“Our Humanist Heritage I: the Gifts and Challenge of Skepticism”
Scott Gerard Prinster, Assistant Minister
Opening Words by Eugenie Scott, Executive Director,
National Center for Science Education
What I think the general public doesn’t understand very well about
science at all, is that science is an open-ended kind of knowing. We have
explanations for natural phenomena, but these explanations are tentative,
and if a better explanation comes along, there goes the old one; we’ll
accept the new one. People think that skeptics are people who go around
saying, “Oh yeah?” That’s not it at all. To me, the essence
of being a skeptic is being willing to ask, “Is there another explanation?” And
that is the essence of scientific thinking, as well, as far as I’m
concerned.
Reading from Doubt:
A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Great believers and great doubters seem like opposites, but they are more
similar to each other than to the mass of relatively disinterested or acquiescent
men and women. This is because they are both awake to the fact that we
live between two divergent realities: On one side, there is a world in
our heads… and that is a world of reason and plans, love and purpose.
On the other side, there is the world beyond our human life – an
equally real world in which there is no sign of caring or value, planning
or judgment, love, or joy. We live in a meaning-rupture because we are
human and the universe is not.
We have an almost violent desire to understand things, and our brains seem
to take the whole of life as a great puzzle. Puzzles in the human world
usually have solutions. The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote about
the difference between problems and mysteries, as did the great, offbeat
student of Buddhism, Alan Watts. Both pointed out that problems must be
solved but mysteries are to be enjoyed unsolved – and that we will
be happier if we regard the universe and existence itself as mysteries.
The world strikes human beings as something to be figured out, and comes
with no solution. Consciousness itself seems missing in the wider universe,
and the human heart seems quite out of place. There is a serious weirdness
to the mind, thinking amid the vast unthinking world.
Reflections
This morning we begin a brief sermon series on the changing role that
humanism has played in Unitarian Universalism, and what we see in its future
within our movement. The majority of Unitarian Universalists identify themselves
as “humanist” when it is offered against other theological
options such as “theist”, “pagan”, “Christian”,
and so on, and humanism has a long and revered history here at First Unitarian
Society. The evolution of humanism and its place within Unitarian Universalism
is complex enough, however, that it bears examining more deeply.
In exploring what humanism means in this conversation, we have to distinguish
it from various other movements that have borne the same name. What emerged
in the beginning of the twentieth century in the sermons of Midwestern Unitarian
ministers Curtis Reese and John Dietrich is not the same as the Greek and Renaissance
humanisms of our history, the modern scholarly movement known as literary humanism,
or the existential humanism of Jean-Paul Sartre. However, what we will call
here “religious humanism” certainly shares some common features
with these other movements, and it is no coincidence that early proponents
like Reese and Dietrich chose the name “religious humanism”.
Put briefly, religious humanism adopts the view that humanity is of supreme
worth and ultimate concern, and must be treated as an end in itself, rather
than as a means to some other end, such as a demonstration of God’s glory,
the means by which the cosmos becomes self-aware, the emergence of world order
or moral order, or as means to some other human life. Humanists recognize that
religion is a purely human effort, and religious humanism is therefore the
pursuit to understand human religious experience through human methods of inquiry,
and to enrich this experience to our utmost capacity.
Many early religious humanists saw themselves as the intellectual and religious
culmination of centuries of human seeking. They portray the ignorance and religious
despotism of the Dark Ages yielding to the power of reason and culture in the
Enlightenment, and birthing the questions and answers that led to the formation
of religious humanism as a movement. Because I’m always suspicious of
views of history that lead to us as the pinnacle of their progress, a historical
error sometimes known as whiggism, it’s helpful to examine more deeply
the role that religion has played historically, and then explore the stance
that humanism takes with respect to that history.
Of course, the actual unfolding of history is never as simple as it ends up
later on paper, and traditions of skepticism had emerged during the Middle
Ages, and even centuries before. We generally fail to realize that, at least
in the West where society was dominated by the Roman Church, faith was not
primarily about intellectual agreement with doctrine, as we tend to think,
but about trust. Because the Church was synonymous with society, politics and
culture, one could either live immersed in the Church, or be exiled from its
society entirely. This was one reason why Jews were treated so brutally in
this era – not being Christian, it wasn’t simply that they were
a different religion; they were seen as living outside of all that Christendom
knew as society. But Jews and Christians did have this in common, that life
in the church was not a matter of agreeing with doctrine, but of living in
trust of the universe that was created around us by the Church or the Temple.
The Latin word for faith, fides, and the corresponding Hebrew word, emunah,
both connote living in a stance of trust in God’s protection and guidance,
and in God’s messengers the religious leaders. The use of the word faith
to mean belief came much later, after the German word belieben, literally meaning “to
entrust one’s heart”, produced the English word belief with all
of the baggage we now know it. I indulge in this etymological exercise to underscore
the history that, while there were thinkers who challenged Church doctrine,
in general it was trust, not belief, that guided religious life in medieval
times. It was our own forebears, the reformers in the Protestant Reformation,
who provoked the controversy in which intellectual belief became the focus
of religion.
The grand confluence of time and place that the American territories provided
in combination with a constantly reforming religion and a literate population
has resulted in a unique and fascinating offspring of ideas and institutions
in this nation. For the most part, New England culture bore a fair resemblance
to that in Europe, but the expansion westward inspired a religious radicalism
upsetting even to the liberal Unitarians back East. The further West liberal
religion spread, the more likely it was that a Unitarian was a “come-outer”,
someone who had grown up with a different religious background but chose Unitarianism
as an adult. In addition, the establishment of Midwestern and Western congregations
like First Unitarian during the Industrial Revolution and the increasing urbanization
of our nation led to ministries that were built upon an ethical basis rather
than a theological doctrine. The average citizen had increasing opportunities
to read and hear about Eastern non-theistic religions like Taoism, Confucianism
and Buddhism. Seen in the light of these developments, it’s no surprise
that Midwestern religious leaders like Reese and Dietrich began to ask aloud
whether it was possible to have “religion without God,” and answered
that, yes, it was indeed possible. Rallying under the name of humanism allowed
these progressives to undermine the hegemony of theistic religion in the United
States -- although Reese was careful to explain that humanism did not deny
God, what was much more effective was that humanism essentially ignored God.
With the advent of religious humanism, many of the historical foundations of
religion in Western society could no longer be taken for granted. The early
twentieth century was a period experiencing an enormous increase in technology
and its subsequent dehumanization, considerable population growth and ensuing
squalor and misery, and world wars and human cruelty on an unparalleled level,
and the possibility that God was looking out for us seemed increasingly slim,
helping religious humanism to flourish.
What has allowed Unitarian Universalism to distinguish itself so thoroughly
from other mainstream religions that it could become a home to a movement like
humanism is our willingness to welcome skepticism. While early Christians would
have been mystified by the idea of doubting the Church’s message, and
modern Christians practically equate faith with unquestioning loyalty, doubt
is woven into the very fabric of what makes us Unitarian Universalists. We
operate today under what is known in theological circles as a “hermeneutics
of suspicion”. A hermeneutics is a systematic method of interpreting
a text; that is, a set of assumptions that we adopt intentionally, like choosing
to look through a particular lens. For example, a “hermeneutics of liberation” guides
us in reading the Bible with the assumption that all its texts are intended
to liberate humanity, rather than enslave us. And a hermeneutics of suspicion
guides us to look at the world around us with the assumption that we can reject
any claim or statement that we believe is false or misleading.
This is not an activity that is generally encouraged in Christianity, which
is unique among the world’s religions in its emphasis on creedalism and
its resistance to skepticism. As I mentioned earlier, the word faith has acquired
new meanings since its translation into English, and in particular in common
usage it has picked up the unfortunate meaning of “certainty”.
In our culture, to have faith is to be certain; to be faithful is to be free
of doubt, and to be faithless is to entertain doubt. Small wonder that so many
people hold their doubts silently, rather than share them.
It became especially clear to me how unusual Unitarian Universalism’s
handling of doubt was when I was in seminary and decided to take a course on
theologian Paul Tillich. I was the only masters student in a class of Jesuit
Ph.D. candidates, and we were assigned a book of Tillich to read each week – no
small feat. In the second week, I struggled especially with a chapter in which
Tillich harshly criticized people who allowed doubt to taint their faith. In
the next class meeting, after listening to the students debate esoteric points
in Tillich’s writing, I finally asked, “I know that many of the
people in the churches I serve will be struggling with doubt, and I believe
that doubt is part of their maturation as people of faith. How could I possibly
repeat Tillich’s message to them?” Not only did the other students
not argue this point with me, they literally could not understand what I was
asking. The idea that there could be religious value in skepticism made no
sense to them.
And this is true for many mainstream Christians in particular, I believe, because
of the order in which they place their religious values. Perhaps you’re
familiar with what is called Pascal’s Wager which, vastly simplified,
states, “if there is any possibility that we are saved by believing in
God and damned for disbelief, we should believe in God, since that reward is
infinite, and the reward for disbelieving and being right is nothing.” I
would say to Pascal on behalf of humanists, “on the contrary, the reward
for believing only what we know to be true rewards us with intellectual integrity,
which for many of us is the highest salvation humanity can strive for. If I
were to live this life only as if it were a test for a life to come, and not
treat it as a precious gift in itself, the loss would be enormous. And if I
were to believe in God only in hope for reward and in avoidance of punishment,
I would consider myself a sorry example indeed of a theist.”
Clearly, to be willing to step forward as a skeptic, to entertain doubt when
surrounded by a culture that reveres certainty, even an illogical certainty,
is an act of considerable courage. We open ourselves to criticism and censure,
which we might have avoided if we had kept our mouths shut. But, as evidenced
by the large proportion of Unitarian Universalists who were raised with another
religious identity, many of us have had to reject an older label and choose
this one for ourselves. This step was something that fascinated me in seminary,
and led me to study faith development theory, particularly that of psychologist
James Fowler, who contributed a model of how we evolve religiously over the
course of our lives. One of the interesting surprises for me is that many people
stop in their religious development around adolescence, and maintain the structure
of beliefs and meaning-making that they had as a teenager. For us to move beyond
that, we have to actively challenge the faith of our childhood and create for
ourselves our own religious identity and tools. Thus Fowler affirmed what I
had already begun to suspect in my own life – that doubt is not a loss
of faith, but is an integral part of the faith journey, a sign that we are
in transition on that journey, and is necessary if we are to move beyond the
religious identity given us as children. For some people, this means remaining
within the same denomination or movement, but approaching it with a new level
of complexity and richness; for others, it means that they look elsewhere for
a place their questions and perspectives are heard and valued.
A great many people come to our doors struggling with doubt over what they
were taught to believe, and I’m proud that we are able to offer a religious
home for skeptics and seekers of many kinds. I want to offer the observation,
however, of where skepticism crosses the line to become pathological, and that
is when it is so pervasive that it is essentially an existential mistrust.
There is power in being willing to doubt, in being courageous enough to challenge
statements that we know are untrue. But I want to echo the words in our opening
reading, where Eugenie Scott reminds us that skepticism is not about always
responding, “Oh yeah?” – that’s simply belligerence,
and not a stance of much value. There is power in being able to doubt, but
pathological suspicion is a weak sort of power, the kind that people use to
block process simply to demonstrate that they can, and a common source of dysfunction
in many Unitarian Universalist congregations. There are few attitudes that
are more spiritually crippling than chronic mistrust.
The answer lies in striking a healthy balance, as it is in so many areas of
our lives. Astronomer Carl Sagan, himself a notorious skeptic, expresses this
admirably:
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas... If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you... On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
What is called for is a stance from which we can doubt and remain open
to new experiences and new truths, and maintaining this balance of skepticism
and openness is a lifetime’s worth of work for most of us.
The legacy that we honor this morning is a message already familiar to most
of us, but nonetheless worth holding up for further praise. In the words of
theologian Frederick Buechner, “Whether your faith is that there is a
God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are
either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith.
They keep it awake and moving.” Let us, then, cherish our doubts, and
use them wisely, for they are the means by which we keep our faith honest and
relevant in a complex world, and the threshold over which we may cross into
greater wisdom and more virtuous living. Amen.