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,…

My thanks to all the thoughtful commenters to my last post on torture.  I thought you might like to read the position paper on torture of the National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union.  The first paragraph reads:

The use of torture is the most extreme violation of the principles to which Ethical Culture is dedicated. Among these principles, respect and reverence for the dignity of the human being is foremost. With the emergence of torture as a component of American policy in the “War on Terror,” Ethical Culture calls for the absolute and total ban on the use of torture, whether by the military, law enforcement, intelligence services or private actors.

The rest of the paper lays out some moving and probably controversial arguments for regarding torture as the greatest ethical “sin,” worse even than murder, as well as the recent facts of torture in America as far as they’re known,…

Okay, this may seem pretty obscure, but I’m often asked by visitors to the Ethical Society of St. Louis how Ethical Culture compares to Unitarian Universalism. So last month I gave a Sunday-morning talk on the similarities and differences between the two movements, which are both at the liberal end of the religious spectrum, and which share roots in free-thinking history, but which grew out of different traditions (Reform Judaism for Ethical Culure and liberal Christianity for Unitarian Universalism) and have different emphases and relationships to humanism. For those interested, you can hear my talk here. (Just click on the MP3 box to the right of the title–it’s about a half-hour.) If you’ve had experience in a Unitarian congregation and have a different experience to offer, please share it.

The Ethical Society, and our national federation, the American Ethical Union, has long supported abortion as being an often difficult but spiritual and ethical choice. Our highest value is the worth and dignity of every person, and since pregnant women are clearly people, while pregnancies are not clearly people (witness all the arguments and differences of opinion on when human life begins), our official stance (individual members, of course, have freedom of opinion) is that to force a woman against her will to carry a pregnancy she does not want threatens her physical, psychological, and spiritual health, and therefore it violates rather than affirms her worth and dignity.

The Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is an organization that brings together representative voices for the millions of clergy and lay people from every major religion and denomination (and many minor ones) who support women’s and men’s sexual health and reproductive rights. MoRCRC’s…