Spiritual Humanism News

Recently humanist groups in the UK have purchased ads on the sides of buses to promote free thought. Now the Mansfield Ohio Church of Christ is inadvertently promoting the same message.

In another example of the recent trend of atheism themed billboards the church proclaimed, “There is no god.” In smaller print they also inform the motorists of Park Avenue East at South Adams Street and on U.S. 30 at U.S. 42 “Don’t believe everything you hear.” The campaign is the handy work of Christian minister Frank Moore.

While the local Mid Ohio Atheists group thinks the billboard promotes their own message, some confused Christians have complained. The purpose of the billboard was to make people think more about their beliefs (and promote the church’s website). In this regard I think it is a success, but as they say, “Be careful what you wish for.”

The attitude of not believing everything you hear is called skepticism. It is the only way to arrive at truth. Just because some one makes a statement is no reason to accept it as fact or use it as a basis of action or moral decision making. A statement may be true or false and without a method of verification it must only be “taken with a grain of salt.”

That is the basic difference between religious beliefs that are based on “faith” and Spiritual Humanism. Belief in any system that is based on prophecies or the supposed word of god that is impossible to verify is a flawed way to make moral and life or death decisions. The morality of contraception, acceptance of different sexual orientations, the very nature of good and evil, must never be based on faith. Faith is flawed.

Instead we must use the best method of verifying the true nature of the universe that mankind has ever been able to devise. The method that has provided all of the medicine that we use to keep people alive. The method that increased the production of food that feed the billions of folks in our world today. The method that discovered and mapped out the laws of electricity, telecommunications, and aerospace.

You will not find this method of truth and discovery in the bible, the koran, the book of mormon or the hindu verdas. No book of faith promotes this miraculous system. It’s called the scientific method. Without it our lives would be a far more miserable and nasty experience.

If you are interested in promoting a religion based on reason and the certainty that can only be attributed to the scientific method, then you need to learn more about Spiritual Humanism and the possibility of becoming an ordained minister through our church.

Don’t believe everything you hear.

It’s been nearly ten years of fear mongering, jingoism and seemingly endless war. Bin Laden was a very small and evil man. Frankly I am surprised that it took this long for the United States to finally deliver justice. Now the job is done. I am certain he lived in fear these past nine and a half years. Perhaps tossing in turning every night, disturbed by nightmares of the thundering blades of American Black Hawk helicopters that he knew would one night come for him.

He is gone and that’s a good thing. Now it is time for America to get our house in order. It is time to end the wars and occupation that Bin Laden provoked. His goal was to pull us in to conflict with all of the Muslim world so that they might unite under his banner to battle against us. In this he failed. We have prevailed and now it is time for us to move on to face even greater threats and challenges.

There have been a legion of opportunists that have manipulated the public with fear of Bin Laden to fatten their own purses to the detriment of the public treasury. They get richer while we spill blood and literally trillions of dollars on wars that we no longer need to fight.

Bin Laden is dead, The War on Terror has been won. Now is the time to close the vast majority of our foreign military bases and bring home all the troops. Our government spends years bickering over how to cut the outlandish expenditures that threaten to cripple our economy and country for generations to come. It is time to force them to take the low hanging fruit.

Call your Senators and Congressional Representatives. Write letters to newspapers and phone in to those crazy Talk Radio shows. Blog it, Tweet it, let the world know we have won the War on Terror and it is time to Bring Home the Troops.

The Spring Equinox is today March 20th 2011. Also known as the Vernal Equinox, the official start of spring occurs today at 7:21 pm Eastern Daylight Time. If you are interested in the spiritual aspects of the natural event take a look at my Spiritual Equinox 2011 celebration post.

Have a Happy Spring Equinox!

The Spring Equinox, being astronomical in nature, is in the minds of many classified as nothing more then a dusty curiosity.  At first glance the Equinox might not appear a profound event that has great bearing on you personally. But for some people the timeless wonder of the rhythmic cycles of nature are more spiritually empowering then any doctrine concocted by humans.

For whatever mysterious reason, billions of years ago, long before life ever appeared on Earth, the planet’s axis of rotation became tilted. The big blue ball we call home skewed its daily rotation some 23.5 degrees away from the plain of its yearly orbit around the Sun. The effects of this on the evolution of life have been both big and small. We living things, have adapted to the yearly sequence of the seasons. Throughout the long and varied history of our biosphere, the need to adapt to the seasonal cycles has guided the course of evolution.

Each season has its own flavor, and atmosphere. The essential nature of spring is hope. Even though the whole of winter’s bluster has not entirely faded, there is a change in the air. The days have slowly been growing longer to noticeable degree. There are no fruits in vegetables coming in for harvest but the crocus has sprouted and come into bloom. The trees maybe be still barren but the sap starts to flow. By instinct you can feel somewhere deep down inside that the world is about to change. Great things are afoot, and if you are to make the most of these springtime transformations you must prepare yourself now.

My personal feeling is that we love the rites of spring because they awaken some deep internal impulses akin to being roused from winter hibernation. We stretch and yawn, and groggily stumble out of our winter dens to sniff at the slightest hint of growth and re-birth that wafts through the air. Something primeval comes alive inside us.

For thousands of years cultures around the globe have seen fit to mark this time of year with Spring Equinox Celebrations and Rites. Any discussion of the spiritual nature of the Spring Equinox would not be complete without mentioning its connection to ancient fertility rituals. Rabbits, chicks and decorated eggs have been used as symbols of the prolific fertility of springtime since before the christian era. These ancient religious icons were simply too powerful to be suppressed. Instead they were just misappropriated and associated with Easter, a chrisitan holiday that scheduled to the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the Spring Equinox.

Similarly hot cross buns so popular this time of year most likely represented the pagan concept of the wheel of the year split into the four seasons and not a representation of the christian cross at all. Rather then a representation of the implement of the execution of Jesus it is a symbol of the cycles of nature.

If you are searching for ways to celebrate the Spring Equinox that incorporates a rational view of the universe then you may use these ancient pagan offerings. The wish for fertility at heart speaks of optimism and hope for the future. The cycles of nature are something we know and explore through the scientific method. These are themes you may be thinking about this Spring Equinox.

You can celebrate the Spring Equinox in whichever manner you find most spiritual moving. To do so you may find it beneficial to become an ordained minister of the Church Spiritual Humanism. Spiritual Humanism is a world view that fuses the human need for a personal connection to nature and the cosmos with an understanding of the universe based on the scientific method. The church offers ordination as a minister to aid you in your own spiritual journey.

I just want to wish every one a Happy Winter Solstice and I hope you take the time to reflect on the spiritual continuity that the celebration of this celestial event engenders.

If you are interested in learning more about spiritual experiences ground in a scientifically based view of our universe you should learn more about ordination as a minister by the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

Next week is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and one of the most religiously significant events of the natural world. Long ago, well before our ancestors created written records, we lived more closely aligned with nature. Before the advent of clocks and electricity you got up with the sunrise and for the most part went to bed with its setting.

Arising with the morning Sun every day one cannot help but observe that the daily ratio of daylight to night varies through the course of the yearly cycle. During the periods of shorting daylight, with the scarcity of food and warmth that ate autumn brings, it is easy to attach a spiritual significance to the annual solar cycle and the return of the Sun.

The turning point when the days stop getting shorter is a point of hope. Even though the full winter seasons lays ahead, it too will pass as the Sun’s rays grow in strength and duration. Individual people, kingdoms and empires all come and go, but the Sun is powerful beacon that always returns.

Discerning the Sun’s path and period helped motivate our development of mathematical and astronomical knowledge. Recognizing it as one star among the countless others in our universe helped us acknowledge the truly unique and precious thing that the occurrence of life here on Earth really is.

Celebrate the Winter Solstice this year by keeping a light or candle burning through the longest night. When you light it take a moment to ponder the clockwork like path of the Earth in orbit around our star, and the special significance the return of warmth and sunlight means to all life here on Earth.

Happy Solstice.
photo credit Donald Macleod

A couple of Swiss tourists recently paid $1,300 to have their wedding vows renewed on the beautiful beaches of the Maldives. However instead of the spiritually moving ceremony in the language and manner of the locals they were the target of a tirade of vulgar insults, religiously bigoted profanities and hateful curses.

The French speaking couple visited the predominately Muslim South Pacific Islands in the second week of October. They stayed at the luxury vacation resort the Vilu Reef Beach and Spa and paid extra for the ceremony, which was performed by wedding officiant Hussein Didi. Didi is also the food service and beverage manager at the resort.

A video posted on YouTube shows Didi directing vulgar abuse at the couple in a pray-like tone while speaking in local Dhivehi language. Other hotel employees are over heard calling out and chanting insults

Subtitles in the video show Didi is reciting the resort’s work schedule and the Maldives Penal code for fornication. “Under penal code clause seven, fornication is now legal.”

He continues, “I am telling you that the marriage of yours cannot be said to be a legal marriage, because you are not legitimate to be married in a legal marriage because one of you is an unbeliever and the other one also doesn’t even believe in any unbeliever’s religion.”

Then he curses the offspring of their nuptial union, “”You fornicate and make a lot of children. You drink and you eat pork. Most of the children that you have are marked with spots and blemishes. These children that you have are bastards.”

Didi fills out the matrimonial ritual by speaking of bestiality, sexual infections and “frequent fornication by homosexuals”. Afterward the video shows the couple planting a coconut tree, during which the celebrant makes comment on the bride’s breasts.

Two weeks later the video was posted on the Internet it quickly gained over one hundred of thousand views and prompted an official reaction from the island nation’s government. Ismail Yasir, the islands’ Deputy Tourism Minister, said “We would like to assure everyone who would like to come to Maldives that we will take such incidents seriously and we will take action. We don’t want for such incidents to be characterized as normal in the Maldives and I am sure it is not so.”

It has also been reported that Maldivian police have arrested the hotel employee who conducted the ceremony. “We have started investigations and are treating this as a very serious matter,” police spokesman Ahmed Shiyam.

Respect and tolerance for the religious beliefs of others is fundamental to peace and prosperity in the contemporary environment of globalized civilization. But tolerance is a two way street. Groups that are incapable of  tolerating ideas different from their own forfeit the right to any special consideration or even basic respect of their beliefs.

Peter Steinfels wrote an interesting article for Commonweal about the current crisis in membership in the Catholic Church. Although he is writing from a Catholic perspective he points out that according to a 2008 Pew study one third of the people raised Catholic in the US leave the Church. Peter claims that if these ex-Catholics formed their own church it would be the second biggest in America.

There are 70 million adult Catholics in the US. If one third leave that amounts to 23 million ex-Catholics. Here’s were it gets interesting. The Pew study also says that while half of the people that leave the Church join other, mostly Protestant denominations, however the other half, that would be some 11.5 million people have no religious affiliation and many of them are non-believers.

The leadership of the Catholic Church is out of touch with the concerns and issues of the people living in this modern world. Because the Church still has so much power and overt influence in the legal and governmental arenas this situation poses a danger to the public at large. Issues such as birth control and the right of all people to be legally married regardless of sexual orientation, are too important to be decided by a backward and morally corrupt institution.

The Church of Spiritual Humanism promotes the concept that religious and moral beliefs must be based on the firmest foundation humankind has ever discovered – the scientific method. Simply put if there is no verifiable proof for something then we must not base our moral beliefs and actions on it. If you are interested in learning more about religion based on reason then visit the Spiritual Humanism web site.

A just published survey of religious knowledge paints a picture of spiritual awareness among agnostics and atheists and deeply ignorant believers. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey asked 32 questions about world religions, the bible, and US Constitutional principles to 3,412 Americans.

Not surprisingly self identified atheists and agnostics scored the highest number of correct answers, 21 out of 32. Next were Jews and ironically Mormons with an average of about 20 correct answers each. Protests got 16 correct answers, while Catholics scored 15.

What the survey doesn’t address is what occurs first in a person, spiritual wisdom or the lack of endorsement in supernatural explanations. Do people examine and study many different God based religions and then eventually come to the conclusion that that there is something wrong that all of them share? Or do they start out as rationalists to begin with, and simply exert more effort educating themselves about religious topics? Perhaps for the purpose of debate and discourse with believers.

A classic chicken and egg paradox, but if we wish to rid the world of the evil caused by such superstition and ignorance we need to know how to eradicate it at its source. To make the world a better place people need to base their actions, ethics, and morals not on supernatural faiths which by definition requires blind beliefs that can never be proven, but instead on the source of all human advancement and knowledge. That is the scientific method. If something cannot be verified via trial and error then no one should base their moral actions on it.

If you would like to learn more about religion and how it is compatible with science then you need to visit the Church of Spiritual Humanism’s web site. Spiritual Humanism offers every one the chance to be ordained as a minister in order to perform religious services like weddings, and baby namings, funerals and inspirational invocations. All based on rationalism and the knowledge we have gained via the scientific method.

It’s been a hot summer here, but its end is near. Has it only been three months since the Summer Solstice? Somehow it seems longer. The Earth has moved through some 585 million miles to arrive at the Autumnal Equinox. A quarter of its orbit round our star. We have moved along with it, swept along, bound to the surface of our home world by the strong and reassuringly familiar ties of the force of gravity.

The Earth, just like a giant spinning gyroscope, has kept its axis pointing in the same direction as we travel about its grand circle. Now we arrive on one of two special days when the dark of night and sunbeams of daylight are equals on all parts of the globe. The day where people everywhere share an odd sort of equality imposed by the celestial geometry and immutable physical laws of the Universe.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere this Equinox is the first day of autumn. The humidity has suddenly disappeared from the air. The hazy vistas of summer have been usurped by the clear and crisp autumnal skies. Paradoxically the increased atmospheric transparency makes Sun light seem brighter and the shadows darker, and the difference between them more strikingly delineated. The soft rustle of leaves in the wind is perceptibly amplified as the trees draw back their chlorophyll and moisture and the breeze gusts with more vigor.

Autumnal Equinox Traditions

Traditionally Autumnal Equinox celebrations were tied to the harvest and the end of the growing season. Fall is the natural time for a feast celebration. Fruits and vegetables have matured and ripened and are in plentiful supply.  Autumnal Equinox rituals are often associated with Harvest Festivals. The date of celebration of the harvest is linked to date of the Fall Equinox in most traditions.

For your own Autumnal Equinox ritual try incorporating a harvest element. If you have a garden use your own crop. If not just use some leaves and stems from plants growing near your home.

In many traditions people sang songs as they celebrated the turn of the season and arrival of fall. A contemporary rendition of a 16^th century Harvest Festival song is:

“Merry, merry, merry,

Cheery, cheery, cheery,

Trowel the black bowl to me,

Hey derry, derry, with a poupe and a lerry,

I’ll trowel it again to thee:

Hooky, hooky, we have shorn,

And we have bound,

And we have brought Harvest

Home to town.”

The “hooky” being referred to here is the hook of the scythe of the reaper as they gather the last of crops from the fields.

The Church of Spiritual Humanism seeks to fuse a modern scientifically based understanding of our universe with spiritually inspiring traditions and rituals. If you feel the calling to be a spiritual leader within a religion based on reason then you need to learn more about becoming an ordained minister of Spiritual Humanism. Ordination through our church is free and lasts a lifetime.