ALL HARVARD PEOPLE:

WELCOME TO AUTUMN 2000

On behalf of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and the Humanist Association of Massachusetts, we’re happy to begin with you another scholastic year and pledge our goodwill and cooperation in making it the best academic experience possible.

Who are we? Well, all too briefly, you can think of humanism as representing a distinctly secular outlook on the world, but inspired by an ethical and compassionate attitude toward all Life. Its active tools are science, democracy, friendship and the arts. Freedom and Justice are its goals.

If you want to contact the Humanist Chaplain, his email address is : tom_ferrick@harvard.edu and to learn more about the Association, go to our website, above. Students are urged to contact the Harvard Secular Society, whose email address is: secular@hcs.harvard.edu to participate in a variety of activities through the year.

SPECIAL PRELUDE TO OUR SEASON --
AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY, LONGY SCHOOL,
DR. MARK LINDLEY, ON SEPT. 24

"Ecological footprint" is a recently developed concept giving ecological economics an index analogous to "cost of living" and "gross

national product" in market economics. When the ecological footprint

of a nation's or of the Earth's population is tallied against geographical capacity to absorb waste products and convert solar energy into bio-mass, the difference is analogous to "balance of trade," and running a deficit is like spending capital for current expenses: you can do it until the "natural capital" is exhausted. Prof. Lindley will explain these ideas and lead a discussion of their ethical implications in regard to technology, consumerism and international trade.

Mark Lindley will speak to a joint meeting of Humanists and Ethical Society Members, 10:30AM, in the Longy School of Music, 1 Follen St., near the Sheraton Commander Hotel, Cambridge.

THE HUMANIST FORUM BEGINS OCT. 1
PROF. H. JAMES BIRX TO SPEAK ON NEITZCHE,
TEILHARD, AND DARWIN AT SCIENCE CENTER

The first lecturer will be our longtime friend from the anthropology department of Canisius College in Buffalo. He is fresh from recent tasks as Summer 2000 Visiting scholar at the University of Zaragoza and Visiting Fellow in the Slovak Academy of Sciences. His next book, “God and Evolution,” will be published by Charles C. Thomas.

Professor Birx will examine the recent history of science and philosophy, arguing that the ongoing quest for truth and wisdom requires dynamic integrity, i.e., an open-ended view of cosmic reality in terms of science, reason and compassionate conduct free from narrow-minded dogmatism. He gives examples of dynamic inte-

grity in the progressive thoughts of Darwin in science, Nietzsche in philosophy, and Teilhard de Chardin in theology. His own naturalism and humanism embraces evolution and warns against the dangers of all forms of irrational fundamentalism and anti-scientific creationism (both movements represent a threat to science, philosophy, and the fact of evolution). Thus, he favors the title, “Dynamic Integrity: The Pragmatic Value for Our New Millennium.”

Please join us at 2:00 PM on Sunday, October 1, in auditorium A of Harvard’s Science Center. A thorough question and answer period will follow Prof. Birx’s talk and then we will have a reception and food. The program is free and open to the public.

THE MAJOR EVENT OF FALL 2000
STEVEN WEINBERG, NOBEL LAUREATE,
SPEAKS HERE, SATURDAY, OCT. 21

Professor Steven Weinberg will give the Alexander Lincoln, Jr. Lecture on Humanism in Auditorium C of the Science Center at 2 PM on Saturday, October 21. His title is “Science and/or Religion?” Before assuming his present post, teaching physics at the University of Texas, he had taught at Harvard and won his worldwide reputation as thinker and writer. Among his many books, “Dreams of a Final Theory” has become very popular.

A REVIEW OF ‘FINDING DARWIN’S GOD’
BY KENNETH R. MILLER (BROWN UNIV.)
PUBLISHED BY HARPER-COLLINS, 1999

If you have a friend who rejects evolution, this is the best book to change his or her mind. Indeed, if Miller’s book won’t do the trick, nothing will. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, has debated many of the anti-evolutionists, and more remarkably, has forced many of them to make public concessions (which they promptly abandoned in their next lecture or debate). Confronting the young earth people such as Henry Morris and Duane Gish in the chapter entitled “God the Charlatan,” he demolishes their reasoning in language clearer to the layman, and therefore more convincing, than the writings of Richard Dawkins.

In “God the Magician” Miller turns to the arguments of David Berlinski and Phillip Johnson. Johnson uses a legal rather than scientific mind to establish reasonable doubt.” He makes technical disagreements such as Gould’s concept of “punctuated equilibrium” to “prove” that biologists disagree fundamentally about evolution. He is sufficiently cagey not to present an alternative theory. Thus the reader never knows how Johnson or Berlinski explain how we got here. They don’t present as easy a target as the young earth people, but Miller zings them anyway.

Then, in “God the Mechanic” he turns his fire on Michael Behe who is a respected biochemist at Lehigh University. His basic claim is that the cell is so complex that it could never have developed without divine intervention. Very gently (should I say in a “ Christian” manner?) he shows how Behe misrepresents the facts. He quotes Behe as writing that there is no scientific publication “that describes how molecular evolution or any real, complex biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred.” Miller then goes on to quote numerous articles that Behe certainly had access to which do precisely that. He’s to kind to call Behe a liar, but......

After these excellent chapters on evolution Miller turns to his ideas of God. His comments about Dawkins, Gould, etc., are much less kind than the ones about Behe and Johnson, but now they are hardly devastating. He does admit that one can’t prove the existence of God, but then he makes his argument. How can evolution be completely random, as both he and we believe, and still have a God who can intervene in our lives? His answer is certainly ingenious and original.. He begins with quantum uncertainty to show that we cannot predict the behavior of an individual atom or electron. He realizes that these uncertainties balance out in any structure, even a small one, that contains hundreds of millions of atoms. But the gene has only about one million atoms, and thus can change randomly. Thus free will is possible. Also at that level God can intervene without having to violate any of his own natural laws.

His argument is actually subtler than the bare synopsis given above. Certainly ingenious, even though it doesn’t quite work, But following his reasoning, the Resurrection and even the Virgin Birth become quite possible. The Humanist won’t like these later chapters. But if you want to convince a conservative Christian that evolution can be accepted by a Christian, this is the book to use. The very aspects of the book that might make us gag are precisely the ones that might make a fundamentalist mind open up to the facts of evolution. If one’s aim is to convince the Bible believer, this is an excellent book.

Peter B. Denison

"…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Article VI. The Constitution of the United States of America.

I certainly do not qualify as an expert in Constitutional Law. But I can read the King’s English. The de jure status of a religious test for office is clear and unequivocal. However, the de facto situation is very murky as the pious platitudes pouring forth from the mouths of our devoutissimo politicians on the national scene currently demonstrate.

Nothing could be more topical in this late summer period that the current imbroglio over which politician can appear the most religious.

It won’t be long now until little boys will be one-upping one another with cries of "my father is more religious than your father!" The great advance that seems to have occurred is that now it appears less important which religion, so long as the religiosity and the appeals to a Divine Being and the pious platitudes are sufficiently frequent and intense. But there does appear that there is a definite preference for the more rigid and doctrinaire religions or sects. Those of a more liberal theology need not apply.

Sanctimoniousness used to be in the realm of the preachers and the revivalists (e.g., William Jennings Bryan). Now it is clearly within the boundaries of the politicians. Ecumenism is the order of the day, so long as the religion is patriarchal and Abrahaminic. After the inane fiasco in the Congress this year revolving around the machinations of the Fundamentalist fringe over the potential appointment of a Catholic chaplain. The salary is $140,000 per year, not that this was an issue since the suppression and suffocation of Liberation Theology. It is unlikely that any of that ilk in Congress who made specious objections to the appointment of the priest, having reaped the whirlwind, will have the temerity to publicly deride the choice of a semi-orthodox Jew as a candidate for VicePresident.

Lieberman’s nomination and his voluble religiosity have probably had one beneficial effect: the public demonstration that not every devoutly religious person is a reactionary, oppressive idealogue. Another salutary effect might be the demonstration that the possibility might exist that someone might actually be able to be a decent human being without having publicly accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Lieberman at least did allow that there might be some decent atheists out there (although this was calibrated as statistically less likely than that religious people are decent). This absurd and grudging canard is at least somewhat more liberal than George Bush, the elder’s, comment that he didn’t think an atheist could be a good American citizen.

Joseph Lieberman’s nomination and the ensuing controversies have proved a treasure trove for every Editorial Board in the nation. A veritable horde of editorials regarding various aspects of the implications of this nomination have been published. Now comes the rush of Op-Ed pieces, as well.

Michael Novak "a theologian at the American Enterprise Institute" authored a piece in the New York Times on September 4 entitled "The Founders and the Torah." In it he attempts to show that the founding fathers were religious men who used a variety of terms for a Deity, most of which were derived from the Hebrew scriptures. Additionally, he emphasizes the fact that Jefferson, as a Deist and religious skeptic, was not your typical founding father. John Adams, a somewhat more sin-ridden Christian, was more typical. Novak refers frequently to the language of the Declaration of Independence, which clearly derives from the Enlightenment’s Natural Law and a Deistic view of the Universe. He then dismisses those who do not believe ("polls suggest perhaps 8% of the population") as sort of irrelevant as a voting block. Of course, even if such statistics were accurate, that’s "only" 23,000,000 people!

Mr. Novak: The U.S. Constitution is the Law of the Land! Not the Declaration of Independence. Whatever the religious predilections of the "founding fathers", they had the insight and foresight to recognize that tyranny of the majority is the most feared potential political tragedy of any republic. And a majority of 92% is greatly to be feared (more accurately, there are about 13% "seculars" in our midst). That is why almost all of the Federalist papers deal with this issue of how in particular to avoid tyranny of the majority. That is why we have a rigid separation of powers, a bicameral legislature, lifetime appointment of Federal judges, among other strategies. This is an awkward and inefficient system, but one that tends to protect the interest of minorities.

It was the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut who wrote to President Thomas Jefferson to ask him if they were really going to be protected from the majoritarian religion by this new Constitution and its Bill of Rights. His reply has been immortalized as the "wall of separation." That is what we would expect from the man who designated his three greatest accomplishments to appear on his epitaph: the foundation of the University of Virginia, the authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom.

Novak also tries to rewrite history by again implying that our country is based on Hebrew and Christian precepts. That is a simple fabrication. The Pilgrims and Puritans certainly wished to establish a theocracy here on the model of the Hebrew bible, but ended up with the New England Town Meeting, one of the purest forms of democracy that ever was. De Tocqueville was so excited when he first witnessed a Town Meeting that he felt as if the ground was moving under him. What did the Hebrew Patriarchs, the Papacy, the Monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire know of democracy or the republican form of government? These are pagan Greek and Roman concepts.

There are only two mentions of religion, per se, in the U.S. Constitution: the one quoted above, in the title, and the establishment clause of the First Amendment. This cannot be an oversight, especially not in the light of the sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence. There is another somewhat tangential mention regarding the swearing or affirming of oaths. Like the lack of a bark of the Hound of the Baskervilles, the minimization of the even the mention of religion or a Deity in the Constitution speaks volumes.

The First Amendment enshrines both the Freedom of Speech and the Free Exercise of Religion. Therefore, any politician is clearly empowered to run a revival meeting instead of a political rally if he or she wishes. However, the Founding Fathers understood well the desirability of discretion in this realm, as evidenced by the few explicit references to religion in the Constitution as well as the avoidance of any references to a Deity or Divine purposes. Nota bene!

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING SINCE WE LAST TALKED ?

You may remeber Rep. Barrios (Dem. from Cambriodge) telling us last May that the future for Gay Rights was a bright one. Since then the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts are a private organization and may discriminate against gays. Now humanists and other fair minded people are questioning United Way’s grants to the BSA ...........

The local Skeptics provided our speaker for the July luncheon, Sheila Gibson from Acton.........Our picnic in Weston was marvelous as always, bit we did miss Mabel Lepper..........Several of our members and friends attended the Conference on Assisted Dying at the Park Plaza over Labor Day, (Sylvia Gerhard, Frank Weaver, Dick Radtke, Dr. Sidney Wanzer and Nancy Dorfman among others)...........Joe Gerstein reports that Smart Recovery has the green light to present its program in the prison system of California ........ Tom Clark has an important article on the nature of the brain in The Boston Sunday Globe’s Focus section for September 10..........The United Ministry at Harvard, where Tom Ferrick has his office, is being asked to find new space in the next year or so; the search has begun.