A. Eustace Haydon, a signer of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, Dean of the Department of Comparative Religion at the University of Chicago, and for some years a Leader in the Ethical Culture Movement (AEU) had this to say on the spirituality of humanism: “The Humanist rarely loses the feeling of at-homeness in the universe. The Humanist is [...]

Compassion without reason is ineffective; reason without compassion is destructive. “Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined [...]

How the National Prayer Breakfast invitation edited Thomas Jefferson: “In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves….We must reduce our volume to the [...]

How can you make resolutions you’ll actually keep? Making general resolutions to change (”I’ll lose weight” / “I’ll stop smoking” / “I’ll do something about my job”) rarely results in actually achieving what you resolve. Those general statements are good starts, though. Think smart. That’s S – M – A – R – T — a way [...]

We as humans factor in far more than basic probabilities — hope, greed, whatever. I found this article fascinating! Are Birds Smarter Than Humans? – PDF file Related posts No related posts.

I cannot fully celebrate anyone’s death. It would make me less than I want to be. It was Osama bin Laden’s celebration of death of others in the service of his ends that led him to inspire so much pain and suffering. I don’t want to be like that, even in a [...]

Recently, someone asked me about the “correct” version of the quote from Felix Adler about “eliciting the best” or “bringing out the best.” Here is an edited version of my response, based on quick research: He said it several different ways. Here are two I can document as actually being from him: The title of [...]

I found this on the way to looking for something else: a paragraph from an early constitution of the “Ethical Union” of the first Ethical Societies in the United States, referred to in a book published in 1896 as being from “a few years ago.” The general aim of the Ethical Movement as represented by this [...]

We are mentioned in this article in the Post: Atheists gather for a holiday they can believe in: Independence Day Glad to get a mention. Our Ethical Society is definitely an atheist-friendly group with many atheists, but we’re not exclusively an atheist group. We’re nontheist in that belief in deities is not required or even important to [...]

As part of the membership meeting in June, 2010, I asked members to remember two incidents this past year that stood out for them in the life of our Ethical Society -- one that they enjoyed, and one that they didn't enjoy so much.

As Memorial Day approaches, I remember that the day was initially created to honor the dead on both sides of a major conflict – the American Civil War – and in that remembering, to re-unite the nation that had nearly split in two. It was not to glorify war, or to justify the rightness [...]