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The following articles are from the Secular Humanist Bulletin, Volume 24, Number 2 (Summer 2008).
On May 2, Center for Inquiry/Europe held an organizational meeting in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In addition to members of CFI/Transnational, several countries were represented, including Poland, Denmark, Britain, and Italy. Those in attendance discussed the values and purposes of CFI in Europe. They set an agenda geared toward fostering skepticism and secular humanism and discussed ideas for developing better relationships with the media.
On May 3, CFI/Low Countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) held its official opening at the Academy Building in Utrecht. The program was centered around the question, “To be, or not to be, secular?” and the presentations addressed such specific questions as “How should a secular society be organized?” “How can secularism be promoted?” “What kind of education is best fit for secularism?” “Is secularism a political framework or can there be secular ethics?”
Paul Kurtz, the chairman of CFI/ Transnational, discussed the importance of planetary ethics. He noted that it is important for humanity to develop a broad-based secular ethics that is inclusive of the entire human family.
Another speaker, Azar Majedi, is an activist for women’s rights with a special focus on Iran and founder of the Organization for Women’s Liberation. Majedi discussed the oppressive nature of Islam but warned the audience not to join forces with reactionary, anti-Muslim bigots. She emphasized that it is possible to oppose Muslim extremism without resorting to antireligious intolerance.
Austin Dacey, CFI representative to the United Nations, discussed his new Prometheus book, The Secular Conscience. He said that religionists should be permitted to discuss their ideas in the public square, partly because it provides the best opportunity for secularists to oppose them. He noted that though religion can be divisive, there are many secular ideas that are also divisive, and religious ideas should not be singled out using that criterion.
David Nash of Britain spoke on “Blasphemy and the Freedom of Speech.” He pointed out that a blasphemy law was recently overturned in Britain. His presentation was especially timely in light of an alarming new development in the U.N. In 2006, after claims that it had become too biased, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights was disbanded and the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was formed to take its place. On March 28, 2008, the Canadian delegation to the U.N. brought a resolution before the UNHRC to bring back the official order of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Speech. In the past, this commission was responsible for defending freedom of expression.
While this sounded like a noble endeavor, a group of Muslim nations were joined by Cuba, China, and Russia in proposing an amendment authorizing the Special Rapporteur “to report on in stances in which the abuse of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination.” In other words, this new initiative could easily be used to stifle criticism of religion. This was not the intent of the Canadian delegation, and Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Bolivia, Guate mala, and Switzerland no longer supported the resolution with the new stipulation. Although they were joined by twenty other nations that had originally supported the resolution, the amended resolution still received enough votes to pass. As a result, Dacey is leading an effort to denounce this turn of events, maintaining that the current situation goes against the intent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
On May 5, 2008, Kurtz and co-director of CFI/Transnational Programs Norm Allen were hosted by members of the newly formed CFI/Romania in Bucharest. They were joined by Stephen Law, a representative of CFI/London, who was also on the program in Utrecht. According to longtime Romanian humanist activist Remus Cernea, this was the first occasion at which speeches on secular humanism had been made at a public gathering in Romania. The presentations were delivered at the State University for Political Science.
Kurtz again spoke on the need for planetary ethics. Allen discussed the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) persons. Law examined “the problem of good” as opposed to the problem of evil. He showed that just as it is highly unlikely that a perfectly evil God exists, it is just as unlikely that a perfectly good God exists.
The following day, Kurtz, Law, and Allen were interviewed at the headquarters of National Geographic/Romania. Later that day, they were interviewed on an online radio program at RadioLynx (www.radiolynx.ro).
On May 7, the three spoke again on the same themes at the Romanian Anthropologic Research Institute. The question/answer sessions were stimulating, but the students seemed unreceptive to skepticism and humanism. On the other hand, faculty members seemed very welcoming of the messages. This is not surprising. The Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) has strong influence in the nation. According to a poll conducted in December 2007, only 18 percent of Romanians expressed confidence in Parliament. However, 84 percent expressed confidence in the Church. Perhaps the most disturbing revelation was that only 14 percent of Romanian students in grades 7–12 accept evolution.
After the execution of Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, thousands of churches were built with public funding on public property. The influence of the churches extends to public schools. Students are led in prayers in the majority of Romanian public schools, and Christian images are displayed in classrooms.
It will be challenging to promote skepticism and humanism among the Romanian masses. However, J. Beth Ciesielski, a U.S. citizen and founder of CFI/Romania, is a dynamic leader. She is assisted by very sharp Romanian citizens. CFI/Transnational will continue to maintain a close relationship with the center in Romania. Moreover, as members of CFI/Europe, they will have strong moral and intellectual support.
CFI/Transnational continues to spread its message throughout the world. Representatives of the Center will soon travel to Africa and India, and students from throughout the world will attend the CFI Institute Summer Session 2008 in Amherst from June 20 to August 10.
The quest for a New Enlightenment continues.
–Norm R. Allen Jr.
Norm R. Allen Jr. is the executive director of African Americans for Humanism, based at the Center for Inquiry/Transnational. He is an associate editor of Free Inquiry and the editor of The Black Humanist Experience: An Alternative to Religion and African/American Humanism: An Anthology (both from Prometheus Books).
Participants who attended the Center for Inquiry/Washington, D.C.’s first “Civic Days at the Capital” from February 22 to 25, 2008, experienced an inspiring and informative weekend. Nearly fifty citizens from twelve states traveled to the nation’s capital to attend CFI/Washing ton, D.C.’s Office of Public Policy’s legislative training and citizen lobbying event. They talked with more than thirty-one members of Congress or their staff to voice opposition to pending legislation that defies separation of church and state.
The four-day event included briefings on global warming, pending legislation in Congress, CFI’s legal work, and recent Supreme Court decisions that are eroding civil rights protected by the establishment clause. Speakers included NASA emeritus staff scientist Dr. Stuart Jordan, CFI/Washington, D.C., Executive Director Elizabeth Daerr, Office of Public Policy Government Affairs Director Toni Van Pelt, CFI Representative to the United Nations Austin Dacey, and CFI Legal Affairs Director Ronald A. Lindsay.
Attendees asked congressional members to support changes to the Charitable Choice provision of The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Act. The measure would allow organizations that receive federal funds to hire and fire staff based on religious affiliation. A similar measure was placed in a previous reauthorization bill but was defeated. Civic Days participants also encouraged their representatives to support The Fair Pay Restoration Act, which would ensure that victims of pay discrimination would not be limited to six months to file a lawsuit. Additionally, they asked members of Congress to reject any controversial judicial nominees President George W. Bush puts forward before the election.
Civic Days participants also toured prominent city sites, including the Library of Congress and the U.S. Capitol Building. The weekend also included a walking tour to learn about Robert Green Ingersoll’s life in Washington and a trip to the Marian Koshland Science Museum’s global-warming exhibit.
Attendees found the event inspirational, energizing, and enlightening. Given its success, the Office of Public Policy plans to hold a second “Civic Days at the Capital” in the spring of 2009. “Attendees were attentive and engaged throughout the event,” said Van Pelt. “We’re looking forward to hosting more people and adding different opportunities next year.”
CFI Founder and Chairman Paul Kurtz remarked, “We should all be proud to see that CFI supporters from all over the country answered the call to demand the use of science and reason in public policy. Their effort to come—some from as far away as California and Texas—proves that there is a national constituency unwilling to accept public law shaped by religious dogma.”
–Steven J. Winkelman
Steven Winkelman is the CFI/Office of Public Policy Legislative intern. He is participating in the Washington Semester Program at American University and majors in philosophy and political science.
Center for Inquiry/Indiana celebrated the first anniversary of the opening of its center on April 1, 2008, with an open house featuring a birthday cake and a slideshow. Since the opening of the center on the beautiful pedestrian Canal Walk in downtown Indianapolis, membership has more than tripled.
CFI/Indiana offers fifteen to twenty programs a month to its members. Some programs are mostly social, such as the popular Coffee and Conversation, which is held every Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to Noon, the monthly euchre night, and a sci-fi night. Others, such as discussion groups on specific books on topics within religion, medicine, and science, are educational. The Secular Family Network play groups and monthly Pitch-in Lunch are bringing young families to the center.
The center has hosted authors Bruce Braden, Sheila Kennedy, Jennifer Michael Hecht, and Austin Dacey and sponsored CFI Vice President for Research John Shook as a participant in a panel on Naturalism at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IU–PUI). The grand opening conference, “Promoting Science and Reason at the Crossroads of America,” brought Paul Kurtz, Toni Van Pelt, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell, and CFI First Amendment Task Force Chair Eddie Tabash to town. IU–PUI Free thinkers on the college campus across the street from the center was a cosponsor of the “Third Annual Darwin Day Conference” in March.
CFI/Indiana has expanded its outreach throughout the state by partnering with existing discussion groups in Fort Wayne, Lafayette, and Richmond and by starting others in Bloomington and Muncie. CFI/Indiana manned a table at the Indiana State House and has been a part of coalitions that have lobbied state legislators. “Promote Science and Reason” license-plate frames were sold as a counter to the state’s “In God We Trust” license plate.
Hundreds of people pass the center as they walk their dogs, jog, push strollers, rollerblade, or just go for a stroll. Many stop in to ask what the center is about, and some have become regular attendees and members. Having the center in this prime location has provided a very high level of visibility and prestige to the cause of science and reason—it is a real candle in the dark.
–Reba Boyd Wooden
Reba Boyd Wooden is the executive director of the Center for Inquiry/ Indiana.
In April, Center for Inquiry/Michigan, in partnership with the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University, hosted an historic debate between Christopher and Peter Hitchens. The brothers, long estranged but recently reconciled, had clashed before in print and on the radio. But this event marked the first time that they appeared together on stage, before a live audience, to debate religion and foreign policy one-to-one.
This was not just any stage. It was in Grand Rapids, home to the world’s largest Bible publisher, a half-dozen Christian colleges, world headquarters of both the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church of America, and Mars Hill—a church so large that it bought a shopping mall to hold its 10,000 churchgoers each Sunday. The stage belonged to an ultra-liberal Fountain Street Church, a speaking venue over the years for the likes of Clarence Darrow, Susan B. Anthony, Hellen Keller, Margaret Sanger, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Frost, Alan Watts, Malcolm X, Michael Moore, and many others. One wall of the sanctuary is lined with stained-glass windows depicting traditional biblical figures. Windows on the opposite wall feature more enlightened luminaries such as Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Roger Williams, George Washington, Desiderius Erasmus, Louis Pasteur, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and, yes, even Charles Darwin.
It was on this stage that brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens stepped out before an audience of almost 1,400 people anxious to see sibling rivalry at its finest. Christopher Hitchens’s name is, of course, well known. His positions on religion and the war in Iraq are often polarizing and have admirers and detractors on both sides. Younger brother Peter is a Londoner, and, although less well known in the United States, he is also an accomplished author, journalist, and media pundit in his own right. Christopher, to be sure, knows how to rule the stage with a fierce and flamboyant erudition that could overshadow any younger sibling. But despite Peter’s comparatively reserved demeanor and buttoned-up style, he displays a bit of Christopher’s acerbity and haughty charm.
The first blows of the evening were landed over the proposition “The invasion of Iraq was wrong” with Peter winning the coin toss—along with the audience’s allegiance for his position against the war. “I don’t want to make this too easy for myself,” Peter opined, “because it seems to me that it is actually a fantastically easy position to take.” And so it seemed to most of the crowd as Peter bemoaned “the rank stupidity of arguments in its favor” and recounted many examples to underline what he sees as the carelessness and callousness with which the war has been waged.
Christopher’s rejoinder in support of “the Mesopotamian War” was rousing, sincere, and laced with its own share of moral revulsion—at Saddam Hussein’s brutality and the world community’s long complacency. His boldness may have transformed into hyperbole when he proffered that Iraq’s “liberation” will stand as one of the “greatest decisions of American statecraft” and one of the things that the American people “will be proudest of in the future.” In the end, some audience members observed that it was the most brilliant defense of the war they had ever heard—all the while remaining unconvinced by Christopher’s arguments.
The final and most anticipated round of the brotherly brawl was over the proposition “God does not exist and he is not great.” “Of all the places in all the world where I could have held what I think will be my last debate with my brother Christopher, Grand Rapids would have struck me as the least likely location,” Peter reflected later. “There is a very strong chance that this will be the last time we do this.”
–Jeff Seaver
Jeff Seaver is the executive director of Center for Inquiry/Michigan.
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OCTOBER 24-27 2013
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