In our Summer 1990 issue, Free Inquiry presented the cover feature, “Dying without Religion.” One of the articles was “A Eupraxophic Declaration on Death and Dying.” (In those early days, eupraxsophy had not yet acquired its s.) The declaration was authored by philosophy instructor and community activist Verle Muhrer, who went on to lead the Kansas City Eupraxophy Center, later the Center for Inquiry/ Midwest. An excerpt is printed below.
No person should be judged by the accident of an untimely death, any more than by the long-worn superstition of judging people by the accident of birth. Nor should the human race be judged as sinful because of the natural condition of dying.
The victory of the grave is no illusion. The grave is victorious. In the end, it always has its way. To believe otherwise is vain, unrealistically prideful, self-deluding, and arrogant.
To be eupraxophic is to master not only living but death as well. We must have the courage and understanding to face our own mortality and the mortalities of our loved ones and friends. However, secular humanists and eupraxophers are naturally more calm and less concerned about death, because they understand it. Our fear, pain, and grief are tempered by aesthetic contemplation, reason, and human—not divine—acts of kindness, love, mercy, and comfort. No illusion is authentically comforting, least of all the illusion that death is unreal and unnatural.
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The transnational secular humanist magazine
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