I was reading this article here about the conference: http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/27173.shtml

Rabbi Wine ticked me off!

Rushdie, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, and the Rev. William Murry (a Unitarian Universalist minister and scholar) represented Islam, Judaism, and Christianity in the “Towards an Abrahamic Humanism” panel. Wine talked about presenting humanism to those whose behavior is secularized, but who still identify culturally with their religious heritage. “They belong to us, but we don’t know how to reach them. We only know how to collect the wounded.” But, he warned, “They are turned off by meetings of the wounded. They don’t know how to relate to a militant group of secularists.”

I don’t belong to anyone! Does Christianity have a culture? I didn’t know that it did. I know Judaism does, but not Chrisitianity. Just because I went from Secular with some influence of religious relatives, to whatever my mother became when I was a teen, spent 20 years in the Episcopal Church as an adult and finally became a Humanist doesn’t mean I belong to the Episcoplains or whoever. There is no freakin’ culture there! And if there is, I’ve rejected most of that. I’m a Humanist. I do not want to go back to any of that.

Nor do I want anyone to play tug-of-war with me. I made this choice as an adult after a lot of research and self-educating. I know where I came from and I know where I’m going (or I hope I do). I don’t belong to the religious, but I can deal with the more liberal religious. I am not anti-religion or anti-God, I just don’t want to be there anymore. I don’t belong to anyone, but I choose to be a Humanist.

Who IS this Wine person anyway? Sounds to me like more church dominance and THAT is one of the things I rejected.

The supernatural cannot be easily brushed away. I am sorry to say that you were actually barking the wrong tree in your efforts to explore church. You see these churches are not what they are supposed to be. Personally, I do not belong anymore to any one of them.

If you really want to explore firsthand the supernatural, I suggest that you visit http://www.the2keys.com and judge, after examining the evidence, whether or not there is something really scary in the “cause and effect” of Jesus Christ’s death. If you fail to personally experience the supernatural in this incident, I should be very happy to join your movement.

Sincerely,

Ephrem

–this was supposed to be a humanist conference, right? Did I miss something?

Incidentally: did Dar Williams ever take the stage? We all got up from the kids’ table after the first ‘bonus’ hour of speeches was over.

I left with many thoughts and questions and ideas. One of them, regarding “community”— how is that fostered in a nonreligious group?

On that note, I appreciated that you came over to people, including me, on Friday, to introduce yourself. I was feeling a little lost and it meant a lot to me that you did that.

-Leah

I also agree, substituting words for God or Earth does not change the meaning much, esp if words like “the creation”. “The creation” infers there was a creator and if Epstein is not backing down from Atheistic ideals, then he should speak out about this. Although I do understand the struggles with finding new words for Spiritual when talking about feelings transcendence, which is really a chemical reaction in the amygdala and/or frontal lobe along with some other parts of the brain triggered by an external stimulus or stimuli. I experienced this many times and esp with my first new born son the first time I held him and we looked into each others eyes.

However, the external stimuli was that I was holding a new life in my arms, that I gave birth to, for the very first time and not some sort of divinity interacting with us. There was no god involved with the feeling of transcendence seeing my newborn son for the first time, but rather awe and wonder at what I had done and the beauty of my son that triggered a chemical reaction in my brain. Those who have had children know exactly the feeling I am talking about, yet we have no words in the English language for that except the traditional words referring to feelings of transcendence and even then it’s a struggle to find words that don’t sound religiously oriented.

This neuro-chemistry has been shown in brain scans and even Sam Harris has discussed this at least once (his article with his trip to the Holy Lands), so there is a science to it, but even he says there is not deity involved. So, the question is, and this is being discussed on some other Humanists boards as well, to describe such things without sounding like we are referring to a religious experience?

I’m wondering if that is the struggle they had with this “benediction” and alike. Although they could have called a spade a spade and instead of saying people passed [away], said they had died. There is no religious inference to the word “died”. Spiritual Humanism does not include a belief in the supernatural nor does it necessarily use religious words either. In fact, it makes every attempt to find different words. Now Religious Humanism, like Sea of Faith, doesn’t seem to make much attempt to avoid such words.

So, maybe the issue is, with all the different forms of Humanism- Secular, Ethical, Spritual, Religious, etc,- finding a common means of communication that we all can agree with. “The Creation” is not going to get it though. I think just saying “earth” is the best choice. If you mean love then say “love”, but don’t use it for substitution for something else. That seems like a cover up to me and what did a deity have to do with this gathering anyway?

This comes dangerously close to blogwhoring, so I’ll add that this was my first conference of the type and that I enjoyed myself. I hope there are more to come.