The Life of Ingersoll

Last spring I wrote a biographical essay on Robert Ingersoll for a Gilded Age class. Though initially a five to seven page paper, near the end of the semester we were instructed to distill our work down to 700 words. A year before writing this short biographical article, I wrote an essay in tribute to him, but 'The Life of Ingersoll' is intentionally more neutral. It focuses on him as a man in his times, working as a lawyer and political booster.

 

Lawyer, politician, and orator Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899) lived in an America still growing into its own identity. No longer a fledgling Republic, the United States of the Gilded Age could boast of a century of history and tumultuous social change. Ingersoll's gifts as an orator and a disciplined approach to his work enabled him to play a prominent role in the political and social world of his day, rubbing shoulders with presidents, industrialists, poets, and scholars. He died with his name a household word despite his humble beginnings as the son of an itinerant preacher.

Ingersoll’s career began in Peoria, Illinois, where he and his brother, Clark, established a law firm in 1858. Ingersoll’s oratorical strengths developed in part from his practice, building on his father’s legacy as a fiery abolitionist preacher.  He initially practiced criminal and civil law in and around Peoria, although later legal successes allowed him to settle in the lucrative field of corporate law. The Munn (1876) and Star Route (1882-1883) trials in particular established his national reputation as a powerful attorney.  In both politically charged affairs, Ingersoll defended individuals accused of defrauding the government against popular bias. 

Ingersoll’s triumph in these cases owed much to his rhetorical talents, to his exhaustive research, and to a gift for near-perfect recall that allowed him to put that research to use. Although not above the use of surgically-used emotional appeals, Ingersoll preferred to rely on an effective display of facts and unassailable logic. Demand for his talents never waned in either law or politics. Ingersoll’s abolitionist sentiments and repugnance for secession made a loyal Republican of the former Democrat, and he campaigned tirelessly for his party during the Reconstruction years. Only his hatred for the Democrats, the party of "rebellion and murder", rivaled his love for the Republican Party, which he believed represented the best of the American spirit. Ingersoll regarded Reconstruction as vital in preventing the triumphs of the Civil War from becoming moot. If the Republican party did not stay the course, he feared that “the Confederate army with ballots instead of bayonets, with Gen’l Andy Johnson at the head, will conquer at last.”

The Republican Party’s post-war history did not prove to Ingersoll’s liking. The period’s corruption and graft disappointed a man who believed so fervently in the need for, and the possibility of, honest government. He nearly retired from politics during the Hayes administration, disturbed by the President’s increasingly conciliatory attitude toward southern Democrats. Even so, he seized any opportunity to champion politicians with integrity: his “Plumed Knight” speech endorsing James Blaine swept the newspapers and kept his services in demand by Republicans seeking office. Ingersoll never held elected office, enjoying only an appointment as the Illinois Attorney General.  His political focus tended to be broader than that of the organized parties: in championing American ideals, he sought to expand them further and took up the banners of women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, and labor. While progressive in social matters,  he viewed himself as a conservative promoting and defending America’s promise of human equality. 

His eagerness to embrace these causes owed much to Ingersoll's humanist sympathies. He advocated American expansion to advance the cause of human progress, for he saw the Enlightenment principles embedded in the US Constitution as humanity's best hope for a better future. The works of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and others whom he read as a child engendered his faith in democracy as well as his freethinking belief in personal responsibility in matters of morality and seeking the truth.  Ingersoll promoted his worldview and religious devotion for liberty and progress in public lectures, capitalizing on his broad education to speak on philosophy, history, science, politics, and religion. His passion and approach earned him praise from progressives, but scathing criticism from orthodox clergymen who objected to his attacks upon organized religion. Attracting large audiences (as many as 50,000 in a given night), "Impious Pope Bob" rose to national prominence while advancing the cause of freethought in its golden age. 

Ingersoll’s life of political and cultural contributions are inseparable from the context of the Gilded Age. Caught between the Enlightenment and modernity, Ingersoll attempted to draw upon those older ideals to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world, drawing attention to the abuses of the day while advocating human progress.

Additional Resources:

• Anderson, David. Robert Ingersoll. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.
• Larson, Orvin. American Infidel: Robert G. Ingersoll. New York: Citadel Press, 1962. 
• Greely, Rogert E. The Best of Robert Ingersoll. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1977. 

Burn the Necropolis

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

We live in a world ruled by rotting bones: cemetaries seat empires. The dead hold power that defies measure over the living. The dead reign largely because people are ignorant that corpses hold them in bondage. Few people would consciously bow before tombstones, and yet people carry on the bidding of decaying masters with every unconsidered thought, with every expression of an idea, belief, or value that they did not forge by hand themselves.

The dead rule the living because their ideas rule us. We become the property of despots as children, when we are most vulnerable, when reason's stern blade has not yet forged and tempered. Parents, society, and authority figures bind us, although they are slaves themselves. Sometimes they are conscious of the role they play as agents of tyranny, a role that allows religious sects and political ideologies to thrive. They perform the great trick of turning fetters into jeweled bracelets that we snap on happily and cling to.  In enlightened times such as these, when people tacitly endorse freedom of speech and thought, they might feel somewhat guilty for imposing ideas on the innocent -- but then they feel it is righteous on their part. Every culture maintains itself: that's the way "it should be". Their political and religious ideas are right, after all: what's the harm in making children think right? In this way, all the horrible sects of the world maintain themselves, and children are taught to hate and are deprived of their potential. They are robbed the glory that lies in being free and living life with courage. Instead, the spear of Tradition beats their knees, forcing them to the ground where they bow before corpses.

Before Muhammed, people worshiped a box in Mecca that contained the relics associated with  various Arabian gods. After Muhammad, they worshiped a box that contains a stone supposedly given to Abraham. Worship of the dead is still worship of the dead.

Our ideas are, in large part, not our own. We inherit them: to which decaying mounds of flesh we pay homage  depends on where and when we were born. A family born in Rome four hundred years before the reign of Augustus would have kept an icon of a favored deity in their home, possibily of Apollo. Apollo's priests would rule there. Eight hundred years later, that same family would worship the doctrine of Paul. Paul's priests, his agents, would be that family's masters. Our parents give birth to us in the same gloomy prison cell in which they sit: they instill beliefs in us that their parents instilled in them. We call this cycle, this endless transmission of ideas, 'culture' -- and the promotion of one corpse over another 'progress'.  Shall we allow an accident of birth to determine  our beliefs and character?

I despise the rule of the dead, the tyranny of ideas over life. I reject their reign first on principle, for no human has any right to rule another in body, let alone in mind. Secondly, there is no reason we ought to be bound by tradition. Why should our ancestors rule us? What justifies the tyranny of parents, even? Maturity, intelligence, and a sense of responsibility are not required for procreation: the lack of these traits seems more conducive to arranging a pregnancy.  Parents force themselves on their children, molding them into their own image,  by the virtue of brute power -- nothing more. No one would contest their sacred right to produce copies of themselves, and so we are blessed with the heritage of racism  and dogmatic religion generation after generation.  It strikes me that the ability to mold a mind is a terrible responsibility, not a right -- one to be taken with humility and cautiousness, not pride. To the detriment of humanity, the only responsibility most parents seem to keep in mind is the' responsibility' to pass on the limited beliefs of their own parents.

Are the dead so much wiser than us? Hardly. They were human, just as we are, and prone to the same mistakes and indignities, and yet being dead seems to accord them great respect. The further removed they are from the world of the living, in fact, the more honor we give them. They can tell us they flew to Heaven on a horse and saw the dead walk again, and we believe them. If the living told us these things, we'd gently escort them to the mental ward. I suspect we give the dead such honor because we feel we cannot take ourselves seriously, and so we cling to the ideas of people who are removed from us. We seek objectivity. But whatever noble personages we honor shared the same insecurity: Jesus looked to Moses, Plato to Socrates. They too, sought objectivity, for they were limited by their times just as most people are today. Moses thought nothing of murder, Jesus nothing of racism, Paul nothing of slavery. The United States' founding fathers beat their chests and spoke nobly of democracy while maintaining slaves and denying all but the landed gentry the vote. Few individuals are spiritual anarchists, who based their lives on their own hand-made ideas, beliefs, and principles. Those who do stand out, because they have found a more elevated foundation:  ideas and morals based on free reason. If we are to seek objectivity, I believe reason is our best hope.

I understand part of the reason people cling to the fetters of their ancestors is the knowledge that one day they will become ancestors themselves. Every person who spends their first night in a crib will eventually spend their last night in a casket. In modern times we humans can live close to a hundred years: our ancestors would have thought fifty a boon. Even so, we know we are but leaves blown in the wind, simply passing through life. Cognizant that our time on Earth is short, we long to be linked to a tree.We seek meaning by attaching ourselves to something bigger: a religion, a state, a worldview.  Perhaps this is unavoidable,  but there is no cause for slavish attachment. If we wish to ground ourselves by referencing a tradition, why not do so with a level of sobriety, of knowing what we are doing and doing it with respect for ourselves. Even the mightiest oak will fall in time: I suggest it is better to make the most of the time we have than to hide ourselves in longer-lived traditions.

When it comes to "honoring" tradition, I think we take stock of ourselves and ask: are we maintaining tradition deliberately to serve us? Or...are we protecting it because we depend on it, unaccustomed to living, thinking, and believing on our own?  If we are trying to protect ideas to protect ourselves,  we are not free. We cannot be free to live, to grow, to flourish if we're constantly hobbling on a crutch.

Too magnificent a jewel to waste on the hands of the dead.

For my own part, I believe Earth and life belong to us, the living. The dead have had their day. Let it rest with them. Ours is still upon us, and we ought to seize it -- to live as our needs and desires demand, not the putrefying flesh of yesteryear.

Foundations may crumble,

And structures will tumble,

And free men will cry,

"Die Gedanken sind Frei!"

But free men will cry,

"Die Gedanken sind Frei!"

("Die Gedanken Sind Frei", English lyrics by Pete Seeger)

Epicurus at the Painted Porch

I am a student of Greek philosophy in two ways -- I both study the schools of thought academically and practice them in my life, especially with regard to Epicureanism and Stoicism. The two philosophies have been in my experience pitted against once another, painted as competing philosophies. My academic study of the two philosophies is very shallow: I have read from both philosophies’ texts, but I have never emerged myself in an in-depth study of how they were received in the Greek world at the time, so I don’t know how accurate such a portrayal is. On the surface, it would seem to make sense. The Stoics believed that virtue was the only “Good”, and the Epicureans believed that happiness was the only “Good”.

Do they contradict one another? Both begin from absolute statements that on the surface differ from the other, and one philosophy is grounded in divinity while the other is not. Epicurus had little regard for the metaphysical: he believed that happiness in the here and now was what people should focus their attention on. The ancient Stoics believed in cosmic order and saw this Order as the source for all that is good -- like beauty, truth, and virtue. To live in compliance with this Order is to live with virtue and thus be happy. The chief Stoic doctrine is to “live according to Nature”: living within our limits. Epictetus, whose work I enjoy immensely, began his Handbook by stating that happiness can be achieved through the knowledge that there are some things we can control and some things we cannot .[1] To act on this knowledge is to live with virtue. But notice what Epictetus is focusing on: happiness. This is the same then Epicurus was focused on.

This is why I do not think that Stoicism and Epicureanism are actually contradictory. Each seem to begin with the object of human happiness as their goal, they just attempt to reach it through different (but not necessarily opposing) practices. Epicurus advocated the simple life and abstaining from insatiable pleasures: Stoics believed in mental discipline, the cultivation of mindfulness. But what would stop Epicures from using Stoic mindfulness, and what would stop Epictetus from living the simple life? The two philosophies differ only in theoretical beginnings, I think, and for the modern Stoic or Epicurean, that simply doesn’t matter.

I count myself a Stoic, but I do not believe in a living Cosmic Order the way Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus did. Erik Wiegardt commented in his The Stoic Handbook that the difference between an atheistic Stoic and a pantheistic Stoic is that one believes cosmic order is unconscious and the other believes it is conscious. I believe laws govern the universe, but I do not think they are divine. I believe in gravitation and friction and inertia and thermodynamics and all manner of universal laws, but I think they are natural. What lies beyond them -- what caused them -- is not my concern. I can no more be aware of supposed metaphysical realms and gods than can a microbe be aware of a soda can.

If I take Epicurus’ approach that supposed metaphysical worlds are meaningless when it comes to human happiness, on what basis do I call myself a Stoic? I do so because there are certain patterns of behavior that lend themselves toward happiness and unhappiness. If I become addicted to a drug, for instance, I will be on the whole unhappy. This is not divine punishment being meted out by Athena: this is chemistry. If I fret about what someone is thinking of me, I will be unhappy. Again, there are no punitive deities involved: this is psychology. If, however, I becoming addicted to substances and adopt the Stoic practice of giving no attention to things I cannot control, I will find contentment -- and the joy I have for living will not be tainted. “Virtue” is the practice of living sensibly, by following patterns of behavior that create long-term happiness. For me, Epicureanism and Stoicism go well together, because the virtuous life is -- in Epicurus’ own words -- the happy life. [2]

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[1] My immediate source for this is Sharon Lebell’s The Art of Living, but the same sentiment is expressed in the same basic way in more conservative translations of Epictetus' works.

[2] “The Principle Doctrines”, Epicurus

Tending the Natural: Humanist Spirituality II

"Remember that philosophy requires of you only that which your nature recquires." - Marcus Aurelius

"We're different, and yet all the same -- we all want to be happy." - Anne Frank

"I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life." - the Dalai Lama

Almost two years ago, I posted an essay that I called "All and Enough: Humanist Spirituality". I took the title from the third Humanist Manifesto, which declares that the natural world is "all and enough". There, I tried to explore what spirituality meant to me. Beginning with my center of reason and empathy and a joy for living, I wrote that I thought spirituality consisted of enjoying life and living it well by cultivating our inner essence. This inner essence has been called a soul or a spirit, but if I did so it would only be as a metaphor. My perception of my own essence is wholly naturalistic: For me, "I" am made up of biological drives and the psychological drives that a lifetime of living have given me. I do not pretend to understand the "stuff" of consciousness, but on precedent I accept that it is probably completely natural or based on the natural.

It is on this foundation of naturalism that I build, and this is part of the reason I call myself a Humanist. My joy for living comes from accepting life on its own terms -- not on the terms of the supernatural. I enjoy life -- I revel in it. I cozy under trees, reading good books and letting the grass caress my fingers while I listen to the wind blow through the trees and the birds sing, and the sheer enjoyment of it all can stop my heart and bring tears to my eyes. I believe in just being happy, in "letting the soft animal of [my] body love what it loves."* This means for me living in accordance with nature: nature is both a beginning and a direction. My natural "center" is reason and empathy -- or more broadly, reason and emotion. I think these two attributes are the essence of human nature. We are intelligent creatures who can use reason to ponder philosophical questions and do things with purpose, and we are emotional creatures, evolved to live in social groups. We experience emotions while living life in our communities, and ideally we would use those emotions reasonable to create ways of living that make us happy (or at least help us survive). This is the beginning of law -- indeed, of most every aspect of civilization.

I labor to live according to my nature: I practice freethought or skepticism, and I try to connect to other people in whatever ways I can -- in spending time with friends, or reading literature and connecting to people who have been dead for centuries. "Cultivation" is a word I like to use in reference to spirituality: I see my life as a flower, a bird of paradise perhaps, that must have good soil and a reliable source of sunlight and water if it is to flourish. I need to stimulate my mind and emotions to grow -- and I need to live within their bounds. A flower only needs so much heat or water: too much will scorch it or drown it respectively. This is what I was trying to get at in my first essay: a life lived with empathy and reason, with sunlight and water, leads inevitably to human flourishing, to eudaimonia, to "invincible happiness".

However I might appreciate the need for living as naturally as possible, this approach has a problem: just because something is natural does not mean it is good for me. Anger is natural, for instance, but if I try to revel in anger, I will find myself visiting the pharmacist with a doctor's prescription for blood-pressure pills. My body's chemistry can be modified through my behavior so that it develops a dependency on alcohol: is it then "good" for me to drink all the more? How do I advocate living a natural life when doing what comes natural is not necessarily the best thing for me to do? For a year or so I've pondered this question every so often, but then just a couple of weeks ago the issue resolved itself with a single word: tending. If you have experience working in a garden, you will know that you have to fight weeds and pests to protect your plants. Weeds and destructive insects are a natural part of a garden, but they are not good for my purposes. I must tend the plants -- pull the weeds and get rid of the insects. Feeding and watering the plants is not enough -- I must continually destroy natural but destructive forces that would render my watering pointless.

So it is, I think, with human nature. I first became interested in the idea of humanist spirituality -- natural spirituality -- when I read Doug Muder's "Humanist Spirituality: Oxymoron or Authentic Path to Enlightenment". One of the topics he discusses is mindfulness among the Stoics: being aware of our thoughts and feelings and asking ourselves if these thoughts and feelings are doing us any good. I found this practice to be intriguing, and I took it up. I have found this practice of mindfulness to be quite helpful -- I no longer fixate on the things I used to, and a year of practice has molded me to possess a near-constant sense of peace. I'm not just interested in peace, though -- I want something active, something forceful: I want to keep the fountain of joy inside me that Marcus Aurelius wrote of bubbling up. What I mean by "tending the natural" is mental practices that bring this bubbling about. I'm not the only person who has noted a need for tending, or disciplined attention: I note that many philosophical and religious teachers have advocated mental discipline of some form or another, the Stoics and Buddhists being the most devoted examples. A few modern teachers advocating mental discipline are the Dalai Lama, Rabbi Zelig Pliskin (an Orthox rabbi, interestingly enough), and the late M. Scott Peck. The point of mental discipline is twofold: being mindful helps us "weed" ourselves, allowing us to grow, while active forms of discipline attempt to manipulate growth in the direction of our choice. Both forms have the end of human happiness in mind.

I have noted through the course of my reading a potential common theme in the philosophical, religious, spiritual, and psychological teachings of the past and present -- that of human happiness. Sometimes this is approached from the angle of the divine, using the idea of a deity as source. I used to use ideals for the same purpose, although I seem to be growing less concerned with reaching some outside ideal and more interested in what will develop from my life if I just enjoy it.

Recommended Reading:

• The Art of Living, Sharon Lebell. A modern translation of Epictetus' Handbook and Discourses.
• The Art of Happness and Ethnics for a New Millenium, Tenjin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama).
• Doug Muder's "Humanist Spirituality"

* "Wild Geese", Mary Oliver

Robert Green Ingersoll: a Tribute

"Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the truth."
- "The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child"




Few people have heard of the man whose image has become my avatar on blogspot. His name is Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899), and he was an extraordinary man. Although raised in the early 19th century, his opinions and values were "24th" century -- Star Trek fans will take my meaning. He was raised by an abolitionist preacher, and although he did not share his father's religious beliefs, he certainly shared his father's gift for oratory. While he made his living as a lawyer and state attorney general, he was known in his day for his oratorical abilities. Mark Twain raved about him; the New York Times took notice of him. His talent may have been partially genetic and partially learned: some biographies attribute his spell-binding oratory to his early experience in the law. * He drew crowds, attracting the attention of far better known men like Samuel Clemens and Thomas Edison. Clemens may have borrowed examples and arguments from Ingersoll's own work. Although not exactly a champion of the working class -- he believed labor and the owners of factories were not fundamentally at odds with one another, and stated that he did not believe in Socialism or Communism -- he urged for fair and safe conditions. (On a minor note, he said this before the 20th century dawned in a time when those words had different meanings. While he advocated fair conditions for workers, he also promoted equal rights for blacks and "east Asian" immigrants to the United States in a time where their civil liberties and rights were severely curtailed. His sterling example shames his peers. Their prejudices cannot simply be excused by murmurs of "Well, it was the times..". His life sees him standing tall, towering over others.



Given the scope of Ingersoll's life, it is difficult to approach a tributary essay to him. The best approach I have found is to present him as a champion of liberty. It penetrated the man: it shaped his politics, his ethics, his parenting style, his efforts to find truth and meaning in the world. It was, I think, his watchword. He devoted at least one speech -- "The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child" -- wholly to the subject, applying the principle to seemingly every aspect of life he could think of. He was passionately devoted to the idea that people -- men, women, and children -- should be able to think for themselves, to discern the truth as best they could find it. "I have never claimed to know the truth," he said, "Only that there are things I believe to be true." Even those who disagreed with him could not help but admire the eloquence of his arguments: "The plea for liberty was sublime. [...]Freedom of speech, and of thought were never battled for in more manly fashion," reported the Troy NY Daily Press upon his delivery of it. It was in "The Liberty...." that he delivered the words that first enraptured me:

"If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender; it has furrowed the checks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine; neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake, and the conscience of a hyena."

When I read those words, I think of the poem "Invictus": "It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll: I am the master of my fate; I am the Captain of my soul." Such was Ingersoll's conviction that he could stand tall, proud, and defiant in the face of not utter destruction, but utter misery -- the purported "flames of Hell". He made a choice -- such was his love for compassion and liberty that rather than submit to the rule of a being who would punish someone for "thinking an honest thought", he would embrace the chance of that misery. There's something noble in standing firm for one's ideals in the face of power that urges one to write them off. A critic might say that it was easy for Ingersoll to utter these words given that he was an agnostic who had no belief in the afterlife -- only a faint hope that there might be one. But Ingersoll stood for his convictions in this life. When offered the chance to run for the governorship of Illinois if only he would stay silent about his religious views, he waved opportunity off: "Goodbye, gentlemen! [...] My position I would not, under any circumstances, not even for my life, seem to renounce. I would rather refuse to be President of the United States than to do so. My religious belief is my own. It belongs to me, not to the State of Illinois. I would not smother one sentiment of my heart to be the Emperor of the round world. "** Ingersoll stands as a standing rebuke to those politicians who assume religions they do not have -- who deceive in the quest for power.



I was almost hesitant to include Ingersoll's defiant words, knowing that for some readers this essay is their first exposure to the man. It was not feelings of intellectual superiority that set fire to his blood and moved him to utter those words. It was, I think, his compassion. The severity of his defiance above is matched by the depth of his love for life and joy. The same man who scoffs at delusions of god-given supremacy and moral superiority is the same who pleads with his readers to have a heart, to not "deny the same liberties one claims for one's own self". His hostility toward the "frightful dogma of eternal pain" began -- as he elaborates in "Why I Am Agnostic" -- when his father took him to a tent revival meeting and he heard a sermon on the agonies of Hell. So moving was this sermon that Ingersoll said he became the "implacable enemy" of the doctrine. He elaborates further: "The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.

"Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed. It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge."

It may be difficult for readers who have never lived under the idea of Hell to appreciate Ingersoll's motivation, to understand why he loathed this infinite hatred so much. I grew up in a world very much like Ingersoll's. The Pentecostal tradition in which I was raised hearkened back to those tent revival meetings. As a matter of fact, if you were to grace the doors of the church I grew up in, the first thing you would see hanging on the walls of the foyer is a painting depicting one of those meetings, with the fathers of the current Pentecostal movement depicted in profile. The sermon on hate that Ingersoll heard once bludgeoned me with its cruelty every week. It was only when I had grown callous to the threat of it that I could utter sentiments similar to Ingersoll's.



In another essay, "Orthodoxy", Ingersoll builds on his disdain for dogma. Here he dissembles the Nicene Creed while expressing his belief -- his hope -- that the religions centered around "things we not know of" would abandon their dogma and become religions of justice and compassion. He reveals a source for his contempt for doctrines and dogmas -- "My objection to orthodox religion is that it destroys human love, and tells us that the love of this world is not necessary to make a heaven in the next." Here we arrive at love, which I believe to be the root of a man, providing the basis for even his conviction to liberty. This is the love that guides him in his parenting style: the love for wisdom that sees him poring over the many books he talked about in "Why I Am Agnostic". Here, in this essay, he utters some of the most beautiful words I've ever heard -- words that belong in a wedding service.

Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning
and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its
radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of
poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every
heart -- builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every
hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the
world with melody -- for music is the voice of love. Love is the
magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and
makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of
that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion,
that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is
heaven, and we are gods.

Ingersoll's flair for oratory has often made me think of him as a "secular preacher". One of his speeches I have is titled "A Lay Sermon", and here he shines. He promotes the same "spirituality" that the Dalai Lama writes about in The Art of Happiness: a commitment to human happiness. Happiness, Ingersoll states, cannot be found in anything but. To pursue wealth is to, in his words, pursue a "gilded hell". Money becomes one's captive. " That money will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity." Ingersoll bucks attempts to pigeonhole him. He can't just be written off as god-hating bible-bashing atheist. I dare say that if I quoted those words in a Pentecostal church -- to an audience who had never heard of Ingersoll -- they would nod and chuckle. (I make an exception for the "prosperity gospel" believers.) Ingersoll once summed up his approach to life: "For while I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself. My creed is this -- happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so." He expounds upon that simple creed -- which, by the way, you can hear him speak via sound recordings here -- in his "Lay Sermon", but the theme in general is interwoven throughout many of his works. In "The Foundations of Faith", he puts forth what he calls "The Creed of Science".

To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful; in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart.

Note the source, an essay about faith. This is the beauty of Ingersoll. He isn't interested in just shouting down the preachers. However wrong he believes dogma to be, shouting it down isn't the point. "The more false we destroy," he once commented, "The more room there will be for the truth." This was a man who was not interested in sitting in a bar and grousing about the evils of orthodox religion. This was a man who runs to the churchhouse door, falls on his knees, pounds the door, and shouts "Stop, you're doing in wrong! In the name of love, you're creating misery! Can't you see? There's a better way." He railed against hate and dogma to create room for love and free inquiry. He was a humanist if there ever was one. He had no desire to make people unhappy, for he believed his own happiness lay in making other people happy. He had no desire to strip people of beliefs in heaven. He himself had "hope for the dead". But he could not accept a doctrine that would make -- in his words -- "the cradle as horrible as the tomb". Is it necessary, he asked, that heaven should borrow its light from the glare of Hell? Note also his term "religion of reason", and his commitment to both "Brain and heart". In his constant urging of people to think for themselves, he promoted the use of reason in our everyday affair. He was a man who celebrated intellectual progress and human achievements -- not just in science, but in literature as well. He was particularly fond of Shakespeare -- fond to the point of developing a lecture in which he praised the Bard's words.



There is so much more that could be said about Ingersoll. Part of what I like about him is his grandness -- he was interested in and talked about almost everything. Philosophy, politics, law, history, sociological critique, biology, literature, skepticism -- the man knew no bounds. He celebrated humanity, calling it the grand religion. His is a life that should be celebrated -- a name that should be known. Instead, in spite of his life, he has been consigned to obscurity. The reasons are not entirely known to me: he was one of the last orators in the so-called "Golden Age of Freethought", a man who fought the growing approach of dogmatic darkness in vain. The great Christian social movements of the late 1890s -- while perhaps giving him satisfaction that the churches were starting to practice the love they ought to have -- may have also dulled the bite of his criticism. Economic revival and the gilded age would have also made his criticism of seeking happiness through wealth unpopular. But he lived, and more importantly he lived well. He died as he wanted, with a family that loved him. They collected his speeches, ensuring that the lightening that once "glared around his words" was safely caught in a bottle for future generations to witness.

Such was the power of Ingersoll that even in print form, his speeches stir me. I have tried to express why he means so much to me that I would adopt his face as my own in this medium -- why I constantly often quote him, why I often hear his words. I can only hope that I have interested others in his life. The speeches collected are a goodly amount. Those I have quoted here -- "The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child" and "Why I Am Agnostic", principally -- are good starting points. If you are reading Ingersoll for the first time, I cannot guarantee that you will be entirely comfortable. He was severe, but passionate -- gentle and loving but fearfully agressive at the same time. This is a man of whom Hamlet might have said, "He was a man -- take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again."
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Sources:

Ingersoll is quite quotable. He was an orator, and his available work reflects the medium, providing short quotations brimming with content. When I have quoted Ingersoll in the above essay, I have generally made reference to the work I'm quoting directly in the text. Those works are online for free at the Bank of Wisdom and the Secular Web Library. The two speeches I quoted most were "The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child" and "Why I Am Agnostic", although I also drew heavily from "Orthodoxy" and "A Lay Sermon". Some of his work reflects developing opinions: during the economic depression of the 1870s, for instance, he is harsh in his address to the "working class". As the decades wear on and the abuses by the factories become more apparant, he is much more sympathetic and it is then that he defends them in "Orthodoxy" and "Eight Hours Must Come". Ingersoll could be quite eloquent, and I think his "Declaration of the Free" is an example of that. It also expresses his faint hope in an afterlife.Some of the more poetic bits of his speeches are presented on their own by the website "Positive Atheism". Do pay a visit!

* Robert Ingersoll, David Anderson
**Specific quote from Ingersoll the Magnificent, by Joseph Lewis.

Further Resources:

• The Ingersoll Chronology Project, from which I borrowed the newspaper images
• The Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum, including audio recordings. (Low quality, but one is fairly understandable and it served as my source for the "Happiness is the only good" creed quotation.)
• Robert Ingersoll at the Secular Web Library

Emotional Maturity

I'm beginning to think that the foundation for emotional maturity is the realization of two things:

• We cannot control what happens to us.
• The only thing we can control is our response to what happens to us.

In the summer of 2006, I fell sick for nearly two weeks. I don't know what hit me, but the two symptoms I was conscious of were (1) extreme fatigue and (2) prolonged and severe headaches. I was bedridden the majority of the time. Despite this, though, I somehow had the presence of mind to write "...we have good days and we have bad days, but we deserve neither." I realized that I was sick, but I realized as the first week wore on that the symptoms were lessening, that it would pass.

It was this attitude that allowed me to maintain my composure while I was sick, to not give in to despair. I simply laid in bed, resting, thinking of other things. I won't deny that if I could have fallen asleep and died that I would have welcomed the relief -- for such was my physical misery -- but I survived. The lesson of that sickness has stayed with me, and has guided my thinking ever since. It's important to me. I don't know where it came from, but ah! -- how useful it is.

We do have bad days. We're attacked by viruses, mistreated by others, are stuck in traffic jams, have unexpected financial difficulties -- in summary, suffer from circumstances beyond our control. You can't stop people from talking about you -- you can't help catching a viruses. The air is filled with them. On the same note, though, we also have good days where traffic moves just the way we want. We go to the zoo and the animals amuse us: our path crosses that of a friendly stranger, and we make a personal connection. We have an easy day at work -- we go outside and find that the weather is ideal.

The idea that we can keep bad things from happening, or make good thing happen, is behind every superstition. Our ancestors did rain dances and sacrificed virgins to keep the sun rising: our contemporaries pray to the heavens to send rain. They weep and pray at their alters, trying to invoke the gods' favor to give them a raise, find them a mate, keep them from harm. People buy rabbit's feet and contractors design buildings that skip from floor twelve to floor fourteen.

Despite all of this effort, though, they can't actually change what happens. If I pray to Athena for good traffic on my drive to someplace, the effect will be exactly the same as if I had prayed to a bag of Skittles or not prayed at all (provided the time I spent praying instead of driving is taken into consideration). I can be as friendly as I like to people, but I'm not going to generate "karma" that makes people treat me kindly in return. Oh, some will return my smile with a smile, but that's only a natural response in people who like being treated with friendliness. We can't change these vents of life, and we waste considerable time, effort, and energy in trying to do so.

As much as we can't control, though, there is one powerful thing we can control: our own mind. It's safe to say that our emotional impulses give us much reason for regret: we make bad choices on them, and later say "I wish I'd thought that through". How many people are in the prisons today because they did something out of impulse -- threw a punch at someone, for instance? Human beings are so passionate that many religions and philosophies push for more self-control. Even emotional Pentecostalism teaches that self-control is part of the fruit of the spirit -- although it's not actually practiced. (An ex-Pentecostal joke: when is self control not a fruit of the spirit? In a Pentecostal church.)

People do learn self-control in varying degrees. They learn fairly quickly, for instance, that you have to watch what you say in front of authority figures. Some people are better at controlling themselves than are others. But this kind of self-control is limited to what we do, to how we respond rather than react to what's done to us. It doesn't include an ability to control what we do by ourselves, or how we think -- and these things are just as if not more important.

Why is how we think important? I believe it is so because our thinking defines our reality. If you go outside and look at a tree, you're not really seeing the tree: you're seeing the image your brain drew of the tree, using the light that is reflected or absorbed from them and taken in by your cones and rods. If you have "normal" vision, you will see it as a collection of greens and browns, probably. But what if you're color-blind? What if the equipment that draws your image of a tree is different from most everybody else's? The image drawn will be different.

The same is true of every sense, I think. Our brains create a reality based our senses. This is true for the sense of reason, which has to be trained rather than being automatic. (The idea of reason as a sense is another essay, I think.) I learned at a fairly young age that I could manipulate the way I sensed things. Have you ever noticed that a location that is new to you looks different than it does when you're familiar with it? Take a house -- does it "feel" different from the way it did when you first moved in? When things are new, they are colored by our imagination, by possibilities: when we are familiar with them, they're colored by our experiences. I realized that I could manipulate my thinking and see something old through new eyes -- and see something new through a sense of familiarity.

Not everyone is conscious of this: just last year, while walking up the stairs in my residency hall at my university, I commented to someone that 'I can still see this place the way it was when I first moved in.' He turned his head and looked at me, replying "It looks just the same. We haven't changed anything..." It wasn't the sight of the place, it was feeling of the place: what it meant, and through that, how it looked. It's a subtle difference, and I'm not sure how to explain it. But this taught me that I could manipulate the way I thought about things.

In late 2006 or early 2007, I read an essay titled Humanist Spirituality: Oxymoron or Authentic Path to Enlightenment? by Doug Muder, a Unitarian minister. In it, he explores the idea of spirituality, and connects it to the Stoic practice of being mindful of one's thoughts: of thinking about how you think and how your thoughts impact your state of mind. The lecture impressed me to the point that I re-read it every so often, and when I read it I began trying to put it into practice. I began to examine my thoughts, to apply reason to them and ask if they were doing me any good. When the way people treated me inspired anger, I seized that anger and thought: will growing angry do me any good? Or will it just make matters worse? When I want to give in to hate, I think: do I really want to sacrifice part of my emotional well-being to this person? Why? When I grew upset or despair at a situation, I turned that anger or despair into the willpower to change the situation. I forced my emotions to work for me -- and if they weren't useful, I neutered them. The podcasts of Zelig Pliskin -- amusingly, an Orthdox rabbi- helped. He advises his listeners to think about the way they're thinking and feeling, to apply reason to them.

I think that this Stoicism is a logical extension of being a freethinker. I said in my "This I Believe" essay that inspired by the successes of the scientific method, I adopted critical thinking as part of my worldview. If I use reason as my guide for what I believe, why not use it to order the way I think? A year ago -- Thanksgiving week, 2007 -- I read my first bit of Stoic literature, that of Marcus Aurelius' meditations. Shortly before Thanksgiving this week, I read Epictetus' Discourses and Manual for Virtuous Living. In both, I found amazing insights that built on this distinction between that which we can control and that which we can't. I've shared my favorite quotations from Aurelius before, and I plan to post my favorites from Epictetus in a week or so. I've been thinking about writing this essay -- or musing, whichever it has turned out to be -- since the summer, and I didn't want to post Epictetus until after posting this. The reason is partly vanity: the distinction between what we can control and what we can't is the essence of everything Epictetus said, and I like the fact that the stuff I think of independently has already been thought of before by people I consider wise. It makes me think I'm doing something right.

Because I read Epictetus before I finished articulating my own thoughts, I'm going to end this with a few quotations from his works that illustrate the theme of what I was writing about. It seems an apt way to conclude.

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Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our control, and some things are not. Keep your attention focuses entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.

When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it: you can either accept it or resent it. What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. [...] We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.

People don't have the power to hurt you. Even if someone shouts abuse at your or strikes you, if you are insulted, it is always your choice to vie w what is happening as insulting or not. If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you.

The Fruits of the (Humanist) Spirit

“Nothing human is alien to me.” - Karl Marx

So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

During the summer I visited my parents and noted that a verse from “Galatians” in the Christian bible was stitched on a throw pillow. The phrase in particular was “Through love, serve one another”. On the face of it, it was a sentiment I could identify with -- I am a humanist, after all, and believe in Woodrow Wilson’s statement that ‘there is no higher religion than human service.’ While I am not religious, I believe religions were created by people to serve particular functions, and that one of those functions is to promote values -- and some of those values are bound to be good, just as some of them are bound to be rotten. As such, I like to read religious texts and beat the bad ideas out of them -- adding the good stuff that’s left to my own worldview.

Even so, I normally avoid the New Testament because of the cultural chauvinists who associate themselves with it. By this, I do not mean all Christians -- merely those who raised in a "Christian" culture and are obnoxious about it, even if their own worldviews aren't very "Christian" at all. Despite this, however, there must still be good to be found in the motley collection of books Christians call the "New Testament" -- regardless of the people who claim it inspires them.

When I re-read the “Fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians, I found myself surprised. Stripped of their supernaturalistic elements, these “fruits” have anagrams in my own worldview. As I began compare and contrast these values with my own, I thought I should share them for those who may not be aware.

1. Love:
- Christian: those who are sincere about their religion try to practice agape love, or “God’s love”. These Christians see their god as loving people unconditionally and believe that people ‘filled with the Spirit of god’ should be able to love people unconditionally.
- Humanist: Humanism as a life stance is rooted in both reason and empathy. The American Humanist Association partially defines humanism as “a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion.” What is the source of this empathy and compassion? Human beings, as mammals, are naturally given toward forging social ties -- especially with kin. We protect our family, or who we see as our family. The mapping of the human genome has proven that human beings are overwhelmingly more alike than not. Humanists by large see the entire body of humanity as one huge family, six billion strong, and thus feel natural empathy toward any human being in physical or emotional pain -- and experience feelings of kinship with all.

2. Joy:
- Christian: “Joy”, or invincible happiness that is not subject to random happenings, is supposed to be a natural gift from God. To quote a pastor I remember from my teenage years, “Happiness is based on happenings; joy is not.” This joy is typically associated with being saved.
- Humanist: I never fully understood the concept above until early 2006, when I began explore philosophy. I discovered in 2006 a source of inner joy -- or I should say sources. The root, I suppose, is a love for life. I am sometimes intoxicated by how happy I am, bewildered even. I cannot articulate why -- except to say that I have no reason to be otherwise. There is no kind of music that I can’t enjoy to some degree, no moment that I can’t seize and find some satisfaction in. Part of my own source of joy is a kind of stoicism, or realizing that I can’t control everything that happens to me -- and that I’m okay with that. (For more elaboration, I wrote an essay over a year ago entitled “All and Enough: Humanist Spirituality”.)

3. Peace:
- Christian: peace, or spiritual tranquility, is supposed to result from a relationship with God.
- Humanist: I see joy and peace as being part of the same essence. My own peace comes from the Stoic influences on humanism, or at least the influences I see. I believe that emotional maturity begins when someone realizes two things: one, that they cannot control everything; two, that they only thing they can ultimately control is their own self. When I realize that I am the master of my responses to what happens to me, and when I exercise that mastery, I maintain inner peace -- emotional stability.

4. Patience:
- Christian: Patience is fairly self-explanatory. Christian emphasis on patience seems to be on withstanding persecution or opposition.
- Humanist: Humanism is not a prescriptive worldview: there are no Ten Commandments, Four Noble Truths, Five Pillars, or list of “fruits of the Spirit”. The foundation of the worldview or “life stance” of humanism is reason and empathy, both of which come natural to human beings in various degrees and thus are not really prescribed -- just naturally practiced. As such, there’s no direct anagram but one can be derived from both reason and empathy. It is both rational and a practice of empathy to be patient, as it is to endure what one must. On the subject of “what one must”, you can read Stoic influences. I’ve read that Paul of Tarsus -- who wrote Galatians -- was influenced by Stoicism, which would not surprise me. Zeno -- the first Stoic -- preceded Paul by some 350+ years, and the early stoics believed in a universal being. (Stoicism, like all worldviews, is subject to interpretation. Marcus Aurelius, who inspires many of my own ideas, believed in the Roman pantheon -- not a universal spirit.) A quotation from Aurelius that applies toward patience is this: “Men exist for the sake of one another; teach them, then, or bear with them.”

5. Kindness:
- Christian: I’ve never actually heard a commentary on kindness by a pastor, so I have to wing this. I’m going to guess that kindness is “love in action” -- dealing with people justly and with compassion.
- Humanism: Kindness, of course, is central to humanism. I cannot exaggerate the influence that simple kindnesses have had on my own life: acts of kindness by a few people I knew in my youth inspired me to live in a spirit of empathy, which led to something of a rebirth for me. When I deal with people, I try to do in a spirit of loving kindness toward them -- which is not always easy with certain personalities.

6: Goodness:
- Christian: What is goodness? Again, this is something I’ve not heard much of a commentary on. The only universal definition of goodness I can think of -- one that applies to any worldview, from the best to the very worst, is this: how well do you fare when judged by your ideals? In a Christian worldview, a “good” person would be someone who lives in love, with perfect faith in their god, who strives to obey the guidance of their god who is supposed to be the ultimate ideal -- all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, etc.
- Humanist: The universal definition I used was “How well do you fare when judged by your ideals?” A humanist worldview, founded on reason and empathy, would define a good person as someone who lived in love and who strives to find truth with and live using reason.

7. Faithfulness:
- Christian: Interpretations vary. A faithful person is someone who keeps the faith, which is important in Christianity. It can also mean that someone who is faithful can be relied upon.
- Humanist: “Faith” has no real counterpart in humanism, it being a rational worldview that eschews emotional appeals that have no grounding in reason. Humanism is an optimistic worldview, however, and so it may be said that some humanists are faithfully hopeful.

8. Gentleness/Meekness:
- Christian: I’ve heard varying interpretations for this. One I’ve heard (and don’t particularly find helpful) is that meekness means to be humble and live subject to guidance from the pastor and God. This particular interpretation came from an authoritarian pastor, which will come as no great surprise. Another interpretation -- one that is basic and seems to be more helpful -- that being “gentle” is a combination of being both loving and peaceful -- to be motivated to help and so control one’s passions to further that end, without allowing strong emotions to endanger that goal.

- Humanist: When “winging” it and contemplating on the definition in the Christian section, I tend to rely on my own thoughts and then interpret them based on what I know of Christian doctrine. My own view, then, is my own thoughts without the Christian swing to it. I believe in dealing with people with a gentle and considerate manner. There are times when no amount of consideration on your part is going to help matters, but I find it’s a good idea to stick to ideals even in those cases just for the practice.

9. Self-Control
- Christian: Christian beliefs hold that humanity is basically corrupt and tempted constantly by carnal nature and the Devil to sin against God. Christians are to practice self control and abstain from worldly pleasures - -sex, alcohol, strong expressions of emotion (the use of strong language), etc. In a broader, more philosophical sense, this can be seen as evidence of stoicism.
- Humanist: Humanists believe that people contain within them the rational ability to abstain from doing evil -- to restrain our primitive, animal passions and treat one another civilly. My own worldview is both humanist and Stoic, and I am quite keen on self-control. I control my thoughts, and spent much time in consideration while trying to figure out a good way to respond to issues of life. I believe self control is crucial to peace of mind.

My rediscovery of the “Fruits of the Spirit” tells me that Christian philosophy and humanist philosophy need not be considered foes. Both philosophies, I believe, come from the same spirit -- the human spirit -- and thus are more alike than they are different. The problem is that the Christian religion often gets in the way of Christian philosophy.

McCain, Palin, Opportunism, and Democracy

Until recently, I wasn't paying much attention to the upcoming presidential election. I've become increasingly more cynical about the state of democracy and liberty in the United States, and remain unconvinced that either candidate can or will turn things around. I wasn't even sure who I was going to vote for, since until recently I couldn't honestly support one candidate over the other. I was thinking of writing in Mike Gravel, myself, or Marcus Aurelius. But recent events have compelled me to make a decision, and I'll probably be enabling the two-party system again this November.

Until recently, I was pretty much OK with John McCain. He was far from ideal, but considering what the Republican party gives us to work with, he looked like a bastion of integrity, civility, and reasonableness by comparison. I wouldn't mind if he lost to Obama, but my world wouldn't fall apart if he became the president. It's not as if I'm entirely comfortable with the idea of Obama being president, either. As said, until recently I was pretty much "eh" on the election. When it came to my decision of whether I should vote my conscious (Marcus Aurelius) or vote for Obama came down to one question: how far will McCain go to appease the religious right -- the supporters of Pat Robertson, the happily late Jerry Falwell, and the rest of that gang who decry every scientific advance since Galileo as "Satanic" and who think homosexuals are demon-possessed?

In recent decades, this group has become a political force to be reckoned with. As a result of decades of pandering to this group of uninformed peasants, it is now impossible to be elected without payng lip-service to the state god. This situation is a violation of Article VI of the Constitution, but who cares about that quaint little document? I realized that if McCain wanted to be elected, he had to pander to this group. I know that referring to these people as uninformed peasants sounds snobbish and elitist, and it is -- and with good reason. I want my broken bones set by doctors who know what they're doing; I want criminals pursued by police officers who know what they're doing; and I want my laws passed by people who know what they're doing -- and I do not think for one moment that people who think the Earth is six thousand years old can be trusted to choose the people who will deliberate on education standards. These people believe sickness and homosexuality are the result of demonic forces and they want to elect people who are in charge of health and medicine? Call me elitist if you will, but I do not want my politicians elected by people whose political opinions are solely informed by commercial television. Yet I see no solution to this problem, which is the reason I've become so cynical about the future of liberty and democracy: its fate is to be decided by mass hysteria.

You can see now why I was apathetic when it came to the election and why my only concern was with John McCain's relationship to the religious right, these lovable peasants whose fathers stopped the Freedom Riders and set their buses on fire and who think that the hypothetical Creator of the universe, with its billions of stars and solar systems, cares about the welfare of a political abstraction on one small continent of one small planet in a backwater galaxy -- and cares about it because It wants worship. Not only are these people wrong, they're insufferably arrogant. To think that Deity would care about the worship of primates!

So a week or so ago, John McCain answered my question and in so doing made an enemy out of me. I don't like being McCain's enemy, but I have no choice. He chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate, and in so doing told me how far he'll go: he will happily bend over and take it in the bum from Ted Haggard. That's how far he'll go. Sarah Palin is inexperienced, and is sure to alienate half the nation and all of the world -- but McCain wants to ensure his victory, so he'll risk her becoming President to get himself elected. It doesn't bother me that he's being a cynical opportunist -- that's American "democracy". Reagan made his bones by being a witch-hunter, after all. What bothers me is that he's so brazen about it. Other cynical politicians at least try to HIDE their opportunism. This guy is brazen about it. His contempt for the American people and reality is impressively massive. What is he going to next? Start flinging Mexican immigrants into "internment camps" to await deportation? What will McCain do to stay in power? I don't want to learn the answer. If he wins, I do not see good things in store for the future of human rights, informed democracy, and liberty -- those liberal values his party despises so much.

This I Believe

I wrote this essay a little over a year ago. It was an attempt to articulate to my friends in the Pentecostal church that I had been raised in what I believed now, without the messy details of deconversion: this essay was to be positive, not negative. I think the essay reflects "me" quite well, and because I am somewhat proud of my accomplishment in being able to articulate my complex worldview in just a few paragraphs, I post it here. I take the name of this essay ("This I Believe") from the NPR program that invites ordinary people to talk about their own personal philosophies.

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If someone had asked me what I believed in a few years ago, I would have been hard-pressed to give a sensible and sincere answer. A couple of years ago, however, I began to evaluate myself and life. I began to think on who I was as a person and what I wanted to do with my life. Up until that point in my life, all of the big questions had been answered by the religion I was raised in. Despite my embracing the faith of my parents, I found that I was deeply unhappy and sought the reasons why; and I sought the remedy to my discouragement and weariness. I am happy to report that I did realize why I was unhappy, and I did find the answer to my problems. In the process, I established a new worldview -- one built upon lessons learned in childhood and supported throughout a lifetime of experience.

I believe that the only thing that ever has or ever will matter to us is the needs of humanity. For this reason, I have no sympathy for gods who demand worship and threaten torture. If they are real, then I pity them -- because they are lesser beings than we have grown to be. I have never been attracted to the idea of streets of gold and walls of jasper, but I have longed for Heaven on Earth. It is my heart’s desire to see people united in love for one another -- overcoming the boundaries of language, ethnicity, religion, and nationality. I spurn any idea that promotes divisiveness. Is a united and healthy Earth an impossible ideal? Perhaps, but think how wonderful just realizing part of that ideal would be. It is this idealism, born of love for humanity, that drives me. Because this idealism has served me so well, I give no quarter to ideas that would rob me or other people of that idealism by telling us that we are worthless and depraved or dependent upon anything but ourselves to effect the changes we need to see. That idea is worthless and depraved. I believe in the power of idealism: I believe we can be better than we are, and that we should set goals for ourselves. Even if we don’t reach them, we are made better by our struggle to overcome our failings. To lose faith in ourselves is to die -- as individuals, as a society.

As I see that there is no difference between the needs of myself and the needs of my neighbors -- whether they be next door or across the oceans -- I live my life in the sprit of empathy. I strive to live in love -- to be compassionate and understand the needs of those around me. After all, that’s all that really matters. I want someone’s life to have been improved in some miniscule way by my existence here. This is done in recognition of the fact that ordinary kindnesses from other people have helped me, and I want to improve other people’s lives in the same way that mine has been improved.

Because I recognize that life is fleeting and that regret is rarely satiated, I strive to live my best life now and to realize the potential of each moment; to be as happy sitting at a red-light as I am driving through the countryside on a sunny autumn day. I recognize that I will have good days and I will have bad days -- but I deserve neither. All I can do is appreciate and make the most of each. I do not live in the past or future, but in the present; and I make the most of it. I am in awe of the world that I live in. When I gaze out of my bedroom window and see the lush green of the trees set against the unbroken blue sky, I understand worship. I am delighted by the pursuit of knowledge, because being able to understand the world that I live in enables me to appreciate it all the more.

I see reason as a flaming sword -- not one that keeps us from paradise, but one that allows us to do away with the choking brambles of ignorance and superstition to make paradise. I recognize that the scientific method, that uncompromising search for real answers, is what has helped humanity rise “from the swamp to the stars”. Inspired by what science has achieved, I adopted the principles of freethought in my life and have found my life to be all the better because of this. I recognize that science and reason must be tempered with empathy , because as Paul Johnson once said, “The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.” The only thing that matters is people -- and that is what I believe.

All and Enough: Humanist Spirituality

"Let us consider the way in which we live our lives." - Henry David Thoreau

"You gotta love livin', baby, 'cause dyin' is a pain in the ass!" - Frank Sinatra

I was once asked if I thought "humanist spirituality" was a contradiction in terms. As luck would have it, I had been thinking on that subject only a week before. A Google search directed me to Doug Muder's blog, where I found an excellent essay on the subject. It's one I recommend reading. The question posed by my friend seems fair, given the subject of spirituality is thought of as supernatural and that the majority of definitions for humanism include a rejection of the supernatural. Is spirituality truly limited to the supernatural, though? I have read the opinions of many on this subject as I sought to articulate my own thoughts, and the opinion is universally expressed by commentators that spirituality has a far more encompassing definition than the one religious personalities assign to it in their zeal to monopolize its use. I would say that spirituality deals with the essence of things, and that by this definition we can relate spirituality to the natural world as well, which is where it belongs to those of us who think of supernaturalism as farcical.

Spirituality in religious and some philosophical systems deals with realizing and nurturing the growth of the individual essence, or spirit. Jews do this by studying Torah and performing mitzvah; Christians by being born again; Muslims by living in submission to Allah. In some other religious systems, a person's essence is nurtured and grows through reincarnation. Whatever the religion, all of these practices concern themselves with overcoming and improving upon our base nature. We recognize that we are given to some desires and behaviors that can prove destructive. We realize that if these desires and this nature can be overcome or controlled that we can live better lives.

The third Humanist Manifesto declares that the natural universe is "all and enough". Our own minds, then, are all and enough to nurture our "essence". Humanists rely on reason and empathy to live informed and fulfilling lives. Both of these tools require only our brains to use. For the Humanist, fulfillment is an internal affair. We do not need magic rocks to pray over or idols to bow down before. We do not require the sacrifice of animals or any other rituals. We do not need holy books. Our minds are all and enough. I have said before that the subtle beauty of humanism is that it is a philosophy often self-arrived at. If someone makes reason and empathy the bedrock of their worldview, that worldview will be humanistic. The values arrived at will be by and large the same.

How, then, do we use these tools? How do I as a person who believes my mind is all and enough find essential -- spiritual -- fulfillment and growth? How do I use my reason and empathy to effect such a result? Spirituality is so broad a subject that I could scarcely expect to cover any of it in one article. What I attempted to do with this was to explain what the basis for humanist spirituality is. If you're interested in spirituality in nontheistic and naturalistic systems of thought there are of course numerous blogs and books devoted to that subject. To end, though, I'd like to explain what my "spirituality" is like.

I begin with this statement: I study the sciences and humanities, appreciate nature and art, and love humanity. This is the nature of my spirituality. Essentially, spirituality for me can be tied to one word, love. Being a humanist, I love truth and humanity unconditionally. I love them both because they so enrich my life. Being able to revel in the knowledge that I'm alive is all-important to me. When I stopped caring about God in 2005, I said to myself that I was going to enjoy life as best as I could and help other people. That was where I really began to grow spiritually, and that occurred well before I discovered the Ex-Pentecostals and began to deconvert. Being able to appreciate being alive -- to really appreciate it -- is the best gift you or I can ever give to anyone. Even when I'm sick, I'm still happy because my joy isn't based on what happens to me. My joy comes from a deeper source, and that is my appreciation for being alive.

I love learning about science because it allows me to appreciate the world around me more than I could if I were ignorant of it. My love for science has grown as I have grown as a person in the past couple of years, and so to has my appreciation for the universe. I can spend hours sitting outside and enjoying the day. When I look out of my bedroom window and see the lush green trees set against the unbroken blue sky, I understand worship. There are times when I am looking at pictures of nature when I think that my chief pleasure in this world is to appreciate this beauty. Nature can be cruel, but it can also be breathtakingly beautiful. I think it's important to focus on the beauty given that all of this is a beautiful accident.

I also love studying the humanities -- history, literature, art, music -- because these subjects remind me of my humanity. When I listen to instrumental music while contemplating the vastness and beauty of space, I am moved. I delight in reading literature and fiction because they represent a sharing of experiences. I can learn more about my humanity and feel more connected to the people with whom I associate. There are similar subjects -- philosophy and sociology -- that I enjoy for the same reason. I am human; not a god. I want to grow as a human, not as a "saint". Pindar, the last of the Greek aristocrats, said "Strive not thou to become a god; the things of mortals best befit mortality."

The last part of my spirituality is that I attempt to live in love -- in hope for humanity. I set goals for myself and I strive to work toward them. My fondest dream is that of a peaceful and healthy Earth, occupied by humans who are united in their love for one another. This idealism drives me. I want to see this; I want to make it happen. I live each day trying to be the best human I can be. Is a united Earth an unrealistic goal? Perhaps now it is. I think, though, that by setting goals for ourselves -- as individuals and as a race -- we also provide motivation to meet those goals. Even if we don't meet the ideal completely, we can still improve the human condition.

I've grown a lot the past few years -- in knowledge, in confidence, and in my ability to live life in love for it. I anticipate growing even more in the future, as I plan on attending services at a Unitarian Universalist fellowship. I can only imagine how enriching being part of that kind of community will be. I've tried to articulate my feelings on spirituality for a long time now, but I feel like one blind man trying to determine the shape of the Great Pyramid. Spirituality is a colossally broad subject, and books and blogs have been devoted to the idea to do justice to it. In this essay, I explained what I think is the basis for naturalistic spirituality and expressed what some of what spirituality means to me in practice.

In this article, I referenced one quotation from Pindar, a classical personality. I found that quotation in "The Greek Way", by Edith Hamilton. I failed to write down the page number when I initially read it, but Google informs me that Pindar is covered in chapter five of that book. To end, here are my results from a QuizFarm quiz that I found over at GifS; if you dig into that blog's archives you can see how long I've been trying to express my thoughts on this subject.

Here are some essays that I found helpful in forming an idea about what humanist spiritualty was and should be:

"Humanist Spirituality: Oxymoron or Authentic Path to Enlightenment?"
http://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/2006/03/humanist-spirituality-oxymoron-or.html
- This is my favorite, and I make a point to re-read it every so often.

"Spirituality: What on Earth is It?"
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1264

"Integral Spirituality, Humanist Spirituality"
http://glitteringstew.com/muse/2006/12/19/integral-spirituality-humanist-spirituality/
- This blog has another post called "Can Atheists Be Spiritual?"

"Why Atheist Spirituality isn't an Oxymoron"
http://members.cox.net/sbcogan/russell.html

"Faith of an Atheist"
http://www.uucpa.org/sermons_02-03/sermon020310.html

You scored as Spiritual Atheist, Ah! Some of the coolest people in the world are Spiritual Atheists. Most of them weren't brought up in an organized religion and have very little baggage. They concentrate on making the world a better place and know that death is just another part of life. What comes after, comes after. Spiritual Atheist 92% Scientific Atheist 92% Apathetic Atheist 75% Angry Atheist 58% Militant Atheist 58% Agnostic 42% Theist 8% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Reason and Emotion

"I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion."- Robert Ingersoll

Tonight, I watched a Star Trek episode titled “The Conscience of the King” from the original series, with text commentary by a man very much involved in the shape the Star Trek franchise took, Michael Okuda. I have been wanting for some time to write on a subject that keeps popping up in other writing that I do, and tonight I witnessed a scene that I thought might serve as an apt if somewhat geeky introduction. In this scene, Captain Kirk is faced with a difficult decision. He is in his quarters with his two best friends -- the dispassionate Mr. Spock and the passionate Dr. McCoy. In the running commentary, Okuda remarks that the scene is a classic example of the connection that exists between the three men. For Kirk, Spock is the dispassionate voice of reason -- and McCoy is voice of humanistic emotion. What made Kirk great, Okuda said, is that he relied on both, taking a balanced approach to things He used both logic and emotion to find the best solution to the problem.

In another episode, "The Galileo Seven", where the logical Mr. Spock is commanding six Starfleet officers who have crash-landed on a hostile planet. Spock’s decisions throughout the episode-- based solely on logic -- result in partial disaster for the people under his command, and he almost has something of a crisis of confidence. While a creature resembling Bigfoot bangs on the roof of their shelter, he remarks that “no one can be more than the sum of their parts”, somewhat in disbelief. Spock was wrong on this count; we are more than the sum of our parts. However, we are more than this because of the sum of our parts. Think of a car; if you assemble it the way it ought to be assembled and give it fuel and oil and so on, you have more than an admirable arrangement of metal; you have potential. You can go places -- more places than you could have gone without the car. I believe that we humans are wholly natural creatures; we are biochemical machines. But because of the sum of our parts, we have achieved a larger degree of sentience than have the rest of the animals. We have the potential to explore who we are; to define purpose for ourselves.

Defining purpose was the theme of the first Star Trek movie. It was about a sentient machine that comes to Earth, wanting to commune with its creator. As the plot of the movie unfolds, we find that the machine used to be one of the Voyager probes that was improved upon and made sentient. Having accomplished its mission of science, it sought more. Spock observes that the machine's mind functions on pure logic. V'Ger, as the machine cam to be called, sought deeper meaning to its life, but had no one to give it that meaning -- its creator was a team of long-dead NASA engineers. V’Ger was enabled to determine its own purpose by Kirk’s crew. The message of the movie is now obvious; reason and logic are not enough in giving our lives purpose. Our brains use emotion -- and so dependant on emotion are we that we need emotional fulfillment to feel satisfied.

Emotion and reason have even more use than establishing purpose; the two work to protect us. Both are necessary. Animals do not operate solely on instincts; some use reasoned strategies. I don’t know that much about defensive personal combat, but I have been told that even in fighting you must have both passion and discipline -- because your passion is most useful when it is disciplined. Emotion and reason also serve as guides. Emotions are like the wind to the sailor. A light breeze across the deck feels good, but no captain would allow strong winds to determine where his ship is to go. Reason gave us science to fashion sails to harness the wind, to somewhat subject it to working for us. Reason turned the winds of emotion into our ally. Later on, science gave us engines to progress despite the wind; to push through the wind when it would have caused them to lose their way.

Emotion and reason work hand in hand; each tempers the other. Neither should be neglected or promoted over the other. When one is neglected, the result is disaster. Fundamentalist, emotion-driven religions foster violence and suffering, and the calculated commitment to profit by corporations causes massive layoffs and distress. Horror movies and books feature both scenarios -- religion and science both running amok. The solution is balance. It’s a simple solution in theory but requires commitment to work in practice. I myself sometimes have trouble keeping emotion reined in, but take hope in the fact that I am getting better at it. I don’t think anyone can go wrong when they make their decisions on this balanced approach.

"Why should we desire the destruction of human passions? Take passions from human beings and what is left? The great object should be not to destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form of intemperance - to destroy passion is another. The reasonable gratification of passion under the domination of the intellect is true wisdom and perfect virtue." - Robert Ingersoll