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Kye Flannery, MDiv '13
“To me, Humanism means treating people, including ourselves, with dignity and respect. As relationships grow, so does the good work that is possible. It's important to me to work for stronger coalitions among those who work for social justice within the Boston faith community. When communities of faith communicate with each other about goals, needs and resources, this changes the terrain of a city and a project for the better. I'd like to see stronger interfaith coalitions here in Boston, and I think Humanists can be, and ought to be, an integral part of that.”
Lily Ross, MDiv '13
“I'd like to initiate conversation about the role of song, dance, and ritual in various religions and wisdom traditions, and the meaning of these traditions in the lives of Humanists and the non-religious. Furthermore, I hope to offer a model integrating theory and practice for appreciating and embracing the web of life as a non magical, rational worldview, informed and inspired by the ancient wisdom traditions yet authentic, creative, and new…. Through academic writing and expressive art I'd like to assist in re-enlivening a creative spirit around self-generated ritual for communities and individuals. I feel that song, dance and ritual are tied to essential human needs for connection, and have the potential to elucidate or evoke a powerful sense of connection to the natural world; the world which includes and extends beyond our human relations.”
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Meet the Assistant Chaplain! |
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Jonathan Figdor pioneered the Humanist Chaplaincy Training Program at Harvard Divinity School when he graduated as the first Atheist Humanist MDiv in the school’s history. While many would consider the idea of an Atheist going to divinity school rather strange, for John, it was a perfectly logical decision. When he finished his B.A. in philosophy at Vassar (with honours), he decided to spend a year doing community service as an AmeriCorps VISTA at a domestic violence shelter in Butte, Montana.
John learned many things that year, but none so vividly as the lesson that most Americans do not take their ethical advice from Aristotle, Kant, or Mill, but rather from religious leaders such as Rick Warren, the late Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson. He realized that if he was going to make a meaningful contribution to the ethical dialogue in this country, he ought to study religious ethics in order to better articulate the dangers of faith-based ethics.
At the beginning, he prepared for a long, hard war of attrition against the Christian establishment at HDS and expected his classmates to be wildly conservative religious ideologues hell-bent (mind the pun) on imposing their religious ethics on all people. After all, he was intent on winning them over to the truth of reason and atheism. However, during his first semester at HDS, he had the fortune of taking a class with Jim Wallis, a prominent and famously liberal Evangelical minister. While Jim and John were theological opposites, John found that their moral compasses were quite similar. John recognized that the two shared a set of beliefs: 1) that scientific methods should be used to solve humanity's problems; 2) that the concerns of this world (poverty, racism, sexism, etc.) should take precedence over the concerns about the afterlife; and 3) that all people have inherent dignity and should be treated as ends, not as means.
John began to understand that he and Jim shared a core belief in Humanist principles. While Jim Wallis's Humanism is deeply influenced by his Christian faith, unlike John’s purely atheistic Humanism, they found that they agreed on issue after issue because of their shared Humanist convictions. Humanism formed a sort of bridge between their vastly different world views. As a result, John believes that Humanism has the ability to transcend religious differences and bring disparate religious and irreligious voices into fruitful and productive dialogue.
John was hired as the Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University in July of 2010. He looks forward to an exciting year of helping to develop and sustain the Humanist community at Harvard and particularly to working with students organizing social, community service, and atheist/Humanist activism events. John will use his contacts with secular activists from the Secular Student Alliance (of which he is a board member) to bring young, atheist and Humanist activists and thinkers to campus to share their ideas with the Humanist undergrads and grads. John’s current research interests are in applied ethics and biomedical ethics, particularly at the intersection of the problems of free will, determinism, and personal responsibility.
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The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard has moved to a brand new Humanist Center, located at 19 Arrow Street in Harvard Square! Now, we're opening our doors to the whole community on the first Tuesday of every month! Come check out our new location, chat with the chaplain and staff, and hear about all of our exciting events and programs coming up this year!
September 7, 5:30-7:30 pm: Open House (warming party)
October 5, 5:30-7:30 pm
November 2, 5:30-7:30 pm
December 7, 5:30-7:30 pm
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A Conversation with Sam Harris on Science and Morality |
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The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard presents Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, speaking about his new book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.
This event is free and open to the public. Copies of The Moral Landscape will be available for purchase from the Harvard Book Store, and the author has agreed to sign copies after the lecture.
For full details and to RSVP on Facebook, click here.
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From the Free Press:
Sam Harris’s first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people—from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists—agree on one point: Science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the most common justification for religious faith. It is also the primary reason why so many secularists and religious moderates feel obligated to “respect” the hardened superstitions of their more devout neighbors.
In this explosive new book, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values, arguing that most people are simply mistaken about the relationship between morality and the rest of human knowledge. Harris urges us to think about morality in terms of human and animal well-being, viewing the experiences of conscious creatures as peaks and valleys on a “moral landscape.” Because there are definite facts to be known about where we fall on this landscape, Harris foresees a time when science will no longer limit itself to merely describing what people do in the name of “morality”; in principle, science should be able to tell us what we ought to do to live the best lives possible.
Bringing a fresh perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong, and good and evil, Harris demonstrates that we already know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.
Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our “culture wars,” Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.
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News From HCH
