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The Newsletter of
 The Humanist Association of Massachusetts
PROF. MICHAEL MARTIN NOV 19
"IS THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ABSURD?"
AT 2 PM, HARVARD SCIENCE CENTER
Michael Martin, one among many of our distinguished members, is a professor
emeritus in Philosophy at Boston University, a Cantabridgian, who has written several
books, and lectured far and wide. He will speak about the assumption of Christian
apologists that once the faith is accepted, life in not absurd. Could they be wrong? Could
it be that the Christian life is absurd? This question, unfortunately, is seldom asked let
alone answered. In his talk, Professor Martin will argue that a plausible case can be made
for the claim that the Christian life is indeed absurd. He will show that the ideas of The
Atonement, of Salvation, Heaven, even Ethics and God are deeply problematic and life lived
according to these ideas IS absurd. Now. while some early Christian Fathers would
enthusiastically agree, most moderns claim the mantle of reasonable belief. How will the
professor prove them wrong?
You can find out on Sunday, November 19
when Prof. Martin speaks in Hall A of the Science Center at
Harvard at 2 PM. The will be a Q and A afterward, and then a social hour.
Michael Martin earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University and focused his research
in the philosophy of religion, of law, and the social sciences. Among his many books are:
Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, (1990) , The Case Against Christianity (1991), and
Verstehen: The Uses of Understanding in the Social Sciences, (2000); these can be found in
our library. Married, with two sons, he continues to write and lecture at a strong pace.
ON DEC 10, HUMAN RIGHTS DAY,
JOSHUA RUBENSTEIN, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
"RIGHTS ENDANGERED -- EVEN IN THE USA"
The whole world respects the work of Amnesty International; an effective
organization committed to human rights. Presently, it is alerting everyone to the
widespread use of torture in many parts of the world. We have asked its New England
regional director to give us a special report on the day dedicated to freeing all
prisoners of conscience wherever they many be. But to look more closely at the United
States. With a new President and a new Congress, will America’s conscience be touched
by injustice, domestic or foreign? Are there inequities here deserving immediate
attention. One thinks at once of the death penalty and the deplorable state of our
prisons, of youngsters being tried as adults, of immigrants under threat of deportation,
of injustices in our prosecutions, of the inattention to massive slums, and of foreign
policy decisions that seem oblivious to genocide.
Fifty years ago, humanists of every stamp rejoiced in the Declaration of Human
Rights, so brilliantly fostered by Eleanor Roosevelt. We strive to keep its spirit alive
in the 21st Century and one way is to support the work of Amnesty International. Its
executive director nationwide, William Schultz, was named Humanist of the Year 2000 at the
annual conference in New Jersey last June.
It’s fitting that we have asked its director in New England, Joshua
Rubenstein, a graduate of Columbia, to talk to us and with us on Sunday,
December 10, in the Science Center (A) at Harvard at 2 PM. He has been with AI
for twenty five very productive years. He has written three books, becoming a major
authority on the Soviet persecution of Jews and on Soviet dissidents. Most recently, he
helped organize the first AI conference in the Russian Federation. His emphasis this time
will be that Human Rights begin at home and we are invited to join that campaign.
TRUTH AS AN
ASYMPTOTE
by Dr. JOE GERSTIEN
The early Greeks were responsible for
several important scientific and technological breakthroughs. Although they seem trivial
to us now, compared with cloning and flying around in airplanes, in their day they were as
dramatic and revolutionary as these advances. The value of pi is one of these
remarkable events. If you divide 22 by 7, you can derive a constant which will allow you
to calculate the circumference and the area of a circle if you measure the radius. You
will get a number on this order: 3.414…The Greeks got it only to 2 decimal places,
the Chinese finally to 7, by the 12th century.
If you continue to carry out the
division, you will continue to add numerals, but you will never finish. You will get a
more and more precise number, but it will never "end’, even if you use a
super-computer. There are many mathematical expressions which produce asymptotic
functions; that is, when graphed, they approach something more and more closely but will
never reach it.
Infinity is such a concept. We can never
put an exact value on it, but it is still a very useful concept, as is pi.
But the concept of infinity still makes
many of us vaguely uncomfortable, as does a piece of music that ends on an unresolved
minor 7th chord or any work of art that stretches expected norms.
In medicine and many other scientific
disciplines, we are often confronted with information that is valid or "true"
only in a statistical sense. In scientific studies, especially of treatments, we try to
indicate statistically how likely it would have been for a given result to have occurred
by chance rather than by the active agent in the study. We generally accept a probability
that 95 out of 100 times this result would be in consequence of our intervention as
reasonable proof of an effect and 99 times out of 100 as virtual certainty. These results
are recorded as "p" values. In the first case the "p" value would be
.05, in the second .01 (one chance out of a hundred that this result occurred purely by
chance). If we can’t make a good "evidence-based" decision, we go to a
"consensus-based" decision (best guess of experts based on all available
evidence plus experience). But we must make a decision, so we do.
When physicists began to realize, in the
early part of this century, an implication of quantum theory, namely, that the exact
position of an electron could never be determined, but only a statistical likelihood, it
occasioned a wave of philosophical introspection, books, articles and at least one
suicide. Newtonian physics, with its aura of exactitude, went out the window as the
universal paradigm and this was very disturbing to a lot of people thoughtful enough to
comprehend at least some of the ramifications. One prominent physicist became so
disconsolate over this issue he committed suicide.
Absolute truth is a metaphysical concept.
Some would arrogate to themselves the ability to discern such absolute truths and
promulgate them to the rest of us. "Thou shalt not kill." Sounds like a
wonderful concept. Shall not kill people? Shall not kill animals? Shall not kill
mosquitoes? (this is the Jain view). Shall not kill someone who is trying to kill us or
our children? Shall not kill someone who is in agonizing pain with no hope of rescue?
Shall not kill someone who is about to be tortured to death and greatly prefers a quick
painless death? Shall not kill an admitted vicious multiple murderer who threatens to
continue his rampage?
It is not surprising that in our
post-modern world with many savants advocating absolute relativism in all realms, some
crave longingly for "the" absolute answer. They want to know what is the right
thing to do and think that they do know this, often through revelation. But with the
inexplicitness of language, the joltingly-different sociocultural values among our
multifarious tribes, what can this mean?
The Hindu custom of suttee was
eventually extirpated by the British occupation of India and it would certainly seem that
this custom is universally reviled. But recently in India, a widow "voluntarily"
threw herself on her late husband’s funeral pyre. She was publicly admired and lauded
by the traditional Hindus as an heroine. Anthropologists launch grenades over whether
genital cutting of women is a reprehensible, psychological and medical mutilation or a
cultural tradition that promulgates important indigenous values.
Clearly, we have now all been educated in
the frailties of belief, on the cultural relativism of history and the biased
observational capacities of humans. This has been an humbling experience for thoughtful
people who thought they had a pretty good grip on history. But we humans have to get up
every morning and face the day. This means accepting things pragmatically. The Catholic
Church has found a way to bend to the concept of evolution. Is this rationalization? At
one time in the history of Catholicism, it was conceived that all the science anyone had
to know was contained in the Bible. The Fundamentalists are still comfortable with such an
absurdity. That is what comes of absolutistic thinking.
We humans peregrinate on these issues. I
left clinical medicine for a while, early in my career, because I was distressed that if
you called three different consultants on a case, you got three different answers. I went
into research: first on humans, then on animals, then on proteins and finally on the
molecules of physical organic chemistry. Fortunately, here I was also destined to be
disillusioned, because if you asked three different chemistry professors about a mechanism
of action, you got three different answers! I then transitioned comfortably and
permanently back to clinical medicine.
Some of us might feel that mathematics
represents simple scientific "truth", but remember that Bertrand Russell spent
several years trying to prove that 1+ 1=2 (and published 3 volumes of mathematical logic
in support of this, but was never convinced that he had succeeded).
Most of us humans are going to learn how
to live with an inevitable degree of ambiguity and unpredictability. Some will reject this
necessity, and continue to crave the kind of absolute certainty that comes from believing
that there is a deity out there that knows all and does all and that therefore,
"it" is the only thing that anyone has to or can know with certainty. I’ll
take the roulette wheel.
"THE ENEMY ON OUR RIGHT"
A REVIEW OF A NEW BOOK
Reviewed by PETER DENISON
Robert Boston: "Close Encounters with the Religious Right: Journies into
the Twilight Zone of Religion and Politics" Prometheus Books, 2000.
Robert Boston is a reporter who has spent several years working for Americans
United for Separation of Church and State. Thus he has considerable contact with those who
would weaken and even destroy that wall of separation which already has too many holes in
it. Boson has gone around the country attending meetings of various Religious Right
groups. He was sufficiently anonymous so that he could get into their meetings without too
much difficulty, and even got to talk to quite a few of their leaders. Some he found quite
likable and others quite the reverse. But all are a threat to our way of life.
That threat, however, is not equal across the board. He considers Jerry Falwell
a has been. His Moral Majority is defunct, but unfortunately replaced by new strong groups
such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Dobson has a multi-million dollar annual
budget, has a column in many newspapers, a daily radio program heard on 1500 stations. (I
have listened to his program; it is generally rather folksy and usually seems
non-political. The message, however, is there. America is going to hell because of a
decline in religion and morals, abortion which is murder, the "gay agenda" which
is worse, etc.). Dobson has a welcome center in Colorado and publishes a whole string of
magazines. His idea of family values is to return women to their subservient role, end
abortion, and so forth. He has a wide audience and is very effective in getting his
homophobic message across.
In his book, Boston has much on the Promise Keepers who now are past their
peak. He writes about D. James Kennedy who does not have Dobson’s pleasant
personality but is probably more extreme. His chapter on John Whitehead and the Rutherfors
Institute is very revealing. This is the group that financed Paula Jones in her suit
against President Clinton. They used their money in legal challenges and came close to
bringing the President down. Pat Robertson also has an organization dedicated to legal
matters, the American Center for Law and Justice. The initials, ACLJ are uncannily close
the ACLU, and the resemblance is hardly coincidental. Boston also devotes a chapter to
Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council, which is a close second to Dobson in gay
bashing.
Lastly, Boston writes on what he calls the "Bottom Feeders." These
are would be leaders of the Religious Right who actually exert miniscule influence, but
they do seem to make a pretty good living out of soliciting funds from religious
conservatives. But of course if some of the present big leaders should falter, one of them
may come to the fore, just as there are several leaders taking Falwell’s place.
Perhaps of most interest to atheists is William Murray, the "born again" son of
Madelyn Murray O’Hair. He’s rather pathetic, barely making a living despite the
fact that there are many on the Religious Right who would love to build up the son of the
hated O’Hair.
The whole book is good reading. Most importantly, in the end Boston tells us
what we can do. These groups are a real political threat and we have to be active in
politics to fight them. Register, Vote, Get others to vote. Perhaps, most importantly,
work with the numerous groups allied to us. Americans United for Separation of Church and
State is largely run by liberal Protestant ministers. We may disagree with their theology,
but they are committed to the same goal as ours. Finally, we may think these extremists on
the right are ridiculous, but they are intelligent all the same, shrewd in politcs and
very dangerous.
ANNOUNCING!
A NEW ENGLAND HUMANIST CONFERENCE
IN THE FALL OF 2001
With the help of several activists in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New
Hampshire, we are preparing a gathering of Humanists in the autumn of next year.
We’ll invite prominent speakers, but, more importantly, a rich variety of interesting
and talented people will combine their skills. If you would like to be in on the early
stages of this grand endeavor, please contact me, Tom Ferrick, by calling (617) 547-1497,
or writing to our address. Email is another easy way: thomas_ferrick@harvard.edu
ON THE EDITOR’S MIND
We are mourning the death of Steve Allen. He shared most all our beliefs and so
we were delighted when he spoke for us in the spring of 1998. He gave the Alexander
Lincoln Jr. Lecture that year to a huge audience in Harvard’s Science Center, a talk
filled with humor and brilliant insights, and delivered in an appealing, down to earth
manner. Afterward he entertained us for an hour or more at the piano, remaining gracious
and forbearing throughout. (A few copies of that talk are available on request. On our
last page you’ll find some of his remarks).
Two of our members have died. Ruth Beebe of Lexington, unable to attend
meetings, enjoyed the newsletter and the warm friendship of our treasurer, Eleanor
Babikian. Quite suddenly, we lost Jack Hilton of Scituate. We knew he was seriously ill,
but death came very quickly. We will miss his humor and wit, and will stand by Val, his
wife of 44 years. She will continue his good work at their nursing home.
Your editor has to attend fall meetings of the AHA’s board of directors.
We will give final approval to purchase the new national headquarters building on T Street
in Washington DC. And we will try to expand the role of Humanist Chapters. Their
activities should be better known, they should have a more prominent role at annual
conferences, and should receive the highest level of attention from the national board.
All the members of all the chapters should be considered humanists, and easily ushered
into AHA membership.
We will be announcing there the Humanist of the Year 2001. He is Steven J.
Gould, the well known Harvard paleontologist and defender of Evolution. He will speak at
the Annual Conference this coming May in Los Angeles.
An event of interest: Mark Lindley will provide a fireside chat on
"Gandhi’s Religion" in Sherborn, Massachusetts, on Saturday Dec. 9 at 11
AM. It will be held at The Peace Abbey, 2 North Main Street. At that time, the "happy
humanist" symbol of the AHA will be installed among many other respected symbols
worldwide. For more information, go to the website: http://www.peaceabbey.org/
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umanist
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