John Adams in Tennessee

Stopped in at the Walker Library yesterday, at Middle Tennessee State University, to check out the visiting "John Adams Unbound" exhibition. Don't miss it if you're in Murfreesboro, it'll only be there through September. Adams used to be a relatively unsung revolutionary hero, but David McCullough, HBO, and PBS have chipped away at his obscurity.

Another side of Adams was a bit misrepresented by the religion panel, though, which played up his Unitarianism and portrayed him as a more-or-less conventionally pious pilgrim. In fact, as Jennifer Hecht points out in Doubt: A History, he was a doubter and a skeptic both before and after his affiliation with the Unitarians. Just like me.

As President he declared: "The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation." And as for those who would ban questioning the Bible's allegedly divine origins? "I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind."

You hear that, Rick & Michelle? Probably not.

Unitarians

We held class out on the James Union Building porch yesterday afternoon, the first really springy day of the season in middle Tennessee (and high time!), and many subjects arose. Unitarianism was one.


I couldn't think of the UU "non-creedal" credo, off the top of my head, so here's their statement-- clearly too radical for a traditionally-Baptist university wishing to promote itself as diverse and welcoming to all varieties of spiritual experience (does that sound angry?):



We promote reason and tolerance in our communities and embrace a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. As members of a non-creedal religious tradition, we Unitarian Universalists are encouraged to discern our own beliefs about different spiritual topics
The Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA's) seven principles express the shared values that UUA member congregations affirm and promote.  Many Unitarian Universalists find rich personal and theological meaning in these principles.



There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Unitarian Universalism (UU) draws from many sources:

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

These principles and sources of faith are the backbone of our religious community.


-Unitarian Universalist Association

religion doesn't evolve

Marine biologist and former White House science adviser Jeff Schweitzer is not much impressed by speculations about a god gene and the evolution of religion. Nothing here about Higgs-Boson, though. (He's responding in part to Nicholas Wade's new book on the subject.) Thanks for the link, Dean. And oh, btw: the Hitchens response to the Googlers at 33'10" when he's asked about people who feel a need for the communal and other benefits of church membership but don't really believe any of the doctrine, and who seek out "the least obnoxious" faith and take it half-heartedly: "This used to be called the Church of England, or the Unitarians-- of whom Bertrand Russell remarked  that they believe in one god MAXIMUM." Hitch also mentions the late novelist Peter DeVries, who said the movement from poly- to mono-theism is progress, next step being non- or a- or anti-theism altogether. That presumably would be the apotheosis of religious evolution! (And is Hitch's response to Robert Wright.)

First, religion did not evolve through the mechanisms of natural selection. The idea of god perpetuates itself through cultural transmission. Second, atheists as a rule do not claim that religion is "useless" at all, fully recognizing that an appeal to an unseen force had benefits to early human societies unschooled in the sciences. Third, even if the absurd claim were true that religion evolved through natural selection, that would in no way challenge the tenet that god is nothing but a silly myth. The "evolution" of religion would simply mean that perpetuating a ridiculous myth had a selective advantage, nothing more, and would certainly not lend credence to the myth itself...

Religion was born not from some god gene, but of fear of the unknown, of the drive to control the uncontrollable, of the need to have mastery over one's fate in the face of an uncertain world. The first ideas of religion arose not from any awe of nature's wonder and order that would imply an invisible intelligent designer, but rather from concerns for the events of everyday life and how the vast unknown of nature affected daily existence. To allay fears of disease, death, starvation, cold, injury and pain, people fervently hoped that they could solicit the aid of greater powers, hoped deeply that they could somehow control their fate, and trusted that the ugly reality of death did not mean the end. Hope and fear combine powerfully in a frightening world of unknowns to stimulate comforting fantasies and myths about nature's plans.

The human brain is extraordinarily adept at posing questions, but simply abhors the concept of leaving any unanswered. We are unable to accept "I don't know," because we cannot turn off our instinct to see patterns and to discern effect from cause. We demand that there be a pattern, that there be cause and effect, even when none exist. So we make up answers when we don't know. We develop elaborate creation myths, sun gods, rain gods, war gods and gods of the ocean. We believe we can communicate with our gods and influence their behavior, because by doing so we gain some control, impose some order, on the chaotic mysteries of the world. By making up answers to dull the sting of ignorance, we fool ourselves into thinking we explain the world. Religion was our first attempt at physics and astronomy...

prickly

Here is an illustration of why atheists are tired of cowering quietly in the closet, and why I'm tired of people ridiculing Unitarians. If I ever get elected to anything, just swear me in on the Constitution-- or on Why I am Not a Christian, tabbed to "A Free Man's Worship."
==

Conservatives warn of lawsuit as atheist takes office in N.C. city
Tenn.'s constitution contains similar ban

RALEIGH, N.C. — Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Constitution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me, and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.

"My father was a Baptist minister. I'm a Christian man. I have problems with people who don't believe in God," said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black Southerners...

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that federal law prohibits states from requiring any kind of religious test to serve in office when it ruled in favor of a Maryland atheist seeking appointment as a notary public.

But the federal protections don't necessarily spare atheist public officials from spending years defending themselves in court...

Bothwell was raised a Presbyterian but began questioning Christian beliefs at a young age and considered himself an atheist by the time he was 20. He's an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, and he still celebrates Christmas, often hanging ornaments on his fishhook cactus...Merry Christmas!

Easter

Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays. "Resurrection" resonates symbolically for me, especially this time of year -- opening day, the darling buds of (April and) May, and all, are a genuine "return to life" that I try to mirror all through the year but feel most deeply only in the Spring.

Saying this sort of thing opens secularists like me to ridicule and resentment from mainstream religionists who think we're poaching on their territory, or blaspheming it. Garrison Keillor loves to poke fun at Unitarians in this regard, even though it doesn't seem to me that he's really an "average" Lutheran. But I side with John Dewey's Common Faith view: religious experience (call it "spirituality" if you prefer) is too widely shared and too important to cede to the supernaturalists. I felt yesterday (with Frank Bascombe): "Good Friday is a special day for me... as though a change were on its way..." Transformation and renewal are part of nature too.

And so I'll continue to celebrate the season of renewal tomorrow in a not-wholly-heathen spirit. "There's new grass on the field. Put me in, coach, I'm ready to play."

Happy Easter.