REPORT on the 17^th WORLD HUMANIST CONGRESS (Washington, DC, June 5-8, 2008) by Frank S. Robinson and Therese L. Broderick

 

         First, we thank CDHS for underwriting our attendance at this wonderful event. (CDHS paid the registration fee; not the airfare & hotel bills!)

         We’ll start with Frank’s report; Therese’s will follow, covering different events.

 

“Humanist legal activism.” A review of some cases working through the courts. The Summum case concerns a monument with an addendum to the 10 Commandments (“The 7 Aphorisms”) which a city allowed a private group to place in a public park. Interestingly, the ACLU has supported the group, on First Amendment grounds. But now the city is getting cold feet at the idea that if it allows one such monument, it must allow others.

         This seminar featured some Supreme Court bashing, noting that a majority (5) of the justices are Catholic. I spoke up to defend the court. I don’t like many of its decisions in this sphere, I actually think the wall of separation is too high, but I do believe the justices try to get these things right and are certainly not biased toward religion. Its advocates have more to complain about than do atheists.

 

Gregory Paul on “The Remarkable Success of Western Secularism.” Paul cited statistics showing that religious belief is imploding in the advanced nations, though not so much in the US. Only about a quarter of Europeans are real believers (and many of those are Muslims). The loss of faith, he said, is spontaneous and bottom-up, with no authority promoting atheism (as under Communism).

To explain this, Paul theorized that education is a factor, with statistics showing that every year of college degrades religiosity by 7%. Another factor is wealth, with per capita GDP negatively correlated with religious faith. American anomalousness in this regard he sought to explain on the basis that the US has higher income inequality.

But the nub of his talk was that humans readily cast off religion when social conditions are benign. He contrasted Europe, with its pervasive social “safety nets,” job security, and free healthcare against the US, where people allegedly feel less secure—another of his correlations. Paul declared that universal healthcare in the US will prove to be the deathknell of religion.

I figured the audience (heavily left leaning, of course) would welcome this thesis. It did not. In fact, when Paul started to get into this point, the listeners went into open revolt. A feisty bunch—shouting at him from the floor. They just didn’t think he had the evidence to support his idea. He responded by insisting on the statistical correlations, but that didn’t cut it. (I contributed the shout, “correlation is not causation!”) Just when I thought Paul would be defenestrated, he was saved by the bell—literally—the fire alarm bell. We had to evacuate the building. Audience discussion continued on the street. Eventually we returned to the room. But Gregory Paul was never seen again!

 

“Educating a New Generation of Humanists.” This I thought would be a real snooze. But Mynga Futrell was a fireball, talking about the OABITAR project—Objectivity, Accuracy, and Balance in Teaching About Religion. She said teachers want to be fair, but they tend not to grasp the concept of neutrality concerning religion, and of treating dissent respectfully. She stressed the idea of “all in, all equal;” atheists tend to be regarded as “outside.” The focus should be not on religious diversity but “worldview” diversity, with students educated to handle diversity in the public realm without being defensive or offensive.

Mynga noted that “secular” is a problematic word and actually has three distinct senses: 1) not relevant to religion; 2) in the arena of values and belief, a departure from religion; and 3) in the legal sense, civic neutrality regarding religion.

 

Paul Kurtz on The History of Humanism and the IHEU (Int’l Humanist & Ethical Union) over the past 4 decades. Kurtz is the closest thing to a humanist Pope. He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at SUNY Buffalo, ex co-President of IHEU, founder of Prometheus Books, and Editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry Magazine.

Professor Kurtz started by saying that IHEU has actually failed in its great mission to create a powerful world secular organization. Perhaps; but perhaps putting the ambition that way reflects overstretch. Kurtz did expound upon some pretty creditable history.

Democratic humanism, he said, was essential in the battle against Marxist totalitarianism during the cold war, stressing the right of the individual to dissent. But the cold war’s end has hurt the humanist movement. As he saw it, humanists defended democracy, which was in some ways opposed by the political right; but that battle has been won, and now the right has seized the agenda of democracy as its own. Someone in the audience shouted something about “lip service.” There was, indeed, some lively blowback on this point, highlighting the fraught relationship of today’s Left with the concept of democracy. The real problem is indeed that the political right has co-opted it; President Bush’s second inaugural address made democracy his central concern; and of course anything Bush is for, the Left opposes. So it has painted itself into an intellectual cul-de-sac of cynicism about democracy.

Kurtz also adverted to the growth of secularism, especially in Europe. The free market and consumer culture, he said, promote secularism by raising living standards, and education (echoing Gregory Paul) is another key factor. Professor Kurtz said that today we are really defending a humanism of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and it’s “too goddamn boring.” There needs to be fun it it, he asserted, and a new agenda. His suggestion for that agenda was “planetary ethics.”

 

“Human Rights.” Prof. Rob Buitenweg (Netherlands) spoke on “Human rights, human plights.” He queried why socio-economic rights are considered secondary to political rights—and answered that it’s a mindset of libertarianism. His talk was basically an attack on libertarianism, as morally equivalent to Satanism. He rejected the assertedly libertarian idea that freedom means freedom from interference, and nothing else, which he said leads to hostility toward socio-economic rights.

Buitenweg argued for “social justice” on the basis that the well-off are not the legitimate owners of their property, that ultimately all wealth has been produced by “force or manipulation,” and hence its owners can justly be shorn of it to help the poor.

This is rubbish. If you’re reading this, you’re likely in the highest percentiles of global wealth. Did you get there by ripping off the poor? More likely it was through a career that contributed to societal and human betterment, for which you were deservedly compensated. Such contributory effort—not “force and manipulation”—is in fact the source of most wealth in the world. Social “justice” is a faulty concept; the plight of a poor person may unjust or not, but in any case is unacceptable, and he should be helped not out of “justice” but simply humaneness.

Next, Roy Brown, past IHEU President, spoke on “The Myth of Human Rights at the UN.” The old UN Commission for Human Rights had fallen into disrepute since it had become captive to the worst offenders of human rights, and the only nation it ever saw fit to criticize was Israel. Reform efforts produced a new Human Rights Council; the intent was that only nations really sincere about human rights would get on it, but guess what? The disgraceful ones still rule the roost. It happens because the elections are in geographic subgroups. The ethic followed is, “I won’t criticize you if you don’t criticize me.”

Thus, in the view of the Islamic nations, human rights are properly governed by Sharia Law, in all its primeval glory. And with their votes these nations block any discussion of the matter.

The latest atrocity is that, in the wake of the Danish cartoon affair, the UN’s “Special Rapporteur” on freedom of expression has been instructed to report not on abridgements of freedom of expression but rather abuse of freedom of expression.

Brown concluded that there is really no international consensus on human rights, and that what is needed is a human rights council outside the UN’s auspices, so that it can be limited to those nations with a genuine commitment to promote human rights.

In the question session, Brown was asked whether military intervention on behalf of human rights is ever justified, and if so, must it be under UN auspices? Given all he had just been saying, I thought the second question was somewhat amazing. More amazing still was his answer: yes to both.

I think perhaps minds have been muddled by the Iraq intervention and its having occurred without UN sanction – at least without totally explicit UN sanction. I would point to something else the US did, which was entirely without UN sanction: the 1999 Kosovo intervention. To me, that case makes it clear that the correct answer to the second question is a resounding “No!”

 

“Human Rights in Real World Situations.” Keith Porteous Wood, director of the UK National Secular Society, on “AIDS: Who is Opposing Condom Use?” (Round up the usual suspects.) He focused on how such opponents, particularly religious forces, misrepresent the truth about the efficacy of condoms. Then Dr. Ana Lita followed up with a presentation about organ trafficking, which she said is a subset of human trafficking. Kidney sellers typically receive $2500-3000, while recipients pay $100,000+.

 

“Freedom of Conscience and Expression.” IHS President Larry Jones was moderator. The first speaker was Maryam Namazie on “The Right and Duty to Criticize Islam.” Namazie is a former Muslim. Freedom of conscience, Namazie said, is not a “Western” value, and it matters most when it comes to criticizing religion and things held sacred. This is vital to human progress. And Islam, in particular, she asserted, is a culture of violence that has wreaked havoc on its peoples. A “moderate” religion is one that has been reined back by an Enlightenment.

Religious freedom, she insisted, does not include the right to be respected and sheltered from being offended. Criticizing a belief is not the same as attacking the person who holds it. It’s the human being—not a creed—that must be held sacred. And, Namazie said, this is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash of the uncivilized.

Next was IHS Executive Director Matt Cherry, on “Freedom of Conscience as a Fundamental Right.” He noted that identifying onself as an ex-Muslim (as in the case of Ms. Namazie) is very dangerous in today’s world, because Islam does not recognize a right to leave the faith. Such apostates earn a death sentence. That, of course, is a fundamental violation of the principle of freedom of conscience. And, echoing Ms. Namazie, he stressed that it’s not religions that have these rights, only individuals do.

Matt called attention to the case of Dr. Younis Shaikh, a Pakistani professor sentenced to death for blasphemy. Invoking the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the US government, together with some NGOs, was able to get Dr. Shaikh freed. (Shaikh’s blasphemy consisted of telling his students that, prior to the start of the Islamic religion, Muhammad and his deceased parents were non-Muslims.)

 

“Separation of Government and Religion.” Anthropolgist Eugenie Scott, with the National Center for Science Education, talked about the global spread of creationist beliefs. The US, together with Turkey, are particular hotbeds of this. The US, she said, has a particularly conservative form of Christianity, actually originating in the early years of this century with the popularity of some pamphlets promoting it. Further, the education system in the US is very localized, with curricula controlled by elected school boards, and thus politicized far more than in other countries. However, evangelical protestanism is rising worldwide, and becoming more politically assertive. Ms. Scott took note of a new creationist strategy: “Academic Freedom Acts,” requiring the teaching of “evolution and its weaknesses.” (A course on “creationism and its weaknesses” might be fun.)

Roar Johnsen spoke on “Pluralism versus Government Neutrality in Norway.” Norway still has a state church (Lutheran)—its cultural heritage, and over 80% of the population nominally belongs to it. But only 10% go to church, and 2% of the population belongs to Norway’s Humanist Association. (For comparison, 2% of Albany’s population would be about 2,000 people. We’d have to get a bigger meeting room.) Johnsen noted that a 1981 law even gives humanists the same financial support as the Lutheran church!

 

“A Humanist Approach to Social Problems.” The moderator was Ellery Schempp, a retired physicist. In his introductory remarks, he mentioned having been involved in some long-ago lawsuit. Then it hit me: Abington Township v. Schempp – the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision, kicking bibles out of public schools, that I studied way back in law school. And there was the living Schempp himself! (I later had a opportunity to chat briefly with him. Reminds me of the time I shook the hand of Alexander Kerensky.)

Schempp introduced this program segment as countering the idea that humanists are thinkers rather than doers. Babu Goginemi spoke about combating the caste system in India, and Sebastian Velez about humanist charities in the Dominican Republic.

 

An informal networking session. John Lombard has spent many years working in China—he started as a Christian missionary, but graduated to humanism. He noted that government suppression of religion in China has had the effect of creating a huge vacuum which religions like Christianity are rapidly filling. His organization is trying to stimulate critical thinking by Chinese students—which their schools really don’t do. Lombard noted that in the aftermath of the recent earthquake, it was noticeable that people under 30 in particular felt an impetus to get personally involved, rather than just looking to government to do all that’s needed.

 

“Psychics, Cults, and the Law.” Fred Edwords, former AHA Executive Director, talked about what he described as the emergence of an anti-cult hysteria, with traditional religionists branding new sects as “cults” and introducing “deprogramming” to undo the “brainwashing.” This he saw as a civil rights violation, entailing kidnapping, harassment, and sometimes violence. The ACLU has agreed, deeming deprogramming a violation of civil liberties.

The problem here is what you call a “cult.” Edwords’ passion on this subject became understandable when he spoke of how his wife was subjected to an invasive “deprogramming” by her family trying to get her to renounce humanism!

Next, Hanne Stinson, British Humanist Association Executive Director spoke about a new UK law that criminalizes “psychics” who defraud people with false claims. The question was posed as when religious practices are so harmful that they should be deemed crimes. However, she held that “psychics” are not generally acting out of belief, but are perpetrating calculated frauds. She stressed cases in which the vulnerability of bereaved people is exploited by these creeps who actually make their psychological situation worse. Ms. Stinson characterized the new law as putting psychics under the same rules as any tradesman providing a service. The burden is now on the practitioner to prove he did not offer something he could not deliver.

Wendy Kaminer, a noted lawyer and civil liberties advocate, dissented, mainly on the burden of proof issue. She agreed that intentional fraud should be prosecuted, but the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” should be maintained. Proving a negative is hard and puts an intolerable burden on the defendant, whose life can well be ruined by a prosecution, even if it ultimately fails. Similar prosecutions could be brought against therapists. Kaminer asserted that if people want to go to these kinds of practitioners, it’s really none of the state’s business; this is a soft form of authoritarianism; there are a lot of abuses in life, and there’s not always a remedy in criminal law. Let’s not give the state too much power over us. (In case it’s not already obvious, I agree.)

 

Awards Ceremony:

Matthew LaClair is a high school student who caused a big media fuss when he tape-recorded a teacher spouting his religious beliefs. His speech emphasized the importance of treating opponents with kindness and respect, and that fighting doesn’t get you anywhere. However, he acknowledged that sometimes gentleness toward enemies only makes them angrier.

It was a good speech. As someone noted—hard to believe this fella is still only in high school.

Matthew Chapman (a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin—not to be confused with any of Darwin’s so-so-grandsons) presented the AHA Humanist Religious Liberty Award to US Judge John E. Jones III, appointed by President Bush 43, who presided over the recent Pennsylvania case of Kitzmiller v Dover, which involved a local school board putting “Intelligent Design” on the curriculum. Judge Jones’s decision utterly blasted ID’s science pretensions and exposed the hypocritical dishonesty of its advocates.

In his speech, Judge Jones noted that the judiciary is not a majoritarian branch of government, but counter-majoritarian, a bulwark against public opinion and abuses of power by political majorities and other branches of government. He characterized the Kitzmiller case as one brought by citizens to combat a majoritarian abuse of that kind on a local level.

Eleanor Smeal, former President of the National Organization for Women and inventor of the “gender gap” received another award. I frankly did not care for her speech.

Smeal had a lot to say about the Democratic presidential contest, and the press coverage, complaining that the press focuses on trivia at the expense of serious matters, and that coverage of Clinton’s campaign was misogynist and sexist. She said “the press is no longer reporting the news but shaping it.” (I am shocked, shocked.)

This was followed up by her loudest, most intensely expressed remarks: a partisan rant against McCain.

Another point was population control. Opposition to population control, Smeal said, is motivated by—can you guess?—the desire to keep Third World labor cheap! This takes cynicism to new heights, and epitomizes the lamentable trend in our politics to address issues by ascribing evil motives to those who don’t agree with you.

 

Ron Herman on a “Comparison of Science and Religion.” This actually proved to be an interesting talk. A key topic revolved around Stephen Jay Gould’s thesis that religion and science are “non-overlapping magisteria,” something many humanists reject. The domains of metaphysical and natural philosophy began to diverge with the ancient Greeks; the dichotomy really crystallized with an 1874 book by John Draper, A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. On the other hand there are “unifiers” who seek to bridge the gap, such as Francis Collins, the genomic scientist who writes about his Christian faith. But most religionists actually only accept one “magisterium.”

Herman stressed that science is not equivalent to just philosophizing, instead following a clearly defined protocol of applying reasoning to observed and experimentally derived facts in order to develop theories. Science, of course, does not rely on faith, which is an emotional commitment to a belief (in something that deserves no belief at all—FSR).

Herman: While both science and religion seek to explain the natural world, science—through a long history of hard work—has at this point succeeded in explaining almost everything we can think to ask. Religion—well! (An audience member commented that there is here an epistemological difference—does truth come from examination of the actual world, or from something imagined to be outside the world?) And, while it’s said that people who believe in both science and religion are “compartmentalizing,” Herman used the word “schizophrenic.”

Are both subject to error? Science, Herman said, does not claim infallibility; it’s religion that claims absolute truth (a little more humility might be in order for religious believers—FSR).

Is religion needed for societal reasons? There’s nothing religion does that isn’t provided by other elements of society. Secular ethics are more soundly based than anything religion offers.

         Herman concluded that religion is “the greatest fraud in history.”

 

Rob Boston on “Theocratic Trends in the U.S.” Rob works for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. One of his key themes was that though often beaten, creationists don’t go away, they come back with a new approach. (Sort of a whack-a-mole game.) The latest tack is the so-called “Academic Freedom” legislation previously mentioned, to add “supplemental materials” to the teaching of evolution, something calculated to seem reasonable to the average person. He noted the recent movie, “Expelled,” as trying to show there is some sort of conspiracy to keep ID out of the classroom.

Another issue: tax-exempt churches are not allowed to engage in partisan politics. Violations are rampant. This is not a free speech issue: you can propagandize all you like, but you don’t have a right to engage in political advocacy on a tax-exempt basis.

Rob emphasized the need to maintain civility in debates about these issues; we need to behave better than our opponents. One further point was that it’s a mistake to rely too much on courts to enforce what we think is right, rather than achieving our aims by persuading the broader public.

 

More Awards:

To Carolyn Porco, Imaging Team Leader on the Cassini space mission to Saturn, the Isaac Asimov Science Award. Dr. Porco started in life seeking answers from religion. When that proved inadequate, she turned to look outward, to the heavens. Space exploration, she said, reflects humanity’s soaring imagination and refusal to accept boundaries; our will to explore, to learn, and to seek the answers to questions at the essence of existence.

One of the most dramatic images she showed us was of Saturn, from its other side, with, almost hidden within its rings, a tiny dot: Earth. And we, she said, are the big dreamers who produced that picture.

Matt Cherry presented the International Humanist Award to Philip Pullman, author of the book on which The Golden Compass was based, and many others. Matt characterized Pullman’s work as comprising the Book of Genesis with a happy ending: showing why eating the forbidden fruit is the start of wisdom.

Pullman, in talking about his writing, said that he is cautious about organizational affiliations because he doesn’t want to self-censor his work. He quoted Blake: “all deities reside in the human breast,” and “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.”

Pullman said that he writes according to his imagination rather than his conscience. He can imagine what it’s like to think religiously. The problem is not simply that it’s untrue (when children play “let’s pretend,” they know what it means), but that religions make claims to temporal authority and the power to impose their beliefs. A “self-amplifying resonance” sets in, driving belief systems toward extremes. Pullman cited the recent case of a young Iraqi girl who fell in love with a British soldier. Though she did no more than talk with the man, her father killed her. Arrested, he was soon released by police who congratulated him for doing the right thing. Her mother, who protested, and tried to leave her husband, also wound up dead.

But Pullman is no pessimist. He declared that if there was no purpose to the Universe before the advent of humanity, there is a purpose now. It’s the purpose of mankind, to preserve and increase the flourishing of consciousness.

 

Panel Discussion hosted by the Secular Student Alliance: “Making the case for the new Enlightenment.” Moderator was Hemant Mehta. Panelists were Greg Epstein, Matt Cherry, Kelly O’Connor, and Jeff Noll (not sure I got the spelling right on that name).

The discussion concerned the best ways to get people to accept science, free inquiry, democratic pluralism, and so forth. A taste of the conversation:

Atheism tends to create organizations, not communities. This environment is not comfortable for many ordinary non-intellectual people with mundane concerns. We need to speak to people’s dreams, and to tell them: “we don’t think you’re just silly. But we want to free you.”

Kelly represented a more aggressive approach. She held that religion harms people, enslaving them with dogma, and suggested that ridicule was effective in bringing down the KKK, and antagonism can be used to get people to question their beliefs. Matt responded that antagonism, well, antagonizes people. But, he said, we shouldn’t be too polite when we are disrespected as humanists. And Hemant responded that some people are not “enslaved, they’re just religious,” that is, they don’t think that deeply about it either way.

Matt said that in the 13 years he’s been in America, he has observed a transformation in the respectability of irreligion which, before, was not even seen as being on the menu of choices for most people. He also said that the biggest force for social change today is actually business, noting for example that businesses have generally become much more responsive about gay rights than have governments.

 

Keynote address: Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

[Prefatory comment: Hitchens was not the idol of this audience. In one prior session, a woman got up to gratuitously declare, “By the way, Christopher Hitchens has no ethics because he supports the Iraq War and torture.” And Jeff Noll in the SSA panel: “We should tell Christopher Hitchens he’s not welcome here because he recommends genocide in Iran.” And these are the sorts of people who think it’s inexcusable if Iraq war opponents are called “unpatriotic,” and they label President Bush “divisive.” Enough!!!]

In his talk, Hitchens sought to defend his book’s subtitle—religion really does poison everything—because it attacks us in our deepest integrity, as though we would not know right from wrong without some divine guidance, thus robbing us of our moral autonomy.

To serious questions, religion offers a totalitarian solution—a dictatatorship of God, which can even convict you of thought crime. Hitchens reckoned the most religious nation on Earth to be North Korea, where the President is actually a dead person, Kim Il-sung—a “necrocracy.” But under monotheistic totalitarianism, unlike in North Korea, you cannot escape even by dying.

Emancipating ourselves from religion is a matter of self-esteem. As to the idea that religion, even if false, makes people behave better, the Holyland is a refutation. The two-state solution, obvious to reasonable people, is vetoed by the “parties of God” on both sides.

Hitchens also talked about the movement in the US to teach “nonsense” (he refuses to call it “Intelligent Design”) in schools. He offered a counterproposal: that every tax-exempt church be required to give 50% of its time to teaching natural selection.

[PS: In this talk Hitchens advocated neither torture nor genocide.]

 

Final Comment: Many people today deny the idea of progress, deny that we have progressed or can progress, and see the world as in a terrible state today, beset by problems and negative trends. But sitting in all these sessions, I was struck by the thought that almost nothing that was spoken in this entire conference could have been uttered in public a few hundred years ago. To be a humanist in the past was very lonely if not virtually impossible.

I am an optimist. I believe in progress. And I believe that a few hundred years from now, Mankind will look back upon the history of religion with a laugh and say, “What were those people thinking?”

 

THERESE BRODERICK’S REPORT:

 

Last week as I was reading our Capital District Humanist Society (www.humanistsociety.org) newsletter, I came across these words of wisdom on page 9: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

 

So I decided to begin my remarks to you today with what I considered to be two of the more breathtaking moments of the entire conference: the awards acceptance speeches given by Carolyn Porco and Philip Pullman, both of which, incidentally, occurred on June 7, my birthday. How wonderful a gift those speeches were.

 

Carolyn Porco was winner of the IHEU Isaac Asimov Science award. She has been a planetary scientist and is now the Imaging Team Leader for CICLOPS, acronym for the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations. The Cassini spacecraft is the first to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit. Cassini entered orbit in June 2004 and immediately began sending back images and data. Four years later, on June 30, 2008—only a few days after the humanist conference--Cassini concluded its primary mission and began its first mission extension. So during her distinguished career, Ms. Porco has had a major role to play in civilization’s greatest visual survey of our solar system.

During her acceptance speech, Ms. Porco projected some of Cassini’s photographs onto a large screen for everyone in the audience to see. One unforgettable image was of Saturn eclipsing the sun. But the most breathtaking image—not only for me, but for many other people around me who gasped audibly—was a photo of Earth taken from the far side of Saturn: a photo which showed our home planet as a tiny, distant dot, almost hidden, barely visible, within the rings of Saturn.

 

Of course any one of us, at any time of day or night, can look at similar space images online at the CICLOPS website (where Ms. Porco maintains a captain’s blog). But sitting in that banquet room, listening to Carolyn Porco herself talking about the latest results of her own extraordinary career in science, was much more exhilarating than browsing the Internet.

 

Philip Pullman was winner of the IHEU International Humanist award. As all of you know, Mr. Pullman is a prominent award-winning and popular British writer, author of many books, including The Golden Compass, recently made into a major motion picture. And as some of you may or may not know, I am a work-a-day poet with a master of fine arts degree in writing. I have attended many writing conferences where I have heard many speeches, but this speech by Philip Pullman was one of the most thrilling I have ever heard—certainly because it was delivered with great force and feeling, but also because it covered topics vital to my current life as a member of a humanist organization and as a creative writer: topics such as the tension between imagination and conscience ; and the important distinctions to be made between a private individual’s religious imaginings and the community mandates of a religious or humanist institution. I don’t agree with everything that Mr. Pullman said, but I was truly very grateful that he articulated some of the concerns of my own ever-evolving convictions as a creative writer and as an atheist.

 

So I’d like to read to you a few portions from his speech, as adapted into an article in the July/August issue of the Humanist magazine published by the AHA. Recently I went to Barnes &Noble and purchased three copies of that magazine issue, so if any of you want to read the entire article, let me know.

 

Besides those two breathtaking awards ceremonies for Carolyn Porco and Philip Pullman, I attended several other conference events independently of my husband Frank: a panel discussion, a breakout session, a talk, a poster session, and two training modules. As I was looking over my notes from those other events, I realized that most of them dealt with themes and issues similar to those presented by Porco and Pullman, even if presented with somewhat less dramatic flair.

 

For example, I came away from Carolyn Porco’s spectacular slide show asking myself, “Given these newest scientific discoveries, and given the ever-advancing technology now at our disposal, what does it mean to be a human being?” If scientists are discovering throughout the solar system environments that might be hospitable to some forms of life, what does that new understanding of life mean for human beings? If cutting-edge space telescopes and cameras allow us to see exponentially better than the human eye allows us to see, what does it mean to be a human being?

 

Those same questions were vital to the parallel panel I attended entitled “Leading Bioethical Issues Today,” chaired by Ana Lita, director of the IHEU Appignani Humanist Center for Bioethics in New York City. The panel’s members discussed some of the political and ethical battlefronts of emerging biotechnology and medicine, of transhuman advances and human upgrades, and of technological self-determination. Is a technologically-enhanced human being still a human being? Is a human-animal hybrid still a human being? In a medical emergency, should hospital staff assist the person deemed to be the most useful to society, or the person deemed to be most likely to survive? On the panel were James J. Hughes of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and Jennifer Miller of Bioethics International. Mr. Hughes made a remark which I found to be alarmingly breathtaking: he said that human-animal hybrids are already being created. The challenges facing such genetic hybrids, and facing all of us, are daunting: defining personhood according to characteristics other than a genome; determining citizenship; delegating reproductive rights; extending the life span; controlling brain cells. While listening, I couldn’t help but think that persons may someday resemble the mythical CICLOPS, after whom the space project is named; and that day-to-day reality may someday resemble the settings of Philip Pullman’s fantasy novels.

 

At yet another conference presentation I attended, those same questions (what does it mean to be human? what will technology do next?), were vital, this time within the context of one of China’s smallest and most remote minority groups, the Mosuo people. The Mosuo people live high in the Himalayan mountains near Lugu Lake in Yunnan Province. They are a matriarchal society with large extended families, walking marriages, no expectation of monogamy, and with a higher tolerance than some other cultures for the young women among them who, regrettably, are lured into prostitution. They husband animals and they weave on looms. They have what we westerners might consider to be insufficient income, electricity, running water, and roadways. The Mosuo people have no written language (which fact I found to be breathtakingly tragic), although they do write numbers. The program presenter, John Lombard, formed an organization in 2005 to help finance the Mosuo people as they protect their culture against the pressures of modernization and the tourist industry. He noted that the Mosuo people are taking control of their own destinies, making their own decisions about how much and how quickly their society will change its ways. The Mosuo people are skeptical people, a quality which might endear them to humanists, except for the fact that their skepticism extends to the claims of modern medicine. Because they live so far from hospitals, they seldom see conclusive evidence of improved health, so they are slow to accept assistance from western doctors. Ironic, isn’t it, that while we humans have already sent Cassini to Saturn, we haven’t yet been able to get the best medical care to Lugu Lake?

 

As with Carolyn Porco’s speech, Philip Pullman’s speech also raised issues and questions that resonated with some of the other conference events I attended. For example, what is the healthy role of a religious imagination within the private mind of a humanist? That question was vital as well in one of the training programs I attended which introduced the first revision of “A Handbook for Celebrants” issued by the Humanist Society. This is the newest edition of a handbook which has already been in use for many years, providing certified humanist celebrants (also known as clergy, chaplains, or ministers) with tips for acquiring legal status and building a business, and with ideas for celebrating a variety of life cycle events. While the speaker Howard Katz was describing the purpose and uses of the handbook, some members of the audience expressed concern that celebrants using the handbook may be adding too much spiritual or religious content to their ceremonies. On the other hand, at least one person who spoke up during a different poster session I attended said that he thinks that religion is an essential dimension of the ethical environment that humanists are trying to set up, and that being against God should not be the main preoccupation of humanism. I have to ask myself, is “God talk” acceptable if it’s found in a novel written by a humanist, but unacceptable if it’s found in a wedding ceremony organized by a humanist?

 

That same intersection of faith and humanism was the topic of the dialogue I attended between journalist and atheist Sally Quinn and the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, Greg Epstein. Sally Quinn co-moderates a blog called “On Faith” hosted by the Washington Post and Newsweek. She thinks it’s important for everyone, including atheists, to read and learn about religions. Her blog is the first worldwide, interactive discussion about religion and its impact on global life. I recommend that all of you check out this very heavily-traffic blog. Hundreds of people routinely post reactions to Sally Quinn’s comments. During the past two days, since July 11, people have been posting reactions to her entry which acknowledged that even though she isn’t a Catholic, she took Holy Communion at Tim Russert’s funeral mass.

 

At the conference, besides attending awards banquets, plenaries, plenums, and programs, my husband Frank and I also wandered through the Exhibits Hall. There I picked up a variety of handouts and brochures from organizations around the world: American Atheists, Interfaith Alliance, Secular Coalition for America, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Ethical Union, The Humanist Institute, Final Exit Network, and humanist societies located in other countries. I have collected these materials, as well as the conference schedule and session descriptions, in a binder which any of you are welcome to take and look at.

 

In conclusion, I want to thank CDHS for supporting my attendance at this humanist conference. And I’ll add that, because I’m a poet, I am often jotting down ideas for poems no matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing. Yes, even while attending a humanist conference, I may be working on a poem. Indeed, I have written a short poem based loosely on an experience I had with a window washer at the conference hotel. This poem is a hybrid: it contains some fact, like Carolyn Porco’s speech; it contains some fantasy, like Philip Pullman’s speech; it takes place both in outer space and in inner space. It starts with a Christian cross and it ends with a whistle. It’s certainly not as breathtaking as Porco’s or Pullman’s speech, but its versified lines certainly do measure the rhythm of breathing.

 

                           All the Rooms Here

 

                           The window-washer kisses the cross

                                    around his neck

                                    before hitching his harness to the narrow scaffold

                                    about to be lowered from the hotel’s roof

                                    down to the fourteenth floor, then from the thirteenth down

 

                                    to the grass. This morning he has heard the news

                                    that all the rooms here are reserved

                                    for a conference of non-believers: for worldwide

                                    atheists and agnostics, skeptics and secular thinkers.

 

                                    As he passes each curtained window, he imagines

                                    those strangers within, those guests just now arriving

                                    from China's mountains and Africa's villages,

                                    from Norway’s cities lit at midnight, and from India’s hovels

 

                                    of untouchable children. Before he wipes clean

                                    each pane of glass, he whistles

                                    a workman’s welcome—

                                    no local anthem or hymn in rude translation—

                                    just three long, high, clear notes

                                   to make his presence there in the sun

                                    perfectly known.

 

 

                                    Therese L. Broderick

                                    theresebroderick@yahoo.com

                                    July 2008