Open letter to my anti-theist friends

I’ve got something I want to say and I’ve wanted to say it for some time. I’ve hesitated because while I don’t agree with you, I respect your right to hold your opinions and advocate for them as you think best. I would never want or to try and silence you.  In fact, I think your voice is important to hear in the public arena. The problem is you aren’t extended that same respect back to me and my fellow Humanists.

Humanism is a philosophy that is based in compassion. Compassion for everyone, including people we disagree with. This is not an abstract concept for us. We feel it deeply with every individual human we meet. It isn’t our lack of belief that defines us as Humanists. It is our compassion. When you denigrate people of faith, we feel pain and sorrow that anyone could be that mean to another human. It makes me want to cry just thinking of how much ugliness your approach is adding to the world.

This is a visceral reaction for me. It is based on my compassion for my fellow humans. When you yell at me and my fellow Humanists telling us we just don’t understand why you are so angry at religion, all I can think is how sad it is that you really don’t understand the power of compassion.

The Great Label Debate

I was asked to weigh in on this, so here goes.  For those of you who don’t know what the great label debate is, well, you’re lucky.  Basically: freethinkers, atheists, humanists, brights, a-theists, apatheists, non-theists, skeptics and anyone else even remotely involved with the above mentioned movements and those who fit into one of the above categories but steadfastly refuse any label, will know that what label you apply to yourself matters greatly 

Humanists more hated than Atheists?  Really?

I was on The God Discussion last week. When I came on I was told that they have more unsubscribes when I come on then when they have an atheist come on.  It seems the more religious members of their audience are generally ok listening to an Atheist, but god forbid they have a Humanist on to talk about Humanism. Deborah, the host, said that the comments made by the unsubscribers were really rather angry. Funny, I thought I was rather nice.

And, really, it’s no joke. Yes, I’m an atheist, but I’m not anti-theist. I really don’t care what other people believe. I should be the sort of non-believer that religious people would welcome. But apparently, the philosophy of Humanism poses more of a threat to religious belief then Atheism does.

Humanism doesn’t cost much

I received a link the other day from money.co.uk about the wealth of churches. It’s about the business of religion and covers some of the wealthiest religions, where they get their money from and what they spend it on.

Not surprisingly, the big dog religion financially is the Catholic Church. They are apparently worth hundreds of billions and their fortune apparently mostly came from priceless works of art that, were probably plundered (I mean saved) during the World Wars.  They apparently have apparently spent 1/2 billion in the USA alone to pay off abuse victims.

Compare this with the America Humanist Association, whose annual budget is about $2 million. According to the 2010 annual report, they spend almost all of that on programs with over a million going to public awareness campaigns.  They don’t appear to spend any money on pay off abuse victims.

Gender Roles, Feminism and the Humanist Perspective

I was asked to comment on the Humanist perspective as it relates to gender roles and feminism. So, that’s what I’m doing.  You might be unhappy to find out that we don’t really have a consensus on these issues as Humanists. For instance, some of us are ok with porn and some of us think porn exploits women. With that much range on some very basic issues within the Humanist community, it makes it rather hard to comment and make a blanket statement about the Humanist perspective on topics related to gender. But there are some basic concepts that almost all Humanists agree on, so I’ll focus on those.

Humanism does not equal Atheism

So just finished reading The Humanist magazine from the American Humanist Association. Once again - it’s a great issue. However, one of the book reviews made me really annoyed. Jende Huang - whom I adore - reviewed Greg Graffin’s new book. Greg Gaffin was the lead singer for the punk band Bad Religion and now holds a PhD in zoology from Cornell. It sounds like a cool book; the problem is that Jende uses words like Humanism, Atheism, non-religious and nontheists interchangeably when he really shouldn’t. If you are talking about Atheists, you are not necessarily talking about Humanists. Simply put, not all Humanists are atheists and not all atheists are Humanists.

This comes up because apparently Graffin calls himself a naturalist even though he is an Atheist mostly because he doesn’t want to associate with what he calls “God-haters.” Jende takes issue with Graffins complaint.  I think Jende misses the point. 

Mentally Ill Humanists

So, it turns out that Clay Duke, the guy who held a school board hostage in Panama City claimed he was a Humanist on his website.  That he may have been a Humanist obviously had nothing to do with why he held people hostage at gunpoint. The fact that he was bipolar however did. Doesn’t matter, the anti-Humanist folk are using this incident to say basically “see - we told you they were dangerous.”