Last week I attended the yearly banquet for the local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a group that lobbies for keeping religions out of government and government out of religions. The speaker, national AU executive director Rev. Barry Lynn, gave an update on the federal government’s financial support for religious organizations’ social-service projects.

I don’t support giving my tax money to religious organizations, even if they’re doing good work.  Having churches as government contractors raises too many red flags for me.  The money is not supposed to be spent on proselytizing, but how could that possibly be enforced?  And apparently religious organizations that accept government money are still allowed to discriminate in their hiring practices–discrimination that would be illegal if practiced by secular institutions.

Are you comfortable with your tax money going to religious institutions’ social-service programs? What if the money were going to a religious group…

Ziztur is a blog by a couple St. Louis twenty-somethings that covers atheism, science, religion, and art.  Most interestingly, the bloggers visit a different religious service every week (more or less) and write about their experiences.  Recently they’ve also been blogging about their visit to the Creation Museum.  The intention of the “faith infiltration” visits is simply to describe what happens in various services–what the space is like, how they were greeted, usually they paraphrase the sermon, provide quotes, and even give the lyrics to the music when they can find it.  Fascinating reading for anyone interested in religions.

Victor J. Stenger is a professor of philosophy, physics, and astronomy and the author of the best seller God: The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.

His new book, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, looks at the moral failings of religions and argues for a universal ethics based on a naturalist, evolutionary understanding of humanity, such as the ethics espoused by classical Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Personally, I think there’s a lot of evidence that religions have been helpful as well as harmful, but I too prefer the nontheistic Eastern religion-philosophies.

Stenger will be speaking Saturday, October 17, at 7 pm at the Little Theater at St. Louis Community College Forest Park (5600 Oakland Avenue).  Free and open to the public.

Hosted by the St. Louis Atheist Meetup Group, the Rationalist Society of St. Louis, the Ethical Society of St. Louis, the Skeptical Society…

I was asked by reader Rachel D. to recommend the documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So,” which examines the use of the Bible in debates about gay rights.  I found it very interesting, but since it primarily pits different interpretations of the Bible against each other, as a humanist I’m not the best judge of the arguments.  So here is Rachel’s recommendation:

“For the Bible Tells Me So is a bold and moving documentary. It brought me to tears in several parts. I think anyone who is a religious person should try to open their minds and hearts and really listen to what this movie has to say. Watch the whole thing and give it a chance before you strike it down. Being a Christian myself it has always bothered me that there is a lot of hate towards gays coming from several religions and the people who practice them. In…

I like Tim Townsend (Hi Tim); I think he is a good and well-meaning guy.  But I was disappointed in his article today about the Freedom from Religion billboard.

Tim writes, “Can atheist groups evangelize to religious believers by advocating an alternative belief in nothing? What replaces the creeds and doctrines and rituals that give meaning and purpose to billions around the world?”

I am frankly fed up with the misinformation that people without supernatural beliefs believe in nothing, lack a sense of meaningful in life, or don’t have a strong moral foundation. Just the opposite is true.  People without supernatural beliefs find plenty of knowledge, meaningfulness, and ethics through nature, science, art, and human experience.  We have belief systems, life philosophies, moral values, and traditions.

There are millions of non-religious people in America today. It is the fastest-growing group in all the polls on belief.  “What replaces the creeds and doctrines and…

It’s A Grind Coffee House at 12520 Olive in Creve Coeur is hosting a series of Wednesday-evening discussions about religions, from 6:30 to 9pm, starting tonight and continuing through October 7. Each week a different local religious leader will answer a set of questions about their tradition, followed by a hopefully spirited, honest, and respectful discussion with the audience. Participants include leaders from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Ethical Humanism and Religious Science. (Yours truly will be the speaker on September 16.)

The events are organized by Creve Coeur resident David Noble, who describes them as “a condensed comparative religions class – only better, because participants can hear what leaders of religious communities think, believe and hope rather than what some professor thinks those leaders think, believe and hope.” Noble identifies as a Christian and is interested in helping his neighbors better understand each other’s beliefs, in order to create an environment…

Hi everyone.  I’ve been a bad blogger this summer, but then the summer is for vacation, no? Even vacation from the all-encompassing Internet.

One of the things I did this summer was read novels, including the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman–the most famous is the first book, The Golden Compass.  I had heard that they were entertaining and well-written; I’d also heard that they were controversial and anti-Catholic.  My impression after reading them is that they are anti-organized-religion-of-any-kind.

I found them entertaining fantasy novels, but not all that different from lots of other books–until the last novel, The Amber Spyglass.  This book tells a very unusual story about God, to say the least.

What struck me most as a humanist, though, was the novel’s attitude toward death. I don’t want to give it all away in case you haven’t read it and want to, but Pullman has a dismissal of the need…

One thing most religions seem to agree on lately is that we have to do a better job at taking care of our environment.  Whether you believe that God made the Earth or that it evolved through natural processes (or both, or something else), it’s up to us to take care of it and our natural resources.

I love to garden–even when I hate to garden (you gardeners know what I mean). For me, weeding is meditation and therapy, and caring for plants gives me a sense of connection to all life.

Two things I have done this year to make my gardening more environmentally sound is to get a couple rain barrels, so that this week I’m watering my plants using water from last week’s deluge, and to plant more edibles, especially those that come back each year.

This month I have been enjoying eccentric but delicious backyard salads of mint, chives,…

I’m in shock having just heard of the terrible cowardly murder of Dr. Tiller, a man who put his life on the line for women in their most desperate hour. As a clergy member of St. Louis-based Faith Aloud, I share this entry from their blog:

Faith Aloud Mourns the Murder of Dr. George Tiller
May 31, 2009

Abortion Provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered by a gunman who shot him point-blank while he was ushering in services at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. His wife, Jeanne, watched in horror from the choir loft.

The clergy and members of Faith Aloud mourn the loss of this courageous, dedicated, and religious man. He and his clinic had been the victim of violence many times before, yet he continued to provide women with desperately needed care. As one of the few providers in the country for third trimester abortions, Dr. Tiller served many women who…

May 1, 2009 - Center, Shonda Garrison and, right, Jolie Justus hug as they confirm their wedding vows with, left, Kate Lovelady, ordained leader of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, on the bus to Iowa City. Seventeen couples from the St. Louis area came to Iowa City to get legally married in what they were calling the Show Me Marriage Equality Bus. (Emily Rasinski/P-D)

Wow.  Friday was an incredible day.  I had the honor and privilege of accompanying 17 same-sex couples with three other clergy (rabbis and a Unitarian Universalist minister) to Iowa City to solemnize their marriages.  The bus from St. Louis left at 6 am and arrived back here at 10 pm, and in-between was a day of love, vows, tears, smiles, family and friends, support from Iowans of all ages and orientations, and hope for a more compassionate future for America and humanity.  Like most clergy I do…

I had the pleasure of attending a Passover Seder last week, and I enjoyed experiencing the ritual and the food and learning some history.  I have been to some non-Jewish “Seders” as well, which take the basic Passover theme of liberation from oppression and use it in a more general way to create secular rituals.  I’m of two minds about this. I know that most ritual has been borrowed at least in part from somewhere else, and that human rituals travel and evolve over time and across cultures.  Yet it seems a little rude to me to “use” another group’s ritual for a different purpose.  I feel the same qualm about celebrating Kwanzaa, since although it was created by a humanist and is the winter solsticetime ritual that makes the most sense to me, I’m not African-American.  At the Ethical Society, we often adapt traditionally religious music to make it…

This Sunday I’m going to speak on Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” at the Ethical Society.  Although I’m a Humanist and not a Christian, I want to examine this famous text because it’s often cited as a powerful ethical statement, even by those who don’t necessarily believe in the Bible as the word of God.  I’m reading the whole Book of Matthew and relevant sermons by Christian ministers both conservative and liberal, and I thought I’d ask readers of this blog as well–what does the Sermon on the Mount mean to you?  Many of its statements seem impossible to live up to, particularly for average Americans.  Some of them seem downright communistic (gasp!) or pacifistic (double gasp!). Are you influenced in your life decisions by Jesus’ sermon? Do you struggle with understanding or trying to follow his words? Do you think this sermon has good ethical lessons to offer non-Christians…

As an ethical humanist leader in the area, I sit on the cabinet of Interfaith Partnership, an organization that tries to bring together as many different religious traditions as possible to promote understanding and to work toward common goals.  One of these goals is the alleviation of suffering by the poor, which practically all religious traditions teach as a moral imperative.

The recent public transit cuts in the St. Louis area are hurting many people, especially those who are lower-income, disabled, or just commited to living a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.  Interfaith Partnership is asking people to contact their state legislators to ask that funding for public transportation be reinstated, and to explain how your religious tradition leads you to believe that helping the poor, the disabled, and the environment are crucial moral issues.  If you believe this to be the case, please let your legislators know.

Amnesty International just released a new report, “Death Sentences and Executions in 2008.”  It shows what I would call progress in that fewer and fewer countries have the death penalty on their books, and those that do are executing fewer and fewer people.

However, America still stands out as one of the last industrialized nations to have the death penalty.  It’s my impression that opposition to the death penalty is one of the few issues in which there is general agreement among religious traditions, liberal, moderate, and conservative.  Humanists organizations such as the Ethical Society of St. Louis affirm the worth of every person (as do many other organizations) and oppose the death penalty on ethical as well as practical grounds–it tends to be applied unfairly, innocent people can be executed mistakenly, there’s little evidence that it makes a community safer or even that it makes victims feel better, and so on. …

Does your religious or philosophical tradition teach that suicide can ever be an ethical act? And what is your personal belief?  Humanists usually support the right of individuals to make decisions about their own lives, including the right to end a life of incurable, unbearable suffering.  At the same time, there are legitimate practical questions about legalizing assisted suicide, such as the pain of loved ones who would have preferred the person die a “natural” death, or, conversely, the possibility that legalizing assisted suicide would pressure people to commit suicide just to save their families from the astronomical medical bills that often accompany end-of-life care. What does your tradition teach, and/or what do you think? Under what circumstances, if any, do we have the right to choose our own exit from life? Should the State allow physicians or others to aid people seeking a clean and painless death?

I just ran across this paragraph by Felix Adler, founder of Ethical Culture (yes, he shares a name with a famous clown, but it’s not the same guy!).  It’s a good metaphor for how Humanists tend to look at humanity’s ethical development.  I think we see the world very differently from those who believe that there is an already-existing ultimate truth.  I’d be interested in knowing what you think: Does it seem to you like an inspiring way to look at life, or depressing, or what?

The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story,…

Last month, the Ethical Society of St. Louis had as our Sunday-morning speaker Dale McGowan, editor of a book called Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids without Religion, and co-author of an upcoming related practical guide called Raising Freethinkers. The talk was excellent, personal, and open-minded. Despite his book’s title, McGowan’s main interest seems to be to raise his children with knowledge of as many religious traditions as possible and the understanding that, although their dad doesn’t believe in any of them, his kids have the right to believe whatever they want and to change their minds about their beliefs as many times as they want. So for those interested, here is an MP3 of the half-hour talk:

Dale McGowan

Our Sunday School is planning to have McGowan back in the fall for a parenting workshop; anyone interested in attending is welcome to contact the Ethical Society for more information.…

I was glad to be acknowledged by President Obama in his inaugural address.  At least, I assume when he referred to “non-believers,” he was trying to be inclusive of the many millions of folks like me who don’t believe in a god, whatever labels we might use for ourselves.  President Obama has talked about his mother’s lack of supernatural beliefs and about the important universal values he learned from her growing up, so I know that he realizes that ethics and character are not dependent on having traditional religious views.  So I don’t wish to complain, just to point out that the term “non-believer” is unfortunately negative. I hope to see the term “Humanist” gain greater usage, as although its meaning can be debated, just as the meaning of many terms can, “Humanist” gives a sense of positive focus.  And I have yet to meet a “non-believer” who doesn’t believe…

There is a spreading campaign of humanist/atheist/agnostic mass advertising, on billboards and most lately buses, to try to raise awareness that it’s okay not to believe in a god—that if you don’t, you’re not alone; you can (and should) still be a good person, and, basically, you should just chill out. The American Humanist Association’s holiday campaign asked, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” while the ads in the recent campaign in Britain say, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

I’m of two minds about the ads. I think it’s important to let people who don’t believe in a god know that they have a community too, and that belief or non-belief in a god doesn’t make you a good or bad person. There are lots of people who don’t believe in a god, or who aren’t sure but doubt it…