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The Ploughshares Fund, a not-for-profit that works for peace and disarmament (see their rating on Charity Navigator), asks us to remember the original purpose of Mother’s Day, which was to promote peace, not just make pancakes.

You can go to their site, rediscovermothersday.org, to read about the history of Mother’s Day and to make donations in your favorite mother’s name to promote peace. Then you can make pancakes.

Last Sunday’s audio recording of my address on democracy and war is now up on our podcasts page.

For those of you who have been considering listening to some of the online addresses but don’t know where to start, here are the most popular platforms of 2006-07. All are about a half-hour long and available on our podcasts page:

By Kate:
1. March 18, 2007: “Ethical Sex”
2. February 26, 2006: “The Religious Left and Civil Rights” [specifically about LGBT rights]
3. January 8, 2006: “It’s not easy bein’ green” [veganism and dealing with diverse ethical views]
4. April 9, 2006: “Is it time to grow up yet?” [Gen X ethics and dilemmas]
5. November 12, 2006: “Infinite Interrelatedness” [The metaphysics behind the ethics of Ethical Culture]

By guests:
1. March 26, 2006, Jim Hightower, “Health care for the privileged few? Why not health care for all?!”
2. February 11, 2007, Dr. George Johnson, “Darwin Day: Darwin confronts intelligent design”
3. April 2, 2006, Dr. Beldon Lane, “Lessons in paying attention: Lao-Tzu and the Taoist tradition”
4. January 21, 2007, Rev. Rebecca Armstrong, “Love: Its mysteries, myths and broken promises”
5. March 25, 2007, Dr. Fred Rottnek, “Patriotism, public health and health care”

Sorry for the clumsy post title; just wanted to get your attention quick. Tonight on PBS’sBill Moyers Journal, two of the three sections have links to Ethical Culture: Moyers is interviewing Jonathan Miller, creator of the History of Unbelief series that the American Ethical Union is co-sponsoring. I don’t know if our local station will carry it–their description of tonight’s Moyers’ show doesn’t even mention Jonathan Miller. (Maybe they just ran out of space.) Moyers is also interviewing Jerry Miller (no relation), one of the many wrongly-convicted people saved from execution by the Innocence Project, which received the AEU’s Elliott-Black Award in 2000.

If you miss the show or want to see past interviews, they become available on the web site after they air.

(By the way, the opening night speaker at this year’s AEU Assembly is David Kaczynski, who turned in his brother the Unabomber and now serves as director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. If you’ll be in Long Island on June 14, come hear him speak.)

Harvard University hosted a wonderful conference of “new humanists” recently (as far as I can tell, the new humanists [Rushdie, E. O Wilson] are different from the new atheists [Dawkins, Harris], by being not quite so pissed off and more open to religious humanisms such as Ethical Culture, though there are exceptions to this rule on both sides). You can read an article about the conference that quotes Ethical Leader Bob Berson of the Northern Westchester Society (also my mentor during leadership training, and someone to whom I’m deeply thankful).

The conference was organized by Harvard’s new humanist chaplain, Greg M. Epstein. Ethical Culture leaders have founded humanist chaplaincies at Columbia University and Adelphi University in New York. A humanist chaplaincy provides a place for ethical and spiritual support and guidance to students who have humanistic beliefs.

As far as I know, no St. Louis school has a humanist chaplaincy. Maybe we should find out if the students would like one.

I finally solved my commuting ecological dilemma–I bought a scooter. It gets me where I need to go in a timely manner (which walking and public transportation often can’t around here), when I get to my destination I’m not soaked with sweat (the problem with biking in this climate), and it gets great gas mileage. The only problem is . . . it’s fun. So it’s tempting to use it when I don’t really need to, which would partly defeat the whole trying-to-be-ecological part, great mileage or no. Oh well, nothing’s perfect.

If you’ve calculated your ecological footprint (a good thing to do every Earthday), you know that air travel uses a lot of energy and creates a lot of pollution. A company called Terrapass (which I just learned about through the web site livingwithed, which I learned about through noimpactman–it’s an eco-surfing day) will calculate the carbon emissions of a trip and let you offset your pollution through investing in alternative energy.

For instance, my trip to New York in June for the American Ethical Union assembly will add 796 pounds of CO2 to our atmosphere. For $9.95, Terrapass will invest in a comparable amount of alternative energy production (such as by investing in wind farms and solar arrays). Terrapass is independently audited to ensure that my $9.95 will actually be invested in alternative energy and not, say, the vice fund.

If you’re a savvy-investor type, you could invest directly in alternative energy every year to offset your pollution and help us all move toward a sustainable future. For those of us less savvy, Terrapass seems like a good idea.

I’ve just finished The Deserter’s Tale by Joshua Key (“as told to” Lawrence Hill). It’s a memoir of a U.S. soldier from Oklahoma who was sent to Iraq in 2003 and became so disgusted with the war and the conduct of his own countrymen (and himself) that he deserted and fled with his family to Canada, where he still awaits a court appeal to see if they’ll be able to stay.

The descriptions of what went on in Iraq are horrific and would shake any faith in humanity. I don’t know if they’re true, or how much they may be exaggerated, but given Abu Ghraib, some of the prosecutions of soldiers going on now, and the stories that came out of the Vietnam War and every other war, if Key didn’t actually see everything he says he did, I’m pretty sure someone else did.

I realized while reading that on some level I bought the line that everything possible is being done to protect civilians, and on another level I’ve known this couldn’t be true. Wars and armies are not organized to protect civilians; they’re organized to kill enemies. But as long as I believe the lie I don’t have to work very hard to change things. I can file my taxes and help fund the war instead of taking a stand and facing the consequences.

Key talks about knowing right from wrong and yet often doing wrong anyway. Clearly belief and even values are not enough in many circumstances. A lot of the beating, robbing, raping, and unprosecuted murders Key describes happened in part because the soldiers were pumped up and sent out to find weapons that aren’t there and to fight enemies they hardly ever get to fight. The insurgents attack and run, or plant bombs and hide, or blow themselves up. The civilians are the only people left for the soldiers to take out their fear, anger, and humiliation on. This may also explain in part why Iraqis are now killing each other. It’s easier for Iraqis to take out their fear, anger, and humiliation on their neighbors than the U.S. soldiers. (I know the religious reasons as well, but they’ve managed to live together peacefully at other times.)

How often do those of us under more “normal” circumstances fail to live up to our values and take out our fears and angers on the innocent? Adler said that seeing suffering and wrongdoing in the world is an opportunity not only for action but also for looking in ourselves and recognizing the potential for cruelty within each of us–forewarned is forearmed, or so we hope. I don’t know how I would act if I were a soldier in Iraq under these impossible and increasingly indefensible circumstances. Support our troops–get them home and get them help.

Yesterday, the Missouri state legislature started debating an omnibus bill (SCS SB 370, 375, 432) that would further weaken sex education and family planning clinics in Missouri. All the available evidence, and two seconds of clear thought, shows that weakening sex education and access to birth control means more unwanted pregnancies.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban on one of the safest kinds of late-term abortion. The “reasoning” of the decision is bizarre and paternalistic—as Justice Ginsberg, THE ONLY WOMEN ON THE COURT, ably explains: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-380.ZD.html.

I recently heard someone use the term “government-mandated childbirth.” Are Americans really going to allow the U.S. to become a theocracy? What’s amazing is the depth of denial of adults who wish children would never grow up, of people who have sex (as most people do, a lot) who wish that other people wouldn’t, of people who don’t want children (witness the low birthrate) who wish that everybody else would have them.

It seems to me based on massive Freudian projection, in which those overcome with guilt for their own dirty-bad desires seek to punish other people in their place. As someone trying to be more compassionate, I hope the theocrats learn joyously to embrace their own sexuality; but if they don’t, can’t they at least learn to punish themselves instead of the rest of us?

The killings at Virginia Tech are horrifying and saddening. And immediately the questions: How could someone do this? Why do such things happen? Today at least as many innocent people will be killed in Iraq, in Darfur, yet those places are far away (if you are reading this in America), and those conflicts seem not quite as completely senseless–except all murder is equally senseless and is equally . . . evil? Sad? Mad? I tend to believe mad, because the only way I can understand murderers is as severely mentally ill–as never having developed or as having lost the understanding that other people are real.

There is always the desire to jump to fix-it, make-it-better, make-sure-it-doesn’t-happen-to-us-or-those-we-love mode, by mounting an argument for stricter gun control, or an argument for everyone to carry concealed weapons for self-protection; by blaming the American culture of violence, or by pointing out that violence overall is actually down despite this latest horror.

Perhaps when we learn more about the killer there can be actions to take to decrease easy gun access or increase mental-health care. But today all we can do is comfort the living and hold on more tightly to each other and our ideal: “May the humanity that is within every person be held more and more precious, and regarded with ever-deepening reverence.” And please, soon?

This Sunday after platform we will hold a special forum for those who would like to share their thoughts and feelings about this tragedy. If you have readings or other materials that help you in painful and confusing times, please bring those to share as well.

Just wanted to share a couple interesting blog entries I ran across:

https://www.queercents.com/2006/04/17/god-and-mammon/ : Primarily about religion and charity, but what particularly struck me is a couple planning children going church-shopping because they believe that raising children in an agnostic household would be too scary for the children. I’d like to hear what any agnostic parents reading this think.

https://plonkee.blogspot.com/2007/04/atheists-should-tithe.html : An English humanist makes the case for tithing to charity.

Here are some links related to my April Fools’ Day platform (which you can listen to at https://ethicalstl.org/libraryaudio.html):

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yes, the Ethical Society accepts dual affiliation.
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God”
The Onion‘s post-9/11 article “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule”

Any other links to share, fun-loving readers?

When I was studying psychology I read about the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, in which a number of psychologically healthy students were divided into two groups to play prison in the basement of a Stanford building. Within days, the “guards” were abusing the “prisoners” so badly that the experiment was called off. The experiment showed how having absolute power over others can corrupt our ethics, as well as the power of context and role to shape our actions.

The head researcher of the Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo, drew parallels between the experiment and the Abu Ghraib scandal. While not letting the low-level guards who became torturers off the hook entirely, Zimbardo argued that instead we should be indicting the system at the prison and the people who set it up, as torture and abuse were practically inevitable under those circumstances. He has now published a book called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, and you can read a transcript of a supportive interview with Zimbardo at https://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/30/1335257–it has some riveting quotes from student “guards” and “prisoners” from the experiment. You can also read a rebuttal to Zimbardo’s arguments about the Abu Ghraib guards at https://www.slate.com/id/2100419/. What do you think? Was the problem the “bad apples,” the “bad barrel,” both, or something else?

There’s also a related but much more positive article on what the Stanford Experiment teaches us about heroism and how we can “nurture the heroic imagination” at https://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/greatergood.pdf. We do have the power to act for good even in the worst circumstances–we just need to remember that we do.

The Center for Disease Control has recommended routine vaccination of girls age 11/12 against HPV, a virus that causes cervical and other deadly cancers. You can read the report at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr5602.pdf
(Thanks to Alan E. for the link).

For more poetic reading, Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” is available at poets.org (I read from section 9).

Just back from a wonderful weekend in San Jose, visiting the forming Ethical Culture Society of Silicon Valley. It’s good to see Ethical Culture spreading on the West Coast. There were planning meetings, workshops on dialog and meditation, and a platform (“Spirituality without God?”) that drew old friends and newcomers, young parents, octogenarians, and everyone in between. The Silicon Valley group doesn’t have a website yet (oh, the irony), but if you’re interested in an ethical community and you live in that area or have family or friends who do, contact me and I’ll get you more information.

The podcast for last Sunday’s platform address on “Ethical Sex” will be up soon, and since I’m about to leave for a long weekend in California visiting the new Ethical Society of Silicon Valley, let me now give credit where it’s due. The platform is dedicated to my mother, Nancy, whose passion for women’s equality and open good sense about sexuality influenced me to no end. A few people have told me that they found my platform “brave”; I find it sad that approaching the topic of sex with positive common sense should be considered anything but banal, but these days in America that seems to be the case.

Speaking of truly brave women, let me recommend these books again: How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, by Christina Page; and Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, by Judith Levine.

A U.S. Congressman has publicly declared that he does not believe in a supreme being. A recent poll (mentioned in the article) says that 55% of Americans would not vote for an atheist, but I don’t think anti-atheism sentiment is really that bad. Those kind of poll results simply measure stereotypes–it doesn’t say much about how people would feel about any particular atheist (or Mormon, Muslim, etc.). Many folks used to think they didn’t like gay people, because they didn’t know they knew any; now that they know that people they already like, admire, and love happen to be gay, they’re shedding many of the old stereotypes and fears. I believe the same will happen with atheists, which is why I’m glad Rep. Stark is willing to be public about his beliefs. Many voters fear that atheists are immoral, and the more openly atheist politicians there are, the clearer it will be that supernatural beliefs are irrelevant: all politicians are immoral.

Thanks to Stephen L for sending this link.

Being a small (but scrappy) movement, it’s nice when we’re acknowledged in the wider culture sometimes. On a Prairie Home Companion a few years ago, Garrison Keillor referred to Ethical Culture as “the Jewish version of Unitarian. Also known as A.W.C. — Atheists With Children.” Not necessary an accurate joke, since we have many members who are neither of Jewish background, atheist, nor parents, but in the ballpark.

Today, Tony Hileman, Leader of the NY Society for Ethical Culture, sends word that the hint for 34 across in this morning’s Washington Post print edition is “Ethical Culture Movement’s founder.” It’s five letters beginning with A. . . . (Note the online crossword is different.)

In this clip, late-night comic Craig Ferguson talks about the cruelty of humor and his struggle with alcoholism. It’s a remarkable moment of true humanity on TV. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch this video. (I know some of you don’t like AA, but he only makes a reference to it at the very end.)

When I tell people that I do not follow or believe in the Bible or other religious scriptures, I am often asked, incredulously, what I base my ethics on. I find this curious, because as far as I can tell, no scriptures, holy books, ancient philosophies, etc., give us a moral code to follow. Rather, humans have innate intuitions about morality that are continuing to evolve as we learn more about the world and cause and effect and interact with more and more different types of people and try to all get along. That’s why when we read ancient texts now, we mostly agree that the bits on kindness and mercy are good and “timeless,” and the bits on stoning people to death for adultery or cutting their hands off for stealing are unfortunate products of their time and no longer to be followed. We decide this within our consciences and in discussion among each other. The gods, prophets, and ancient thinkers have not been providing errata or updates. (“BTW, the part about murdering the children of your enemies being okay? I changed my mind about that.–God”) Perhaps the next time someone tells me that they follow or believe in religious scriptures, I should say, “Really? Then what do you base your ethics on?”

If you like these sorts of things, check out this rather long but very interesting debate on faith and reason between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris. Although it’s a shame that they skim so quickly past what they agree on, I’m impressed that they remain civil.

Toward the bottom Harris expresses a longing for “a fully reasonable and nondenominational spirituality.” I await his pledge check.

Thanks to Gwydion for this link.