©2007, UrbisMedia
Evangels are always testifying. You know, professing their “saved” and “born again” BS and going on about how morally superior they are because they have decided to believe in something that has no more basis in fact than the fairy tale of the Three Bears. They love to testify.
I always have a little mental chuckle when they use the word testify. Being an Italian American who grew up in my early years in and I-A neighborhood, I remember guys who used to grab their testicles when then were professing something they wanted you to accept. Balls in hand, they might say something like, “ Bahfungool , man, I’ll pay you back the money next Friday. I’m good for it.” (The bahfungool adds a little something to the pledge, but let’s leave it at that for now).
Testify comes from testes, so it literally means, “I swear on my testicles that what I say is true, or sincere.” So I imagine all those evangels grabbing their testicles and testifying, “Jesus is my personal lord and savior. I bet my balls on it.”
Now I realize that this etymology raises a problem for female’s to testify, if you know what I mean, they lacking any, well, you know what I mean. Maybe we need a gender-specific term for testifying. How about “ovafy” (“I swear on my ovaries”), and women could sort of grab themselves with both hands just below their hips in gestural confirmation when the “ovafy.”
This whole business of swearing on the tender parts of one’s anatomy is, of course, to put them up as sort of collateral against reneging on a pledge or not really meaning what you testify. In other words, you are really honest and sincere, or “they” fall off (or out) [1] .
Evangels do not, would not, grab themselves. They would rather stand by the thousands is some megachurch in Colorado, arms raise heavenward, eyes closed, testifying their faith. They would probably be scandalized by a bunch of “goombahs” standing on a street corner in Brooklyn, grabbing their nuts and testifying, “ Bahfungool , man, Jesus Christ, he’s my personal lord and savior. Hey, how would Jesus bet the point spread on the Knicks game tonight?”
But I am really digressing, because my motivation for this piece is that I think that for all the shots I have been taking at the church, Christians, and religions in general, it is time for me to get a grip on my testes and testify as to where I stand, to what I believe in. Some people think that nontheists like myself do not believe in anything; they think we are nihilists. But they are wrong. We can be very passionate about life—this life—not some imaginary afterlife that no one really knows exists, or not. Being concerned with this life, or “age” is what makes us secularists (from saeculum , for the age or times.) But it also has the connotation of meaning non-religious.
So I am a secularist. And, since I am more concerned with mankind—which is something I can attempt to know and understand, and with which I share some common destiny—I regard myself as a “humanist.”
Put these together and you get Secular Humanist. Ask a fundamentalist Christian about Secular Humanists and you will get some blather about Satanists or worse. (Don’t ask them to define the terms because they will not be able to.) Since secular humanists are nontheistic. Evangelists consider them to be infidels, non-believers, the enemy; the live in a Manichean dualistic world of simplistic thought.
But here’s what Secular Humanists really profess, what they would “testify” to:
Secular Humanists are primarily concerned with human potential, with human fulfillment, growth and creativity, both individually and collectively. If there is purposes and meaning to life, this is what it is. Man should be the measure of things, not some scriptural injunctions or dogmas, or invented deities, saints and angels. If there is a commandment attached to this notion it is the “golden rule.” If you are theistic this is the same as the Second Commandment. If you can’t love your fellow human beings then shut up about loving Jesus, or God. You are a hypocrite.
Secular Humanists do not accept things on faith. This means not just religious beliefs, but political and social ideologies, philosophies, UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster. They are subject to scrutiny and test. We regard people who say, “the Bible says it, therefore God wrote it, and that’s good enough for me” as lazy-minded morons.
We are committed to the tenets of the scientific method of inquiry about existence —factual evidence, test, and proof. Faith, mysticism, and the crap doled out by such as oxymoronic “creation scientists” and laughable “intelligent designers” does not even come close to be science. We search for objective truth where the facts are, not in the Book of Revelations. And we allow that new factual information might alter existing theories. We believe that facts and values are as categorically different as we believe it is imperative to separate church from state.
This means that we seek knowledge of the world through rationality . We attempt to acquire knowledge by observation, experiment, test and replication. We believe that action based on knowledge through reason, which is application of experience consistent with the norms of Secular Humanism. We believe that the arts are a relevant dimension of human experience to inform reasoned discourse and social action. Hence we do not believe that prophecy, superstition and so-called “revelation” are a basis for knowledge or social action.
We are committed to this life and making it better for everyone. We do not approve of strapping two pounds of C4 explosive on your belly and blowing up a bus of school kids, or making preemptive war on nations that have done us no harm, so that one can get seventy-two virgins, go quail hunting with Jesus and Dick Cheney, or enhance our earthly habits and desires at the expense of others.
We believe that civilization begins with the recognition of the rights and dignity of our fellow human beings regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, or any other thing their DNA or circumstances of their birth gave them. We should regard people for what they do, for and to others, as well as to themselves—how they play the cards that life has handed them. We are committed to the precept that each person be allowed to find their own meaning for their lives.
We are committed to the search for ethical principles to guide human behavior and government with honesty, fairness and integrity. We do not believe that moral principles derived from various religions—although some of them may be virtuous and consonant with appropriate ethical principles—should be the basis for societal guidance. Hence, we believe unequivocally in the strictest separation of church and state.
We believe in tolerance of those who choose the conduct their lives by faith and superstition, in so far as that tolerance is returned. However, we will employ all means of argument and the exercise of the political process to prevent religious intolerance and the imposition of articles of faith and superstitions religious beliefs from being imposed upon society and from being codified into laws and governmental practices.
The most essential (and I will say also, true Christian) attribute is human kindness —recognition, compassion and action—of, and toward, others. This must also include a corresponding kindness toward their (and our) environment. To over-exploit, degrade and destroy the earth is genocide. To divide the world into “good and evil” is to denigrate entire peoples and to invite wars of genocide.
It should be evident, then, that Secular Humanists are not nihilists, do indeed stand for something, but they do not subscribe to deriving their principles from fairy tales, popes, mullahs, dalai lamas, or blow-dried evangelist prayboys. We stand for humankind and its potential and we believe in facts over prayer, state over church, and science over superstition.
Some will see this testament as a lot of softhearted liberal notions that does not take account of the nastiness of much of the world, that there are evil empires, and axes of evil. Theirs is the view that does not see synthesis, or tolerance and compromise, as the as the result of differences, but rather conquest, dominance and even annihilation. They will also see Secular Humanists as weak, and as pacifists and appeasers. This is mistaken. We fill fight and go to war if it is necessary to resort to force to protect our rights and those of others. But first we will fight with facts, and reason, scientific inquiry, and we will not act from fear, prejudice and moral superiority.
The credulous will not act kindly toward Secular Humanists. Incapable of defeating their arguments, believers resort of demonizing the non-believers. They cannot conceive of a philosophy that accept the existence of their gods, and that does not hold out hope for heavenly reward and some fairytale afterlife. In other words they refuse to admit that their construct of a look-alike god who has given them an incontestable. They cannot see any moral worthiness to a secular philosophy whose behavior is not motivate by the merit it earns to win the approval of God, Allah, Yahweh, or some other deity. They can’t imagine doing anything that is not done in the name of their god and the self-interest of their own salvation. Indeed, sometimes their deity tells them to go out and slay the believers of some other deity so that they can earn their place in the afterlife. Is here any altruism in that?
So Secular Humanists are probably nicer than the religionists, too. So be nice to us. I mean this; I say it while I am holding my . . .
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©2007, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 11.27.2007)
[1] Which, in the female case, they do, monthly. So, women would not be allowed to “ovafy” during those times (Leviticus 23: 18)