The Newsletter of
The Humanist Association of Massachusetts
The Humanist Newsletter for
November/December 2001
Prof. Tu Weiming
Speaks Nov. 18
"China, Human Civility and World Community"
Harvard’s Science Center, Rm. A
China is becoming a full fledged citizen of the world. Representing one
fifth of the earth’s population, the Beijing government holds a veto in the
Security Council, it is a nuclear power, and its economy is burgeoning. Yet its
record in human rights is a sorry one, its Communist rulers brook no political
opposition, and it maintains a closed society. What actual role will it take in
the present crisis where America and the West are plagued by Islamic extremism?
Put differently, does China have any common basis with the Enlightenment ideals
which Europe and the U.S. proclaim?
When Prof. Tu Weiming speaks on Sunday, November 18, at 1:30 PM, he will
provide us clearer information when wrestling with these and related questions.
However, we can expect him to take a wider, more comprehensive view of
modernity. We live in an age characterized by instant communication, fairly easy
travel between cultures, and advances in medicine that astound all of us. The
new world brings us ideas such as globalization, a feminist critique of how
societies operate, and the challenges posed by rampant individualism. Do these
new concepts invalidate the values we have received from previous ages? How can
we address these questions in a way that truly brings a sense of peace and
optimism? How are we to act as members of the world community?
Prof. Tu was born in Kunming during World War II, earned his B.A. in
Taiwan, and, interestingly, achieved in 1963 an M.A. at Harvard in Religious
Studies! His Harvard Ph.D. is in history and East Asian languages. After
teaching at Princeton and Berkeley, he came here in 1981. Two of his many
involvements are his membership on the Committee on the Study of Religion and
his close collaboration with the U.N. Security General. In 1999, the University
awarded him the title of Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and
Philosophy and of Confucian studies.
In the Aftermath of September 11,
The Humanist Community Examines
Terror, Islam and American Policy
It’s time WE talked – about what happened, our reaction, and what
next? We have asked a group of thoughtful people to join us in a town-meeting
discussion on Sunday, December 2, at 1:30 in our regular meeting space, Science
Center A at Harvard. Among them we hope to have Prof. Karen Armstrong, famed for
her work in the study of religious fundamentalism. If she can’t be with us,
all of us may draw from our experience and reading so that we can cope with the
insanity of That Day, and forge some reasonable, hopeful direction for the
future.
Certain to be raised are some of the following questions: How did we
manage after September 11? Personally and collectively. What does justice demand
for so heinous a crime? Must we extend the war beyond Afghanistan? Is American
military power the key to victory? How are we doing in the public relations
battle? Are our alliances with Middle East regimes more salutary than harmful?
Is America’s level of patriotism, (and religious fervor), a false exuberance
soon to wither? Is the Homefront united and patient, and is it ready to suffer
loss of liberty, lives, and treasure for a victory undefined? What role should
we expect the United Nations to take?
If you are ready to speak out, and to listen, in the company of other
humanists and skeptical-minded friends, we will try to formulate a rational, if
general, consensus.
Women Dehumanized
Our member Fran Hosken has been publishing Women’s International News
from her home office in Lexington for 27 years. Probably she has never issued a
more powerful editorial than that carried in the Autumn edition of WIN News. She
pulls no punches in her condemnation of the vile treatment of women in too many
areas of the Muslim world. We must admit that , "Fundamentalists everywhere
are supported, joined and fed by their shared contempt, hatred, exploitation and
vilification of women." They would make women "invisible." Can
there be any doubt that the control, veiling, and seclusion of girls and women
by men, especially by the Taliban, violates human rights? And infibulation,
female genital mutilation, which too often is promoted as Allah’s command in
several Moslem quarters, must be the worst of crimes. Fran Hosken cries out for
justice. Do we hear her?
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: SOLVED!
Yes, this knotty issue, which has been tormenting brilliant philosophers,
clever theologians, a horde of savants and seminal thinkers for millennia has
been explicated finally, spectacularly and as slickly as Fermat’s Theorem was
last year. And this challenging task, this remarkable feat, mirabile dictu, was
performed live, before TV cameras, on a national network. Bravo! No, Bravissimo!!
It was not a solo performance, however. Two ingenious intellects were
required, each meshing jovially and gloriously with the other to explain why
such a horrendous and cataclysmic event as the World Trade center devastation
could have occurred with the full fore-knowledge of an omniscient, loving god,
full of grace and compassion (but apparently as vengeful as your irascible
brother-in-law who drinks too much after a Red Sox loss. At least there were
three Stooges and four Marx Brothers to produce their hare-brained antics.
And here is the conundrum: the god who apparently knew what was going to
happen (and who is also omnipotent and omnipresent) has to be absolved of any
responsibility for its occurrence and the almost certain slaughter of a
multitude of innocents.
Apparently, the standard fall-guy, the "usual suspect", the
perpetual miscreant who sows mayhem and maliciousness like Santa distributes
Xmas gifts, the DEVIL, has an iron-clad alibi for the morning of September: he
was busy being exorcised in Tallahassee. Usually, he is more ubiquitous than the
Mafia when the time comes for someone to take the rap for some calamitous crime.
Apparently, he was fully occupied on this or another malign errand outside this
galaxy and thus unavailable for comment. Hence, in this instance, he has been
exonerated.
Muslims, it appears, are self-starters and thus do not require the
complicity of Beelzebub to produce unmitigated evil. Perhaps we have not only a
Christian God who doesn’t resurrect heathens but a Christian Devil who doesn’t
waste his time in the temptation of infidels, who, after all, are already damned
by their lack of discretion in religions. Thus, Mephistopheles likely
concentrates on seducing the virtuous Christians into evil, those of other
faiths can go to Hell on their own recognizance.
Nor do secular humanists, homosexuals and their civil libertarian
apologists, require his attention, since it appears that they are perfectly
capable on their own of provoking such horrors without the intercession of the
devil by irritating the compassionate and grace-bestowing deity which has his,
her or its petulant moments and you’d better not catch him her or it on a bad
hair day. Their most unforgivable sin: inhibiting the catechizing of children in
the public schools with Christian Fundamentalist dogma.
But please don’t misunderstand. This particular god never actually
causes a catastrophe, at least not among Americans, obviously his, her or its
chosen people. [Come to think of it, though, a million Rwandans got the same
brush-off]. He, she or it would never instigate such a callous and reprehensible
action, nor, evidently, have to take any responsibility for such an heinous
crime. No, he, she or it merely lifts the shield of invincibility which
surrounds this nation and allows our punishment to proceed unimpeded by his good
offices.
The last time I encountered such absurd nonsense was in The Iliad. Here,
at least the gods
were not averse to actually causing things to happen the way they wished, nor
were they
and humans actually reluctant to so identify the criminal, selfish, crazy or
malicious
behavior of the gods and to attribute to them the vicious, petty characteristics
which they
so clearly possessed. However, when you have only one god, you are stuck. At
least
Homer was willing to call a spade a spade and a vindictive, perverted creep of a
god a
vindictive, perverted creep of a god.
Several years ago, the foot of a Boston Pentecostal preacher slipped off
the brake of his
van during a religious procession, and onto the accelerator. The vehicle lurched
ahead,
striking a pregnant parishioner and killing her and her fetus. During the
eulogy, he suggested that this
must all be part of god’s plan, which was not necessarily discernible by
men and which might be now obscure. He could not refrain from suggesting that
when everything about the incident is
clarified, we would see that the Devil had played some role
in it, too.
It will take more than a couple of snide, insipid clowns like Pat and
Jerry to explain this one away.
The vagaries of human motivation and the vicissitudes of geopolitical intrigue
will not be resolved by their rote, glib absurdities, tailored to exculpate
their vindictive and brutal god of the
cataclysm of the moment. Let them stick to rationalizing the
accidents provoked when drunken drivers plough into Sunday school excursion
buses, incinerating the parishioners.
Hopefully, that task will occupy them for a while and keep them
out of this kind of "theater of the absurd" pathetic mischief.
Joe Gerstein
A.J. Ayer is best known for his logical positivism as expressed in his
book, Language, Truth, and Logic. In this short book of 174 pages he gives a
good concise overview of the famous philosophe. The first chapter gives a
synopsis of Voltaire’s life. He was always a rebel, constantly fighting for
freedom of speech and thought, and against the influence of the Catholic Church.
(He had many friends who were clerics, but they probably shared his skepticism.)
Because of his rebellious nature he frequently got into hot water, getting out
of it with his charming personality and access to influential friends. However,
for many years during the reign of Louis XV, he was not allowed to live in
Paris. He spent time in England which he highly admired for its freedom and
empirical philosophers, and shorter periods at the court of Frederick the Great.
Frederick admired Voltaire, invited him to his palace at Sans Souci more than
once, but after a while got frustrated and kicked him out. Voltaire spent much
time in provincial France. Even though he was quite wealthy, he was often
homeless, but always had friends he could live with.
In subsequent chapters Ayer deals with Voltaire’s writings and ideas.
His complete works were printed in 72 volumes, but except for Candide little is
read today. That short novel was written to satirize the idea sponsored by
Liebniz that every thing works for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
That story, which Ayer summarizes, is still a delight to read. Ayer also gives
summaries of Voltaire’s short stories, but they are of much poorer quality.
One fascinating chapter deals with Pascal’s Pensees. These are the
famous jottings of a great mathematician who also was a devout Jansenist
Catholic, and are conventionally regarded as quite profound. Jansenism was a
Catholic version of Calvinism, including the belief in predestination. In reply
to Pascal’s famous wager tjat it is advantageous to bet on the existence of
God, Voltaire wrote: "To reduce it to betting is to trivialize the issue.
Moreover its being in one’s interest to believe that something exists is not a
proof that it does exist. Worse still, it is not even in one’s interest to
believe that God exists if Pascal and his friends are right in thinking that
only one person in a million is saved. Pascal gives ammunition to
atheists."
Voltaire was not an atheist, but a deist, believing in a benevolent God.
Ayer, being the philosopher that he is, could not resist analyzing Voltaire’s
thought and pointing out the inconsistencies in his beliefs. If God is
benevolent, and everything is determined, then Liebniz has to be right that this
is the best of all possible worlds. Ayer does not consider Voltaire a great
philosopher, but respects him highly as a defender of free speech and thought,
as a vigorous opponent of superstition and religious intolerance at a time when
it was dangerous to take the positions that he did take.
The book is interesting and well written. A reader might want to skip some
of the plot summaries in his chapter on the short stories, but the rest of the
book is fascinating.
Peter B. Denison
That Day
I feel I should have something to say
About That Day.
But although images are the stuff
from which words are made, I am on overload.
Now when I search for images
I have to claw through rubble,
Climb over steel and concrete—
Choking on clouds of dust—
stumble on body parts,
wade through blood and tears,
in search of something to say
about That Day.
Even then, when I search for word
to build my thoughts on
I have to work with new ground,
new sounds from ancient tongues,
Out of the scrapbook heap of things I’ve read—
Taliban, Al-Jihad, A-Quaeda, Mullah—
Which speak of unfamiliar lands:
Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kurdistan.
Through the dark side of Islam, the unwritten pages of the Koran,
I sit blinking in awe as our vengeful "war" rages on;
reinforced by the camera’s selected view
of handsome faces, contorted, jeering, burning us in effigy
out of hatred for an ideology, theology not their own,
in praise of That Day.
I watch the air lift of food for starving "collateral" refugees.
I feel a sense of compassion and pride.
But when I watch "bunker busters" bearing the words " September
11th,"
Raining down their terror on Taliban (and anyone else around)
Should I feel good about that too?
In the face of such moral contradictions
What should I say about that Day?
End
Maurice Anderson
October 25, 2001
(Mr. Anderson, who lives in Cambridge, is a new member of HAM)
An Editorial: Faith in Fairness
The despicable evil of September 11 will never be forgotten. Thje heroism
of rescuers and the inspiration of public officials have engendered fitting
praise. The nation is surviving this terrible blow and must now seek resolution.
The government is fully justified in bringing A-Qaeda before an international
tribunal. Our military superiority will be necessary, but not sufficient.
Terrorism must be universally denounced as a profound violation of human
rights. Once its nature has been understood, once it’s been defined in simple,
unmistakable language, once it’s recognized everywhere as a horrific crime,
ordinary human beings will cry out for justice. How do we get everybody on the
same page? International crime demands international law, which implies an
international court.
Fairness is a universal human need. Everyone, including the average
Muslim, honors it and talks about it incessantly and applies it regularly. It’s
simple justice. If all nations were to adhere to a Law of Fairness, America
could win the public relations battle against the Terrorists. And if a fair,
world respected judicial system awaited these criminals, people would approve
their apprehension. With Islam’s assistance, let the West begin constructing a
world-wide process of justice, based on Nuremberg, Rwanda, and Kosovo.
Faith in fairness will bind us all.
"A Cure for Fraud"
was the Globe heading on October 7, 2001. Not as president of HAM, nor as this
newsletter’s leading columnist, was Dr. Joe Gerstein being hailed. No, he had
blown the whistle on a major pharmaceutical company after its representative had
offered him $40,000 "if he would encourage other doctors to prescribe its
cancer drug." As an administrator of the Tufts Health Plan he was in a
position of influence. Not only did he refuse, he brought in federal prosecutors
and thereby forced the company, (TAP of Illinoise), to plead guilty and settle
the fraud charges – saving the taxpayers millions of dollars. The company’s
plan was to ensure doctors a profit of at lest $100 per dose of the drug Lupron.
Medicare and Medicaid would pick up the tab. Victory for the common good came
about only after 5 years of effort, and Dr. Gerstein’s lawsuit under the False
Claims Act which allows whistle-blowers a share of the fines collected
precipitated the conclusion. Here is a classic case of a person who, angered by
persistent, widespread evil, chose not to do nothing. It’s also a classic case
of earthly, human centered ethics encouraging imitation. We are proud of this
man. |
