She responded that she was a humanist. I was thrilled. Another one encountered in the wild. But without taking a breath she continued, “actually I do not know what a ‘humanist’ is. I do know that I don’t call myself a feminist because I believe in the equality of men and women.”

She asked me to explain what humanism is, since she calls herself one but doesn’t actually know what the term means. I started to explain about how humanism is an ethical tradition, but she interrupted me to continue: “I believe in the equality of all people. I extend that equality to plants and animals. We need to recognize the spirit of all living things and their equality.”

I was starting to like this woman, though thinking that it wouldn’t hurt her to interrupt less and listen more. I liked where she was coming from. I also believe in the equality of all people. I wouldn’t use the word “spirit,” but I also believe animals and plants need to be valued. We need to recognize our symbiotic relationship before it is too late. But I’m getting off topic. After decreeing the equality of all living things, my newly discovered humanist abruptly took us in an unexpected and unsettling direction.

“I think atheism is the biggest evil facing our society today. Atheists are grotesque.”

Where did that come from?

I am not going to relay the details of how our conversation ended. I will say I did not reveal that she was talking to an atheist. She didn’t really give me an opportunity. But there are a few aspects of this exchange worth talking about.

To begin with, this is not the first time the “humanist” label has been used by someone who doesn’t understand the history and current usage of the world. Just last week, Joseph Gordon Levitt made waves when he tweeted about how he learned about the definition of humanism. I do wonder how this woman would feel if she knew that what the label embraced describes a movement of consciousness presently chock full of self-described atheists.

I do regret not relieving her of her ignorance. But I’m not sure if, with the opportunity to do it over again, I would do anything differently.

On reflection, I believe the reason I didn’t say anything was because of her use of the words “evil” and “grotesque.” I think I was worried that someone who used such words to describe a group of people could conceivably turn violent if made aware that she was unwittingly aligning herself with such a group. Combine that with the simultaneous knowledge that she was speaking to such an evil, grotesque person, and I had no idea how extreme her reaction would be. This is a situation every atheist faces when choosing when, whether, and to whom to reveal their beliefs. And not always do you have such a clear understanding of the other’s position on atheism before opening (or not opening) your mouth.

But even that fear and misunderstanding of atheism isn’t what most concerns me about this conversation. What most concerns me, is that this is a woman who claims boldly that she believes in the inherent equality of all people—who even includes plants and animals in this equality. Yet, atheists are grotesque “things” off the equality spectrum that she assigns to the entire universe. How can these two convictions exist together in one person? How can a person who stridently advocates for recognizing the equality of all—including non-human life—viciously and categorically leave out a vast and growing group of people?

I hope this woman met the humanist contingent at the climate march, because I believe the climate march is exactly the kind of space where her hateful beliefs might begin to change. Ideally she met a humanist and commiserated about the state of environmental justice and hatched plans to make it right. Ideally they bonded over their concern for the environment (if only because of its impact on us humans). Ideally then, and only then, did she ask what humanism was. Because getting the answer then maybe startled her enough to reevaluate her beliefs even the tiniest bit.

This opportunity, albeit fantasy in this case, is why I want to talk about the climate march. Much has been said of the march itself and I don’t need to add my voice to that chorus except to say that I support its goals and hope it is the beginning of some real change in policy and attitude when it comes to making and keeping our planet healthy. I do want to talk about what the march represents beyond climate change.

At the march there were likely representatives of almost every incarnation of the human experience. 400,000people of every race, age, gender, religion, and even politics marched in NYC and thousands more marched in at least 166 parallel demonstrations around the world. Immigrant rights groups came. So did labor unions. Student groups, seniors, artists, scientists, native communities, and, yes, faith groups. Conservatives marched too, though they may have kept a low profile.

The humanists did assemble and marched among a larger group of interbelief participants. That means there were humanists marching alongside Muslims who were marching alongside Sikhs who were marching alongside Jews who were marching alongside Mennonites. And it doesn’t end there. Everyone in the interbelief contingent was marching alongside the other groups assembled because of their commitment to environmental justice.

For me, humanism is about equality. The core challenge humanists face is realizing that equality. The increasing support for the environmental justice movement, demonstrated by the turnout and coverage of the People’s Climate March excites me for that realization. Environmental justice is a worthy and important cause on its own merits and that conversation should be held loudly and with immediacy. But the conversation also provides an important opportunity for realizing human equality.

We all live on this planet together. We all experience the effects of climate change and environmental ravishing differently, unique to our own circumstances, but we all face the same problem. So we all have a role to play in the solution. The conversation we all must have about the solutions for environmental justice is an opportunity for even more. It is an opportunity for people who are different—who have different ideas, different life experiences, different beliefs—to meet each other through their similarities. When we meet because of a shared problem our differences become an afterthought. The differences are still there, and they can be discussed later, but our relationships will form before our differences have a chance to drive us apart. And with those relationships formed, we have a real chance to realize equality.

This was originally posted with State of Formation.

Oddly, science and religion, using their broadest notions, have been pitted against each other in a war over certainty. For many anti-theists, religion dupes the faithful with easy answers to unanswerable questions. In other words, for creating false certainty. By those religious people who see science as an adversary, science is criticized for not having all the answers. In other words, for accepting, even embracing, uncertainty. I am not trying to suggest that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible–that a person cannot be a scientist and a theist. I am merely exploring how the two disciplines deal with certainty and uncertainty.

In the US, we live in a culture where changing one’s mind is unacceptable, even in the face of new evidence or changing circumstances. (Writing for Applied Sentience, Aaron Gertler explores this phenomenon in more depth.) A cursory survey of accusations of politically flip-flopping in election rhetoric proves that point. We live in a world where questioning long held assumptions is met with derision even when the evidence falls against a popular belief. The debates over vaccines and global warming make that point.

Despite science’s foundation of questioning and acceptance of the inevitability of error, for most people, science does come with a sense of certainty. How many times was I told in college by my science major friends that they preferred science to humanities because in science there were right and wrong answers? Yes, college science majors. Maybe that was the case on their exams, but science in no way promises certainty.

Science does promise greater and greater understanding. Science is a path to ever increasing clarity. But it is the nature of that path that attracts the greatest criticism–constant questioning, continuous reassessment, and continual willingness to change. Willingness to admit new theories in the face of greater evidence is science’s greatest characteristic.

Perhaps I am confused by humanity’s hunger for certainty because for me uncertainty is much more comforting. This may be my mother’s fault. As long as I can remember she’s told me, “when you stop learning you die.” What is there to learn if we already know the answers–both to the big questions and the small? Knowing that there are always ideas and phenomena to explore gives life meaning.

The magician Penn Gillette, who makes his living not by not revealing mysteries,said, “One of the most rewarding feelings in life is the ‘aha.’” This is a pleasure uncertainty offers the world. The reward of the “aha” is not the erasure of uncertainty. Though, of course, in any specific case uncertainty has been largely erased, all the other mysteries still exist. The “aha” is so sweet because such hard work was required to create it (most of the time).

But this is not the main comfort uncertainty provides me. Knowing there are things that are unknowable, at least for me, at least in my lifetime, makes me feel like part of something bigger–this complex, infinite universe with new wonders at every turn.

I don’t know the comfort of certainty that some religions provide with supernatural explanations. So it is impossible for me to compare that comfort to mine. But for me, not knowing makes the world a miraculous place. I want to live in a miraculous, awe-inspiring world. But supernatural explanations of miracles do not induce awe. Their certainty does not inspire. The vast array of wonder in this world excites me often because of their mystery. The never-ending search for natural explanations fuel me. My world is full of unexplained miracles. And I like that. It is not the uncertainty that makes them miracles. It is the journey of discovery that makes them miraculous.

This piece was originally published with Applied Sentience. Read the original here.

]]> http://interbelief.com/why-i-love-being-uncertain/feed/ 0 http://interbelief.com/why-are-there-so-many-secret-atheists/ http://interbelief.com/why-are-there-so-many-secret-atheists/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:00:00 +0000 http://interbelief.com/?p=414 [Read more...]]]> Recently I attended a meeting for atheists and agnostics. The primary purpose of the group, as I understand it, is to function as a community of support. To start the meeting everyone was asked to introduce themselves by relating their religious history. Having just recently written about my how my religious history is unusual for an atheist , I was curious what I would hear. I was worried that everything I had written would be contradicted just days after it was published. It wasn’t.

Mostly what I heard was not surprising. Most of the people present had been raised in families of various degrees of religious adherence. Several people came from extremely religious families. Their stories were of not fitting in. Their family’s religion didn’t make sense to them. They felt like frauds participating in religious rituals. Finally telling their families of their true beliefs resulted in strained relationships or, in at least one case, total abandonment by their families. Finding communities of like minded people, like this one, was life saving.

Other stories were of less religious upbringings. These were households that only went to church when the grandparents were in town. They only attended temple during the high holidays. Of course they believed in God, but that belief didn’t have much impact on day to day lives. When they realized they actually did not believe, the biggest change was their perspective on their life. How they lived it remained much the same.

There was one other person who, like me, was not raised in a religious family. Like me, this person’s extended family was religious, but their immediate family was not. There was some tension among her extended family about their beliefs, but by and large they were not an issue.

What surprised me was that when several people “came out” to their religious family members, some family members revealed their atheistic beliefs in turn. One woman discovered that her mother, father, and only sibling were all also atheists. Her entire nuclear family had all been acting for the sake of the others for decades. The parents, though atheists when their children where born, did not want to indoctrinate their children. They took their children to a church in the denomination of their extended family. They allowed, indeed encouraged, their children to attend churches of other denominations with their friends. When they wanted to go to church camp they did. The two sisters both explored several religions but ultimately decided none of them made sense for them. But they continued to feign Christianity when the family was together.

Why am I telling this story to an interfaith community? Because despite the evidence from their childhood that their parents were open to any number of religious traditions, both sisters were afraid to tell their parents that they were atheists. Atheist beliefs are viewed, even subconsciously, as something fundamentally different than theist beliefs. I don’t know how many times I have witnessed interfaith discussions that concludes with “at least we all believe in God.”

I was dismayed at this atheist meeting by how quickly my comments about my work with religious people were dismissed. I was told that the work I wanted to do was losing battle. The only worthwhile work in this area was to protect nonbeliever’s rights as religious people are constantly working to take them away. I, of course, stood my ground explaining why interbelief engagement is both necessary and worthwhile.

Not everyone spoke against my work. Some quietly applauded it. But those who spoke up spoke loudly. These were the people who had been hurt by religion and religious people. They want nothing to do with religious people. Not ever.

After the meeting I got to thinking about the presence of these two kinds of atheism: secret atheists and anti-theists. It reminded me that interbelief work is not only about the big picture, as it is most often portrayed. Usually when interbelief moments are reported it’s when rabbis are invited to the Vatican. It’s when interfaith services are held in the wake of a tragedy. It’s when a church donates it’s space to a Muslim community that does not yet have it’s own building. These are wonderful moments. I support them. It’s hard enough getting positive stories into the news.

Hearing these stories made me remember that while interbelief work at the community, national, and international level is important, it is ultimately about the personal level. It’s about keeping families together. If we can’t keep families together, what hope is there for bring communities separated by race, religion, and nationality together?

This post was originally published with State of Formation. Read it here.