Rev. Kendyl Gibbons
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
February 3, 2002
Practicing Humanism: Part I Evidence
Let's get this straight, once and for all. Being a Humanist, or a Unitarian Universalist, does NOT mean that you can believe whatever you want. In point of fact, it means the exact opposite; it means that you cannot believe things just because you want to, just because they are nice ideas, or make you comfortable, or are convenient or popular sorts of convictions. Many people who embrace the heritage of liberal religious humanism do so after significant struggle with beliefs they find they simply can not hold, no matter how much they want to, or try. Not uncommonly, the convictions that do seem plausible to them come as a great disappointment and even distress to parents and family and friends; people whose approval is important to most of us. If any of us could believe what we want, surely we would not choose beliefs that give offense to others, or put us so dauntingly in the minority. But the truth is that we cannot choose what we believe. Unless we are to live in complete hypocrisy and self-deception, we can only affirm that we believe what honestly appears to us to be true. That is a very different thing from believing whatever we want. I might want it to be seventy degrees and sunny tomorrow, but to believe that it will, and dress for that eventuality, when actually a blizzard is blowing up, is the act of a fool, not a humanist. I deeply wish I could believe that I can fly unaided, but all the available evidence indicates that I can't. Religious freedom doesn't mean I can go around asserting that I can fly, just because I would like to, claiming that as a humanist I can believe whatever I want. To tell anyone, even the most casual inquirer, that humanism means you can believe anything you like, is a grave disservice to that person, and to this vital religious heritage. Everyone in this room who considers herself or himself to be a Unitarian Universalist or a humanist, has a responsibility to think about this issue until you come up with a better answer than that - and if you can't, then come and talk to me, and we will work one out together. Or if that's too hard, then take the front page of your next newsletter, and cut out the masthead where it says that to be a Humanist is to affirm the sufficiency of human experience and a commitment to learning to live with greater human dignity in the world in pursuit of meaning and joy, and carry that little slip of paper around in your wallet. Such a rote response may not inspire anyone, but it's better than misleading them about one of the central tenets of our faith.
This month's series of sermons on Practicing Humanism is intended to be useful in that process of articulating in words, and living out in actions, the meaning of being a self-proclaimed religious humanist. It is also designed to help refute several of the common misconceptions that people have about humanism, and often fall victim to in understanding our tradition and trying to describe it to others. One of those errors is the mistaken notion that humanists can believe whatever they want. A second, related, error is the attempt to define humanism on the basis of what it does NOT believe in. This effort, which creates an image of a negative, quarrelsome faith with a sneering attitude, is caused by a confusion of two different ways of defining a religious heritage. In terms of their historical roots, all faith traditions begin by defining themselves over against the existing religions. Each new way represents an alternative, and must clarify how it is different from the institutions and practices already available to believers. However, as the faith matures, if it is to become an enduring and life-giving tradition that is handed on from one generation to the next, it must develop a positive message and a self-description that does not depend upon another tradition for contrast. The Judaism of the Hebrew scriptures is constantly defining itself in opposition to the indigenous cults of Egypt, Canaan, and Babylonia; early Christianity finds its identity in the ways it differs from contemporary Judaism. So perhaps it is not surprising that 20th century humanism is sometimes described in contrast to the beliefs of orthodox Christianity, or theistic traditions in general. But this is only a description of our intellectual history; it doesn't say anything about what we value or affirm, what gives meaning to our lives, where we find joy or comfort or the call to justice and ethical living. People's broken lives are made whole and their hungers satisfied not by how smugly they reject the beliefs of others, but rather by how ardently and faithfully they live out the things that they themselves believe in. When our neighbors and co-workers and family ask us about our humanism as a religious path, we need to tell them what gets us out of bed in the morning, what keeps us going in the face of tragedy and despair, how our lives are made graceful and creative by the power of our convictions, and how religious community nourishes our work for a better world. Otherwise, so long as we answer the question What is humanism with a litany of the doctrines we don't believe, two things will happen. One, our faith will remain derivative and dependent upon the very traditions we have rejected, and two, our children, who have no need to be liberated from old creeds, will find nothing satisfying at the heart of what we try to teach them about the religion we hope to hand on to them.
When we say that humanism affirms the sufficiency of human experience, we are whether we are aware of it or not, tackling one of the primary challenges of theology, the question of How do you know? The formal name for this type of thinking is epistemology; it is something that philosophers and preachers have been wrestling with for as long as there has been religious or intellectual discussion. I want to propose that once you have answered this question with the humanist assertion of confidence in the sufficiency of human experience, you have said everything that needs to be said about what differentiates our faith from the orthodox creeds. Because, look; at the most basic level, believers of all kinds want the same things. We want to be good people, to live satisfying lives, and to escape as much pain as possible and postpone death for as long as possible. I want those things, don't you? And I suspect that pretty much everyone, from our neighbors across the street at Hennepin Avenue Methodist and the Basilica right through to Osama bin Laden or any religious fanatic you would like to select, wants them too. What we don't have is a consensus about how to get those things. How are we to be good people? What is the way to live a satisfying life? How can we best avoid pain and death? There are almost as many proposed answers to these questions as there are human lives and personalities. So how are we to choose among them? Which brings us back to the question of epistemology, the question How do you know? How do you know that compassion and honesty are the way to be a good person? How do you know that reason, creativity, effort and generosity will make for a satisfying life? How do you know that some combination of science, dignity and eventual acceptance is the most effective response to pain and death? I would say that I know these answers from my observation of my own and others' experience, but as Chet Raymo suggests in his description of the skeptic, I am also aware that it is always possible that my answers are wrong.
The other way in which we might seek to answer the question of how to fulfill the basic wants of human life comes down to something like, Read the manufacturer's directions, or Figure out who's in charge, and ask them. If the universe had a self-conscious creator, it probably would be helpful to know what that being had in mind for us to do with it. Millions of people, and many of the world's religions, operate on the premise that we can figure out who is running this show, and get instructions about what we are supposed to do. Then, whether those instructions completely make sense to us or not, we can just follow them, with the assurance that they come from someone who knows more about it than we do, which would be a comforting thought. But this is the method that the Humanist is saying No to, when we affirm the sufficiency of human experience. We are saying that for us, all the questions of human living, large and small, must be answered on the basis of human knowledge, human reason, and human experience. We can never give away our responsibility for figuring things out, for finding answers that make sense to us. If our lives are not satisfying, we must not whine to some powerful figure whose rules we have followed in the expectation of being rewarded; rather, we must discover the path to fulfillment by our own process of exploration, by the evidence of our own observation.
Let me be clear that this does not mean that human beings should function as isolated monads, each of us making the all the same mistakes, and reinventing the same wheels over and over. Life is too short. Human community and history both operate on the premise that we can save one another a great deal of trouble by pooling our knowledge and our observations. Probably the largest part of what I understand about achieving goodness and satisfaction in life, I have learned from people who I have never met; people who are dead, or who have no idea of their influence upon me. I didn't have to find out for myself that it's a bad idea to eat raw pork, or to get pregnant at fifteen, or to drive through red lights. We learn from observing one another's adventures, and from the accounts of many peoples' experiences throughout time. In fact, the cumulative nature of human experience contributes to its sufficiency; we do not yet know everything we need to or wish to know, but we have gathered more understanding with every generation and every discovery. Each of our lives is a contribution to that precious and painfully accumulated treasury of human wisdom; either as a creative explorer of some aspect of living in the world, or if nothing else, as a cautionary example - the choice is ours.
Now, as we saw with the children a few moments ago, there are several types of evidence that we accept as criteria for knowing something, and the practice of humanism requires an ability to recognize and distinguish among them. There is, of course, our direct sense experience, but if that were all we trusted, then the whole resource of others' wisdom would be closed to us. There is much that we are content to believe because it is in accordance with reason; I have never counted to confirm that 17 times 54 is 918, but the principles of multiplication make sense to me, and so I believe it. I have never died, but I accept the logic that says I surely will. I accept many accounts of the experiences of others; - that divorce is painful, that parenthood is both rewarding and draining, that war is hell - and even though these are experiences I have never had myself, I say that I know these things. I have never measured the speed of light, nor would I know how to begin to do so in any practical way, but I accept the authority of those who have, who tell me that it is approximately 299,792,458 meters per second, and I say that I know this. More interestingly, I say that I know that the waterfall at the Arboretum is beautiful, I know that judicial murder by the authority of the death penalty is wicked, I know that Mark loves me, and I know that I am grateful and accountable for the gifts of my life. But what evidence can I offer to attempt to prove any of these propositions? I can bring you photographs of the waterfall, or copies of Mark's love letters, but if you say to me, Bah, that's not beautiful, or That's not really love, what can I reply? I can argue that the practice of execution cheapens human life and makes society brutal; I can claim that my days have purpose and meaning when I strive to be grateful and accountable, but these ideas must find convincing resonance in your own conscience and spirit, for I cannot in any logical sense prove them. Nevertheless, I say that these beliefs, these knowings that I cannot prove, grow out of human experience, my own and others'. I have not received them from the creator's instruction manual, nor directly from the creator - even if such a being existed, which I doubt (though I can't prove that, either!).
We all have these kinds of knowings, even the most rigorous scientists and the most emphatic skeptics among us. We all have emotional, moral, aesthetic and spiritual convictions that are not arguable in the formal sense. And dear friends, for goodness sake, to be a humanist is NOT to lay aside all such unprovable beliefs; what kind of impoverished human life would that be? On the contrary, to be a humanist is to acknowledge that such beliefs are altogether human; that they, too, are the products of perception and experience, and that we must take responsibility for them. For remember, we cannot just believe whatever we want. Rather, we have undertaken the religious discipline of believing what the evidence indicates is true. If I had my preference, I would like to believe that absolutely everybody loves me; I am fortunate to have some evidence that a few people do; to be a good humanist, I must be satisfied with the latter.
These convictions, these beliefs that grow from the ground of human experience, can never be dogmatic. It is necessarily always possible that I, or you, or we together are wrong, even in our most treasured assurances. Could I find that the waterfall isn't beautiful? Well, there was a time in my life when I thought Barbie was beautiful; perhaps this, too, is an issue of maturity! Could judicial murder be not wicked? I suppose if it could be statistically validated that executions really do save the lives of many potential future victims, I would have to re-think the moral equation. It is of course always possible for people to demonstrate that they don't love you, after all. I cannot immediately conceive of how I would be persuaded not to be grateful and accountable, but I must, in principle, acknowledge that possibility.
I want to suggest a way of thinking about these other kinds of knowings - not for proving them, exactly, but another sort of 'evidence' that must also be considered. For when I speak of the sufficiency of human knowledge and experience, I mean all those ways of knowing, and in addition to sense perception, and reason, and intersubjective authority, I think there is another answer to the question How do you know? I think when we say that we know that it is wrong to steal, or to be cruel, and that we know it is good to be gentle, or cheerful, or generous, we are not only talking about the cumulative human experience of the past, we are also talking about the sort of world and the quality of community that we hope to create, and the kind of people we want to be, in the future. Vision and aspiration are integral parts of the human experience in which our convictions are based. It does not require the promise of the creator of the life of all that is to assure us that the future might be different from the past, that human creativity and skill and the gathered knowledge of the generations might work together for increasing good. To expect either a utopia of perfect goodness and happiness, or of everlasting life, doesn't seem to me to fit with what we already know of mortality and fallibility. But to expect that some of the brokenness and tragedy of the world as we have known it could be healed, to think that even in my own brief years I might become more nearly the person I would wish to be, seems perfectly congruent with everything experience tells us. When we say, as humanists, that it is better to be concerned for others than to be indifferent, and the question comes back How do you know? it is legitimate to reply, Because that is the kind of world I want to live in, and the kind of person I hope to be. By the same token, we must also accept the disciplines of those identified aspirations. If the world we want to live in is peaceful, we cannot go around indulging our individual or collective tempers. If the kind of person we want to be is courageous, then we must not shrink from necessary risks and the exercise of fortitude. If we want beauty, we must practice seeing it, and creating it. Not because some revelation has instructed us to do so, but because these are the implications of our utterly human hopes for the future we might create.
Still, we could always be wrong. Alexander the Great had a vision for the world; so did Hitler - those probably weren't visions we would embrace today. Mother Theresa had a vision for the world; I agree with some of it, but not all. Thomas Jefferson had a vision for our nation - and it didn't include blacks. Aspirations, too, are the products of human experience, of perception and reason and story, and they evolve with the unfolding of history and the accumulation of wisdom, but they are never infallible. Someday our own descendants will smile at all that we didn't know, and sigh for the smallness of our minds, and give themselves to the building of a world that we cannot now imagine - but that, too, is part of our vision and our hope. The practice of humanism is not about anything as trivial as believing whatever we want; rather, it is about taking responsibility for how we know what we know. It is about affirming that perception and reason and the accumulation of human knowledge and aspiration, fallible though they all are, will be sufficient to guide us in answering the essential questions of life. It is about cherishing a faithful skepticism that is forever open to new information and larger experience, and knowing what kind of a world we intend for our lives to bring into being.
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Opening Words:
Welcome to this hour of gathering and reflection,
This moment in the rhythm of our days when we open ourselves to the nourishment
Of beauty, of silence, of thought upon ultimate things.
Welcome to this community, in which we seek to strengthen one another
For the work of building the world that is to be.
The sage and poet Kenneth Patton has written:
The church of tomorrow will not strive to save people from the world;
It will save people in the world.
It will make honest and whole the cravings and appetites of human nature,
Leading to the joys of self-realization and full humanity.
The church will seek to serve the whole person and the whole community;
From it will come the hopes and ideals for a better world.
From the church will come the challenge of free minds to the evils of every age.
It will struggle against all individuals and all groups who exploit their fellows.
No one shall be too mighty, too rich, or too famous;
No tradition shall be too revered, no shrine too sanctified;
All shall be weighed in the scale of human values,
For this is the church of humanity, and them alone it will serve.
There will the parents come with their infant,
And there will the children be introduced to this world.
There will they learn the meanings we have found
In the skies, the fields, the hills and the valleys, and the cities of our world.
There will they learn to measure the meaning of their days,
To gather into their minds the wisdom of their ancestors.
To know why we call one thing right and another wrong,
And to treasure beauty, mercy, and justice in the deep places of their beings.
As common as life itself, as strange as the air we breathe;
As reasonable as our own minds, the friendly companion of our days,
Such will be the church when it is free from the superstition and the darkness of centuries.
It will be the hub, the center of our life together,
Weaving the strands of our days into a pattern, a design, a meaning.
Uniting us with our companions of the journey,
Helping us in our pilgrimage along the road between the cities of birth and death.
May the flame of this chalice illuminate that pilgrimage,
And stand as a beacon to all who would join us in seeking to know the fullness of life.