How Humanistic Should American Foreign Policy Be?
A Members Forum, September 22, 1:30PM
Harvard Science Center, Hall A

Humanists will be invited to participate in an open discussion on a very timely subject. We will go behind the headlines, and deeper than the current debate about a possible war with Iraq, to more profound and enduring questions. HAM members and friends, as well as members of the Ethical Society of Boston are invited to take part.

We will be asking questions such as these:

-What has ethics to do with government, especially foreign relations?
-Is national security the sole determinant?
-Does political expediency rule, or should human rights be our compass?
-What should be the scope and nature of humanitarian efforts?
-Ought Humanists establish their own humanitarian programs?
-Do we defend and assist, on an equal level, people in theological and dictatorial states as well as in democracies?
-Short of actual genocide, may we intervene unilaterally in a nation’s internal affairs?
-To what extent may we sacrifice our own sovereignty to the dictates of international law?
-Does the Just War theory apply in all cases; can a preemptive attack ever be justified?
-Should we promote economic justice and environmental health as major foreign policy goals?
-And lastly, how do we relate to the United Nations, reluctantly or generously?

-And is world government a valid goal?

Feel free to add your own questions. As American citizens, we must take responsibility for our government’s behavior throughout the world. If you have a thoughtful question or comment, and wish to reserve a few minutes in the public spotlight, please call me (617-547-1497) and I’ll see to it that you will be heard early in our discussion. Participants will receive a copy of The Humanist, featuring the Middle East crisis.

The procedure: friends and fellow humanists will hear some opening remarks from HAM’s President, Dr. Joe Gerstein, Tom Ferrick, Harvard’s Humanist Chaplin, and Mr. Marvin Miller, long time columnist for the Ethical Society newsletter. The floor will then be opened to your comments and questions for a full hour. Not, mind you, to debate the cons and pros of the Iraq matter-- but to discuss what ethical principles, if any, should govern the foreign policy of this world’s sole super power.

Christopher Hitchens, Oct. 13
Addresses Harvard Community And Humanists Of Massachusetts
Hall D, The Science Center

One the more notorious inconoclasts of our age, Christopher Hitchens, will speak frankly about religion when he comes to Harvard on Sunday, October 13, at 1:30PM. His frequent articles in The Nation and Vanity Fair may have pleased or dismayed us, but never have they bored us. Scathing and unapologetic, he speaks the truth as he sees it, and few of us are left comfortable- but we are thinking! He’s going to address the question: Is the inculation of religion harmful to our youth?

Humanists celebrate Free Thought Day around October 12 because it is the anniversary of a famous court decision in pre-revolutionary America when so-called supernatural evidence was banned from our courts by Governor Phipps (1692). Objective proof remains the standard, and "spectral" claims have remained without credibility to this day.

Not surprisingly, Christopher Hitchens, an avowed atheist, is an appropriate celebrant of the occasion. He is a relentless truth seeker- surely not 100% correct- but fearlessly honest. Seeing further and deeper than most commentators, he forces us to re-examine assumptions, to face uncomfortable facts. A contrarian and ego-basher, noted for his tirade against religious fervor, he is fully aware of his own fallibility and admits to "a slight sense of imposture". But he can be intimidating.

Hitchens is a graduate of Oxford (1970), and began his career as a staff writer with the New Statesman magazine, going on later to Harper’s, Newsday, and other publications. Presently, he writes a biweekly column for The Nation and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. His television appearances and campus lectures have been numerous. He is the author of several books, the latest of which are Letters To A Young Contrarian, and a work on Orwell.

A co-sponsor of Mr. Hitchen’s visit is the Harvard Secular Society. This student organization has the full backing of the Humanist Chaplaincy. Its president this year is Patrick Smith ‘04, and other officers include Jeremy Zorn ‘03, Jason Lurie ‘05, and Aidan O’Connor ‘05. Jason Bussey, from the Law School, is the student coordinator. All Harvard students are invited to connect with them for intellectual fun. Tom Ferrick, 5-5985, is the Humanist member of the United Ministry, with an office on the lower level of the Memorial Church, Harvard Yard.

As The Bough Is Bent

I spent a year working as a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Brandeis Department of Biochemistry. About every two weeks some scientist from another institution would come by to present a talk about his/her current work while we ate our brown bag lunches.

On one occasion, a graduate student of Japanese origin visited us from the prestigious Wisconsin Biochemical Institute. He started off his talk by telling us he was going to talk about rectin. None of us had ever heard about this substance before, so there was a bit of a buzz in the audience as everyone checked whether his or her neighbor had heard more precisely what this was.

A painful 15 minutes passed while he described his project and some of the issues involved and said the word "rectin" at least six more times. On each occasion, the buzz would resurface. But no one successfully deciphered the word. Then, mercifully, he threw his first slide on the wall, LECITHIN, that’s what he was talking about, lecithin. We all knew what that was! How cruel, to assign a Japanese student to work on lecithin

This rather dramatic experience demonstrates the persistence of the pronunciation patterns that we all acquire in childhood with our native language. We also know that a child, say, less than three, can learn almost any number of languages and speak them all with native inflection, if the training and speaking begins before three. After that, there is a rapid decline in the ability of our central nervous system to be programmed for speech. Such is the early plasticity of the central nervous system of humans.

It is relatively easy for a native English speaker to detect the origin of a non-native-English-speaking individual by his or her accent, unless the language was exposed in the child’s first three years.

That is why religions want to catechize. So that they can get their message engraved into the formative brain while it is still "plastic" and moldable. Once that is done, it can almost never be eradicated. Yes, people do convert, but most of those into whom these doctrines are inculcated at an early age retain this orientation until they die. The "molding" of the brain involves actual changes of neurological connections and attachments within the brain. These networks are richer and more complex in those infants which receive more stimulation of various kinds: motor, tactile, olfactory, auditory, visual, etc.; they are scantier and simpler where stimulation has been minimal. Maybe hip-hop would work as well as Mozart for this purpose.

Now this is not total hard-wiring of the brain. Opera singers, for instance, who work tenaciously, may be able to eradicate most of their foreign accent in a number of languages by diligence and persistence, but almost never 100%. The same could be said of religion. Relatively speaking, there are few apostates, just as there are few foreigners who speak without accent in another land.

When I was a medical student assigned to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, I overheard in the clinic a nun asking a cute, little three year-old girl to recite her catechism. She recited it in a such a manner that indicated she had no notion of what she was talking about, in the same way that I pledged allegiance to "one nation, invisible..."

Intuitively, it is clear why such a trait would be evolutionarily favored. It is crucial for the survival of a tribe that individuals be inculcated with certain information crucial for a child to learn, for instance, about snakes, human and animal. The detriments are, unfortunately, evident, as well.

This same sort of operation, performed on adults with a much less plastic brain, we call brain washing. I don’t think we know the intimate neurological anatomy underlying this phenomenon. Perhaps it’s more analogous to a software change. And in our society, brainwashing of the young is the guaranteed right of the parents, who can insert, almost at will, any sort of claptrap into a young brain and have it more or less indelibly engraved therein for a lifetime.

I think it is our contention as Humanists that children are best raised if they are inculcated with the rudiments of logic and rational thinking with a good education about options and turned loose to fend for themselves in the world of competing ideas. But this is certainly a minority option.

"You must lay aside all prejudices...and neither believe nor reject anything because any other persons have rejected it or believed it. Your own reason is your only oracle." So wrote Thomas Jefferson to his nephew who was seeking his recommendation for a religious preference. Clearly, however, one’s reasoning faculties are likely to be considerably clouded by the installation of a non-rational computer program as soon as the "computer" language has been installed.

Such is the human predicament. We are wired and programmed for tribal existence but now we live in an environment in which the tribal myths no longer lead to survival, but to exclusivity and mutual destruction. We can await evolutionary change or try to do some reprogramming now. Hopefully, the human race will outrace its Armageddon. I’m not optimistic.

Joseph Gerstein

What is Humanism?
Humanism is a rational philosophy, informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximum individual liberty and opportunity consistent with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory democracy and the expansion of an open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes every human being as part of nature, experience and culture.

Early Twentieth Century Fundamentalism
Book Review of
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

When I first read this book at age sixteen and still a Christian, I was quite upset when Frank Shallard (a minor character, but the only hero in the story) depicted Jesus as not being such a uniquely admirable character. Now that aspect of the book bothers me not a bit. At the time I was also sickened at what eventually happened to Frank, and almost felt like skipping the passage when I saw it coming this time.

The principal character, Elmer Gantry, is an anti-hero. He starts off as self centered, but often sincerely religious. While he never completely sheds his superstitious awe, he does develop into a first class scoundrel. Lewis wanted to show three aspects of religion between 1902 and 1927. First, that of small town Baptist churches in Kansas and neighboring states. Second, the doings of a travelling woman evangelist based to some extent on Aimee Semple McPherson. Third, the hypocrisy, backbiting, and political infighting of ministers in a large midwestern city.

With Gantry it was easy to construct a plot that could move him into all three realms. He was powerfully built, a football player in college, handsome, with a rich baritone voice ideal for both singing and preaching. He had the tendencies to wine, women, and song, to help him to screw up, and the shrewdness, intelligence, and luck, to generally get himself out of trouble.

Thus he gets the deacon’s daughter pregnant in his first small church. To escape a shotgun wedding he manages to get her second cousin sufficiently compromised so that he is forced to marry her. Then his seminary sends him to a larger church, but he gets drunk on the way and is washed up as far as the Baptists are concerned.

Then after knocking about as a traveling salesman for a couple of years, he manages to hook up with an itinerant evangelist named Sharon Falconer. (Naming her after a bird of prey is delicious) He does well as her business manager and adviser. Also as her lover. But she is the victim of a fire from which Gantry escapes.

After finding that he can’t succeed as an evangelist himself, he ingratiates himself with a Methodist Bishop and starts his rise in that denomination, finally getting a large church in Zenith (the home of Babbitt), and revitalizing a dying church. He regards the other ministers as potential rivals and become the chief preacher in the city by vigorously pushing anti-vice campaigns and Fundamentalism. His campaigns never bear permanent results, but they do give him the newspaper publicity he seeks. In the process he destroys the lives of several people who are far better than he is.

Lewis begins by being rather sympathetic to Gantry, making him a curious combination of cynicism and sincere belief. But halfway through the book it becomes evident that Lewis now thoroughly dislikes him. Gantry is portrayed as

very skillful in manipulating people, both individually and in groups. Socially perceptive, he seems able to read exactly how people will respond, when he should come on strong and when a subtler approach is required. But then there are several scenes in which he acts like a social clod, completely oblivious to the fact that he is not only turning people off, but antagonizing them. But perhaps this is not such a contradiction as it seems. In those scenes he is simply in a buoyant mood and is talking to people he has no desire to manipulate.

Humanists should find his depiction of religion in the early 1900’s rather comforting. The religious right was both stronger and more intolerant then it is now. His picture of Protestant America in that period is probably exaggerated, but he does make it clear that there are many in the cities who just don’t bother with church. Lynd in his studies of Middletown (Muncie, Indiana) shows people just as anti-foreign, but less bigoted in their religion. It was well received in its day, 1927, and even critical reviews acknowledged that his portrayal of the evangelical and fundamentalist scene of that period was accurate. The book is a great read and well worth the attention of humanists.

Peter Denison

Association News and Events

Plans are underway to invite Taslima Nasrin to speak for us in November. A humanist heroine, an exile from her native Bangladesh, she is a powerful exponent of women’s rights in the Muslim world, and of free thought everywhere.

Copies of Dr. Joe Gerstein’s letter in answer to Jeff Jacoby’s column in the Boston Globe are available on request- "a secular public school should not be involved in indoctrinating children with religious doctrines to which their parents object." (Pledge of Allegiance case)

The Ethical Society of Boston, fellow humanists, meets at 33 Garden Street (Longly School of Music), Cambridge, every Sunday at 10:30AM. David Nichols, also a member of HAM, is President of the Society. On September 29, Governor Dukakis will be the speaker.

HAM proudly sponsors Smart Recovery, a humanist answer to addiction. Also the Fund for India, where a new stamp honors Gora, the great humanist colleague of Gandhi. Call with any and all questions.

Please note the date after your name on the newsletter’s address label. It tells you when you last made a contribution to HAM. If the date is not 2002, please answer this serious need for your support; it’s already late in the year.

Free parking is available in the area of the Harvard Law School (behind the Science Center). Enter from Oxford Street and zig-zag left to the Littauer Lot, marked LITT. A social hour follows our meetings

A Humanist Samaritan

Coming up the Framingham Centre Minuteman statue on Main Street, I noticed a fellow struggling to push his car into a slightly uphill parking area in front of St. Andrews Church. It was a late Sunday afternoon with virtually no traffic. Turning down Franklin Street, I drove around the block to go help him. At least with my truck I could tow or push his heavy vehicle.

When I got there he had parked it on the slight incline, and was heading off on foot toward downtown with an empty plastic bleach bottle in one hand and his little six-year-old boy holding the other as they crossed the street. I stopped and asked if I could help. He indicated that he was out of gas and looking for a gas station.

I drove them to the nearest one on Union Avenue, which was closed and then over to the service station by Mt. Wayte Avenue. They could not allow him to use his empty bottle, nor could they located a regulation gas can that we might borrow. Julio had just been grocery shopping and his remaining rolled up dollar bill and change would surely not have bought much gasoline.

We went back to my house where I picked up my lawn mower gas container which still had about a gallon in it. There they met my wife, Louise, who is learning Spanish. It seems Julio came over from Puerto Rico some ten years ago.

We arrived back at the parked car. Julio poured in the gas and the motor eventually started up loudly indicating probable difficulty ahead in getting an inspection sticker. I gave him some money and urged him to buy more gas right away. Hopefully, he did. What he has now would not take him far.

All I know is that I almost just drove right on by. I was tired and you can’t always help everybody. But right now I’m very glad I did stop. They were very grateful. It’s the kind of thing that makes life with all its burdensome complications really worth while. Good luck, Julio, to you and your sweet little family.

Originally entitled "Julio’s Family", its author is Jack Rivers, a freelance writer for Metro West News, and a long time member of the Humanist Association of Massachusetts