor.” It is different than thinking a prayer will lead to a dinner (for the starving). We need the difference between those two things made very, very clear in our own minds. Petitionary prayer, unfortunately, is there.

We humanists need to be the model for not having to do that. You can be intentional and think about and through things without bowing and scraping. That is what we try to do.

Jacobsen: When you are talking about leading the next generation of leaders in the UU tradition, who are they? How do you reach out to get the training done?

Breeden: The AHA, I am on the education committee. We have been working with Meadville Lombard, one of the UU seminaries here in the US there. We are developing a humanist concentration within the ministerial track, as an MA program.

We hope it will lead to certifying humanist chaplains and also humanist leaders. One of the problems of humanism that we have had is that we have not had any quality control, frankly. People can call themselves humanist–and do–because they are no longer Christian and have become angrily atheist.

I see humanism as a way to treat the world and other living things in it. We are trying to get increased information our there about how to be good without god, as the AHA says. The broad training that we get. The broad visibility that we get with the programs is better.

There are a lot of young people who are very interested in getting involved in this project. A lot of dedicated young people are in it. A lot of people of colour are interested in getting involved in humanism. We must, as a movement, as I was mentioning earlier, about cultures must be ready to move over and accept that things can be done in a unique way.

That is the way to the future for humanism. Things worked in the past. Some things need to go out of the window as a new generation arrives.

Jacobsen: What are some social and communal activities of the congregation for you?

Breeden: The UU Humanist association formed in the 60s. For years, it functioned as, more or less, a way of celebrating our general assembly, getting major speakers in, doing a scholarly journal, and, more or less, that was the focus.

It was to do things at the General Assembly and to get scholarly work out to our membership. That model is changing. When I came in as president, my number one goal was to move things towards a unique way of understanding.

I see the need out there. I hear it all the time from all races and groups that exist within the larger UU congregations. They need material. They need ideas. So that, what I see as the future of the UUHA, there are fewer and fewer people going to GAs.

There are fewer and fewer who will read a scholarly journal nowadays. These are not the future. Certainly, social media has stepped in to get increased information out there and to make increased connections between vast distances.

That is a process that I began doing. I very much encouraged that other people different than myself–an old white guy–I have encouraged them to enter the organization and transition it. The current leader of the organization is Amanda Poppei. They are coming at it from her direction now.

It is a needed direction. I was pleased that I was able to move it from a direction of mostly older white guys to something that will be supportive of a new generation of humanists who are often people of colour and a lot of women.

It is not just for the cranky scientist type guys anymore. That was my push. I think we are going in that direction.

Jacobsen: What would you consider the largest existential threats not to the livelihoods but to the ways of life of the UU Humanists in America?

Breeden: I think the biggest threat to UUism is a little bit different from the threats to humanism. The threat to UUism is that as the mainline religious traditions have really collapsed here in the US. I think the general idea of liberal religious stances will get lost.

I had a good friend who is a United Methodist minister saying to me one morning, “Oh yes, my 9:30 service is a Unitarian service.” The United Methodists know what they are doing. They are around the world. As liberal denominations get more liberal, where is the space for UU pluralism?     

It is a question that UUs need to look towards. I think the answer is more of a humanist answer because it is distinctly different from the others. It is about human responsibilities. We can address those problems. We can be different than super-liberal Episcopalians and super-liberal Catholics.

I think there is a threat in UUism itself–Can it change fast enough away from a simply liberal Christian model?

Jacobsen: There is no inevitability to any growth, maintenance, or collapse to the humanist traditions. Do the more fundamentalist traditions of the world have a greater chance of in effect ideologically surviving compared to the mainline denominations or traditions, or those found in UU, in UU Humanists, and humanism?

Breeden: I do not think there is a real possibility of liberal religions disappearing soon. However, in the US, we know the Evangelical fundamentalist traditions are growing. There are a lot of Ex-vangelicals who do not buy the right-wing exclusionary ideas.

There is a future for liberal Christianity – to use a negative idea – Christianity Light.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: I do not think our humanist message will become the dominant one. But we will survive as a different kind of organization than we have had in the past. I think that we have a bright future. I do not think that we have a dominant future.

Jacobsen: What are some weaknesses in a humanist philosophy? In other words, not necessarily wrong or incorrect in any necessary way. Those points of contact in the premises behind the general philosophy, worldview, and life stance that can be okay but necessarily a firsthand truth.

Breeden: I think we are going through those right now in the UU tradition. The Steven Pinkers among humanists [Laughing[. They are optimistic about the human future in the big view. Pinker is a perfect example of that. Jonathan Haidt is a good example here in the US.

That kind of liberalism and humanism is “true,” but it also leaves out so many social problems that are so real for poor people. I think those who are going to see their philosophical traditions in an abstract way are almost not communicating with the people who are suffering from all kinds of economic issues, etc.

We must pull ourselves back from that edge from being overly scholarly, overly academic, and just pull ourselves back and remind ourselves that it may be true that people are living longer. But when a loved one dies; it does not matter [Laughing].

Day-to-day life is not always like this golden life. I do not think that it’s appropriate all the time to be overly academic. Humanism must deal with the everyday of depression and poverty from the viewpoint of “we’re going to do this,” but “we can fix this.”

We have the tools. But we do not communicate this, except in the sense of an academic and ivory tower sense.

Jacobsen: How does this myopic and pollyannish view of the world simply not deliver emotionally for the needs of most people most of the time in those important points of life, whether marriage, death, birth, baby namings, and so on?

Breeden: One of my favourite philosophers is Martha Nussbaum. Her philosophy has been to say, ‘Reason and rationality are only another piece in the range of emotion.’ I think that through a strict materialist view; it cannot be denied. We have not grappled with that fact yet. Martha Nussbaum is not the figure who is going to be read in book clubs. I think we need to get those ideas out there. Reason is also an emotion. Reason is also embodied, as is everything else.

Once we begin to look at things from that viewpoint, I think the humanist position will be more successful. Daniel Kahneman, I think, has shown definitively that we do not have reason and unreason. It is that we have thinking fast and thinking slow.

Jacobsen: Is this in that famous book?

Breeden: Yes, thinking fast is the gut, it is intuition; it is our emotions. Those work for us most of the time. We need to use them. But thinking slow, it is the way that we have figured out how to keep the water out of our bedrooms. It is how we figured out how to water fields.

We need not set up such a dichotomy that we do not think that when we are thinking slow then we are not human anymore; because we are. Our thinking is emotional. We have motivated reasoning. The more we have found that we have fallen into things that we thought were completely rational, but were in a European colonialist viewpoint.

I think as we discover this more–the more the logic side will become more gentle. We will become more humble. We will become a full body again. That we are a complete organism here. That we need to focus on both of those things at the same time, if that makes sense.

Jacobsen: Who is the most popular UU humanist author?

Breeden: That is a wonderful question. I am so glad that we have moved beyond the New Atheist period. I do not know if we have someone like Dawkins and Harris who have been popular among us. I would want Martha Nussbaum to become popular. But her philosophy just does not do it.

I do not think we have a book that quite does it. It is out there. The book Sapiens by Hariri is a good introduction to thinking like a humanist in an effective way. It was on the New York Times bestseller list.

Jacobsen: What about speakers or high-level orators?

Breeden: I think the best articulation of humanism is Anthony Pinn. He went from the black church experience to the UU experience to the humanist experience. I think he understands all of those. I think he understands the limitations of all of those.

I could listen to him all day. He is a brilliant articulator and a clear humanist mind of where things need to go currently.

Jacobsen:  Who has done a disservice to the UU community?

Breeden: It is broader than that. In the UU, as the humanism got rolling with the religious humanists, as they were called in those days, after the Cold War, as the idea spread, it became a particular thing. That particular thing reflected a white flight, upper-middle-class, very privileged, suburban mindset.

There were very particular reasons for that. The US government was spending a lot of money on science, whole suburbs grew up around universities and institutions; those people became UU humanists. That set a tone for the kind of humanist who was upwardly mobile and believe in reason, music, and the great Western art museums.

All of these things that were part of the American middle class at a time when it was reaching to achieve more, and more, and more. That is gone. It no longer exists in the US. You could get an education and still be in grinding poverty, as you know.

So, the upwardly mobile and then going to the burbs no longer exists. There is an attitude that continue to live out of that. Even though, those people are extremely elderly or have died. There is still a piece of UU Humanism that is what Humanism is. It is not.

It never was. It, certainly, was not in the early days of the John Dietrichs who were seeing it as a Democratic Socialist proletariat. It exists in UU. The Steven Pinkers really reinforce that kind of humanism in a very unfortunate way.

That is the greatest challenge for those of us who want to change into a new Humanism. So much of UU Humanism is the past, of the glory days of the US, which is no more.

Jacobsen: Some things to bring together. North American, Western European, and East Asian nation-states do not replace themselves at a sufficient rate. They are below the replacement fertility rate, as many know.

At the same time, those subpopulations within those nation-states with the above replacement rates tend to be on the more fundamentalist and religious sides or orientations. With that, in the long to medium term, what does this portend in terms of the religious and the secular populations in these regions? Also, the demographic statistics tend to indicate individuals who grow up in a religion stay in it, to add to that argument as well, or that question moreover.

Breeden: Yes, one could become very depressed at that. But if we look at the history of ideas, one thing that becomes clear is that liberal values have never been popular. They have never been majority. They have been localized and marginalized over time.

In the Middle Ages of Europe, it was education and the idea of education. I think we forget the changing nature of reality if we think, “The Middle Ages or Dark Ages are upon us,” as we have the information before us. If the information stays readily available, you will have people who become atheists.

It is just that simple. Just as a kid in Mississippi who is gay can look up information online and has a normalization of being gay, which is good, similarly, if a kid in Mississippi can look up humanist materials that normalizes the idea of unbelief, that human experience is the basis of reality rather than some supernatural reality.

If the information is out there, I believe people will come to it. Never a majority. I think, it was, again, a mistake of Europeans and North Americans after the Second World War to think everything would, eventually, become secular. Peter Berger was the scholar who came up with the Secularization Theory as it was called after the Second World War.

He thought social safety nets and secularization would destroy religion. He was wrong. Before his death, he recanted the theory. It does not mean that people are not going to figure out that we are making this up ourselves.

That edge of people will always be here, I believe. What we must do moving into the future is guaranteeing the ideas of secularity, separation of church and state, work against theocracy whenever we see it, I believe the future can be bright.

We must figure out a way to get out of the Anthropocene. If we get together and start talking to each other, we can do it.

Jacobsen: You have mentioned the Anthropocene. Some have called this the Capitalocene as well [Laughing]. If we look at the UU community, is it more capitalistic, socialistic? What are the economic orientations of the UU community?

Breeden: I think the broader UU community is compassionate capitalism. Among humanists, there is much more of a Democratic Socialist view of things. Often, I think that is because of the analysis. We know from economists that, in a capitalist system, money keeps going towards the top. Until you do something.

The best thing to do is tax . . . because bloody revolutions are not good for anyone. You must get a tax structure that takes the top off and redistributes downwards. I think a large majority of humanists do believe that that kind of intervention is necessary to a future . . . or a humane future.

Otherwise, we will have gated communities, and inequality will rise if we do not do it. That is the way that I see it, anyway. One cannot be a brutal capitalist and be a Unitarian Universalist or a Humanist. That is what we do. We bring in the voice of the oppressed.

Keep working with that in mind, keep working for more equality.

Jacobsen: How does the UU community incorporate more modern definitions and movements of gender equality?

Breeden: One of the interesting things about UUism–my congregation, when it started being a Unitarian congregational group, was on the left fringe. In 1950, the average Unitarian was probably a centrist Republican in that way.

What has happened over time, and this is true of most mainline denominations, I count UUism in that category, is moving more in a Left-Right split. The war in Vietnam was very divisive among UUs. Many people simply left because of the anti-war stand of the UUA.

Nowadays, as it turns out, the current UU congregant is very left of centre. We see this in the US. The centrists are problematic. We know a centrist group voted for Obama and then for Trump. It is almost mindboggling for those on the more extreme left how those people can make that move.

To them, it makes a great deal of sense. That person is not in a UU congregation nowadays. Moderation is a challenge among UUs, increasingly so, as we find in the United Methodist Church as the question LGBTQ rights has become the catalyst of left and right.

The Methodist denomination is splitting, but not in half. It is going to be more to the right than to the left. There was a book called Saving Grace that looked at American religion after WW II. 

The fact is before WWII, Americans chose their politics based on religion. After it, they now choose their religion based on their politics [Laughing]. We do not have many Trump supporters jumping into UU congregations.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: My minister friends who have more moderate political divisions–Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and such–here is a problem there.

In the US, two groups are facing some turmoil and identity crises. One is the Reformed Judaism, which is going further and further Right because of the Israeli question.

Also, the more middle-class African American congregations. I have a good friend who leads an African American congregation. He says that he does not really preach anymore because he has a lot of Trump supporters now.

It boggles his mind. It boggles my mind. But American politics has gotten very strange in that. You cannot walk into an African American congregation now and assume you can preach the Social Gospel. Things are becoming more polarized and stranger.

Jacobsen: What myths do the secular have about the religious? What truths dispel those, and vice versa?

Breeden: Yes, the great cliché about humanists is that we do not have any place to base our morality. That boggles my mind; that that argument is still in place, as it was disproved by about 1650. Among humanists, there is a misunderstanding of liberal Christianity and liberal Islam as well.

People can be devoutly religious and know all about science. They can live in the doubt, often, as some do. Others live in science, religion, politics, and have different rooms in their brain – compartmentalization. I know people who remain liberal Christians because they believe the tradition has value.

They believe the teachings of Christ as leftist radical visions of equality in the world. They are very sincere about that. I, often, get very angry and tired at both sides of that argument. There is a middle ground, where someone can be devoutly Muslim and still not hate homosexuals.

It is possible. People will believe devoutly and, also, be people who allow difference in the world and do not force their views on others. We need to get the word out. I wish more people understood it.

Jacobsen: In the United States, we can see Liberty University, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and the like. In Canada, we can see Trinity Western University and a variety of other institutions oriented around fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity. What are some issues for the LGBTI+ community in those areas?

Maybe, what are some nuances some of the secular, maybe, do not understand?

Breeden: That is interesting. I have a transgender child who converted to Reformed Judaism. It makes perfect sense to her, to do that. There are nuances within all these traditions that are not immediately apparent. One of the oddities, I think, of right-wing religion is that the United States is, in many ways, the inventor of the fundamentalist thing.

It may be our most dangerous export after munitions. You know?

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: [Laughing] it can be accentuated in African nations where the fundamentalist narratives go in and rile up the nation. Hate of that sort is hate [Laughing]. It is not religion. It is hating. It is fearmongering. It is using the base reactions of people’s humanity. I just do not think that is where religion lives.

Of course, it (the origin of religion) was not about hating people. There simply was no discussion of many of the issues that nowadays define fundamentalism. It was not discussed. We do not have to be that to be who we are. A fundamentalist or Pentecostal person can be a good, accepting, and loving person. But the politics have gotten involved and turned things in a particular way.

They did not have go that way. They do not have to stay that way.

Jacobsen: You are describing two more fundamentalist, traditionalist, and conservative religious groups. One, LGBTI communities do not exist. You are going to hell, not because of what you believe but, because of who you are. In fact, we do not believe who you are because you are simply living a lifestyle rather than living inside a lived experience and identity.

On the other side, we can see concern and complaint in overweening, supplicant, and guilt and shame ridden progressives around the LGBTI+ communities. It is too much in the opposite direction. What are some palliatives to that latter issue?

Breeden: In the state of Minnesota, where I live, we had a ballot initiative. Should gay people be able to get married? I was, as a minister, on the forefront of that battle to get things changed, so that gay marriage would be legal in the state.

One of the ways that we went about doing that was not by talking about rights, and not by talking about the law, but simply having people talk about their lived experience. They had a thing. One initiative was “be gay at work day” [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: Just talk about it. And the change that I began to see working on this day after day was that I began to hear in church basements older ladies who were saying, “My granddaughter, she is a lesbian. She is okay.” Or, “My grandson is gay.”

This was in the Methodist and Baptist churches.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: The real thing that must happen is that we must be brave enough to be out there, so people know gay people. They do know gay people. Every statistic tells us everyone knows gay people, in Iran too. So, of course, how do you cross that line? That is the issue and the problem.

I think that family bonds are, in many ways, the answer to that. We just must keep talking. In the States here, one thing going down in history as beginning the move towards gay rights is a TV program called Will & Grace. It was network television show. It had a gay guy.

Gayness was being normalized on the American television screen. That is what we must do. It is to get the information out there. We know that homosexuality is an absolutely natural thing for animals to do. We know that. But religions have, traditionally, condemned it.

These are Western religions, monotheisms. We have to say, “You got that wrong, culturally. Here are some reasons why you got that wrong.” I keep hammering on it. Evangelicals become Ex-vangelicals because they realize the Evangelical stance on homosexuality is dumb, just dumb.

I think the newer generation is more prepared for that. Max Planck, the physicist, talked about how science advanced one funeral at a time. Gay rights, they have too. They must advance one funeral at a time. I wish it would not [Laughing].

Jacobsen: [Laughing] that is true.

Breeden: I wish that people would reconsider just by looking at the simple science. That may be a little optimistic.

Jacobsen: That Max Planck quote was actually very good. One can say the same for Einstein on Quantum Theory. He would not accept it. He would not accept the idea, not of epistemological chance as in statistical mechanics but, in ontological chance. In that, the universe simply works and exists with incomplete knowledge of itself.

So, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Well, you advance that field, even Einstein had to die in a way. To pivot from that particular point, if we look at some definitions of God, if we look at individuals who identify as elite religious scientists with a serious intent to discover principles about the dynamics and operations of the world, they could define a God in such a way that they could take their standard understanding of “theology” as “the study of God” into the scientific arena.

It would be relatively trivial and a truism in terms of its definition, in the ways in which we naturalistically understand the world empirically through the methods of science, but it may provide a framework for those, probably, with a UU and other similar orientation to become or aspire to professional and elite, if very talented and hardworking, scientists in the future or at present. Does this seem to jive to you?

Breeden: Absolutely. One thing that we forget is that the assumption that God, the Maker, made things logically and, therefore, we can figure out those laws; it led to science [Laughing]. It led to understanding. The whole key to the whole scientific project in the Western world was from the idea that God created these laws.

Spinoza–many of us have gone on from there to completely materialistic viewpoints. But I believe that I can prove there is a god, simply by saying that I define God as the observable universe. If I want to define God that way, then God exists, because the universe exists. I am not against that idea. I just think that, sometimes, it is a little bit condescending to define “god” in such a specific way.

In that, I can go around and say, “I am a theist, therefore… I understand God in a more unique way than you do, and then I am going to play your game.” I do not do that. I think many UUs do. By saying, “I understand God that is completely naturalistic.” John Dewey started it. He probably started that in A Common Faith. He says, “Atheists should and can use the word ‘God.’’ I find that a little wonky. I think there can be a case made for a materialistic God. But that is not the God that many people want to exist.

It is usually about magic and miracles, and the moral laws of human societies. I do not think you can get that from a naturalistic understanding of God.

Jacobsen: Pivoting further from the idea of a future redefinition, in a way, of theology, if we are looking at, simply, social life and secular communities, what are some failures? What can we learn from those? For example, the treatment and inclusion of trans people, of the transgender community at large. I ask this because you are the father of a trans child.

Some of those things would be important for some to hear, to read about, and, maybe, to reflect on a bit.

Breeden: The more stories that we can get out there, the better. I try to be mindful that my child’s story is not my story to tell. I am a parent. The most telling thing in my experience–I was not a minister yet–I had been a UU for many years when my child came to me and told me this. I did not have any trouble accepting it, fine with me.

I worried about my child, of course, because it is dangerous, physically and psychologically. The most telling moment for me: As I told you, I came from a Pentecostal background. I was terrified that my kid would tell my mother. She was illiterate and a fundamentalist Christian. I never told my mother that I was an atheist, “I will not confront them. I will not tell them. They won’t understand.” My kid said, “I can’t do that. I have to tell grandma.”

That kind of family bond, of understanding, that goes beyond the extremely oppressive black and white thinking of fundamentalist Christianity. It is there. Of course, I have had transgender friends who were disowned by their parents and shunned by their family. That happens too. Yet, there is always going to be that edge of love, which trumps all of that.

That is what we must believe in, finally. I must admit–I was completely and wrong. My kid was right. My mother died in the full knowledge of who my kid was; my kid was proud of that. It worked out well, I think.

Jacobsen: What book has blown you away, recently?

Breeden: I get blown away by books all the time. I am an inveterate grazer of books.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: I cannot help myself from reading the latest one. A book that I just got in the mail, which I am really enjoying the heck out of. It is Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It by Felipe Fernández-Armesto. It is a brand-new book. It just came out. It is a look at the history of ideas. How ideas come about, become socially commissioned, this book is just amazing.

Everybody who has any interest in the history of ideas should read this book. Go for that; it is a brilliant book. Another one along the way that I found was Selling God from a while ago. It is looking at how American religion, because it had to live in the marketplace, became commercial. That is a fascinating book. The 7 Types of Atheism that came out a few months ago.

I thought it was a very good book about how atheism can be misinterpreted and weaponized, shall we say, and how it can be made into a very compassionate humanism. I read all the time.

Jacobsen: Who do you consider the most impactful UU individual in the history of Unitarian Universalism?

Breeden: Wow! That is interesting. There are several of them. Ralph Waldo Emerson drew me into UUism. I took an introduction to American literature class as an undergraduate and went into Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, and the American transcendentalist thinkers from the time. I think Emerson still stands out in American political thought and social thought, and theological thought.

He was someone able to think outside of the box. It was probably coming from a lot of colonialism– translations of Hinduism and Buddhism began to come in. He probably would not have thought what he thought without the critical work being done at that time.

He is someone who you can go to. You can read his 1830s paper Nature. It is still good.

Jacobsen: New Atheism, or Firebrand Atheism and Militant Atheism, did a service in this sense. They blasted the door open for a marginally wider acceptance and knowledge of the meaning of atheism in many contexts.

Breeden: Yes.

Jacobsen: How did this movement differ from previous forms? What were some successes? What were some failures?

Breeden: Of course, as someone who was already a humanist, though I was not a minister but a college professor at the time, it was good to hear smart atheists speak to the viewpoint. It was very empowering. There were books. There were people reading and talking about them. The first blast, I loved it. As it went on, the Sam Harrises and Dawkinses began to say more, and more, and the more I began to cringe.

I do not think that anyone can be argued into atheism who has not been already exposed. I do not think browbeating is the way to go. I think we need to take a stand as to how we do things with invitational stances. I think they simply went too far. They armed the angry atheists among us in some unfortunate ways.

It was good for those of us who were already convinced. I know some people who read the books and became atheists. They did ‘convert’ some people, but those were probably already questioning, frankly. I do not believe in the confrontational way of doing it.

Jacobsen: If we are looking at the massive rise of the Nones, which is at an incline of 8-figures worth of Canadians and Americans combined coming along a concomitant decline in believers, what are some positive lines being drawn there? What are some potential misinterpretations in terms of looking at the data, at the superficial analysis of it?

Breeden: I keep a pretty close eye on the data. In fact, I have been trying to figure it out. It is not as positive a reflection on humanism as one, at first, thinks. It has more to do with, I think, a general secularization of North America, but in a way that is moving more towards a completely syncretic religious understanding.

When I became an atheist in the 1970s, only 1% of the population was atheist.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: You did not talk about it outside of universities [Laughing]. Now, we are around 10%. That is exponential growth in my lifetime. People are now openly atheist. That exponential growth is still a tiny group of people. We know the Nones are predominantly not atheistic and believe in someone like a deistic god that makes things go right. You can make a prayer, so things feel better.

So, you can rely on external help and that kind of understanding. This is my old Pentecostalism speaking: There is no cost to it. You can be theistic, and God wants you to do well in the world, but you do not think you have to do anything. We old Pentecostals think you must pay for your faith. We atheists think that you must pay for yours.

I think there is an ease to the Nones. That they just do not think about it. I am glad that American society is no longer as it was when I was a kid, ‘Do you go to church?’, was considered a valid question, even for job interviews.

Nones are not joining congregations of any sort. They are less likely to become involved politically. People who do not join congregations. That is not good.

I do not think the current trend is a win for atheists, agnostics, and humanists as a community. I do not think we are winning because somebody stays home on Sunday morning and plays video games or because brunch has replaced communion. We are not winning that; we are not winning souls and minds in that equation. We must keep reaching out with a positive image. That a positive secular community does positive things for society and you.

Jacobsen: As you look at statistical data from Pew and elsewhere, in general, most of North America is scientifically illiterate in several ways. If we look at Liberty University, Trinity Western University, and elsewhere, and if you look at the offerings, it will have a proposal as if creationism and evolution are on the same footing, but they are not.

Even though, internationally, evolution via natural selection is in the minority view in the world. What are some effective ways to get the message across about scientific principles, methodologies, and general theories that bind together the findings to a wider section of the general population?

Those that have not been reached so far.

Breeden: That is a very good question. One of the oddities of my congregations here in Minneapolis, Minnesota: They started as a Darwin reading group in the 1870s trying to grapple with the book and what it meant. We are still grappling with the book and what it means. Even though, we know Darwin had some missteps as well.

The amazing thing is that almost everything that we do in terms of applied science, medicine, etc. It assumes that this is true. So, you are going to get things back from the scientific assumptions; that natural selection is how it works. So, we have this view on creation. Our scientific community depends upon it. Our health community depends upon an idea that the general population really cannot grasp.

One of the things that I talk about in my congregation is the theory of natural selection. I keep up with evolutionary biology, neurology, because we simply learn increasingly about why human beings act as we do, as we get deeper and deeper into our understanding of how evolution plays out in the human family.

It explains increasingly why we do what we do. There is a little kerfuffle going on with how much evolution affects the political parties and partisanship. Is it a lot? Is it a little? If a lot, can we change political views? Or did you walk into the politics exactly how your genes came together? It is all fascinating stuff. As we see and explain increasingly about human behaviour based on the use of the ideas from natural selection, it increasingly normalizes those ideas.

We must keep talking about that.

Jacobsen: What are some exciting and positive developments in the UU community?

Breeden: With the American Humanist Association and the UU Humanist Association, they are getting some education in place for some future humanist leaders. I find that exciting. That we will institutionalize humanism and how to minister humanism. We have increased people of color coming into the humanist community to be out and proud as a naturalistic thinker.

I think that is great. I think we have increased with people like Mandisa Thomas out there. We have more people of color. It is supporting a move toward a naturalistic understanding. The secular humanist groups sponsored by the American Humanist Association and the American Ethical Union are all growing. I see all of that in a positive light.

We must get the message out. We must keep talking, not isolate ourselves by bomb throwing…

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Breeden: …the more that we do this. The more people think, “Wow. This is comfortable. I am not sure what I believe, but I want stand up here as a questioner.”

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts based on the extensive conversation today?

Breeden: Your questions are great. Back when I was in the radio business, I was not an interviewer like you, believe me. You are doing great. One thing, I guess, I would reflect on, which I think about a lot. It is very unfortunate that humanism became the name that we call it. Some people or many people interpret it. I really like the term freethinker so much better.

Freethinker, someone who thinks freely, even thinks different things tomorrow than they think today, which is not always a bad thing. Freethought is where it is at as far as I am concerned. It is why humanity has achieved what it has achieved. Let us keep thinking freely.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Minister.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/23

Dr. Bonnie Cleaveland is the President of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry. Some may recall this organization from the conversations with Dr. Herb Silverman. There is a good reason for this. Dr. Silverman is the founder of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, among other initiatives by him.

Here, we talk about developments in personal life, unquestionable things in the secular community, and more.

Scott Jacobsen: So, in terms of some background for the readership, what are some pivotal moments in the development of personal philosophy, and life stance, especially in a secular direction, or a secular humanist direction in particular?

Bonnie Cleaveland: I grew up non-religious, although with two religious parents. I was interested in religion when I was younger. I remember asking my mom if I could go to church. She took me to church, but

afterwards, I said, “That’s enough. I do NOT want to do that again!” [Laughing]. It was pretty boring for a kid.

I grew up in the Southern United States, so many of my friends are religious. When I was in middle school, forty years ago, I wanted to talk to a friend about the abortion debate. She refused to have the discussion, saying, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it!” Later in life, I realized that that is a standard Christian response to many topics.

That probably made me more anti-religious. This way of talking about issues shuts off your brain off entirely. Questioning isn’t encouraged.

I found the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry about five years ago. I was excited to find a group of people who were similar, even in this small Bible Belt town of Charleston, South Carolina.

Jacobsen: Are there topics in the secular community that harbour a certain unquestionability, akin to the aforementioned?

Cleaveland: The only thing I am worried about is that we do tend to be uniformly progressive. At least here in Charleston, it is assumed: if you are secular, then you are progressive, but it’s not true for everyone. We have libertarians and conservative members. I worry, sometimes, that they may not feel as welcome, which is unfortunate.

Jacobsen: What could increase the level of inclusion of those voices?

Cleaveland: That is a great question. By being aware, not everybody has the same progressive beliefs. It is interesting because it has a parallel to religion in the South where everyone is assumed to be a Christian. One of the first questions is this, “Where do you go to church?’ It is part of the water in which we swim.

You drive down the road and there are churches everywhere. Charleston is known as the “Holy City” because we have so many churches [Laughing]. So, it can be truly hard to be secular in the Holy City. So, I do not want progressivism to be the water that we swim in as secular humanists.

We need to continually acknowledge that there are different political viewpoints. Primarily because right-wing Christians have claimed religions as theirs. But that does not make any sense. There are plenty of religious people on both sides of the spectrum. Just because you are politically conservative does not mean you need to be a believer.

Jacobsen: What are some fun and community activities of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry?

Cleaveland: We did all kinds of great things. We have trivia, happy hours, and we go to performances and events together.

We enjoy volunteering together, as well. About quarterly, we bring food and serve it to the underserved in a downtown park for Potluck in the Park. A group of us go quarterly and pick up trash at our assigned section of roadway. We always have a great time. Anything we do as a community is fun.

Jacobsen: Who are some prominent members of the community?

Cleaveland: One prominent member is Herb Silverman, our founder, who also founded the Secular Coalition for America. In 1994, Herb started giving some talks around town and talking about secularism. Lots of people said, “I wish there were more secular people I can talk to.” Secular people felt alone. Herb founded Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry.  We joke that Herb is the closest thing we have to a god!

Most of us are regular people, who are not necessarily well-known around town or in the secular community. We do have Amy Monsky who founded Camp 42, a group of summer camps around the South – in South Carolina, Florida, and Mississippi.

Jacobsen: What are some of the social or political activities, or issues, the Secular Humanists for the Low Country have been involved in, in the past? What have been some currently or ongoing that they have involved in, if any?

Cleaveland: There are many. Because we are in the Bible Belt in the US; there are frequent violations of the First Amendment, which guarantees the separation of church and state. So, we see things like classes engaging in prayer or a teacher using or displaying religious materials in the classroom.

We often are standing up for secular families and people of other religions who are not in the majority Christian religion. I have become increasingly concerned with the expansion of Christian Nationalism, since about 2016.

The Religious Right in the US has been organizing for 30-40 years. They are reaching the pinnacle of their power right now, both in national politics and local politics. In South Carolina an evangelical ministry in the Upstate of South Carolina, near Greenville, gets federal funding for foster care and adoption. Because they get federal funding, they are supposed to help all people who are considering to foster an adoption.

Under our governor, Henry McMaster has gotten a waiver that they can turn away people of non-Evangelical religion. A Catholic woman who wants to foster and adopt was turned away once they found out she is a Catholic. She was simply turned away.

The secular community is working to introduce ourselves to legislators and highlight that we do not want federal funds given to private religious activities. In Charleston County, which is relatively liberal compared to the rest of the state. We have a school board committee who are in charge of sex education. Several members of that committee are designated as religious leaders. So, there are more religious leaders who are given specific seats on that committee than medical people. I have recently been appointed to that committee for a three year-term, so I hope we can make some progress toward evidence-based sex education. Religion should have nothing to do with sex education in public schools.

So, those are some the most important issues that we fight for, kids’ rights and people’s rights, to not have their federal tax dollars fund religious activities.

Jacobsen: You mentioned “kids’ rights and people’s rights.” In terms of overall context of the social and political activities mentioned, what does this portend for women’s rights in the Bible Belt in America?

Cleaveland: It is clear that the Christian Nationalists primarily want to control and oppress women.  They are fighting to close abortion clinics, for example. They’re attempting to control women.  They are not focusing on men’s responsibility in pregnancy, for example. Women, and therefore society, is better off when birth control is freely available and comprehensive sex education available to everyone.

The religious right fights efforts to make birth control and other family planning accessible, so they obviously care more about controlling women than about reducing unwanted pregnancy.  It is important for us as secularists to stand up for women’s rights, and probably join with even religious organizations who are moderate and who want a sensible science-based approach to legislation and public policy.

Jacobsen: According to the Guttmacher Institute, although a progressive organization, granted, the work to decriminalize abortion for women reduces the number of abortions and increases the health and wellness of women who do get them.

In addition, it respects bodily autonomy and the independent and free choices of women, if given freely, equitably, and in a safe manner. In other words, if one has pro-life stated aims, and if one looks at the data, internationally provided by the Guttmacher Institute, and others, in terms of organizations.

Then a true pro-life person should, in fact, take a pro-choice position. Does this dialogue emerge in any of the secular dialogues with religious leaders in the low country, or in the popular media in the United States? I mentioned United States because I live in Canada.

Cleaveland:. I only recently learned that the rates of abortion in a country that do and do not allow legal abortion are almost exactly the same. Honestly, I believe that many religious are so insulated in the information that they consume; that they do not realize many of the facts about abortion.

So for us secular science-based people, one of the things we can do is spread science-based information.  Many people understand that making abortion illegal does not stop abortion, but it makes abortion less safe.

We know from lots of studies that providing sex education and access to birth control tremendously decreases the rates of abortion. It’s easy to think that, iff people knew the reality, then people would be more open to the pro-choice point of view.

One of the things we often do as secular humanists is spending time trying to provide data and information, because we do tend to be more based on reason and in science. We are learning that people do not change their minds particularly based on data, but based on emotion. We have to change social norms.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved through the provision of time, effort, finances, professional networks, and so on, to the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry? How can this recommendation expand in the Bible Belt in general in terms of secular organizational health?

Cleaveland: So, anybody, wherever they are, could Google “Secular,” “Secular Humanist,” “Atheist,” “Agnostic,” or “Freethought” in order to find a local secular group. I am amazed at how many secular organization there are even in small towns. If it is not in their own particular town, there is probably an organization in a town or two over.

People can find us at our website, http://www.lowcountryhumanists.org/, We started a Twitter feed, @CHSHumanists, just over a year ago, and we put out a lot of information, stories, and links to other secular organizations. We are also on Facebook and Meetup.

I do think it is so important to have people with similar values around you. We enjoy donating to local secular charities, volunteering around town, and getting together for social activities.

We have family friendly activities, too, so, we have a separate Facebook group for local families, including secular home-schooling families.

We recently had Andrew Seidel, Constitutional attorney from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, about his new book, The Founding Myth. These great discussions are my favorite part of Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts and conclusion based on the conversation today?

Cleaveland: If people have younger kids, then I would strongly urge them to look into the secular summer camps. Camp 42 here in the Southeast US or Camp Quest around the US and Canada provide secular kids life-changing experiences.  

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and you time, Dr. Cleaveland.

Cleaveland: Thank you so much, it was nice talking with you.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/22

Rob Boston is the Editor of Church & State (Americans United for Separation of Church and State). Here we talk about secular and freethought communities, the American story.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What defined communities of secularism and the values of freethought in earlier periods of the American story? What define the communities of secularism and the values of freethought now?

How is this reflected in the newer writers and speakers – and their content – in the secular and freethought communities now?

Rob Boston: If you read the history of freethought in America, you’re struck by how the early battles were basically about the struggle for these ideas to even exist. Both the government and the larger culture were hostile to the idea that God might be mythical. Some freethinkers were arrested for blasphemy, and freethought materials were sometimes banned. Anyone who wants to learn more about this period should read Susan Jacoby’s book Freethinkers.

Modern-day secularism is like any other philosophy or idea in that it contains a range of people who bring different ideas and aspirations to the table. Some secularists want to focus on increasing the acceptance of non-theists in American society. Others want to work on separation of church and state. Still others argue for a broad social justice approach.

I remember the days when organized freethought groups were dominated by older white men. I’m thankful for the work theses leaders did in launching the movement. However, demographically, America is undergoing a lot of changes.

For secularism/freethought to be viable in the years to come, it will have to broaden its approach and welcome younger people, women, communities of color and members of the LGBTQ community. For freethought to appeal to the members of these communities, we need to make it clear that we share their concerns.

I see this happening, but it has been a slow process, and there has been a backlash to it. The rise of the internet has amplified some atheist voices that are misogynistic and racist. One of the reasons I hew to humanism is that the values of humanism rebuke misogyny and racism. I believe that an embrace of a truly inclusive humanistic ethic is not only the moral choice, it is our best hope for the future.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rob.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/20

Dr. David L. Orenstein is a Full Professor of Anthropology at Medgar Evers College of the CUNY (City University of New York) who has authored two books: Godless Grace: How Non-Believers are Making the World Safer Richer and Kinder (2015) and Darwin’s Apostles (2019). In early professional training, Orenstein was a  primatologist, he grew into a prominent national (American) and international humanist and freethinker with a noteworthy civil rights and human rights activist history through the American Humanist Association (AHA). He represents the AHA at the United Nations through the NGO/DPI program. Also, Orenstein is an ordained humanist chaplain who serves on the board of several local and national groups including The Broader Social Impacts Committee of the Hall of Human Origins/Smithsonian Institution, and the Center for Freethought Equality, and The Secular Humanist Society of New York.

Here we talk about the definitions of cultures, human rights, the United Nations, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, when we’re dealing with descriptions of cultures as such, and then the human rights violations that may follow from particular cultures or aspects of cultures, when can we draw that line firmly? How does this play out in some of the conversations at the UN?

Dr. David Orenstein: Here’s the thing, most people at the UN are not anthropologists. Most people serve at the UN for diplomatic reasons. They may or may not be there because they want to be there. For some, it is just a job.

For some, it represents a place to represent their group or their nation. But there is a general consensus that politics – from my time there – will always play a role in the ultimate decisions that are made those in power in the United Nations regarding what is violence, what is culture, and who gets to be protected.

It doesn’t always work out fairly. I’ll certainly give you an example. About 4 years ago, when I just started serving. There was a discussion on the rights of non-believers in some Arab and Muslim countries. 

It was made very clear. That one very large Arab state would not sign onto anything that gave shade to humanists, or atheists. In fact, they threatened to withhold something else that was much more public if they felt that the humanist cause was being taken up more seriously by the United Nations in general.

That is, or at least was, a big problem. I wrote about this several years ago for the AHA when I found out about it. But we talked about culture. We know, as part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. People have a right to their culture.

They have a right to express that culture freely without any harm, whether religious or not. But where the rubber meets the road is what mechanisms does the UN use to enforce its dictates or its mandate regarding the human rights and cultural violations. 

The UN tries to be the best it can be for everyone and, in that, it sometimes will make enemies. I think from a culture point of view. There is very much statement and are statements about minority rights, about religious and non-religious rights within the context of minority rights.

People should be harmed or hurt. Things like that. They have this small group of statements. But then there is the reality; people are harmed for expressing their independent thought.

The UN doesn’t, really, have a mechanism because it is fighting against itself, in many ways. Not necessarily fighting against its own self-interest, but wanting to find its right to speak.

The UN, of course, does not believe anyone has the right to oppress another person. Member states have to sign onto this. But in practice, it is clear that under of the guise of “this is my culture” things do occur; that would seem, in the West, very, very dramatically different, whether about atheist rights or humanist rights, or LGBTQ rights, and so on and so forth. 

There is a lot of – not hypocrisy but – more evidence that we can’t, as a species, get our act together, which is a shame. But I am also very, very hopeful that one day, we will. I would not want to see a world without the United Nations because no terrible how things are.

A world without the United Nations would be a thousand times worse in my opinion.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, David.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/20

Minister Amanda Poppei is a Senior Leader & Unitarian Universalist Minister at the Washington Ethical Society (Ethical Culture and Unitarian Universalist). Here we talk about ‘standard’ services for the UUs and ethical societies.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s talk about some of the functions within the community, what is the standard service repertoire – and proper terminology for everything within it – in a Washington Ethical Society Service?

Minister Amanda Poppei: Our “flow” on a Sunday morning looks pretty similar to a Protestant service, although we use different language for many elements…and of course all of it is from a humanist orientation.

We have Opening Word and an Opening Song (which is usually a sing-along), a Welcome and Community Candlelighting (when we say, every week: We kindle within us the warmth of compassion, the light of understanding, and the fire of commitment to build a bright future for all), a Meditation and music that goes with it, a Platform Address and a musical response to that, Community Sharing when people can share what resonated for them or what they are taking away from the morning, then Collection, a Children’s Sharing which might be a story or might be hearing from the kids about their classes, and then Appreciations and a Closing Song (again usually a singalong, and usually the same for the whole month because it will fit with the month’s theme) and Closing Words. The whole thing, from start to finish, is called a Platform Service. 

Jacobsen: How does this differ from other ethical societies? 

Poppei: Not all Ethical Societies light a candle or do a meditation, and not all use a monthly theme the way we do. All of them have a Platform Address, and almost all of them have something like Community Sharing, though for some it might be a Q&A format, whereas ours is just hearing from people without responses from the speaker. We also have more music, and definitely more singalong music, than most other Ethical Societies. 

Jacobsen: Also, what is the code of conduct or the means by which to standardize, for base consistency, the messaging, imagery, topics, and presentations of the ethical societies, at least in the United States? 

Poppei: There’s really no means of standardizing–it’s up to each Ethical Society to create what is meaningful for their community. 

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Minister Poppei.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/19

Sadia Hameed is an ex-Muslim and human rights activist focused on women’s rights in particular. She is a Spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She grew up in Oxford. She lost faith at age 15. Her brother was bullied for speaking out as an atheist and, likely due to the backlash and bullying for this, committed suicide in 2015. The last wishes of Razaa were not respected during the funeral for him. This estranged Sadia and her family. She was featured in the film Islam’s Non-Believers (2016).

Here we talk about the FiLiA conference.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you got involved in the FiLiA conference. Who founded it? Why was it founded? How did you get involved?

Sadia Hameed: It was founded by Lisa Marie. It started as Feminism in London. It was a feminist conference in London that fizzled away. She then created FiLiA, which, I think, means daughter. So, she created this conference year on year. It has gotten better and better.

I have been involved in the past 2 years. It has gotten better and better. The demographics got wider and wider. I think that she just wants to take feminism to as wide an audience as possible. But a very, very honest feminism rather than the kind that shies away from anything.

She really believes in freedom of speech and equality regardless of who you are. She does not shy away from anything, which is very admirable in this day and age.

Jacobsen: Are there any confirmed speakers?

Hameed: At the moment, no, we are planning for 2019. I am hoping for the Pakistani activist Gulalai Ismail. She was charged with terrorism for her human rights work and her work in the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (or the Pashtun Protection Movement, PTM), which highlighted some of the Pakistani army’s behaviour tactics and abuses within the Pashtun area.

The moment that she focused in on the army. All of a sudden; she was targeted with terrorism and then went into hiding. She got out of the country, eventually. She is in New York, now, as far as I know. Her getting out of the country was not the last thing that they did.

Now, they went after the parents. Her father is in custody under false charges because she is against the army. The army is very powerful. Touch wood, we are hoping to bring her next year. No formal speakers as of yet.

Jacobsen: Who does Lisa Marie look up to?

Hameed: [Laughing] I do not know, actually [Laughing]. She has a lot of lovely feminist friends, perhaps them. I cannot say for certain. I would have to ask her.

Jacobsen: What have been themes discussed and ones more appealing for the overall conference?

Hameed: So, the sex work theme. That was very, very popular. It was on the FiLiA website. This was the first time. For the last few years, FiLiA hosted a panel on secularism. This was the first time that they had a panel on blasphemy and apostasy.

The interesting thing that happened at the conference this year. It was a couple sentences to open the panel on secularism. The first was, ‘Religion is misogynistic.’ There was no problem in the room whatsoever. [Laughing] All of the women nodded their heads. The women were like, “Yes, you’re telling us something that I already know.”

Second, ‘Islam is misogynistic.’ Then gasps through the room. I said, “What is the fucking problem, mate? What is the problem? I said exactly the same thing. I just mentioned a religion rather than just religion.”

It was a really good conference for people, women, that were definitely thinking. I felt like the conference was sewn together quite a lot this year. Some of the women this year managed to sew together the issues between the women talking about the trans issue and the women talking about secularism.

They realized that it was hard to reach them. It was the first time for when we went to the conference and realized the similarity of our issues. It took years but thank you very much for fucking realizing it. There was  quite a lot of positivity this year.

They also talked about surrogacy. Sadly, I missed that panel. So, I could not tell you too much about it, myself. We had Marie Legar this year as well. The issue was a woman who attacked in France for speaking back to a catcaller.

They had panels on women’s health, failing families, femicide, the trans issue in terms of children, class. If you go to the website, you can see the panel. It was so diverse. It was pretty fantastic, actually.

Jacobsen: What would be the principles of founding the conference or developing a conference for others to take into account – just to put those seeds in people’s mind if they want to create their own conference?

Hameed: I would say, “Have a clear, concise, simple objective.” Lisa Marie’s most recent objective is to bring feminism to as many women as possible. She has worked really damn hard for it. She fundraises for women who cannot attend it.

Her whole idea was a simple, straightforward one. It was to bring as many amazing women together as possible. If your objective is simple, then you are going to gain a really, really big audience. This is the first conference that I went to in which every single speaker was so diverse.

It was a tick-box feminism conference. People being like, ‘Let us bring in the token darky to meet our quota of darkies.’

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Hameed: [Laughing] there is a dishonesty in that, isn’t there? With FiLiA, it did not feel forced. Every single thing there felt like a real space was carved for everyone. This conference finished; within days, she said, ‘Okay, onto 2020.’

The only other place I have seen that so far is the Battle of Ideas. It is like a genuine free speech conference in the UK. That is the only other place where I have seen a genuine willingness to keep the space open regardless of whether the organizers agree or disagree.

I think that is really, really key. A good researcher is able to keep impartial. I think a good journalist. I think the same applies to a good conference organizer. You do the organizing. You do not control who says what  and how they say it.

You open the space for it. You let things happen quite naturally, really.

Jacobsen: Last question, with one minute…

Hameed: … [Laughing]…

Jacobsen: …how do you manage the stress of the kinds of difficult issues that you’re dealing with day in and day out on sexual abuse and survivors as well as the men and the women who are going through this over the long term, and not just dealing with one person and then it is over?

Hameed: Yes, I am working very hard to begin rolling out a campaign next year because in the sexual violence sector is, actually, a mandatory getting of a supervision. It is like internal therapy. It is mandatory as a professional working with victims who are very, very traumatized. It is impossible as a human not to take on some of it.

Part of a job, something that is mandatory is that you get therapy along the way. So, that is built into the job. It is monthly, usually. Actually, the sexual violence sector is the only sector in which it is mandatory. It is not mandatory in every single sector.

Even in the atheist sector, where I am right now, there is no need to provide me with therapy in spite of the difficult stories that I am hearing, including the sexual violence stuff that I am seeing. What I am going to be doing with the campaigns next year is to start lobbying governments to make it mandatory in every single care sector where you are dealing with difficult stories, the employer has a statutory responsibility to provide this support.

So, they can get the service. The impartiality of the service is crucial because the managers who ask if you are okay; in case, they can use it against you. Managers are notorious for cunts. Aren’t they? [Laughing] they are not always thinking about your well-being, but the organization and their own agenda.

Staff wellbeing, absolutely, assures client wellbeing. If you are not looking after staff, then you’re looking after your clientele. If staff are burned out, then they will do a great job in the daily work of the organization.

It is important for any sort of care sector. We will be looking for that full steam. We cannot do anything as of now because Parliament has been dissolved with the current General Election. I am sure that we will have another one [Laughing].

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Sadia.

Hameed: Thank you so much!

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/20

The Brainstorm podcast is Saskatchewan’s first skeptic and atheist podcast. An eclectic group of local skeptics discuss a variety of topics relating to science, skepticism, religion and politics while having a few drinks and a few laughs.

“The 49th Parahell with Rob Rousseau” episode link here:

http://brainstormpodcast.ca/the-49th-parahell-with-rob-rousseau

In this episode of the Brainstorm podcast Skeptic Studio, Cory talked to Rob Rousseau who is a well known Canadian leftist and host of the podcast 49th Parahell. They talk about the far right, politics, and being a leftist in Canada.

Here are some links to Rob’s content:
http://49thparahell.libsyn.com/

https://soundcloud.com/49thparahell

https://www.patreon.com/49thparahell

https://twitter.com/robrousseau

https://twitter.com/49thParahell

For anything else you can contact us at mail@brainstormblog.net

You can follow the show on twitter @brainstormpod, check out the facebook page at facebook.com/brainstormpodcast, or join our discussion group, search for The Brainstorm Podcast Discussion Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Brainstormpodcastfriends.

You can sign up for our newsletter at https://www.brainstormblog.net/newsletter

Or you can follow me on twitter @hardcoreskeptic

Thanks to our financial supporters Seanna, HJ, Magnus, Stephanie, BobbGlenn, The Utah Outcasts, Zack, Freethinker 215 and Lisa Simpson support American Atheists, Keith, Jesse, Peter, Kim, Larry, Drifa, Rob, Richard, Darryl, Aaron, Destin Doesn’t Suck That Much,  and The Flying Spaghetti Monster (Sauce Be Upon Him). If you want to join them and help the show grow then you can do that at www.patreon.com/brainstormpodcast or you can do a one time donation at www.paypal.me/brainstormpodcast

Remember to check out aloststateofmind.com and www.voidpod.com

For more show notes check out our website www.brainstormblog.net and follow the show on Spreaker for notifications whenever a new episode is up or we go live.https://www.spreaker.com/user/brainstormpodcast

And join our Discord chat for live chat during the show https://discord.gg/7ZJCcKP

Check out our new store online for some Brainstorm gear. It’s athttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/brainstorm-podcast-gear?ref_id=5797

We’ve teamed up with Reason Revolution too. You can find that at www.reasonrevolution.org

Remember to give us a rating, a thumbs up or a fav on your podcatcher of choice podknife or podchaser, join our facebook group, like our page, follow us on twitter, share the show and spread the word.

Seriously, share the show. It means a lot and helps the show grow.

Thanks for listening and remember, the truth matters

—

Just want to say thanks for listening to our show. We work hard to produce good, fun, skeptical content and hope that you enjoy it. If you want to support the podcast or any of our other projects you can find more information on our main website www.brainstormblog.net or go to our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/brainstormpodcast

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/20

Stefan Paintner works for Atheist Refugee Relief. Here we learn more about some of the issues and difficulties of refugees, and the manner in which organizations can help support them to safety. This issue, apart from religion, will continue to increase as a problem for many years.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you become involved, originally, with Atheist Refugee Relief?

Stefan Paintner: In 2015, when the big refugee migration came to Germany, we thought it would be important for us as an atheist group to also get involved in the social work that had to be done at the time. In Germany a lot of the social sector is run by the church, even though the population is not very religious. When we started getting involved, we met Rana Ahmad, a Saudi activist who got famous when she published a photo of her hand holding a notice with “Atheist Republic” written on it, inside of Mecca with the Kaaba in the background. She connected us with atheists in the camps in Germany. Together we tried to help them with a network of secular organizations like the GBS (Giordano Bruno Stiftung) that has local groups all over Germany.

Jacobsen: How have these efforts through Atheist Refugee Relief provided a basis solidifying moral precepts on top of the standard and mostly correct notion of atheism as a negative/rejecting belief?

Paintner: Through our practical work and our self-conception we increasingly succeed in convincing people that we are not just atheists, but atheists who care. This is the best way to promote atheism and humanism. We stand for human rights and humanist values. Also the atheists from the Islamic countries who have come to us, they all share the same basic values. If you really believe in the individual rights of every human being, you cannot be religious because many values would be excluded as a sin like for example homosexuality. A key element of humanism is also that there are no final truths, everything must always be up for discussion so that values and rules can improve further. So atheism is just a side effect of these values.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more prominent cases of atheist refugees?

Paintner: Regarding people, of course, it is Rana, the co-founder of the Atheist Refugee Relief, who also came here as a refugee herself. But we are also working with Worood Zuhair, a very powerful feminist activist from Kerbala, Iraq. Hisham is an atheist from Egypt who openly spoke about his humanist views on Egyptian television. Amed Sherwan, an Iraqi atheist who was tortured in Erbil because of his disbelief in Allah, he was 15 years old at that time. Munshi is an activist from Bangladesh, whose friends were murdered by Islamists. Hind Albolooki, a brave woman who managed to escape Dubai. And many, many more.

But it is also very important to raise awareness for the situation of ex-Muslim atheists. We were the first to expose the Saudi attempts to pressure Saudi refugees inside of Germany to go back to their home country or that their families tried to abduct them. But our main political success was to bring the criminal and Islamistic activities of the Shia militia “Al Salam 313” inside of Europe to the big media. Without the information we received from atheists we are in contact with, Europe would still not be aware of the serious threats that these militarily trained extremists pose to western societies. We even spoke about this in the EU parliament.

Jacobsen: Why is ProtonMail utilized by Atheist Refugee Relief?

Paintner: It was a recommendation by another activist. The data is stored in encrypted form and is therefore not accessible by third parties. When we communicate with other ProtonMail users, we can guarantee end-to-end encryption and the traffic cannot be monitored. Secure communication is crucial for many of our contacts.

Jacobsen: What is the right to self-determination for atheists in the context of religious societies? Also, what does this mean in theoretical and practical terms?

Paintner: They have to pretend to be religious, since it is not possible to leave Islam (currently, we are only in contact with ex-Muslims). If you do so you are guilty of apostasy and in 13 Islamic countries this is punishable by death. But also the threat and the pressure by their family can be enormous, especially for women. Women suffer the most, because if they don’t behave as a good Muslim, they might get beaten, tortured or even killed. Even small criticism can have harsh consequences, even here in Germany. One example is the atheist activist Yahya Ekhou from Mauritania. He posted a harmless comment regarding an accident in Egypt and the next day the Imam of the main mosque in Nouakchott (capital of Mauritania) announced a death fatwa against him. He is now in constant fear of his life, here in Germany.

Jacobsen: How many countries have the death penalty for apostasy or for leaving the faith? What countries? Why those nations?

Paintner: There are 13 countries that have the death penalty on apostasy (according to “WorldAtlas”). The most prominent is Saudi-Arabia, where atheists are terrorists by definition. And yet there are many living as atheists in the closet, as many people told us, who made it out of the Kingdom. The other countries are Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The Islamic countries (except Turkey) have different degrees of fundamentalist legislation, but they are all based on the Sharia. Thus, in Islamic countries there will always be some laws against blasphemy, apostasy or the like, and the consequences are unacceptable in terms of human rights.

Jacobsen: What religions persecute atheists per capita – thus, even if one accounts for total adherent differences between the world major religions and the world minor religions – the most as a matter of course, as a matter of fact? Why?

Paintner: Until now we are in contact with Ex-Muslims only, who had to flee their country but they are still not safe in Germany. We support people from 19 different Islamic countries. In the world, we observe that Muslims share a very high degree of identification with their religion. Anti-Western sentiments and anti-Semitism are also very common, so if someone embraces the values of enlightenment she or he is considered a traitor. It is worse when for women, because beyond that, they put shame on the family and the community, maybe simply by living a free and modern life-style. >This is why these atheist activists need special protection that we try to provide by hiding their address or transferring them to other regions of Germany.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved and help with ARR?

Paintner: The core of the organisation in Cologne is just about ten people. Now we are founding many regional groups. So we will be located not only in Cologne, but also in Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg and more are coming. And we also have a highly active group in Austria. We need people to bring the problems of the atheist refugees to public attention and to support local refugees. We are all volunteers and depend on donations.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Paintner: It is very important for the atheist community to support the ones who are fighting to liberate their countries from religious terror. They pay a high price for this. They lose their friends, their home, their family, their community – everything. It is our duty to support them, because you don’t get freedom for free.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Stefan.

Paintner: It has been my pleasure.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/18

Ric Glowienka “joined Humanist Canada in 2016, became a Humanist Officiant in 2017 and joined the Humanist Canada board in 2019. The son of refugees, Ric came to Canada in 1957. A fascination with computing, Ric has spent 40 years working with organizations around the world, implementing leading-edge systems that prepare them for the information age we live in today. Ric has assisted companies such as Ford, Intel, and NASA and cities like New York, Boston, and Baltimore in leveraging technology to improve their efficiencies and meet evolving customer needs. Ric is a believer in life-long learning. His goal is to refocus Humanist Canada’s message and mission so more Canadian Humanists following their values will be compelled to join the organization. He lives in Ottawa and enjoys travel, music, art and architecture, and cycling the bike paths of the nation’s capital.”

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are on the Board of Humanist Canada, which is the national representation of humanism. I am on the Board with you to be completely transparent and open for the duration of the interview. What are some moments when a humanistic orientation and life stance took root?

Ric Glowienka: That’s a good question. My roots of my humanism are basically in the Enlightenment philosophy, although I don’t know if I knew it as that at 14 or so – I had a scientific and mathematical orientation from early life.

I remember back in primary school doing a project in science class on statistical probability. I realized that the world was not a supernatural place. The world worked with some degree of rules. I was fortunate enough to have access to a set of Encyclopedia Britannica to be able to read about the physical world in which we lived.

As I went from that age to high school, I found that I was less and less inclined to give any credence to any supernatural effect or any phenomena. I really looked for scientific or other physical reasons for things happening.

That was the awakening of my skepticism. I think that’s where it all began.

Jacobsen: Do you think Canada has a different flavour of humanism than American or Western Europe?

Glowienka: I think different than Western Europe. I think Western Europe has codified, more than us in North America, a humanist response to social issues. In the United States, they are still much more likely to bend to a supernatural orientation.

I think Canada is in the middle. I have encountered people who say, “I am spiritual but not religious.” I think, “Are you hedging your bets?” I think that is our approach to governance in Canada; Canadians try hard not to offend.

A truly rational person would say, “Sure, believe what you want, but the matter of the fact is that we will legislate in accordance with reason and rationalism.” We are a weird mix between most Americans and the more humanist values seen in Europe.

Jacobsen: Do you think this influences our political and social outlook as well? Do you think it influences our relation to other countries in the world?

Glowienka: I think our approach to other countries is more humanistic than the United States. I think there’s more of a social justice to our work in international relations than our neighbours. I think that is deliberate and a healthy thing. I, personally, like the fact that Canada approaches things with an understanding of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its work with the world.

It is not business as usual. It is business unusual. We try, with moral persuasion, to say, “You have to get rid of some of these impediments to the conversations and the enactment of the UDHR.” Canada is one of those countries.

Good international relations start from a bedrock understanding of rights. That’s straightforward with Canada and its approach to the world stage.

Jacobsen: What do you think about Canada and the scientific literacy of its citizens?

Glowienka: I would like to say, “It’s stunning.”

Jacobsen: How does it look from Ottawa?

Glowienka: As Canadians, we are literate as to the operation of the environment around us. The way that we use science to improve our lives.

Let’s say it more specifically, we have relied as a nation on technology to survive. Canada has not been geographically challenged where food stuffs naturally grow. We’ve used science to improve the yields of what will grow, and what we can grow.

We are challenged in building shelter for our people given the extreme climate. I think all of those have led to impressive innovation in Canada. I think, as a country, we have a scientific orientation.

As bad as oil is for the climate, the fact is that a lot of brave people in Canada have done the hard job of extracting oil from oil sludge, from a product that is unusable. In terms of a scientific and cultural orientation, I think we’re in good shape.

I think a lot of people would defend that. We have lot of travelers or passengers in the Canadian environment taking advantage of a lot of technology without acknowledging the criticality of it, in our existence as a country.

In a long way around, we probably could do a better job in our educational system to get kids into STEM. My feeling is that we need to get more kids into STEM. We need to do a better job of getting more youth involved, so that they can take advantage of it and be the next generation of innovators.

Are we the world leader in it? You could say, “Canada is one of the major countries in the world.” Could we be doing a better job? Yes, I think we could be doing an even better job.

Jacobsen: Where do the arts and the humanities fit into the humanist worldview?

Glowienka: That’s a good one. I get pleasure out of solving logic problems. I get pleasure out of a rock song or seeing a fine piece of architecture.

We are not pleasure seekers but seekers of better experiences – let’s say that. The good and bad can be different for everybody. It could be a crossword puzzle. It could be a good rock concert.

What makes you happy? I think that depends on a person’s worldview and how they grew up. I think that kids were lucky if they grew up in a family that enjoyed music and art.

I believe it could virtually anything from writing a computer program to a drawing of a cathedral or something. That’s the long answer. The short answer is, “There are a wide variety of things that trigger happiness in human beings.”

All the arts. All the elements that make up a society are valid contributors to happiness.

Jacobsen: Have humanists made mistakes in their work in Canada? How so if so?

Glowienka: I think Humanism is an unknown concept to many Canadians.

Are humanists not as communal as people who belong to organized religion? Humans benefit from a sense of communal involvement, and we are competing with organizations that have – literally – thousands of years of communal structure.

Whereas, humanism as an organized community is under a century old. How do you create a culture of humanist community with deep history? We are seeing the beginnings of a humanist communal culture. We are all feeling it.

I am a member of Humanist Canada. I also joined the Humanist Association of Ottawa. They have things on offer to get people together. I do not take advantage of them. I feel this is the way for others.

What does this mean to the average humanist? We do not have a BBQ every September. We do not celebrate Isaac Newton’s birthday or anything like that as a capital “H” humanist. I see a whole series of humanist atoms that haven’t coalesced into anything more complex yet.

But I think the arrow of human nature and human behaviour points to more and more humanist structures, which would, in some sense, be analogous to religion without dogma. It is building a coherent humanist message in Canada, perhaps.

Jacobsen: Do you notice anything in the newest generations of young people?

Glowienka: I spent seven years mentoring college students for Nipissing University. I did a class in Information Technology Management. I spent a lot of time observing people in their 20s to 30s and how they approach life.

Their lives, in general, are far more open to experimentation without judgment than I recall in my teens and 20s. We have allowed youth to be more experimental in their approach to life, with fewer rushes to judgement.

We are not as judgmental about alternative ways of living as our parents were. I think a lot of kids take advantage of that. That’s cool. Again, we are still a nation of immigrants. We can see this in my classes and others as well.

In the 20 to 30 years an experimental lifestyle is no longer looked at with a stigma. There is a looking at other ways of thinking. We have a longer way to go. I think both of those things are positive.

Now, my daughter, on the other hand, is a spiritual child, which is fine by me. She must find her own way. I think in their teens and 20s, kids are looking for more direction. They are saying that there was, perhaps, a little too much freedom and openness.

Over the next few years, we may see a backlash to more ordered, structured, and regimented behaviours. My own view is that the long arrow of progress is towards wisely approaching opportunities and wisely approaching new things in a non-judgmental manner.

Again, long story short, in terms of what I see in society from youth, it is a more liberal view towards social norms.

Jacobsen: Americans like to speculate about if they ever had an atheist president in their history. Do you think Canadians have ever had a humanist prime minister?

Glowienka: William Lyon Mackenzie King was talking to his dead mom. So, that’s probably not a good example. If I had to pick an icon of humanism in Canada, I think that I might choose Lester Pearson. He was the son of a Methodist minister, but I don’t think that adversely impacted his governing style.

He seemed to be more of what I consider myself: a globalist or humanist of the world. I think Pearson did a good job of that. Prior to the Second World War, I think there was a heavy emphasis on religious activities and on religion.

In WWII, you get into, “The world is not made better by us slaughtering each other. So, let’s make it a better place.” Pearson was a role model of saying, “Let’s make this a better place or planet.”

Are there any others since then? I haven’t seen a real commitment to that sort of type of behaviour. I am Liberal by political orientation. So, I tend to see our liberal leaders with a bit of rose-coloured classes, and our conservative leaders with a more cynical bent.

If you had to ask me, “Do you feel any of the post-Pearsons are more humanist?” I would say, “From my perspective, I think they have all done their best to not let their own personal religious beliefs really colour their governing style to a detrimental effect.”

Even if it is a deeply held religious belief today, does this mean that they will lead the nation upon those beliefs? My gut feeling is “No.” I think that even if they have strong religious beliefs; I think that the Canadian scene over the last 50 or 60 years has been a lot more based on governing through a – let’s call it – humanist manner.

Jacobsen: What do you think are some of the more exciting initiatives of Humanist Canada now?

Glowienka: I think Humanist Canada could be more of a national organization. It is good for getting people like me to be wedding officiants. I like the idea that Humanist Canada is trying to be more countrywide. I am participating in the committee that is going to try to change perceptions of humanist officiants across Canada.

I think that is laudable. I think people who want a non-religious service should be allowed to have it. I believe in freedom of choice. I believe they should be able to marry whenever they want and to whoever they want.

I think we have a way to go in terms of spreading the goals of humanism as a life stance for more Canadians. Right now, we are still very low national leadership. We need to make the value of being a member of Humanist Canada have some serious value and some serious meaning. We should speak for the more than 25% of Canadians who have no religious affiliation.

So far, I have enjoyed the conversations that I have had with some of you. It is something that I was not doing up until 2 or 3 years ago.

Jacobsen: What about Humanist Association of Ottawa?

Glowienka: I haven’t had much to do with them. They have been more of a communal organization. I have been putting it off. I have a full-time job, so I try to preserve some time for myself. Then again, I think that I am missing out on something when I am not taking advantage of them and their community.

Jacobsen: Any final thoughts or feelings in conclusion based on the conversation today?

Glowienka: It is refreshing. I grew up in an Eastern European family. It was a Polish family, very Roman Catholic. We did grow up in that environment. I am sure that it is the same for many other cultures.

I am sure other cultures are even more rigid. The one thing that I am finding or learning, being a humanist that represents Humanism now; there can also be the same depth of culture to humanism.

I think a lot of people in North America still do not understand. They assume that humanism represents anti-theism. There is a cultural grounding to it. I say to people to learn about humanism. Maybe, that will make it easier to say, “I am a humanist. Here’s why…”

My wish for the years that I will be involved in Humanist Canada will be to help people understand the philosophical and cultural, or historical, underlying tenets of humanists. How we exist? Why we exist? How society benefits from our existence?

We want to say, “This is a positive. It is not anti- anything. It is a pro-human movement.”

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Ric.

Glowienka: Thanks, Scott! I hope that I have given you something useful and worthwhile.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/17

Mandisa Thomas, a native of New York City, is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence today,” she recalls.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.

In 2019, Mandisa was the recipient of the Secular Student Alliance’s Backbone Award and named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethought Heroine. She was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association’s Person of the Year 2018.

As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa encourages more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

“The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”

Here, we talk about September 11th, 2001 for the United States.

*Interview conducted on September 11, 2001.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today is a particularly traumatic day, nationally, for the consciousness of America. For one, it broke the image of invulnerability. In another way, it marks a real tragedy for the number of dead and for the size of the attack. What does this day represent to most Americans and what are some reflections on religion in that context?

Mandisa Thomas: Yes, today is September 11^th, and it is the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in which some Islamic extremists hijacked a total of 4 planes. 2 that were crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City, 1 that was crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and another one that went down in Pennsylvania.

What this represents, it was a tragic attack on America. So, what this means for us, it showed this country’s vulnerability. People did not think that there was any way that there could be this sort of attack on American soil. You only saw that stuff in movies. To see this sort of thing take place in cities that are near and dear to us was very frightening. There were a lot of people who lost their lives. The World Trade Center is a financial center of the world and to see the towers go down like that was heartbreaking. My husband and I are from New York City. We grew up with the World Trade Center and the Twin Towers, so it was very monumental to us. Also, my mother-in-law worked near the World Trade Center, so she was near ground zero, and had to evacuate from her workplace along with many others. She saw the Twin Towers go down. It was a very, horrific day for a number of people. Granted, there are horrific events that take place almost every day, but it is always special to the minds of Americans because of the way these attacks were orchestrated and on the day that it happened, September 11th, 9/11. So 9-1-1 is forever memorialized in people’s hearts and minds.

Jacobsen: What are some larger contexts here with regards to the style of religious belief and the fervour and zeal behind it?

Thomas: We know that there are people who are extremists about their positions. We see this with Evangelical Christians. Also, we see extremists in Islam, but, of course, they do not represent everyone in that community.

However, this goes to show how seriously people take their beliefs to their point where they will infringe on the human rights, including physical harm. This has been a key issue when it comes to women’s rights in Islamic countries and communities. Again, this isn’t relegated to this particular religion. But this was a very harsh reality, that some countries that are populated by Muslims really condemn the United States for what it stands for. And unfortunately, the 9/11 attacks did validate some ignorant propaganda of people who come from that area of the world. But it also put a face on people who were willing to not only die for what they believe in but also to kill for it. And they came from that part of the world.

Jacobsen: Is there any sex and gender aspect to this? For instance, some of the more extreme and horrific attacks or aggressions tend to come from men.

Thomas: Yes, [Laughing], that is interesting considering that Islam tends to favor men. Christianity does as well, like most religions do, but Islam in particular favors men, and the male ego. There are so many conspiracies surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and who was behind it. Supposedly, the most credible theories are that Osama Bin Laden orchestrated them. Yet, it does show the number of men who were willing to carry out these attacks. Again, it is a tragedy. However, it is hypocritical for Americans to act as if they are much different, even if they would not go to the extent of killing people for what they believe in. This country’s history proves that it is not above subjugating and oppressing women, children, and others who are marginalized.

Jacobsen: Why mostly men? [Laughing]

Thomas: Your guess is as good as mine.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Thomas: This goes back to the conversation we had about toxic masculinity, about what it means to be a man, and what it means to have power. Time and history has shown that men in particular, are so obsessed with power to the point where they will cause destruction. That they will cause, unfortunately, the deaths of innocent people. And this has a lot to do with the concept of God being in male form and having the ability to destroy and create at will. Because over centuries this notion has been able to thrive, then you have other men who will emulate it. Unfortunately, this has become institutional over the course of centuries and there is no telling how long it may take to undo it.

Jacobsen: Could this also, in turn, related to higher levels of aggression not healthily channelled in terms of some of the forms of masculinity we have been talking about before?

Thomas: Absolutely, it does. It seems like as much as people say they want peace; it’s lip service. Unfortunately, the human race has collectively thrived on aggression, violence and war. Definitely a “survival of the fittest” way of being. And because they have been able to getting away with it for so long, there is no telling if people will admit that there is an ongoing problem here, and if mental help – whether on an individual or collective level, will be effective. Again, there is no telling how long it will take for this to turn around. Hopefully, sooner than later.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you. 

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/17

David Flint is the Vice-Chair of the North London Humanist Group. Here we talk about his life work, and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

David Flint: I’m mostly English. One grandmother was a lapsed Jew but I never met her and didn’t know her ethnicity till I was 63.

I was born and brought up in Birmingham the only son of an accountant and a stay-at-home housewife. My father was an agnostic, my mother a rather nominal Christian.

Jacobsen: Following from the last question, how have these factors influenced personal life and views?

Flint: Not very clear. I don’t think I was ever a Christian and I was never a member of a church. I attended a Congregational church weekly between the ages of 14 and 17 as a sort of quid pro quo for attending the church youth club. I stopped after the school RI master gave me Honest to God to read.

I found I was a Humanist later than year after the minister gave the youth club a talk on humanism.

Jacobsen: How does a rejection of the supernatural change the way one lives one’s life?

Flint: Not sure that it did much but then I don’t think that religious belief made much difference to the lives of those friends who had it. Apart from weekly church attendance.

Jacobsen: How does an understanding of the natural influence views on life and meaning in the light of the aforementioned rejection?

Flint: From age 18 I was at University reading Chemistry and an active member of two humanist groups. I also went to lectures on philosophy and other topics. So it’s hard to establish which experiences formed my views.

I think humanism led me to be:

• Sceptical of all claims that beliefs drive behaviour. I thought and still think it’s more common for interests and desires to drive beliefs.
• Open to naturalistic explanations including genetic explanations of behaviour.
• Sceptical of the value of moral preaching.

Jacobsen: As the Vice-Chair, what are your tasks and responsibilities at the North London Humanist Group?

Flint: To make some decisions jointly with the secretary and chairman and to chair meetings in the absence of the chairman.

Jacobsen: What does an average gathering look like to you? What are the demographics of the North London Humanist Group?

Flint: An average meeting is 15 people and lasts 2 hours. There is usually an external speaker and the topic is usually related to religion.

Many of the group are my age (72) or older and some of us have been friends for 50 years.

There are more men than woman, though not overwhelmingly, and c20-30% have Jewish ancestry.

Jacobsen: How do you prepare for the activities of the community? What are some enjoyable and prominent events happening on a regular or annual basis?

Flint: Monthly meetings. Lunches or dinners about 3 times per year.

Jacobsen: How is integration with the surrounding community and culture? What are some joint activities with other faith/non-faith groups in the larger community?

Flint: We are a small group with little visibility and little formal interaction with churches, etc. joint activities with other groups are very rare.

Jacobsen: Who are some recommended speakers, authors, or organizations?

Flint: Humanists UK, National Secular Soc.

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts in conclusion?

Flint: Humanism could be a call to arms. A demand that we base our lives and our politics on reason, evidence, and compassion. But though all humanists share those values they would be divided on their implications. (Except in our dislike of religious schools, the established church, religious dogmatism, etc. and support for legal abortion, voluntary euthanasia, equal marriage, etc.)

The humanist movement could have taken a lead on issues that are bedevilled by primitive thinking (not always religious) and a refusal to acknowledge evidence. These issues include policy on drugs, crime, and climate change. But since we are generally cautious and undogmatic disputes do not get resolved but rather tolerated.

I am not aware of any UK humanist body that has taken leadership on these, or related, issues.

That’s one reason why I devote most of my time to work on climate change policy for the Green Party rather than to humanism.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, David.

Flint: You’re welcome.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/16

Takudzwa Mazwienduna is the informal leader of Zimbabwean Secular Alliance and a member of the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe. This educational series will explore secularism in Zimbabwe from an organizational perspective, and some more.

Here we talk about governance in the history of Zimbabwe.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If we examine the history of Zimbabwe, and its modern leadership, who have been bright lights of science, cosmopolitanism, and the like?

Takudzwa Mazwienduna: The former minister of Primary and Secondary education Dr. Lazarus Dokora has been the most progressive force and he has faced backlash from the ultra-religious Zimbabwean population because of it. He banned religious prayers and proselytizing from public schools. He also introduced a program that enhanced science education in schools.

Jacobsen: Has anyone identified as a humanist, freethinker, atheist, or something akin to simply rejecting the religious beliefs of the general public without accepting them?

Mazwienduna: There hasn’t been a public figure that has come out as a Humanist or Freethinker in the history of Zimbabwe. It is political suicide considering that Zimbabwe is ultra-religious.

Jacobsen: How is the inherited political legacy of past generations holding some aspects of Zimbabwe back from progress? How is this bringing Zimbabwe forward in its efforts to modernize?

Mazwienduna: Patronage is the biggest problem in that regard. Liberation war credentials are the ultimate golden ticket for Zimbabweans to benefit from the corrupt, totalitarian system. The system of patronage impacts everything to do with progress.

Jacobsen: How can the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe utilize these heritages of national governance to bolster the efforts for humanistic progress in Zimbabwe?

Mazwienduna: The Humanist Society of Zimbabwe finds itself in a tricky position in this situation. Its mission is not a priority for the totalitarian government hence unlikely to receive any genuine support. Some government ministries have been welcoming however, since they had the same goals and initiatives, such as the ministry of education under Dr. Lazarus Dokora. The government is obliged to respect secularism as the constitution dictates, but they do otherwise very often and opposing them almost always ends in death. As long as the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe stand for secularism without crossing the government or countering its interests, they are safe.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Takudzwa.

Mazwienduna: It’s always a pleasure Scott.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/14

Mandisa Thomas, a native of New York City, is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence today,” she recalls.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.

In 2019, Mandisa was the recipient of the Secular Student Alliance’s Backbone Award and named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethought Heroine. She was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association’s Person of the Year 2018.

As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa encourages more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

“The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”

Here, we talk about maturity with time.

*Interview conducted before September 4th.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your birthday is on September 4th. What is some of your commentary based on that birthday – of getting older, being more mature, and letting certain things go over time?

Mandisa Thomas: Yes, on September 4th, I turned 43. As I have gotten older and over the course of my life, I realize that first, maturity doesn’t necessarily come with age. I see a lot of people who have gotten older physically, but they haven’t aged well mentally. 

What I see as maturity is that you are not just thinking solely of yourself. However, there are moments that you must take for yourself, which is absolutely important. But it isn’t completely about self gratification.

Knowing that there’s some give and take in life is usually lost on younger people, which is understandable. Though I certainly do not think that younger people should always have to take on mature matters. Unless, it is absolutely necessary. But as we get older, there are life experiences that we process better, or at least we SHOULD.

Unfortunately, I have seen some of my peers not do that at all, which is very interesting, but also sad at the same time. But I realize that I have been mature most of my life. So it just seems like I’m just physically one year older with every birthday.

But at the same time, I’ve learned to process some things in ways that I would not have when I was younger. So there’s definitely been some growth over the years.

Jacobsen: By “mature,” this phrase can get thrown around at a lot, what do you mean by mature? What are some obvious stages of more maturity, not only in general terms of thinking of other people and taking time for yourself simply for health and well-being?

Thomas: Again, to me, “mature” is also how one thinks, and lives in this world. Being more mature means that you take situations on a case-by-case basis, you look at things more objectively than you would have a few or many years ago, whether it is through life experiences or it is through education.

You begin to reflect more. You are able to say, “Well, maybe there was a reason for this,” and not make excuses. Whereas before, you may have just had an opinion on something and just automatically thought it was wrong, that you begin to take a second (and even third) look, and gauge things based on the situation and also make an informed decision, not necessarily one that would best fit your viewpoint.

You begin to understand certain things and how they affect other people, and even how they may affect you in one or more ways. Learning to accept that sometimes we may be wrong. There are things that we may have to do that we would have never thought of before.

That, to me, is a good example of being mature. How we think, how we process, and how we adapt.

Jacobsen: Does this speak to more a universalization of principles then applied to people when you are having that thought process that is more mature?

Thomas: That is part of it. Because principles are a very interesting thing. It almost seems to border on the whole idea of what morality it is. Principles and moralities aren’t necessarily synonymous with each other, but they also harness the antithesis of each other.

I would say my principles are to ultimately treat people the way I want to be treated. Although, I think it is good to treat them accordingly at times, because there are some people who just aren’t deserving of your kindness.

I do try to be courteous and nice to everyone though. If someone needs help. I do not turn them away. I try to be as hospitable as possible. 

I also look at how people treat others on a regular basis as opposed to when they are standing on a platform because that, to me, informs their principles. How they would treat someone when the rest of the world isn’t watching. Just because someone says they are “moral” and ethical, doesn’t mean they really ARE. It just takes paying close attention. 

As we get older, our life experiences, our ability to educate ourselves when we do research, our ability to make decisions, as well as being able to change our minds and our actions when necessary, also informs our maturity and principles. It separates our reality from our idealism, which can be a glorious thing. 

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you. 

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/13

This is an ongoing and new series devoted to the South African Secular Society (SASS) and South African secularism. The Past President, Jani Schoeman, and the Current President, Rick Raubenheimer, and the current Vice-President, Wynand Meijer, will be taking part in this series to illuminate these facets of South Africa culture to us. The whole SASS-y gang join us.

Here we talk about support from the international community.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s start with some commentary on the international community. Secular communities can vary in size and scope and depth per region and per country of the world.

How important is joining up with that global culture, that international community, of secular people?

Rick Raubenheimer: Well, it’s nice to have, I think, because we can exchange useful views, and there was the talk of possibly funding a conference in Africa. That would be useful, because we don’t have the funds to do something big ourselves. Otherwise, I must say we haven’t had much contact with them except for them asking us to join.

Jacobsen: When they reached out, what was the reasoning behind the decision to accept the offer or the invitation to join them?

Raubenheimer: The idea of them funding an African conference in South Africa was motivation.

Jacobsen: If you’re looking at Uganda or Botswana, or Ghana, and elsewhere, these individual organizations can only do so much and joining up with international contexts or an entire region of like-minded people can, basically, help them share information, strategies, things that have worked for them.

Things that have not, for them. Do you see that other organizations can find a benefit in joining up with a larger community of like-minded people?

Raubenheimer: I can imagine in the abstract that that would be the case. I don’t have contact with the other organizations to be able to say specifically that this has been the case.

Jacobsen: Moving forward, what are some early benefits that have come from being part of Humanists International? What, more particularly, would you like to see as some benefits coming from Humanists International?

Raubenheimer: In terms of what benefits have come so far, I would imagine the only benefit, so far, has been that we are listed on their website and people willing to dive into the website and locate the map to locate us on would be able to find us. That’s the only benefit I can see we’ve had so far from it.

In the future, more contact, I guess, I hope. I would’ve thought they might have an email newsletter, periodically, but I’ve heard nothing from them, and perhaps more contact in the conference I mentioned.

Jacobsen: I’m out of questions [Laughing].

Raubenheimer: I thought it would look like it would not be a very deep topic to mind, shall we say.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/13

Shirley Rivera is the Founder and President of the Ateístas de Puerto Rico. The intent is to learn about Puerto Rican atheism and culture, as an educational series.

Here we talk about the gender roles in Puerto Rico.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we have been talking about gender perspectives around religion, around politics, and around Puerto Rico. With regards to the gender and our perspectives of the church, how does this influence the general public? How does this even influence the way in which secular culture plays out and views itself?

Shirley Rivera: The culture is attached with the religion so most of these perspectives are about what is the role for the woman and what is the role for the man, how big of an influence in how the people raise their kids. Since they’ve grown up, they have become an adult. They keep this all stuff in their mind. All those stereotypes about what is the role for the female, what is the role for the male.

So, the church has a big influence because if we want to talk about the Christian religion, then the role for the female is clear. How, the woman has to stay in the house and also take care of the kids. You see all these stories in the Bible, how the Bible put it clear what a woman will have to do and what is wrong and since to that a woman is a rib.,

The woman can make you do things. Eve made Adam eat the apple. You’re not big enough to make decisions by yourself. He couldn’t say, “I do not want the apple.” So, you can see since in the beginning of the story, the Christian story in the Bible, how it influences the mind of the people. The women are perverts, the females need to come from the ribs of a male. You can always see how the women are always in the side. Why did not male came from the ribs of the female?

So, you see it is clear all those beliefs, all those stories make a perception and our perspective. To the people, it is the same still today. The people still have that. People still believe female came from ribs from the male. When you have that in your mind, automatically, the female is less than the male, so you see how the roles came to be since that time.

Jacobsen: The secular culture, does this seep into the way they work among themselves, the way they view themselves?

Shirley: Yes, it is still attached. In the past conversation, I was talking about in how a secular community. You can see how the female would automatically oppress themselves. When you are on a project, they have to take leadership. They always let the male make the decision because in their minds the male is the one who will have to make the decision because they have the last word about any decision.

So, you can see how internalized in the culture are their roles. The perspective is that he has to take the decision when he has the last word. In my opinion, it does not count. I can make my opinion, but, at the end, it does not count. You can see that in the secular life, in the secular minds, of the people because it is how they grow the culture.

Even though, they do not believe in god. They still have all those perspectives because that is how they grow, that is what they learn. Even when they directly not express that or they did not practice that, it is still deep in their minds; it is still that stereotype in their mind, still. Because you can see in how they act, how they talk, the decisions they take, everything is influenced by that.

Jacobsen: What might be a corrective to secular women always taking a backseat in secular movements, communities?

Shirley: Yes, you can see that today. You can see how in the groups, most of their leaders are male and how if you are in a board, you are in a group, the males are the one who make decision. You can see how the women do not speak out. Because they can speak out, I do not think males have any problem in secular groups in women taking a board position or making decisions. The females automatically have that stereotype.

They feel, “If I talk, my decision does not count. Or, it is going to be embarrassing or, maybe, my decision is now too smart or maybe because they do not believe among themselves because that is how they grow.

Jacobsen: What are the impacts of self-image and self-esteem on secular women?

Shirley: The secular groups bring the best of us into them. We, in the transition, in the process, still deal with the stereotypes within them. However, no one will know tomorrow as time moves forward.  

The old culture, though, has been here since the beginning of time. I see how this impacts the ways in which more empowerment of women for each other is a positive force, when more women are speaking out and getting more important into the community. There is still a lot of work to do.

But it is sad in the leadership, I do not see any progress. We have a little bit of progress; but in the leadership, we need more empowered women in the secular community.

Jacobsen: When women lead these religious communities and then enter the secular communities. Then we can see the differences. At the same time, when are stereotypes not stereotypes and simply statistical generalizations that do reflect some of our reality of differences and in the way this plays out in religious communities, and in the secular communities, between sexes and genders?

Shirley: So, when these females do these transitions between the religious world and their secular work, they bring all that with them. It is how you see their world. Even if you still believe in god, even if you understand human rights, you still have those thoughts in your day.

How you raise your kids, your ideas, your ethics, your morals? Morality and ethics for me is the same thing. But how they base the decision on what they take. So, what do they take? Why the females getting considered trying to think of their decisions?

Females are getting considered when they choose work, what females take into consideration when they go into a relationship. It is all the daily stuff, how you see, how they keep that. Most of them want bigger.

For example, when I was a believer transitioning into an atheist, I was transitioning into something more secular. You need to have a secular mind or secular thought. That is the difficult part, even in males.

Jacobsen: How do these set of roles restrict not only women but men?

Shirley: Because they bring those roles with them in their mind too. That is how you continue the style of belief. For example, you are a male. You transition from a religion into a secular worldview. You bring all those cultures with you, even if you do not believe in god. What is the role for the female? What is the role of you?

you will still be responsible for your family. You need to be the head of the family. Your wife will have to do these stuff because you came with that. That is how you graze, that is how you see your parents; that is how you see your family; that is how you see your neighbour.

So, you will copy that. Even if you do not believe in god, the way you live. The way you make decisions. The way you see the roles. The way you assume the perspective of the addicts. You still bring that idea because the brain when you take decision will look, for example, in the past.

So, when your brain is looking for example in the past, the brain looks for reference, which you have. There is no way you can change that, only if you are super extra smart and delete that from your brain and be more neutral.

But when you have a male, for example, who does that? In the transition, they still bring all those roles and perspectives and stereotypes with them. Without any bad intentions? They will do it because that is how they grow.

They do not know if that is bad or good what they see. So, they will repeat that. So, you will see that in conscious ways. They will pass this on to the kids. That’s how you say this in English. They will pass this on to the family.

That is how they are going to raise the kids in a secular family because you cannot see atheist males. Their wife does not work. Their wife is staying in the house and raising the kids. You cannot see that in most secular communities.

Why? Because that is how they grow, that is how their roles change over time as they transition into a more secular mind compared to a previous religious mind. That is what they have in mind. They do not know another life.

They do not know another style of living because that is how they grow. That is in their minds. So, when the brain is growing, it is going to take that, for example, for the norms and ethics. It is to see how to live.

They are looking for how they grow in the conscience; they will do that. So, it is difficult. There are all these stereotypes in the religions. All those stereotypes and patriarchy affect the females and males. Because if leaving the female happy in the role of being in the house, you put pressure to the male. They are left with the responsibility for the financial needs of the family, and that is not fair for either.

Because you put the pressure in the male. They are responsible for taking care for the wife, for the kid, for the dogs, for everything, so you put the pressure on them; that is not fair too. So, people thinking with these types and styles.

You afraid of the female, “No.” You afraid of the kids, “No.” You afraid of the male because the kids are seeing that is not right. Then the male if they will lose everything, in their mind, then he will feel bad because you put that role on him.

That these types of stereotypes and perspectives affect these lives of the males too. It is not healthy. It does not make for a healthy family.

Jacobsen: What is the positive way forward for the secular communities?

Shirley: When you are being more inclusive, when you do not assign roles, when you start helping each other and become a team, when they are a team, that is good for the kids because they grow with that too.

So, when you have a partner, you have a marriage where both look partners rather than subordinates. They are not a head for the family. This is the feat for the family. You can see how partners can help each other.

When one of them goes and does a bad act or thing, the other one will help them. Because they will have the power to make that happen. Because, for example, if both of them are responsible for their family, and if one of them is gone, the rest will still survive because you did not leave the roles to both of them alone.

They shared their roles. If you let that down to the 5 kids, it will survive for the 5 kids because he never shared everything with her or the opposite with the male who is the one who is taking care of the whole family.

A family in which the female works in the house the whole time. What if something happens to the husband? What is she going to do? Because she never learned. She never learned all the roles. So, when you have a marriage or you have a partner or romantic relationship, both of them will have to share the roles.

Both of them need to be inclusive for the day when the other one is not there. Everything can still run. That would be the healthy way in both of them. You do not put the pressure to the male, and you do not put pressure to the female because at the end both will need some help and should be flexible, dynamic.

Jacobsen: If we are looking at the influence of religions in Puerto Rico, and if we are looking at some of those coming out of those restricted views, behaviours, and mindsets from the Roman Catholic Church and other religions, what are the risks of going back to default in the secular communities given that many people will have come out of religion?

Shirley: Puerto Rico is a religious place, but, at the same time, you can see how the crisis, how the style of living is making both of them work and have our roles. You can see we have religious families, but both have to work.

Both help each other because the necessities at this point will benefit both of them. The both will have to take care of the house because the crisis makes them do it. They need to survive. So, at that point, the male does not care about the roles, being the male for the house, because they need to survive.

It is not that clear or bad right now because that is the only way they can survive because nobody has jobs in the current crisis. They have to survive at some way. At that point, they do not care if the female work or not.

So, years ago, 62% in the university are female. They went more. They earned more degrees. It is much higher than the males and probably even higher now. In a couple of years, we will see more females in the workforce, in leadership positions, compared to the males. Because males have gone to work, so spouses have more time to go to school.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Shirley.

Shirley: You are welcome! ­

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/12

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam) founded Jichojipya (meaning with new eye) to “Think Anew”. He is among the best read – on primary freethinking and humanist sources – African freethinkers known to me.

We have talked before about freethought in Tanzania. They have an in-development YouTube channel here. Some grassroots activism here. Some work or organizations with activism and cultural exchange here: Galimoto’Kali, Sisi Kwa Sisi (Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/Felix Ntinda).

Here we talk about Tanzanian freethought.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the current state of freethinking in Tanzania?

Nsajigwa I Mwasokwa (Nsajigwa Nsa’sam): Let me start with an apology, sorry that it has taken me long to attend to this. It has been tight, too much pressure on my side, for over a year now – since April, 2018, precisely. I am involved in a civil case.

I was forced to open because my research investigation culminated into interviewing a prominent public figure that I had suspected and identified as a freethinker (and I was right..!), got copied verbatim in one of the Swahili newspapers here, without my permission. There was no acknowledgement whatsoever.

When I sent them a “Demand note,” they ignored it. I had two options, either to “leave it to the god” – a phantom nonbeing anyway, or go to the court.

I chose the latter course, no matter what consequences in terms of time and limited resources. I have stood on my own without a lawyer for that is damn expensive; I couldn’t afford it.

Since then, I have been attending to the court almost twice a month for over a year now, almost 40 times by now, inevitable sacrifice. I leave it to the court of law to decide; the court is a secular pillar here in Tanzania, the mainland side.

So recapturing the time, well, things have happened. We had our AGM on 15^th June 2019. It was a huge success, many individuals attended – others from outside Dar es salaam.

We footed the bill from our own contribution and this time many people contributed, implying the interest and enthusiasm has soared, so after the AGM many have been joining us, importantly including ladies.

Back in January 2019, we had a guest named Kirstine Kaern from the Danish Humanist Society, who visited us here in Dar es salaam. She also had visited other east African countries and then continued to southern Africa.

We were together for 2 days and she interviewed four of us, including one brave lady. It is in her social media site named “Babelfish.” She has initiated a great idea, doing a commendable job. Jichojipya asks that she get the support to keep doing what she is doing going on.

On December last year, 2018, we were able to have our own office, and desk, within our member’s office in Dar es salaam. When Kirstine Kaern came, she met us at our office, 20+ km North from Dar es salaam city centre.

It is a positive step, progress to have that, and individuals interested are coming to visit, for discussion on secular humanist philosophy and borrow freethinking books that we have for their reading.

We also had another gathering on September 1^st, 2019, as one of our members; Prof. Alex Mwakikoti had just returned to Dar es salaam from attending the burial of her mother aged 94 years. We did a dirge, condolence the humanistic way.

It is the trend we have initiated for such situations whatever it should happen. Everybody appreciated the move, more so Prof. Alex Mwakikoti himself.

Of course, we donated contributions between freethinkers ourselves, to meet the hotel room bill for the occasion, and once again many members contributed and 10 came for the occasion. We are becoming a Tanzanian freethinker’s family…!

There has been the emergence of female freethinkers thanks to Jicho Jipya efforts of identifying and unearthing. They are happy to know they were not alone as nonbelievers, giving a big relief to each.

It is a positive sign, and the idea of visiting to support an orphan centre has just been initiated by one of them in support of all. We are revamping the website because we intend to be more active and vigorous on that side.

Of course, we are doing all of these activities with our own pocket money. We have reached the stage where we need support to go massive scale on social media and to the public as a whole. This is just a quick update, sir.

Jacobsen: In terms of pragmatic first steps, what needs to be done in order to combat the superstition there, more than before? Of course, I am aware of the work by Jichojipya/Think Anew, in addition to our collaborative work beginning with African Freethinker as a publication.

Mwasokwa (Nsa’sam): It is unfortunate that in Tanzania; there has been a circle of recurrence of harmful acts of killing human beings engendered by witchcraft beliefs.

Early this year – January to February 2019, there were incidences of some children disappearing only to be found killed – in some cases their private parts removed. This was in Njombe – Southern highlands of Tanzania.

Our member of Jichojipya-Think Anew, Mr. Lucas Isakwisa, reported this in the article you published elsewhere. Needed is rational, empirical, secular education, and campaigns based upon.

Needed are resources for the rationalists and secularists like us, we need to be ever-present in the public, to enlighten the society about false claims, leading to these barbaric acts, superstition-based. It is a shame.

Victims were just school children going to school for education, only to meet their brutal death along the forest path towards, shocking.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Nsajigwa.

Mwasokwa (Nsa’sam): Thank you too, so many things to do, my apology for taking this long, “Aluta continua.”

—

Nsajigwa has been interviewed here. We conducted other interviews/publications in Blogogate here, Canadian Atheist here, here, here, and here, in The Good Men Project here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and in Humanist Voices here and here, Tanzania Today here, and Tech2 here.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/11

Takudzwa Mazwienduna is the informal leader of Zimbabwean Secular Alliance and a member of the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe. This educational series will explore secularism in Zimbabwe from an organizational perspective, and some more.

Here we talk about areas of concern in legislation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If we look at a Canadian context, one soft spot is the possibility for removal of the tax exemptions for churches or the creation of a single, secular, and public school system for all children and adolescents.

Roman Catholic Christians acquire privileges in society through public taxpayer monies due to the dominance of the faith at the foundation of Canada. Any comparable cases with Zimbabwe?

Takudzwa Mazwienduna: Such cases in Zimbabwe have been dealt with, the government is very secular and as from 2015, churches were taxed. Taxing churches has however posed a threat to secularism because they have now acquired a legal voice in political issues as taxpayers.

Jacobsen: Any possible starting points for these efforts? Any radical ideas or notions from not just the leadership but the membership of the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe?

Mazwienduna: We have raised our concerns when we have seen something like that happening and the government knows better than to repeat the same mistakes. Current threats to secularism from the political establishment are nothing more than stunts to get votes or scapegoat the government’s incompetence, corruption and violence, such as the recent National Prayer against sanctions.

Jacobsen: Could there be risks of violent reprisal on the part of the religious against the humanists and the secularists?

Mazwienduna: The religious stunts by the government are something we could speak against, if it was not for the fear of violence. We know just as well as everyone that religion is not at the core of the issues, rather political scapegoating. The government has a record for abductions of activists or opponents that contest them on any issue. The religious stunts are clearly not to endorse Christianity however, but an advancement of government propaganda.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Takudzwa.

Mazwienduna: It’s always a pleasure Scott.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Dr. Mir Faizal and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/11

Dr. Mir Faizal is an Adjunct Professor in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Lethbridge and a Visiting Professor in Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When people talk about atheism or theism, it is important to know what is being asked. So, I would like to start the discussion with you by directly asking you if you think God exists.

Dr. Mir Faizal: To answer this question, we need to first define what we mean by God. The problem with this question is that the word ”God” has been used for so many different concepts, that it is hard to understand what one is talking about. This also causes problems in the discussion. It is known in physics that you cannot derive consistent results from a system, with unphysical gauge degrees freedom in it. So, to derive consistent results in such a system, we need to follow a procedure called gauge fixing to fix these unphysical degrees of freedom. Now in this question, we actually have unphysical degrees of freedom. This question actually contains two different questions. The first is about the meaning of the word “God,” and the second is about the existence of God.  Usually, people try answering the second one without answering the first one, and this causes confusion. So, let us discuss the first question, then we will be more precise about better understand what we are discussing. 

Jacobsen: So, you want to start by defining what you mean by the word “God.” Ok, then tell us, how would you define God? 

Faizal: I would define God as the most fundamental aspect of reality from which all other aspects of reality are derived, and it is not derived from anything more fundamental. If it can be derived from something more fundamental, then it is not God, according to my definition, but that something from which it is derived is God. In other words, God by definition cannot “not” exist and everything that exists, exists because of God, and God does not exist because of anything more fundamental. Now this definition is pure tautology, and it does not provide any new information. It only fixes the unphysical degrees of freedom, and so we are now only left with one well defined question. Now we have assumed by definition that God is the most fundamental aspect of existence, it is meaningless to ask if God exists, as by definition it is equivalent to asking if existence exists. Now we are left with the unambiguous question about the nature of the most fundamental aspect of existence. This question is much more well defined than an ambiguous question about the existence of God, when we have not even fixed a definition of God. 

Jacobsen: So, what is the most fundamental aspect of existence? May be start from telling us, what is the most fundamental aspect of physical reality?

Faizal: Well to understand that we need to understand an important concept in physics called as the effective field theories. If you are seeing any object around you, say a ball, it is actually a complex system of interacting atoms. But you do not need to know about atomic physics to know how the ball will move at your scale. All only need to know is Newton’s laws at that scale, as Newton’s laws are a good approximation to atomic physics. Going deeper, it is known that atoms are also made of fundamental particles. However, atomic physics is a good approximation to that system of fundamental particles. Now if you keep going deeper and deeper, you will come to a Length scale called the Planck scale. The physics here would be described by quantum gravity. Even though we do not have a full theory of quantum gravity, we have various approaches to it. String theory and loop quantum gravity are two famous approaches to quantum gravity, but there are several other approaches too. A universal prediction of quantum gravity is that space-time should break down at Planck scale. So, if you really look deep enough, you will discover that space-time and all objects in it are approximations to something more fundamental, and this fundamental aspect of existence is information. In other words, information is more fundamental than substance. In technical terms it is described as “it (substance) from bit (information), not bit from it.” So, the laws governing nature are more fundamental than nature itself. Instead of relativity existing because of space-time, space-time exists because of relativity. Physically the most fundamental aspect of reality is information, which is a mathematical structure. This structure is more fundamental than any physical structure like space-time, and hence cannot be possible derived from it. Even the multiverse exists as the level of it, and comes from some bit.

Jacobsen: So, would you say this is God? 

Faizal: Well there is even a problem with that. A mathematical structure is an axiomatic structure. So, we start from some axioms, and derive consequences from those axioms. The problem now comes from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. The first theorem states that any axiomatic structure is incomplete, or in simple words there are things which cannot be proved within an axiomatic structure. The second theorem states that the consistency of an axiomatic structure is one of those things. In other words, the consistency of a mathematical structure cannot be proved within that structure. Penrose has argued that even though formal proof cannot be provided for Gödel’s unprovable statements because of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, human mathematicians can still prove them. In other words, we need consciousness to do mathematics, but reality is mathematics, and so I would say we also will need consciousness there to overcome this problem. However, it should be known that human consciousness occurs at low energies due to neurons in our brain, and now we are talking about a scale at which even space-time does not exist. So, rather the statement should be that a better linguistic approximation for the most fundamental aspect of reality is it has consciousness rather than the lack of it. However, this is still an approximation, and the actual nature of what produces this mathematics structure cannot be accurately expressed in language, which has evolved to express simple human actions. 

Jacobsen: Can you give a simpler explanation about existence of God? 

Faizal: We again start from the definition that God as the most fundamental aspect of existence. Then we can look at our universe and try to infer the nature of God from it. Now in popular discourse, theism is the assertion that the fundamental aspect of reality is infinitely intelligent, and atheism is the assertion that the fundamental aspect of reality has zero intelligence. It is difficult to deal with zero or infinity, and in physics usually a finite number is assumed during calculations, and this finite number is set to zero or infinity at the end of calculation. So, let us also do it here, and make the argument more precise. Let us assume that our universe is a simulation, and now what can we say about aliens who have simulated it. Well if they can simulate an complex living system, they would be intelligent. If they can simulate evolution on a planet, by which complex living system will evolve, they will be very intelligent. Finally, if they can write an mathematical structure, which produce correct physics, and which will cause the big bang and the right evolution of galaxies, and finally cause complex life to evolve from evolution, they have to be hyper-intelligent. If those aliens would be stupid, the universe would be full of inconsistencies, and would require corrections. As our universe is free from such inconsistencies, we can infer that the reality behind this universe is very intelligent. However, we cannot still prove if it is not a simulation, but that does not change the argument. As if this is a simulation, then the arguments just shift to the universe, where aliens have simulated us. Even if this is an infinite sequence, the argument will still hold using limits. After all infinite is just another number, and we can consistently deal with it using limits. Furthermore, the multiverse will just add another layer to it, as to simulate physics which will generate a multiverse is more difficult than to simulate physics which will generate a single universe. The problem with naive creationist argument is that they get stuck on biological evolution, and try to assume a God who breaks natural laws to spontaneously create complex life. The whole nature is exists because of God, and in this there is no need to assume that God will perform some miracle and spontaneously create complex life.

Jacobsen: How does this idea of God relate to the common religious ideas of God? 

Faizal: There are again two aspects to it. Now in almost all religions there is a concept of the most fundamental aspect of existence, from which other existence proceeds, and it does not proceed from anything more fundamental. Interestingly it is also assumed that it conscious and it is not an object in space-time. So, Yahweh/God in Judaism, the Heavenly Father in Christianity, God/Allah in Islam, Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism, Brahnam in Hinduism, Tian in Confucianism all represent this idea. It may be noted that as in Christianity both Word and Spirit have a non-temporal causal origin from the Heavenly Father, who in turn does not have a causal origin from anything more fundamental, Heavenly Father in Christianity is linguistically equivalent to other terms in this list. Also it may be noted Tian in Confucianism has a will, and so again has consciousness and thus linguistically equivalent to other terms in the list. But then there is another aspect of these religions, in which earth or even humans are made the centre of existence. We humans are an insignificant species, living on an insignificant planet in an insignificant solar system in an insignificant galaxy, in possibly an insignificant universe. It is one thing to get inspiration from Moses or Jesus or Muhammad or Zoroaster or Confucius or Ram or Krishna or Buddha, and it is another thing to say that one of them is the most important being in the whole multiverse. There will be countless alien species, billions of times more intelligent than us. This anthropocentric view seems to be the result of our own imagination. Furthermore, the idea that a human is the most fundamental aspect of reality is totally meaningless. It is like saying a human being is gravity, or human being is evolution, which if taken literally is totally meaningless. It is not even wrong; it is simply meaningless.

Jacobsen: In this definition of God, how do you address the problem of evil, or the paradox relating to God’s ability to create a stone which God cannot lift? 

Faizal: We have to differentiate between the most fundamental aspect of existence being conscious, and the linguistic approximation of this most fundamental aspect of reality in theology as God. The problem is that our language only evolved with us to express objects at our scale, and when we are dealing with such a fundamental reality, it breaks down. So, it is important to understand that any description of God, in any language is only a linguistic approximation of reality. So, as any approximation, this approximation will also break creating apparent paradoxes. Now these paradoxes occur due to breaking of linguistic structure rather than the concept that is being described. It is well known that deterministic mathematical structure cannot consistently explain nature. If we try to answer the question regarding the exact position and momentum of a quantum particle, we will not get consistent answers. It is not that we cannot obtain such information, but such information does not exist in the system. If we extract information about position, we are not left with any information about momentum. Now we cannot even ask this question. Similarly, we can adopt a non-deterministic language to solve such paradoxes. For example, God is good and God is powerful, but you cannot linguistically ask both questions at the same time. It is just like asking about momentum and position of a particle at the same time. Similarly, can God create any stone, and can God lift any stone, are two questions which cannot be asked at the same time. I think it would be nice to try to see how for such a non-deterministic language can be developed to rule out such paradoxes. But in any case, it is important to distinguish between fundamental reality and its linguistic approximation. 

Jacobsen: How do you see miracles that break physical laws, which some religious people talk about? 

Faizal: Another aspect that seems to be strange is to assume that certain miracles break natural laws. In our definition, God is the most fundamental aspect of reality. Now we also expected that space-time to break down at Planck scale, so this fundamental aspect of reality cannot be constrained by time. In other words, God’s nature would not change with time. As God’s action do not change with time, similar causes lead to similar effects, and this is why science works. However, it is possible that improbable events can occur (without breaking natural laws), and they can be interpreted as miracles. It may be noted that both the idea of God interfering only at specific points of time to do miracles, and God only interfering at the beginning of universe, as if that point is special, does not fit with this description of God. This is because in this description of God, as God is defined as the most fundamental aspect of existence, so linguistically we can say that God does everything. However, God does everything consistently, and there are no inconsistencies in the universe. So, even though we do not still have a consistent physical understanding of the physics at the point of big bang, big bang has to be explained physically. In simple words, God is not the God of gaps, with big bang being a big gap, but a God whose intelligence is so perfect that no gaps are left.

Jacobsen: Thank you!

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/10

Mubarak Bala is the President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. We will be conducting this educational series to learn more about humanism and secularism within Nigeria. Here we talk about a history of personal and professional punishment, imprisonment, even torture, based on the rejection of the supernaturalisms of the dominant cultures and communities.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You were punished by religious believers. How long, and in what ways? Why is this permitted by the culture in Nigeria?

Mubarak Bala: Well Scott, I was punished not just with the dumping in a psychiatric asylum, I was out a year plus, having been closeted half a decade. I was sanctioned and counselled, carrots mostly, in hope, but I also stayed, hoping to normalize relations and my secular life. 

When my replies always became same, bold, blasphemous and sincere, they now sought prayer and psych analysis, this is what religion demands, after which, you have a 3-day ultimatum, die, or recant. 

As I was drugged and put in that hospital, my father picked my phone and recanted, apologized and posted to the public, my reconversion back to Islam. He hoped by the time I woke up, I would be back to normal sense, back to their normal. I woke up angry.

It was 18 days, and was allowed visitation by govt. officials, clerics, family, and lawyers, all due to your action online. I thank you.

Before long, even the leader of Boko Haram has heard, and threatened me, raining curses, that this is what education entails for the northern Nigerian elite… leaving lovely Allah, an Allah so dear to both Boko Haram and northern Muslims.

This is all permitted by the culture in the north, because the region is unique, operates outside of the world system. We were never colonized, just a contact by the British mostly to our emirates as an indirect rule, they never wanted to disturb much of the system and stability built by the Usman danfodio Jihad, a century earlier, the region is too far from the coast, too vast, and too many people to rule without a possible mob action, we still are too many, a century later, the largest despondent human concentration in the world, largest uneducated, largest number of poor, largest fanatical populace, largest unemployed, this is why even today, the federal govt. has to look away, when parents, husbands, and males own their kids, and determine their lives, even in adulthood. Emirates still hold slaves. Too much conservatism. A 12-year-old will marry a 53-year-old, just as the best life is to copy the best of mankind, dare make an arrest, and Nigeria may be no more…

Jacobsen: You were punished by the state. The state endorses religion in several countries, explicitly and implicitly. How long, and in what ways? 

Bala: I was never punished by the state, the governor had a Federal ambition, so cannot be seen by southern voters as an Islamic zealot, and rightly so, they mostly see sharia as a political liability, for the poor, uneducated, which meant deep down, I relieved them.

I was however left unprotected, unhelped, forlorn, left for picking, either by mob or by poverty, I was an IDP with no friends and no help, running around from place to place. But it is my life, my land, my region, I made sure I survived, because I anticipated worse, and devised ways to survive over the closet years. I still am alive today, normalizing humanism, a thorn they hate, but unhindered.

There are only 12 states of 36 in Nigeria that implemented the Sharia in 1999-2002. Others are secular. I live in Kano (home) and Kaduna (work) and visit Abuja, (the safest), and eke out survival tactics everyday. I plan to be President someday in future. It is going well, even in the Sharia states.

Jacobsen: What were the justifications for the punishment of a nationally leading humanist with some international renowned?

Bala: If I had died, by family punishment, a committee may be set up, paper work and money would pass around, and no one would go to jail, none may die.

If sharia had acted on me, I will still be tried shoddy, though the clerics would spew it just so the mob behead me lawless, in court, or in police custody, or in prison, it has happened before.

If the mob did it, no one would be arrested, politicians would only make noise, you from far away Saner Climes, would write, fuss, blog, spew and haggle, but I will stay dead, life will go on, and I am not even a Khasshoggi, so I would be forgotten far sooner.

If poverty had killed me, it is only natural they’d say, but is it? When friends left, family absconded, help ceased, I went hungry alone in my room, licking dry pepper, sugar and water, just to balance the electrolytes in the blood, no one knew… I would even post funny jokes on facebook… Those were hard times, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, with some respite time to time, with help from Saner Climes, individual and Organizations… I thank all. 

I am very comfortable now, with a job and contingency plan. But the government did not help. I was mostly alone, still mostly alone, the internet is my lifeline, my small zoo gives me happiness, and made a few friends here and there. Times have changed.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mubarak.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/09

Dr. David L. Orenstein is a Full Professor of Anthropology at Medgar Evers College of the CUNY (City University of New York) who has authored two books: Godless Grace: How Non-Believers are Making the World Safer Richer and Kinder (2015) and Darwin’s Apostles (2019). In early professional training, Orenstein was a  primatologist, he grew into a prominent national (American) and international humanist and freethinker with a noteworthy civil rights and human rights activist history through the American Humanist Association (AHA). He represents the AHA at the United Nations through the NGO/DPI program. Also, Orenstein is an ordained humanist chaplain who serves on the board of several local and national groups including The Broader Social Impacts Committee of the Hall of Human Origins/Smithsonian Institution, and the Center for Freethought Equality, and The Secular Humanist Society of New York.

Here we talk about the relation of the issues of humanism and the UN, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s begin a little more on some concrete stuff. Some specifics on an American Humanist Association representative on American and humanist issues at the UN. What are some of the issues that come up when you’ve been there?

Dr. David L. Orenstein: I think some of the real controversy is trying to make sure that humanism, but, more importantly, secularism, not be denied as a human right. That is to say, the cause of people to be free of a group, to perform their lives – however they define their lives – in as secular a way as possible.

It doesn’t have to be in a humanistic way. We have to ensure freedom of religion and freedom from religion. If people want to live their lives without religion or without formal spirituality, then people should be allowed to do it, let alone be harmed by it.

Let alone be able to speak out when religion does something horrible like take away a woman’s right to choose or when people are vandalized because they are perceived as taking the name of “God” and blaspheming it, and being attacked because they have an alternative point of view.

Jacobsen: How is this received when you state these things or attempt to fight for these forms of human rights in action at the UN?

Orenstein: For the most part, in the past, there is almost an exclusion of the role of secularism in the past. There is more attention to it. We are constantly reminded by those of the Committee for Religion and Belief, and to make sure one’s spiritual group is not attacked by another’s spiritual group.

It is to make an equality of understanding between someone who espouses no religious beliefs and religious beliefs. People get it, at least in the public forum. What happens when people go back to their own organization? I couldn’t tell you.

But for those people of goodwill, they get it. They understand it. They see it as an equal protection. But I could not tell you right now that everyone on that committee privately agrees with it, but they might publicly agree with it.

Jacobsen: Religions posit a supernatural moral order. Humanism affirms a naturalistic one.

Orenstein: Assuming a materialistic order.

Jacobsen: How does an orientation within a naturalistic human rights framework differ from a religious, transcendental, traditionalist moral law framework? I mean “differ” other than the obvious ways.

Orenstein: It varies on the consideration on actions by the divine or the divine’s representative on earth as being the moral center of how people live within, not only the UN framework but also, their own moral framework.

There is no such pretext within the humanistic worldview. That is, a conclusion that the world has a material focus. It is not the same as belief in a spiritual or metaphysical world purpose, which, essentially, assumes some magic must be real because that is the only way the supernatural must work. It is another reality.

When you are talking about morals and their politics and policies within the UN framework, they do so based on, ultimately, how that belief is enacted. If you talk about Israel or the Arab states, or the Vatican, they are, certainly, looking at the world through the eyes of metaphysics before dealing with the material world.

That is indirect. What we do within the AHA framework within the United Nations, our morality is derived, and our empathy is derived, from common respect without the need for any individual personal belief in the divine.

Our trust and hopes in each other as humans. There is no intermediary between goodness and our actions. That’s not to denigrate people who believe that they need God to bring peace. But we do not need to use that stepping-stone to improve human life.

Jacobsen: Why do humanists seem more oriented within a human rights framework than some sectors of religious communities? Those “some sectors” of religious communities who simply want a leg up among everyone else, whether another religion or no religion.

Orenstein: It is a good question. Because there is no necessary monolithic answer to say, “Those people over there feel this way.” I think most humanists tend to feel is based on the fact that there is no other time other than the time that we are granted through the natural world.

The urgency is to figure out problems when you can be here to relish, or your offspring can relish, in those immediate fixes. If you are coming from a religious perspective, you’re thinking – or might be thinking, “Yes, there are some things that we can fix. But suffering is something people must do,” or, “It is okay to suppress another one’s views because I have the dominant faith and am openly, because of my religious belief, going to go to a special place later in another realm. That you don’t get to. Therefore, I don’t have to treat them necessarily very well because it won’t matter once I jump this mortal coil.”

This is not to slander anyone’s faith practice. Because there are people who because of their faith want to see people live more harmoniously. The urgency to see this happening in your particular life-time is there, in the way it is for humanists.

That there is only one material lifetime each of us have. So, we better make the best of it while we’re here rather than hope for a metaphysical lifetime and not care about what happens to the planet. There are those who deny climate change because God will never cause another environmental disaster.

Because He promised, after the Great Flood, that there won’t be any more disasters. I think there is a moral and ethical lapse of judgment there based on the supposition or belief that your particular god, and your very specific theology, is going to be responsible for the 8 and a half other billion people on the planet. That’s a leap.

Humanists take the other 8 and a half billion people and want them to live a healthy life at this time. Boy that was longwinded.

Jacobsen: And I’m out of questions. So, it is a meeting of times.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/07

Jamie Ireland is a member of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations. Here we talk about humanistic, secular Judaism.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is family background, e.g., geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

Jamie Ireland: I grew up in California, we speak English, Secular Humanistic Judaism.

Jacobsen: Following from the last question, how have these factors influenced personal life and views?

Ireland: I know no other way. I always expressed my Judaism in a secular and humanistic way.

Jacobsen: How does a rejection of the supernatural change the way one lives one’s life? How does an understanding of the natural influence views on life and meaning in the light of the aforementioned rejection?

Ireland: That is all I know. It puts the responsibility of my life on me and that there are consequences in the here and now. There is no other life forgiveness at the end of life it is now.

Jacobsen: What are your tasks and responsibilities at the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations?

Ireland: I am on the board of the CSJo but I am also on the board of our local affiliate and I teach Jewish Culture School and guide students through their Bar/Bat mitzvahs, put on holiday events.

Jacobsen: What does an average service look like to you? How does the maintenance of Jewish culture inside a secular lens provide some forms of solace, comfort, and connection to the past?

Ireland: We talk about our history and it depends on what holiday we are celebrating as to how we talk about the connection and to what part of our history we are exploring at the time. We sing and that connects us and we discuss what it was like to be Jewish at other times in history and in different places so we are connected to other Jews that we learn about.

Jacobsen: How is the integration with the larger culture for the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations? What are some of the more popular, and important, secular Jewish events and activities for the community? Any personal favourites?

Ireland: One way we integrate is through our participation with the Interfaith Councils in our area. This helps to work with the broader community on issues that are important to all of us. Our Rosh Hashanah observance and our Passover Seder are our biggest draws. We have potlucks and come together in community.

Jacobsen: What are some joint activities with other faith/non-faith groups in the larger community?

Ireland: Light up the Season. It started as just a tree lighting in a nearby city but has become an event where different faith groups share their winter traditions. It is lovely.

Jacobsen: Who are some recommended speakers, authors, or organizations?

Ireland: Rabbi Judith Seid, Tri-Valley Cultural Jews.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Jamie.

Ireland: Thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences with you.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/08

Mandisa Thomas, a native of New York City, is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence today,” she recalls.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.

In 2019, Mandisa was the recipient of the Secular Student Alliance’s Backbone Award and named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethought Heroine. She was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association’s Person of the Year 2018.

As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa encourages more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

“The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”

Here, we talk about political work and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s talk about secular people and ordinary religious people getting together and, basically, becoming more involved in the political arena based on some of the regressive policies affecting the lives of ordinary religious people and ordinary secular people every day. How do you recommend that happen in an American context?

Mandisa Thomas: I think it’s because we’re in an age of information and because there’s more dialogue among people from different backgrounds. They are also seeing how this particular administration is treating people of color, whether they are believers or not.

Other marginalized people are starting to see that their principles don’t necessarily align with those in power who represent their religious perspective. That there’s a need to care about others regardless of where they stand, because they realize that if we can be discriminated against, then so can they. No one should want anyone to be held back due to their skin color, their ethnicity, their gender identity, religious views,etc.

Now, as time moves forward, we realize that these policies can affect ALL of us. So it is important for people to actually come together, discuss the issues, especially to iron out any differences and determine where we find common ground.

Jacobsen: In your experience, who have been positive allies for the secular communities in this political activism?

Thomas: The Secular Coalition for America is a good ally. We are a member organization, and they are part of our lobby wing of the secular movement. They do pay attention. They are aware of what is going on in Capitol Hill. They are our voices.This is something that is very important for all of us. It is about listening to and representing the voices of those of us who are further marginalized.

There are a lot of people starting to shed their affiliation with traditional religion, organized religion, and the church. As a result, we’re find common ground with many people, as well as meeting more nonbelievers who may not have openly identified previously. So the SCA has been one of our organization’s good allies.

Jacobsen: How can secular communities be more careful in not doing the same as some religious communities have done to the secular in this political activism and bridge-building?

Thomas: I certainly think that there’s a lot that we could learn from the religious community as far as mobilizing people – without the guilt and fear factors of course. And I think the secular community can do better with not just reaching across the aisle, but also with leading by example and showing up to more events, and connecting with various organizations.

For example, the Secular Coalition for America, the alliance with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, they are also aligned with the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), which aren’t necessarily secular organizations per se.

But they work for the rights of all Americans. It is aligning and collaborating with those organizations, as well as speaking on issues that pertain to other marginalized communities. Understanding that it isn’t just our issues (ie, church and state separation and atheist visibility) that are important, but there are also other issues that, even if they do not affect us directly, may affect us at some point. In fact, that there are some that already affect many of us.

That is what we also try to make the other side understand. There are many religious people who may have non-believers and atheists in their family. For some of them, it may take a better effort to show that they care. And we may be a resource for them, even if they aren’t coming over to our “side”.

Then there are things that they can learn from us. Same as we can learn from them.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/06

Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof is a Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane. Here we talk about his life, work, and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was early life like for you, e.g., geography, culture, language, religion or lack thereof, education, and family structure and dynamics?

Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof: I was born in San Francisco, CA in 1964, and grew up in the Bay Area. I grew up mostly in Pacifica, CA, just south of SF, from the time I was 5-years-old until I left home at 18 years of age. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, in a small 1250 square foot house, in what must have been among the earliest integrated communities in the U.S. It was rough for the first years because our parents often passed their fear and prejudice on to us, all of us, white kids, black kids, Hispanic kids, Chicano kids, Filipino kids, Samoan kids, Iranian kids, and so on. But eventually we all grew to be friends despite our parent’s anxieties, and today I’m proud to have been among the first generation of kids growing up in integrated neighborhoods to have also helped elect our country’s first African American President. Integration works. I wish our country, as a whole, was still as segregated as it is. I was an English speaker who grew up in an unchurched family, though I became a Born Again Christian in my early teens and began attending church then. I was part of a blue-collar family with a working dad and stay home mother. My father was an abusive man, probably an undiagnosed and untreated paranoid schizophrenic, which made life Hell for my mother, myself, and my three siblings. I hated school, mostly because I was fearful of the world, lacked confidence, and was, thus, easy prey for the school bullies. I’m a high school drop out because of it. 

Jacobsen: What levels of formal education have been part of life for you? How have you informally self-educated?

Eklof: I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Communications, a Master of Arts in Religious Studies, and a Doctorate of Ministry. In addition to my formal education, I delight in continuing to self-educate, largely by reading and researching areas that interest me, as well as, occasionally taking formal classes or training. I’m a certified member of the APPA (American Philosophical Practitioners Association), have attended theologian Matthew Fox’s school, The University of Creation Spirituality, and most recently completed the Executive Program at Singularity University. I started off as a Southern Baptist minister, for a very short period, but left Christianity while still in seminary. I became a Unitarian Universalist shortly thereafter, in 1989, and reentered the ministry in 1999 as a UU.

Jacobsen: As a Minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, what tasks and responsibilities come with the position?

Eklof: I prepare and conduct worship services, provide pastoral care, officiate weddings and funerals, engage in the larger community through both involvement and social action. At UUCS, I’m also the Acting CEO, which means I’m responsible for managing the staff, budget, and general operations of the church. That’s the mechanical explanation. Day to day, my work changes constantly due to emerging needs that seem to always be coming up.

Jacobsen: In terms of the inclusion of women into religious traditions, the Unitarian Universalists appear much better than many other religious or non-traditional religious worldviews. What is the status of women within the formal teachings of the Unitarian Universalist Church?

Eklof: The UU religion is noncreedal, meaning it has no formal teachings, about women or anything else. However, we share many common values, including the belief we should respect, included, and empower everyone, regardless of identity, including females. Universalists, in particular, were the first official religion to ordain a woman in the U.S., Olympia Brown, in 1865. Some of the most renowned women’s suffragists were associated with Unitarianism, like Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Dix, Margaret Fuller, Clara Barton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe. Our female ministers have been increasing in number since the 1960s, and today outnumber males. During the past three years, the number of new ministers has been about 80 percent female.

Jacobsen: Women need the support of men in the current renewal and revival of the women’s movement. How can the Unitarian Universalist Church, if supportive, become a part of this?

Eklof: As evidenced by my previous response, the UU religion is already part of supporting the move toward women becoming more equal and empowered in our communities and our larger world. This is part of our general commitment to making sure this is so for all marginalized people, regardless of their gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race, religion, politics, class, etc., etc. We have a long way to go yet, but like many people committed to creating a more fair and just world, we’re working toward it, have made some headway, and will continue to do so in our individual relationships, congregations, communities, and in the world at large.

Jacobsen: What are some of the important teachings, and social and community-building activities, of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane?

Eklof: Again, as a noncreedal religion, we don’t have formal teachings. However, we’re very proud to have a religious education program that teaches our kids to be well informed and open minded early in their lives. We are the only congregation in town that offers K-12 age appropriate sex education, not only to our members, but to the community at large. OWL (Our Whole Lives) is a successful sex education course that was developed nationally by Unitarian Universalism. We are engaged in many social and social justice activities in our community, many of which we also support financially through special collections. We are members of the Spokane Alliance, an organization that partners with other churches, educators, and unions to work together on our common concerns. Some of our members were among those in our community to first promote birth control (when it was still illegal), bring Planned Parenthood to Spokane, start NOW, help shut down the Hanford Nuclear reactor, and were crucial to passing marriage equality in Washington State, to legalize marijuana (cutting the number of police stop-and-searches in half). Most recently we’ve helped pass cutting-edge environmental legislation, stop executions in Washington, and have a program to help bail out and pay legal expenses for people in our community arrested by ICE. As a congregation, we have an active social life among ourselves, much of it informal, through the friendships that have formed through many years of working together in our larger community.

Jacobsen:  Moving further into 2019, what do you see as the important activist activities of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane?

Eklof: There are, of course, the obvious concerns continuing to plague us all, like Global Warming, income inequality, homelessness, systemic racism, rising healthcare, education, and housing costs, and so on. We also remain attentive to needs and issues as the unexpectedly emerge. Acts of gun violence and the racist desecration of religious buildings are examples. Given the coming 2020 election, politics is also heavy on our minds.

Jacobsen: Any recommended reading on Unitarian Universalism for those with an interest in it?

Eklof: The books written about our nebulous and evolving liberal religion are either too academic, or sparse. Instead, I recommend people read and research about us online. Read Wikipedia and go to individual church websites. Read or watch a few sermons and services. Then go visit churches in your area. It’s a better way to get a real feel for what the religion is about.

Jacobsen: How can people become involved with the donation of time, the addition of membership, links to professional and personal networks, giving monetarily, exposure in interviews or writing articles, and so on?

Eklof: The best thing to do, if one is interested, is to begin by attending a UU congregation for a while. Get a feel for it, as I say, then decide if it works for you or not. Like any church, one can be involved by simply attending services or functions and activities, as well as choosing to volunteer for various committees and projects. In most congregations, financial support is a term of official membership, though the amount is up to the individual contributors. We do have a national Association that also allows our members to be involved on a larger level with the organization, including many social justice organizations, like the UU Service Committee. As for publications, I’m afraid UUs are the worst self-promotors, largely because we’re not hung up on ideology, which means we don’t have any need to convince others “we’re right.” Most the time people “discover” us on their own, saying, “I think I’ve been a UU my whole life, I just didn’t know it.”

Jacobsen: Any final feelings or thoughts based on the conversation today?

Eklof: I appreciate your interest in our little liberal religion. We represent far less than even 1 percent of the population. You’d be lucky to find one UU in a group of 300. Yet, when people ask me, “How big is your church,” I sometimes respond by saying, “About as big as a stick of dynamite.”

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rev. Eklof.

Eklof: It’s been my pleasure!

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/05

Mubarak Bala is the President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. We will be conducting this educational series to learn more about humanism and secularism within Nigeria. Here we talk about African freethought.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What defines African freethought?

Mubarak Bala: Africa, the cradle of homosapien species, and one of the earliest of civilizations, along major rivers and valleys sparring the continent, allowed for the development of humanity from the crudest hunter gatherer families, to settled agricultural communities, which naturally, inquired about how we came about. 

This is interesting because, back then, pre-organized religion, priests were not yet ordained, and so, every family, community and civilizations, divided by contours, watersheds, hills and forests, developed their own unique stories that best explained the world to them, and passed it down through generations.

It may interest the reader to know, that these wide variety of free inquiry, free guesses and unhindered thought patterns, aided the development of languages, tribal and cultural diversity, as well as provided later generations a way of tapping into the experiences and lessons learnt over thousands of years, which still manifests today beyond the continent.
Physically, the African thought process, grew from storytelling, to legend, mythology, mysticism, magic, spirituality and nature worship, which best fits the people and the threats they faced at any particular time. 

Do not be surprised, Thunder, scared and rattled the primitive man, which then created many myths around it, becoming one of the main pillars of their belief, Sango in West Africa among the Yoruba, Amadioha, among the Ibos, Kwarankwatsa, among the Hausa, are all thunder and associated mythology of lasting impact on the psyche of people to this day. Thor has cousins you know. 

So, thunder, rivers, fire, rains, fertility, organs of fertility, death, air, animals, disease, and strange looking residual mountains, all became part of the deified nature, to which Africans found meaning and purpose, and the will to inquire more, then came Jesus on a Chariot from the sky, and Muhammad on a flying winged pegasus, and everything turned upside down…

Without the freedom to think and inquire, since everything became blasphemy, heresy or apostacy, Africa lost its roots, lost its pandora-tree of sapping information from ancestor avatar, and became zombified by religions and modes of thinking of mostly, singular phased brains whose source of information was mostly dreams and whims.

Without such intervention, African free inquiry might have led the continent, into a more nature-friendly, sustainable, and better economic and social diversity, with enough resources to also tame the natural environment, and shape their destiny, not losing a single child or gold to ships sailing to far worlds…

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How can Africans remove colonial baggage and traditionalist superstition to emancipate both mind and body for themselves?

Bala: Luckily, the same colonial conquests that destroyed African superstition for Abrahamic superstition, also came along with science and education, albeit with adulterated means and methods of dissemination of such, as well as disregard for diversity and history, so education became premium.

These unforseen circumstances, gave the continent a chance to reawaken and start over and pick up the pieces. Although many societies still lag behind others in the pace of rational awakening, the internet is doing wonders among the youth, unconventionally. 

African youth have now set the tone that even political leaders, hardly ever stand on the way, talk less of trying to regulate the massive reawakening of the populace, effectively exposing lying pastors, abusive priests, murderous turbans, and purging poisonous texts away from curricula, imported to create as many minions as possible for desert perverts.

Africa is now being put back on track, not by he governments and the incompetent politicians, but by rational voices bypassing the conventional media, to set the tone, and set the agenda, for rational and empirically viable discourse that spills over to even beyond the continent. The next generation, I assure you, would not be as hopeless as this one, nor as wretched as the past few!

How can humanism provide a language and tradition for this?

Humanism, inculcated in not just children, but all free rational minds, have the power to turn around the continent, from mostly slumbering old giants ruddering the people to a clueless oblivion, back into the path for cohesion, freedom, compassion, education, free-inquiry, freethought, as well as sure footed political, social, economic, and sustainable, stable today and tomorrow. 

Education is the key. Tolerance is the mechanism. Communication is the baton. Internet is the power. 

Good news everyday so far, amid the appalling bad news. Nigerian government promising to lift 5m out of extreme poverty in 10 years. Also promising to put 10m children in school in 5 years. Also breaking 100s of chains from legs of adults and minors incarcerated in slavery, in Islamic torture centres in north Nigeria. Same government merging uniquely taught religious subjects to pupils in schools, into one course, which sees Islam and Christianity as well as a sprinkle of other paganisms into one course for all, does all the good we could hope for… Teach all the religions at once to kids or none at all, this would neutralize the radicalization and general delusion by growing minds, we always suggested, a decade into an endless war with terrorists and tribal hate.

We advocated all these and pressured the government to act, and yes, they did, and promise much, much more. There is hope!

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mubarak.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/05

Cantor Dr. Jonathan Friedmann is the Community Leader of Adat Chaverim – Community Leader and the Education Director of the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeles. Here we talk about his life, work, and views.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was family life growing up, e.g., geography, culture, language, and religion or lack thereof?

Cantor Dr. Jonathan Friedmann: I grew up in Southern California in the early 1980s in what was, at least in those days, a “normative” Reform Jewish household. My siblings and I attended supplementary religious school and the family went to services a few times a year, but the subject of theology was never discussed at home. It simply wasn’t interesting to us. We learned to read Hebrew and became relatively fluent in the conventional prayers, but never thought twice about the meaning of those prayers, which we treated as historical relics that connected us to a less enlightened past. Like many liberal Jews, our Jewish identity was almost entirely ethnic or cultural, and synagogue was just one part—and not necessarily a central part—of that identity. Although my parents were passively or functionally atheist, we were connected to the Reform synagogue because it was one of the few places where our Jewishness could be openly expressed. God, or the absence of God, had nothing to do with it.

Jacobsen: How were these family factors influential in the development of education and within the wider community of early life?

Friedmann: I remember attending Jewish sleepaway camp when I was in high school and encountering, for the first time, a Jew who professed a strong and unshakable belief in God. I was dumbfounded. In my limited experience, only Christians held such beliefs.

Jacobsen: How does Humanistic Judaism differ from other Judaisms?

Friedmann: The primary difference between Humanistic Jewish practice and other forms of liberal Judaism is that, for us, it’s vital that our ceremonial language reflect our actual beliefs and worldview. First and foremost, this means that our services are non-theistic, focusing instead on Jewish and universal teachings that resonate with the core principles of humanism: human dignity, agency, responsibility, and potential. This approach necessitates not only throwing out most of the age-old prayers, but also creating or compiling songs, meditations, and affirmations to take their place. As such, Humanistic Jews are able to experience Jewish holidays and life cycle events in a way that’s authentic and personally meaningful to them.

Jacobsen: What is the interpretation and meaning of community in a non-theistic Judaism with an emphasis on humanism?

Friedmann: Human beings are social animals and Judaism is, historically, a highly communitarian system. As much as an individual Jew might want to differentiate him or herself from the Jewish people, three very strong forces tend to push us together: antisemitism, the human need for community, and the affirmation that comes from sharing experiences with like-minded people. Humanistic Jews are doubly outsiders, first because, as Jews, we’re a minority group, and second because we’re not at home in conventional Jewish religious environments.

Jacobsen: How does Adat Chaverim – Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeles provide a space for the safe and healthy practise of Humanistic Judaism compared to other areas of California or, indeed, of the United States with the recent waves of political and social strife in the country?

Friedmann: The Los Angeles area is predominantly liberal; we live in a “blue bubble.” Our community is overwhelmingly on the progressive or even radical end of the political spectrum, even on issues that often divide liberal Jewish communities—such as Israel and intermarriage. Our differences of opinion tend to be ones of degree rather than kind. Largely because of this, we’ve maintained an atmosphere of genuine openness and support. We speak openly about troubling events, giving particular attention to how these developments impact us as Jews and how we can put our Jewish/Humanistic values to use in affecting positive change.

Jacobsen: What are some community activities and popular events of the community at Adat Chaverim – Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeles? 

Friedmann: Our most popular activities include our weekly adult education sessions, which I lead, and our many field trips to places of Jewish cultural interest in the Los Angeles, of which there are many.

Jacobsen: How do you lead encourage, support, and initiate members of the Adam Chaverim congregation? 

Friedmann: Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the U.S. (after New York). Yet, Humanistic Judaism remains a little-known option. Most of our members have either grown tired of “going through the motions” in larger denominations or have no prior synagogue affiliation. They typically discover us through Internet searches using some combination of “Jewish,” “atheist,” and “Los Angeles.” I’m the first point of contact at our congregation; I answer their calls or emails directly. More often than not, when they attend their first educational or ceremonial gathering, there’s an immediate feeling of finding a home.

Jacobsen: In the practical living of ethical action, what do reaching out to those in healing the planet, having a rational outlook, working with other Jewish peoples, charity, and human rights look like – through Adat Chaverim?

Friedmann: Because of its emphasis on science and reason, Humanistic Judaism can be overly intellectual in orientation. Our community is most energized when we’re engaged in rich discussions of literature, philosophy, history, archaeology, pop culture, and so on. However, we realize that words are often just words; there’s a world out there that needs healing. To that end, we’ve organized members for marches, collaborated with immigrant rights groups, volunteered with food and resource programs, worked with environmental organizations to plant trees and clean beaches, among other things. Also, last year I was invited to the first gathering of the So Cal Secular Leadership Summit, which brings together all sorts of secular, humanist, and atheist groups in the region with the goal of uniting our efforts toward social justice and secular advocacy.

Jacobsen: Any recommended speakers or writers? How can people become involved with or support the efforts of Adat Chaverim – Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, Los Angeles? 

Friedmann: One of the leading scholars of secularism, Dr. Phil Zuckerman, is a professor at Pitzer College on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. Phil has spoken at a few of our events and is in touch with the Society for Humanistic Judaism. The best way to get involved with Adat Chaverim is to visit our website (https://www.humanisticjudaismla.org/), contact us by email (info@humanisticjudaismla.org), and attend one of our gatherings. Visitors usually know within a few minutes whether our community is right for them.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Jonathan.

Friedmann: My pleasure.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/04

Reverend Gretta Vosper is a unique individual in the history of Canadian freethought insofar as I know the prior contexts of freethinking in Canada’s past in general, and in the nation for secular oriented women in particular.

Vosper is a Member of The Clergy Project and a Minister in The United Church of Canada (The UCC) at West Hill United Church, and the Founder of the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity (2004-2016), and Best-Selling Author. 

I reached out about the start of an educational series in the early pages of a new chapter in one of the non-religious texts in the library comprising the country’s narratives. Vosper agreed.

Our guest today, Rev. Jessica Purple Rodela, who graduated in 2008 from the Meadville Lombard Theological School and founded the anti-racism forum entitled The Kaleidoscope Initiative featured in The Arc of the Universe: The Unitarian Universalist Association’s Anti-Racism Work. She is a Minister in the Grand River Unitarian Congregation and the President of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers of Canada. She has served on the Canadian Unitarian Council Board of Trustees.

She is licenced to perform life cycle events including wedding ceremonies, funerals and memorials, baby namings, and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Handlarski focuses on “Tikkun Olam” or repairing the world, and the emphasis of ethical behaviour within Jewish culture.  

Here we talk about women atheist leaders, once more in the pulpit.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Unitarian Universalists and The United Church of Canada provide an image of progressive belief structures, life stances, and leadership flexibility inclusive of women and various flavours of atheists at the lectern, which becomes a huge boon for women atheist leadership in traditional patriarchal institutions (supremacy and predominance of men in most levels of authority and sociocultural influence in the institutions).

Why do the Unitarian Universalists and The United Church of Canada provide this space in history and right into the present? How?

Rev. Jessica Purple Rodela: Thanks for the question.

I’ve found it a challenge to respond – and this struggle may be part of the full answer.  On the one hand, I want to sing the praises of our Unitarian Universalist commitment to inclusion; on the other, I am called to critique a movement that applauds itself for having a better track record than most of including women, but like all movements it has not been only forward and onward forever. 

Theologically speaking, Unitarians and Universalists (we are a merged tradition) were poised from the start toward an ever-widening circle of inclusion of people. We rejected the notion of original sin, substitutionary atonement, and ‘hellfire & damnation’ early on.   It was a natural (though gradual) evolution that Unitarians and Universalists then embraced both women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery in 19^th century North America.

But theology is only part of the aspirational story of Unitarians and Universalists. The practice of inclusion is quite a bit muddier. 

According to The Prophetic Sisterhood by Cynthia Grant Tucker, in 1836, Mary Ann Church was the only woman listed among the 400 Universalist preachers in North America. Mary Ann Church is believed to be the first woman to preach in any kind of church in Canada.  In 1863, Universalist Olympia Brown was the first woman to be fully ordained by a major Protestant denomination. Mary Augusta Safford was leading a Unitarian congregation by 1880. And in 1888 Fidelia Gillette (Universalist), was the first woman to be ordained and called to serve a Canadian congregation.  When Eleanor Gordon was ordained a year after Rev. Gillette, there were a total of 101,640 Protestant clergy in North America; only 70 were women.  Over half of those 70 were Unitarians or Universalists (16 were Unitarians; 32 were Universalists).    

But what many histories of our movement neglect to mention is that women were afforded these early opportunities mostly in areas where men did not want to serve – often in sparsely settled frontier towns. As those towns (and their congregations) were more established and lucrative, men moved in and women religious leaders lost their positions.

Our two traditions – Unitarianism & Universalism – had merged by the time I first felt a call to ministry. At the tender age of 10, I would have never seen or heard of a female minister. Only 3 % of Unitarian Universalist ministers were women in 1973.  By the time I attended seminary in 2004, over half of Unitarian Universalist student ministers were women.  But this acceptance was still new – the generation just ahead of me, my female mentors and ministers had been the trailblazers: these who were first and few, who faced criticism for ‘daring’ to leave “Sunday School” and the pews, for robes and pulpits and Board rooms. I listened to their tales with marvel that within my lifetime it has changed so dramatically and because of them I was welcomed wholeheartedly into the fold of ministerial fellowship. The Unitarian Universalist Association did not elect its first woman president until its most recent election, in 2016. 

Today, binary gender inclusion is a natural assumption for Unitarian Universalists; and now we are focused on examining how to expand into genuine non-binary inclusion as well, so that we can truly live into our first principle:  to affirm and promote the worth and dignity of every person. 

Rev. Gretta Vosper: The conclusion of my “heresy trial” by way of a settlement reached between The United Church of Canada (UCC) and myself should not be misunderstood as a welcoming of atheists into the ministry. I believe that the denomination’s silence on the decision to allow me to remain indicates, rather, that they are barely tolerating my presence. It will be some time before celebrations of full inclusivity will be appropriate.

Indeed, that my denomination created a special process in 2015 – its ninetieth anniversary – that held clergy to belief in the archaic Trinitarian formula for belief – God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is evidence of a shift toward a more rigid, belief-based Christianity than I have previously experienced within it. The church I loved was often described by its members and clergy as “non-creedal.” To require ordered ministers to profess a literal belief in the Trinity throughout their ministry stands in stark contrast to the church into which I was happy to be ordained. I consider the UCC’s turn toward a more conservative theology – one orchestrated by senior staff, not the people of the denomination – to be a betrayal of the church’s historical position with respect to other denominations and the Canadian context within which it was born.

As a child, my “belief” system was developed through a Sunday School curriculum based on the most progressive critical scholarship of the day. That curriculum, only in use for less than a decade, encouraged children and adults to consider the Bible as a human construction. As a theological student studying for ordination in the UCC, that perspective was upheld and reinforced. Comparing theological beliefs across the history of Christianity, we wrestled with a breadth of concepts. But concepts are just that: concepts. Without a human brain to consider them, they do not exist. At no time in my training was I required to believe “traditional” Christian beliefs were central to the UCC’s faith or a literal Trinitarian God. On the contrary, we were expected to wrestle with the “traditional” and live on the edge of faith where love and justice wrestled with contemporary society.

What the United Church welcomes are those who may comfortably identify as a-theists, a cerebral tip of the hat to elitist theological positions such as panentheism, a complex theological position held by many clergy but understood by a statistically miniscule number of congregants and even fewer Canadians. In other words, if you can come up with a definition of “god” that is so smokey no one knows what it really means, your presence will be celebrated. Christianity has been evolving its definitions of god into smoke for millennia; we are very good at it.

Beyond the obvious concerns regarding opacity, however, evolving new, smokier definitions of god has exacted a great price upon Canada’s church-loving population. Esoteric definitions for god have seriously undermined the social capital congregations have long poured into the communities beyond our doors. People who don’t want to do mental callisthenics for an hour on Sunday morning have been leaving church for a long, long time. We’ve barely a remnant left of what we once were. If you consider the influence denominations such as the UCC and the Anglican Church of Canada have had on Canada’s social democracy and consider its loss, the rise of populism quickly makes sense. The collapse of small charities, the reduction in volunteer hours, the loss of philanthropic investment in community, and the impact of all this on the country’s powerful social safety net, is a direct result of our refusal to steward the social capital invested in our congregations. It is a harbinger of a nastier Canada than we like to think we are and can be (recognizing that our Indigenous sisters and brothers have seen that nastier Canada since Confederation). Had senior staff in the United Church turned their attention to examining the denomination’s long slide into irrelevance and working to address it rather than plunging headlong into the excoriation of a scapegoat, our future may not be as bleak as many see it will be.

Women, persons of diverse sexual and gender expressions, the old and infirm, those who are physically, emotionally, and intellectually different, the racially marginalized – all these, I believe, have the challenge and the privilege of bearing the future, literally and figuratively. We have lived historically outside the circles of power, watching as decisions were made for us, not by us. From our vantage point, we have seen the manipulations and orchestrations of those who have written the rules, accorded the privileges, prevented whole sectors the rights and privileges to which they are rightly entitled. Perhaps, as we find our way into those circles, we will hold to the truths we have witnessed and speak them there, creating, as we do, something different, better, more humane.

I care not if we save the church and have said so publicly in the past. Indeed, I wonder that religion itself has not already outlived its benefits. The good that church and religion can accomplish, however, is worth saving and I find my ministry within that work. With or without belief, holding to one another and doing the work of making whole the relationships we create and nurture with others, and with our fragile ecosystems, that, I believe, is worth the struggle.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Rev. Rodela and Rev. Vosper.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/03

Mandisa Thomas, a native of New York City, is the founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, Inc. Although never formally indoctrinated into belief, Mandisa was heavily exposed to Christianity, Black Nationalism, and Islam. As a child she loved reading, and enjoyed various tales of Gods from different cultures, including Greek and Ghanaian. “Through reading these stories and being taught about other cultures at an early age, I quickly noticed that there were similarities and differences between those deities and the God of the Christian Bible. I couldn’t help but wonder what made this God so special that he warrants such prevalence today,” she recalls.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and the American Humanist Association, and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others.

In 2019, Mandisa was the recipient of the Secular Student Alliance’s Backbone Award and named the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s Freethought Heroine. She was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association’s Person of the Year 2018.

As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa encourages more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

“The more we make our presence known, the better our chances of working together to turn around some of the disparities we face. We are NOT alone.”

Here, we talk about events, recent work, and representation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We were talking about demographic tendency differences over time. You recently came back from a two-week travel and work spiel. What were some of the events? What were some noteworthy demographic changes you noticed in the last few years, while attending this trip?

Mandisa Thomas: Yes, I recently spoke and represented Black Nonbelievers at the Skepticon, which took a break in 2018 after 10 years, and then returned this year, in Saint Louis, MO (it was previously held in Springfield). I also had the opportunity to speak at the Ethical Society of Saint Louis that same weekend.

I also had the occasion to come back to my hometown area of New York City, where I spoke with two groups: the Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County (HFFC) and the Long Island Atheists.

For the first group, the first time I spoke there in 2015, there was a nominal crowd, with only about 2 to 3 people of colour in the audience.

This time, the organizers were very active in advertising the event, because they wanted more attendance. We also wanted more people of colour to attend. Now that we have a New York City affiliate of Black Nonbelievers, we were able to help. I kept some copies of the flyers; they looked amazing. And this time around, there was a crowd of approximately 50 people, which for the venue where it was held, was amazing. And about a third of the attendees were people of colour. So not only was the promotion better, but there was genuine interest from said folks in attending more events, as well as displaying their visibility as nonbelievers.

Also, the fact that the talk resonated so well is very important. There was also a young black man in attendance who was a reporter for an outlet called Subverse. He saw one of the flyers that were posted, covered the story, and made a YouTube video. There are some interesting comments on said video. I always tell myself, never read the YouTube comments, because they can be quite “trollish”. But it was quite interesting to see the feedback. Overall, there was a clear difference between the visibility from four years ago and today, which was inspiring. It showed that some predominantly white secular groups are committed to outreach improvement, especially for people of colour and in their activities. Also, the fact that our organization has grown and expanded has been a huge factor. Therefore, we are able to establish more networking and collaborative opportunities. We are making progress in areas of diversity and inclusion.

Jacobsen: Do you consider this more an increase in recognition of organizations representing those populations for African Americans or black folks in the United States feeling more comfortable coming out? Or is this people feeling convinced more within African-American communities by non-religious and secular arguments, in finding more appeal in those communities to come to those events, or both?

Thomas: I think it is both. First, it does make a difference to have representation. I speak on this often –  what organizations should be doing to retain people of colour within their membership and also in their leadership. Of course, I reiterate the need to support organizations like BN, and others geared toward marginalized groups, as it does not take away from their membership – rather, it SHOULDN’T. But more people of colour are also finding their voices, as well as communities for support. Because yes, evidenced-based thinking and life approaches make more sense. And the more platforms we offer and the better the representation looks, the more we can strive for what is needed in our community.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mandisa.

Thomas: Thank you. 

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/03

Faye Girsh is the Founder and the Past President of the Hemlock Society of San Diego. She was the President of the National Hemlock Society (Defunct) and the World Federation of RTD Societies (Extant). Currently, she is on the Advisory Board of the Final Exit Network and the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization. Here we talk about religion, secularism, and Rational Suicide.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Some might read the combination of the words “Rational” and “Suicide” as “Rational Suicide” and scoff & huff, especially in the context of Abrahamic religion dominated societies in which the theology seeps into every facet of the society, “You cannot have a ‘Rational Suicide’ as God owns everything, including every body and soul. So, to kill oneself usurps God’s authority, this violates Natural Law and Moral Law. Both given by God Almighty. It is sin, pure and simple.”

What seems like a secular counterargument to this line of argumentation? What seems like a religious counterargument to this line of argumentation?

Faye Girsh: Not being a religious scholar — or believer — I probably do not have a convincing argument disputing the basic premise that God owns everything. Seems to me that a lot depends on how God is seen, i.e., as kind and merciful, generous with His or Her gifts such as free will, rationality, and choice. I think scholars have been arguing these issues for centuries.

Even in Islam there are various interpretations of how much their God controls things. My very religious Christian neighbor chose to end his life, as did his wife, because they felt they had accompished their mission in life and knew they would be together now in the arms of Jesus.

A minister who was a Hemlock member wrote a treatise arguing that Jesus had Divine Euthanasia, as evidenced by the fact that he died pretty quickly on the cross whereas the Romans intended it to be a prolonged death (like many people have now.)

The main thing, it seems to me, is that in a secular country no religion should impose its beliefs on others who think differently.

Jacobsen: How does religion and non-religion impact questions of a Rational Suicide?

Girsh: Certainly some religious people, such as Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, would never agree that taking one’s own life is a rational act, nor would some psychiatrists and other professionals.

Yet the rate of suicide is increasing so some religious people are desperate enough to take matters into their own hands in spite of the possibility of burning in hell and other penalties for violating religious doctrine.

As a psychologist I do believe that the choice of ending one’s own life in the face of unbearable suffering or of impending dementia is a rational one. But I have worked with many people for whom ending life is not rational.

There is realistic hope for them of having better days, cures for their suffering, and working through their problems. Understanding that death comes to all of us and that we do have some control over how it will be helps to let go of a difficult life.  

There are so many forms of coercion forcing people to stay alive — including but definitely not limited to — religion that it seems important for people to accept that death will happen and life does not have to be the choice when it is not appropriate for them.  Life is not always good, death is not always bad.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Faye.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/02

Dr. Leo Igwe is the founder of the Nigerian Humanist Movement and former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, now Humanists International. He is among the most prominent African non-religious people from the African continent. When he speaks, many people listen in a serious way. He holds a Ph.D. from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria.

Here we talk about the character of the humanist traditions in Africa.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The character of Africa spans an enormous range. Traditional African ways of life and superstitions from the influence of the pre-colonial eras and remain influenced by the Christian and Islamic colonial periods.

All, now, influenced by modernity, cosmopolitanism, science, and technology. Humanism in its modern incarnation is new. It arose, in Nigeria, through you. What is the character of African Humanism?

Dr. Leo Igwe: Delineating the character of African humanism is problematic, especially within a historical context  that is largely based on western, not African, representation of Africa or the African. Such a project is helpful, remedially useful in shedding some light on a phase described as dark, and in ascribing something, or better somebody, to a place, a time when ‘there was nothing’. The humanist cosmological outlook, as culturally linked to Europe, to the European renaissance or to the West seldom provides a coherent articulation of human centeredness, human assertiveness that speaks to ancient Africa, and the evolution of African humanism.  

Humanist antecedents in Africa have largely been ignored or deemphasized because ancient African had been sliced from the tree of common humanity, leaving behind a gapping hole that yearns to be filled. Invariably, as an outlook that has humanity as its central element, the character of African humanism draws from varied sources and encounters, from the existential struggles in the precolonial, colonial and post-colonial formations. It is in this variety that the true character of African humanism rests. It’s in diversity that the strength of African humanism can be found. Indeed it’s only in such situation of the African human that the humanistic tendencies can be properly articulated. While, in the precolonial phase, superstitions wielded enormous influence, humanity overcame and overwhelmed the primitive tendencies. Although identified with ‘civilization’, the African contended with the malign influence of colonial- Christian and Islamic- religions. These contentions have continued in the post colonial era as the superstitious synergy of these foreign religions and their traditional counterpart pummels and tries to hinder and hamper the progressive emancipation of African human spirit. Thus the character of African humanism is summed, and can only be embodied in the virtues of defiance, resistance and affirmation, not in blind faith, unquestionable obedience and submission and passivity.

Jacobsen: How does this differ from the Nigerian type of humanism?

Igwe: Nigerian humanism is only a sub category of the African humanist formation. The Nigerian type does not necessarily differ in character and essence; it only contains specifics of these continent wide existential struggles. The Nigerian type of humanism has its own niche, and unique reference point. In many parts of the region, humanism contends with the dark influences of traditional superstitions and Christianity, or traditional beliefs and Islam or Islamic extremism and fundamentalist Christianity. Typical to the Nigerian situation is the combined negative influences of these superstitions and extremisms. Thus Nigerian humanism encapsulates strands of emancipatory narratives that speak to various traditions, and superstitions, to Christian and Muslim extremisms.

Jacobsen: What is the mutual interplay between African Humanism and Nigerian Humanism as emancipatory philosophies for African peoples who live in Africa now?

Igwe: In Nigeria and Africa, humanism can be resourceful in combating superstitious beliefs such as witchcraft and blood money that are too often used to exploit people. Persons living with albinism have become endangered species and are often denied their humanity; they are hunted down and butchered in the quest for their body parts in Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania. Elderly persons, women and children are accused of witchcraft, beaten, banished or lynched by mobs in Nigeria, Ghana and in other parts of the region. Nigerian and African Humanisms can reinforce each other in the quest to realize social change and progress.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Dr. Igwe.

Igwe: You are welcome, Scott.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Canadian Atheist

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/11/02

Kwabena “Michael” Osei-Assibey is the President of the Humanist Association of Ghana. We will be conducting this educational series to learn more about humanism and secularism within Ghana. Here we talk about logistics, events, and maintenance.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s say you’re going to pitch a new event idea or accept one, what would be the standard process of bringing this forward to the Board of the organization?

Kwabena Osei-Assibey: My organizational structure has an executive body of 6 members whom I report to. Running a volunteer organization I believe is much easier because most of the ideas do not originate from the executives. We have brain storming sessions almost every month and ideas are developed organically from there. Sometimes we accept an idea or event as a collective but it is ultimately up to the executives to drive the idea across the finish line. This is difficult sometimes when challenges of life prevent us from spending the time we want to on activism. We have been recently discussing ways to circumvent this bottle neck and hopefully in the future, we will be able to afford paid staff that will keep our ideas moving.

Jacobsen: What would be the criteria for consideration of the inclusion of a new event idea into the oeuvre of one-time events for the organization?

Osei-Assibey: The most critical thing is that whatever we do must align with our humanist values. Secondly, HAG as an association has certain goals which have been enshrined in our constitution. We need to make sure that the event speaks to those goals. Another thing is zero footprint. This is done when we are partnering with minority groups that are in danger or require special sensitive considerations. Finally, we have to look at cost. We have to ask ourselves whether we can get enough volunteers to donate towards the project.

Jacobsen: What would be the criteria on top of the former responses to qualify an event for consideration as a recurring one?

In addition to the above, we find that the most difficult hurdle for recurring events is location. We have had to change locations for our monthly free-thought events at least 3 times. We are currently running a video series dubbed Honest Discussions, and we have to make tough choices when it comes to getting free venues.

Jacobsen: What have been the most popular events in the past of HAG? Also, how can the podcast and other media be used intelligently for the outreach to potential interested publics about the work of HAG and its future events?

Osei-Assibey: Our Conferences have always been well attended and so has our free-thought events. Our vision is to create as much local content as possible, digitize and make them available for others to see that humanism or atheism translates well in the African context. We are also aware that the internet and access to data is still far from equitable. Our hope, however, is that, in the future, the internet will be more available and affordable, and what we digitize today, will be available for future generations to build on.

We have also been looking at targeted ads and we have employed a few in the past. However, those have not been as successful as we would have hoped. What has been most successful is the public response when we go on radio or TV and make our opinions on national issues heard. Traffic to our website and inboxes increases as we reach a larger audience, many of whom may not be on social media.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Kwabena.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.