Unitarian Sermon: "Why I Am an Atheist"

Gee, maybe I could get a Sunday gig after all....

A contemplative reader says he heard a good sermon at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Sioux Falls last Sunday. The headliner: Ronald Knapp, minister emeritus of First Unitarian Church of Omaha, who told the congregants why he is an atheist.

My correspondent forwards a 2007 PDF edition of Reverend (?) Knapp's sermon:

If we can - if the human race can - find a way to say “no, no, no" to the conventional faiths, and to the conventional gods, we can then say "yes, yes, yes," in reverence and awe, to a natural world as we now know it, a world where all human beings are members of one family, a world where all living things are interrelated, if we can - if the human race can - say “no, no, no" to the conventional faiths, and the conventional gods, we can say “yes, yes, yes" to an unfolding universe from which we have come and to which we shall return, a universe of oneness [Ronald Knapp, "Why I Am an Atheist," sermon, First Unitarian Church of Sioux City, 2007.09.16].

Curious: Does a pastor get to say things like that and still keep his ordained title?I would think if I regularly published articles about the Democratic Party's divisive and destructive effect on Western civilization, I'd have trouble keeping my post as Lake County Dems treasurer.

I do find the idea of a pastor delivering such a sermon an interesting exercise in intellectual openness and curiosity. I would think at the very least that conversation over coffee afterward was livelier than usual.

But church, as I understand it from my outsider's position, isn't about good conversation. You can certainly have good conversation at church, but church is about getting the Good News, and the Good News is the God News. You go to a church service to acknowledge and worship the Deity. A church can certainly host a speaker or a panel discussion on atheism or Judaism or Islam, but that's not a worship service. That's... something else.

Knapp describes himself as an "evangelical atheist." He separates "evangel" from sacred use and appropriates it for his own calling to spread the "glad tidings" of his naturalist, humanist message. Here Knapp chooses a different path from mine. I'm an atheist, but I don't evangelize. I resolved early on in my adult atheism not to invest much energy in encouraging people to abandon their faith and join me in a universe composed exclusively of atoms and natural forces. I decided I could make more productive use of my finite time and energy exhorting my neighbors to at least exercise their Christian principles consistently rather than trying to pry them away from those principles. (My call to Christian consistency is also much more fun.)

I say this not by way of criticism of the apostate Knapp. I welcome and admire fellow non-believers who are willing to present their non-belief openly and intelligently amidst the great Christian masses of the prairie. But Knapp raises an important question: Do we atheists really have an obligation to convert religionists to our non-faith?

Evil Liberal Humanist Professors Indoctrination Conspiracy Fails Miserably

"An article of faith among conservative critics of American universities has been that liberal professors politically indoctrinate their students," begins Patricia Cohen in her Nov. 2 New York Times article. We hear exactly that sentiment from cobwebby corners of our own South Dakota blogosphere (see also here and here for whiffs of this thinking). We liberal secular humanist demons are brainwashing the undergrads into Marxism. How else could a socialist like Obama win the White House?

The radical conservatives love to find boogeymen on whom to blame their woes. Alas for them, another conservative boogeyman gets whacked by reality: Patricia Cohen goes on to report that three new studies have found that we godless Commie academics evidently can't indoctrinate our way out of a paper bag:

...Three sets of researchers recently concluded that professors have virtually no impact on the political views and ideology of their students.

If there has been a conspiracy among liberal faculty members to influence students, “they’ve done a pretty bad job,” said A. Lee Fritschler, a professor of public policy at George Mason University and an author of the new book Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities.

The notion that students are induced to move leftward “is a fantasy,” said Jeremy D. Mayer, another of the book’s authors. (Bruce L. R. Smith is the third co-author of the book.) When it comes to shaping a young person’s political views, “it is really hard to change the mind of anyone over 15,” said Mr. Mayer, who did extensive research on faculty and students.

“Parents and family are the most important influence,” followed by the news media and peers, he said. “Professors are among the least influential.”

A study of nearly 7,000 students at 38 institutions published in the current PS: Political Science and Politics, the journal of the American Political Science Association, as well as a second study that has been accepted by the journal to run in April 2009, both reach similar conclusions.

“There is no evidence that an instructor’s views instigate political change among students,” Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner, a husband-and-wife team of political scientists who have frequently conducted research on politics in higher education, write in that second study.

Their work is often cited by people on both sides of the debate, not least because Mr. Woessner describes himself as politically conservative [Patricia Cohen, "Professors' Liberalism Contagious? Maybe Not," New York Times, 2008.11.02].

These studies only confirm what any professor could have told you: the kids aren't listening anyway! ;-)

Seriously, teachers and professors make easy punching bags for folks with a political agenda. But if you don't like the kids' politics, well, you can't blame us. As I've said before, if you think skinny secular humanists like me are the greatest danger America's youth face, you aren't paying attention.

Money: The Root of All Community-Weakening Individualism?

Not that Mitchell blogger Steve Sibson is lacking for blog fodder, but here's a warm fuzzy from the secular humanist camp for my favorite culture-warrior:

Hey, Sibby, maybe it's not secular humanism tearing civilization apart: maybe it's just money. Greg Mankiw points us toward a study that found people given even little reminders that get them thinking about money are less helpful and more solitary than folks who aren't thinking about money:

Trivial reminders of money made a surprisingly large difference. For example, where the control group would offer to spend an average of 42 minutes helping someone with a task, those primed to think about money offered only 25 minutes. Similarly, when someone pretending to be another participant in the experiment asked for help, the money group spent only half as much time helping her. When asked to make a donation from their earnings, the money group gave just a little over half as much as the control group.

Why does money makes us less willing to seek or give help, or even to sit close to others? Vohs and her colleagues suggest that as societies began to use money, the necessity of relying on family and friends diminished, and people were able to become more self-sufficient. “In this way,” they conclude, “money enhanced individualism but diminished communal motivations, an effect that is still apparent in people’s responses today” [Greg Mankiw, "Does Money Undermine Community?" Greg Mankiw's Blog, 2008.08.24].

Boy, Sibby, sounds like we need the socialist utopia of Gene Roddenberry, where science and reason have gotten rid of antiquated concepts like currency and vanquished crime, poverty, and want.

More details and commentary for Sibby and everyone else in this Peter Singer commentary (knock yourself out on that secular humanist, my friend!).

Unlike Sibby, Corporations Driven by Profit, Not Philosophy

I'm always tickled to make Sibby's headlines. I hesitate to respond, though, since I know a lot of my readers may ask, "What the heck are they talking about?" or, more likely, "Who cares?"

But Sibby is just so wrong this time, I must indulge. Sibby, my response follows. But for those of you who don't care for our little blog-world back-and-forth, here: watch a bit of the cultural bedrock of my own secular humanism, Star Trek (see this episode synopsis for context):



Now Sibby, do you really believe that the problem Naomi Klein points to (and that John W. Whitehead and I amplify is "certain business leaders who adhere to the secular humanist worldview"? No, the problem is that those business leaders don't give a tenth of the damn that you do about philosophy. Those CEOs are not the liberal patsies you envision strolling fuzzyheadedly about Harvard Yard advocating Marxism and denying Christian professors tenure. Those CEOs were too busy treating college as vo-tech for MBAs to even notice the secular humanism the liberal arts crowd espouses.

Klein says American corporations are developing and promoting technology that helps China oppress its people and that will help other governments, including our own, take away citizen liberties. You can't pin that problem on secular humanism or any other worldview windmill you care to tilt at. Corporations have no worldview. They don't value human life the way either Christians like you or secular humanists like me do. They don't believe in God's salvation or man's inherent goodness. Corporations, these artifical entities that our courts blasphemously endow with personhood, are driven by profit, period. Not patriotism, not religion, not truth, nothing but profit.

I would suggest that conscientious secular humanists are as interested as conscientious Christians in fighting human rights abuses in China (and everywhere else), and that both my people and yours are more interested in standing against totalitarianism than the corporations and free-market fundamentalists who say we can't afford to upset the world economy. Don't be fooled: those CEOs defending free trade with China aren't motivated by principle; they're motivated by the very selfish, materialist desire to keep their access to a market of 1.3 billion well-controlled Chinese workers and consumers.

Corporations profit from totalitarianism. That's not secular humanism. That's exactly what I called it yesterday: amoral materialism.