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Christian Nation
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Book Review by Rob Boston • 13 February 2014
by Frederic C. Rich
W.W. Norton & Company, 2013
340 pp.; $25.95
In 1935 acerbic Minnesota novelist Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, a disturbing book about a fascist takeover in the United States.
Fifty years later, Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, another disturbing book, which outlines a future America run by the theocratic forces of the religious right.
These dystopian visions of our country have now been joined by a third, equally disturbing book, Frederic C. Rich’s Christian Nation. Rich’s novel is a retelling of recent history, presenting an intriguing “what if?” It’s a speculative work of fiction in which Barack Obama narrowly loses the 2008 election to the John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket. A few months later, McCain dies of a stroke while on a state visit to Russia. Palin is elevated to chief executive.
Although it quickly becomes obvious that Palin’s in over her head, things change rapidly on July 22, 2012, when coordinated teams of terrorists use missiles to down airliners in seven states. Nearly 7,000 people are killed. Palin declares martial law and delivers a tough-talking speech. A terrified population supports her.
There’s worse to come. Riding a wave of “Teavangelical” support and anti-Muslim hysteria, Palin is reelected in November; reactionary Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress.
But rather than deal with the problem of terrorism, Palin quickly sets about pushing an aggressive social-issues agenda. In short order, federal courts are stripped of their right to even adjudicate church-state cases. Houses of worship are freed to dive head first into partisan politics. States are given the power to ignore the Bill of Rights.
The next president, a Palin advisor named Steve Jordan, ushers in a so-called “New Freedom” program anchored in something called “The Blessing,” a ten-point program that cements the nation’s fate as an officially “Christian nation.” (Point Three of The Blessing is a statement that the United States “recognizes the authority and law of our Lord Jesus Christ,” language that echoes similarly named amendments that were introduced in nineteenth-century America.)
To find out what happens next—and a lot does—you’ll have to read Christian Nation. What makes the book so intriguing is that it’s heavily anchored in real people and real events. Religious right leaders Ralph Reed and Michael Farris
make an appearance, alongside Alabama’s infamous “Ten Commandments Judge” Roy Moore (who ends up with a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Yikes!)
What’s more, all the laws and repressive measures Rich introduces in the book have in reality been proposed. As Rich points out, religious right leaders have been saying for a long time what they want to do. No one should be surprised when they try to do it.
For example, proposals that would strip the federal courts of their right to hear certain types of cases (usually church-state related) have been knocking around for years and have been embraced by the religious right. Similarly, a series of harsh anti-gay laws that are imposed on the nation in Rich’s novel may sound fantastic—until one remembers that it wasn’t that long ago that some far-right religious and political leaders proposed quarantines for gays, and even today some states are trying to bar gay people from adopting.
Although told through the eyes of its first-person narrator, a Wall Street attorney named Greg, Christian Nation is as much the story of Sanjay, a young resistance leader who provides much of the story’s intellectual background. It’s through his voice that the reader learns of the “dominionists,” an extreme brand of religious right activists who believe God has given them the task of taking “dominion” over the nation. (This movement is not a fictional creation of Rich’s imagination; such people, also known as Christian Reconstructionists, exist. In fact, they provided much of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern religious right movement.)
If recent experience has taught us anything, it’s that people who are afraid will gladly surrender their liberties, not just for security but for the mere promise of security (unfulfilled, of course). The Americans of Christian Nation, reeling from the smoking ruins and body count of a horrific terrorist attack, are very scared indeed.
In the end, that’s what makes Christian Nation so interesting—and disturbing. It’s that nagging feeling that, as much as Americans love to talk about their liberties, they would trade them away under the right conditions. As my boss, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, noted in a cover blurb: “No violent revolution, no blood in the streets, is necessary for Americans to lose their freedoms—just a failure to defend the liberties that we often take for granted.”
Rich, a New York City attorney, clearly did his homework for this book. His analysis and understanding of the goals and methods of religious right groups is deep and penetrating. He probably could have written another history of the movement or a jeremiad slamming theocratic groups. Instead, he uses fiction as the vehicle for his message of warning.
It was a smart choice. Read Christian Nation. You’ll walk away convinced that it could, in fact, happen here—and with luck you’ll resolve to make certain that it never does.
Published in the March / April 2014 Humanist
Boston5Rob Boston is director of communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a board member of the American Humanist Association. Rob writes the Church & State column for The Humanist magazine and TheHumanist.com.
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The Tomb of Jesus and His Family?
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Book Review by Paul Donohue • 13 February 2014
by James H. Charlesworth, Ed.
W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013
592 pp.; $33.55
It’s interesting to think that there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ, or any of his followers. The Talpiot tomb has come close to proving the burial of Jesus and family, and I personally believe it has, but the excavation has been so badly botched that all interested factions can object to the findings. Christian fundamentalists object because they see a threat to their faith in the resurrection. Then there are authors who object because they have made a career writing books that say Jesus never existed. The Jewish archaeologists who investigated the tomb are defensive because they blew the greatest find in history. In the end, the debate will never be resolved, but at least it will open the eyes of some to the real historical Jesus and how a simple Jewish carpenter was deified.
Some facts are undeniable: The Talpiot tomb was unearthed during a construction project in 1980. Ten ossuaries were found and cataloged but one “went missing.” The others are stored with the names noted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Ossuaries, carved limestone boxes containing bones after the flesh has rotted away, were a common practice of burial in Israel from about 100 BCE to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, and thousands have been found and stored. When found, bones are removed and reburied anonymously as required by today’s Orthodox Jews, a practice severely lacking in historical foresight.
The first archaeologist to examine the tomb was recently quoted by his widow on the news that he believed he had found the tomb of Jesus but was fearful of revealing it. Names were carved on six of the ten ossuaries and have been read as: Jesus son of Joseph, Maria, Mariamne kai Mara, Jose, Judah son of Jesus, and Matthew.
The Mariamne name has been attributed to Mary Magdalene based on later uses of this form of the name. This interpretation is contested in The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? edited by James H. Charlesworth of the Princeton Theological Seminary. The statistical probability that the names correspond to Jesus and family members mentioned in the gospels is the main reason for the suggestion that the tomb is that of Jesus.
The news of the Talpiot tomb was first expounded in the BBC documentary by Ray Bruce, The Body in Question,
in 1996. But the main notoriety was in Simcha Jacobovici’s 2007 Discovery Channel documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus (James Cameron was the executive producer), and Jacobovici’s book, The Jesus Family Tomb, co-authored by Charles Pellegrino. They make the case that the tomb is that of Jesus and family based on the statistical match of the names compared to the names in the gospels. They also give evidence that the missing ossuary is the famous James ossuary with the carved label: James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. The evidence is the unique match of the elemental analysis of the patina that forms over the eons on the limestone surface. The patina matches that on the Talpiot ossuaries, but doesn’t match patina from other tombs. To me, this is convincing, but more comparisons with ossuaries from other tombs need to be done.
The James ossuary is the “slam dunk” in the statistical analysis, but it was unfortunately stolen in the initial incompetence, probably by someone hoping for money. Incidentally, it was purchased on the antiquities market in 2002. The owner went through a seven-year forgery trial on charges that the words “brother of Jesus” were added. No fraud was found.
After the uproar over the 2007 book and documentary, Charlesworth organized this more scholarly investigation, assembling distinguished scholars to evaluate the findings without sensationalism. Charlesworth states at the outset that he doesn’t think the tomb is that of Jesus and family, adding that, “Too often publications and debates devoted to the Talpiot tomb were shaped by unscientific methodologies and emotional assumptions.” The purpose of the symposium was to clarify facts, not reach a consensus, but he feels that a consensus formed that the tomb is not that of Jesus of Nazareth. But after reading the 575 pages myself, I don’t get that impression.
(CC BY-SA 3.0) Tamarah/Via Wikimedia Commons
(CC BY-SA 3.0) Tamarah/Via Wikimedia Commons
The Tomb of Jesus and His Family? contains reports of twenty-eight scholars, and covers a whole range of questions, such as: Are the names accurately read, especially the name attributed to Mary Magdalene? Does her ossuary contain bones of one person or two? Would Jesus be called son of Joseph? Why not Jesus of Nazareth? Why would the tomb be in Jerusalem and not Nazareth? What do the statistics really indicate? Was Jesus married? Did he have a son? Is the James ossuary from the Talpiot tomb? And most importantly, would the discovery of Jesus’s bones destroy faith in the resurrection? This question leads to more inquiry into what early Christians believed about the resurrection; was it a body or a spirit that rose, for example.
My favorite chapter is by James D. Tabor, whose blog (Jamestabor.com) I find corresponds with my take on Christian origins. He states: “I am convinced that there is a surprisingly close fit between what we might postulate as a hypothetical pre-70 CE Jesus family tomb based on our textual records correlated with this particular tomb in Talpiot and its contents.” He expounds on the statistical rarity of the names, the evidence for Mary Magdalene, and that Jesus’s brother Jose is mentioned in the gospel of Mark, 6:3. Tabor doesn’t consider the tomb an attack on faith, since he believes it gives evidence that Jesus really existed.
The last chapter by Charlesworth discusses the “Patio tomb,” which is near the Talpiot tomb but hasn’t been opened. The Orthodox forbade opening, but allowed a robotic arm to photograph the ossuaries. The archaeology is the subject of the book, The Jesus Discovery, by Tabor and Jacobovici. One of the ossuaries is very ornate with a drawing of a fish spitting out a stick figure of a man with the name YONAH (Jonah). Jesus had said (Matthew 12:38-41) that Jonah would be a sign. This suggests that in a nearby tomb, there are early followers of Jesus who were obviously wealthy and lends support to the thesis that the Talpiot tomb contained Jesus and family.
Missing among the book’s scholars is anyone who believes Jesus is entirely mythological—a significant oversight since there are apparently many of this persuasion, as reported by Bart D. Ehrman in his book, Did Jesus Exist? Ehrman and Tabor would argue that there are just too many details in the gospels to say there is no basis. I agree, but I am impressed with the thinking of Joe Atwill in Caesar’s Messiah. He thinks the gospels were written in Rome with support of Emperor Titus who had recently destroyed Jerusalem. Titus hoped to pacify the rebellious Jews by promoting a peaceful messiah who would render to Caesar. No doubt, Paul’s otherworldly messiah was a good fit.
This hypothesis answers the question of where the gospels came from and how they were financed.
Putting it all together, I think the Talpiot tomb is that of Jesus and family. The Jesus movement headed by James was influential in Jerusalem and had many followers. Jesus’s bones were likely buried in an ossuary, and it makes sense that later other family members were added.
How could the reports of resurrection have spread? When Jesus’s body was moved, rumors spread that he had risen. The earliest version of Mark’s gospel reports no sightings. Later gospels based on oral and Q-source writings embellished Mark with stories of a virgin birth, miracles, and resurrection appearances. Several chapters of the book contend that early Christians could still believe in the resurrection as a spirit while the body remained.
In the end, examinations of the Talpiot tomb can increase awareness of the questions surrounding the historical Jesus. By promoting scholarly inquiry like Charlesworth’s we can gain a clearer understanding of what really happened, and significantly help demythologize the belief that Jesus was a God who died for our sins.
Published in the March / April 2014 Humanist
Paul Donohue, PhD, is a retired industrial chemist who currently teaches at the University of Delaware Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, having given courses on global warming, all forms of energy, and the uniqueness of humanism.
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AFTER TWILIGHT: Fighting Theocracy, Comic Book Style
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by Matthew Bulger • 4 March 2014
AF_cover2
Growing up in Texas I came across more than my fair share of religious fundamentalists, many of whom were my best friends. Most of these people were just overzealous Christians eager to spread what they viewed as the word of God, but occasionally I’d run into someone who felt that the United States was a Christian nation and that those people who weren’t Christian couldn’t truly call themselves Americans.
According to these religious extremists, America had deviated from the religious principles on which it had been founded, and the only way for our country to become truly great again would be by embracing religion, specifically Christianity, and some of the more extreme values that these fundamentalists claim it professes. This meant, among other things, putting Bibles back in schools, mixing religion with government, and discouraging non-Christians from entering or staying in our country.
It’s with this background in mind that I began to read the AFTER TWILIGHT comic book series, written by Gary Watson, Richard Alvarez, Sandra Yates, and drawn by Douglas Brown. The comic, a short six-issue story arc, is based in the near future where Texas has morphed into a theocracy and is struggling to eradicate heretics at home while seceding from the Union and fighting the federal government for independence.
Without giving too much away, this scenario is put in to place by of events that occurred in the backstory in 2012 and 2013. Around this time, the Texas government had grown increasingly conservative and was changing school textbooks to be more religious and conservative, while also cracking down on individuals deemed to be social deviants. As a result of this crackdown, some liberal and secular activists resorted to terrorism, destroying churches and other buildings as a means of retaliation, while others engaged in peaceful protest. This cycle of violence resulted in an even more religiously conservative government getting elected, which in turn transformed the state into a theocracy and began to seek independence from the relatively irreligious United States of America.
The protagonist of the story, which is set in the 2020s, is Jen Frazier, the daughter of one of the original activists that opposed the growing religiosity of the Texas government back in 2012. Jen, who is reluctant to fight against the new theocratic government of Texas, sees her passivism challenged when her family members are imprisoned, and finds herself following in her mother’s footsteps by joining those opposed to this new government.
The series itself is notable for its original setting and for its interesting social commentary on the value and pitfalls of violent protest and resistance. At the same time, the occasionally heavy-handed nature of its diatribes against fundamentalist religion detract from those strengths. The antagonists of the series, religious extremists who have killed and manipulated their way in to power, are completely unsympathetic and static characters meant to be the personification of evil and zealotry, and their unchanging and extreme nature prevents the reader from understanding why they do what they do or from forming any sort of attachment. Furthermore, the comic’s critique of the common man who supports this regime is extremely patronizing, casting all religious folk as hyper-authoritarian ignoramuses. While painting an entire populace with such a broad stroke is advantageous if one wishes to create a dystopian society, its unrealistic nature ends up just being a distraction from the better aspects of the comic.
Another issue with the comic is the clichéd inclusion of disproportionately big-breasted and scantly clad women, which has plagued male-created comics for decades and typically serves only to degrade otherwise strong female characters and distract from the story. That being said, the vaguely pornographic presentation of female characters does have some relevance to the larger story in AFTER TWILIGHT due to the restrictions on promiscuous clothing that are enforced by the theocratic government in the new Texas republic.
3-20
Overall, AFTER TWILIGHT shows various signs of promise, but its simplistic approach to the relationship between religion and government and the motivations of religious fundamentalists left me a bit frustrated. The comic could really come in to its own if the series was continued and the creators gave a bit more depth to the leaders and supporters of the theocracy, or at the very least cast the “freedom fighters” as something a bit darker than the uber-liberal good guys.
AFTER TWILIGHT originated in 2004 as a thirty-minute short film (available for streaming on Vimeo On Demand), followed by the comic (published by Nu-Classic Publishing and sold in digital and print form at aftertwilightcomics.com). Now the creators are exploring options to turn it into a feature-length film, which could surely allow for more character development and nuance. Watson, who directed and produced the short film, says:
The intention while writing AFTER TWILIGHT was to portray a disturbing, extremist society that would not necessarily be outside the realm of possibility. That was underscored by the fact that we could never completely stay ahead of the reality curve. Actions that we would imagine for our script would show up as actual events or issues in the newspapers weeks later—and it continues to happen to this day.
Fundamentalism is certainly a big issue in modern America, be it of the religious or political sort, which is why stories like AFTER TWILIGHT that deal with this issue are so interesting and important.
Tags: Comic Books
bulger_matthew.jpgMatthew Bulger is the legislative associate for the American Humanist Association. He writes the On the Hill column for TheHumanist.com.
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Religion Without God
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Book Review by Charles Murn • 20 December 2013
Murn
by Ronald Dworkin
Harvard University Press, 2013
192 pp.; $17.95
Ronald Dworkin’s last book, Religion Without God, is simultaneously a blast from the past and a sign of the times. He claims to be religious and atheist in a manner that has some parallels in religious humanism from the middle of last century. Yet when comparing religious views and secular views as the basis for human values, he shows only a modest comprehension of the latter.
The most expansive argument of the book is that value has a supernatural source. Nonetheless, Dworkin doesn’t even hint at any other characteristics of his source of value. He says evidence of it can’t be found because it’s supernatural. But he also doesn’t indicate how humans might know the values that come from this source. In other recent work, Dworkin argued for a unitary value system that holds that some values—we can assume those from his supernatural source—are objective and true. But all he can offer as a basis for determining which are which is “when we are justified in thinking that our arguments for holding it true are adequate arguments.” So much for objectivity.
The root of Dworkin’s confusion is his failure to distinguish meanings of the word “value.” He starts out talking about moral values, as in choices about good and bad, and ends up talking about the value of perceptions to judgment, as in the search for truth. These two profoundly different concepts must be treated differently, but he lumps them into the same category. The reality is that both play into judgment, but in radically different ways. Moral or personal values are the basis for choice, which in judgment comes into play in terms of what one ends up wanting: for example, good things are usually what we call that which we want, rather than bad or wrong things, which are the things we don’t want.
In contrast, the value of perception is based on a reasoned assessment of the aspects of judgment about what the truth is. This type of assessment, to find truth, must in fact be free of the first kind of value. The first is ultimately personal choice, while the second is methodical, whether personal, scientific, legal, or otherwise. The first is opinion, subject to persuasion. The second is evidence-based, subject to revision in the face of compelling reassessment of old evidence or discovery of new evidence. For those reasons, while reality is objective, neither type of value is. Tellingly, Dworkin never defines “value.”
On a constructive note, Dworkin holds that religious theists and non-theists can communicate with each other in terms of value. This point isn’t exactly in line with his claim that values are objective. But it’s certainly true. The work of organizations like the American Humanist Association is clear proof that most naturalists, meaning those who define knowledge as the best conclusion from current scientific evidence, can communicate with any religionists who are willing to talk about values. Not only does Dworkin seem oblivious to that reality on the ground, he demonstrates a blindness to the true nature of naturalism that prevents him from including naturalists in the breadth of his statement.
For one thing, Dworkin’s embrace of a supernatural source for value collides with his overall appreciation for science. His general acceptance of scientific knowledge makes him a naturalist as far as it goes. In that respect, the sum of his views are a blast from the past in that they’re not so far from religious humanists like John Dewey and Julian Huxley—instrumentalist naturalists in that they relied on science to provide evidence useful for understanding reality and making choices.
But Dworkin’s supernaturalism on the question of value ultimately puts him outside naturalism. Naturalistic humanists flat out reject a supernatural realm on grounds of lack of evidence. Even Dewey and Huxley pleaded lack of knowledge of the source of value and certain other key philosophical elements of human existence. In contrast, Dworkin, in a contradiction in terms, calls his view “religious atheism.” Certainly his view isn’t theistic, but that doesn’t mean it’s atheistic. The middle ground is nontheistic religion. Whereas Dewey’s pragmatic humanism found values in assessments of human nature and natural law, Dworkin’s supernatural source for values is a nontheistic religious solution through and through. His larger argument, of course, is that religious experience of nature doesn’t require belief in God. Not surprisingly, Dworkin favorably discusses the nontheistic religions of Paul Tillich, Baruch Spinoza, and pantheism, although he only comes close to endorsing Spinoza’s deistic version. Viewing it as religious nontheism, his argument in favor of his proposition on the basis for value is consistent.
That framing also more fully explains Dworkin’s forceful argument against naturalism. In line with his general misrepresentation of naturalism, his arguments stereotype views of naturalists on the subject of value. On the one hand, he repeatedly either describes all naturalists as determinists who see no order in the universe or as asserting that all that exists is a random accident. He claims without basis that naturalists do not find beauty in nature. On the other hand, he cites Albert Einstein and Steven Weinberg, among others, who clearly are naturalists exclaiming the beauty of nature’s fundamental laws of physics. By doing so, he contradicts his own claims about how individual naturalists describe the universe and offensively portrays all naturalists as viewing the universe as chaos or a mere machine.
Like so many theists, Dworkin thus tries to claim that all expansive emotional experiences are religious. But before the hominid species had words for those experiences, much less religion, they certainly experienced beauty as well as wonder, awe, and marvel, all of which Dworkin asserts are solely religious.
Lacking a demonstrable understanding of what naturalism is, Dworkin’s argument harkens back to the same old prejudice as Rev. H.E. Fosdick’s now obsolete attack on humanism, “Religion Without God?” written in 1929.
Mainstream naturalism is generallyquite the opposite of how Dworkin describes it. Naturalism sees order in nature, consisting of laws established by evidence tested with the scientific method. He does not acknowledge that for naturalists, human value is explained sufficiently by: (1) the existence of things in the universe to value and (2) the capacity of humans and other life forms to value things. Humanists generally value those things that sustain the standing of humans in the universe derived from as comprehensive an understanding of the parameters of our existence as currently exists. Those values neither have nor need a supernatural source. Yet Dworkin attacks naturalists and others who find values to be personal and relative, without explaining why it is bad to do so. He fails to explain why thinking that way could prevent a person from perceiving beauty and awe and wonder and marvel in nature. He certainly doesn’t show how an objective supernatural source of value, if it existed, would be better. Finally, he acts as if the values expressed by naturalists, such as those in the Humanist Manifesto, aren’t real.
All in all, given its meager offering of new insight into the nature of value, Dworkin’s book feels more like an attempt to get in on the action that humanists and naturalists have been generating in philosophy. Dworkin’s book is only one of several recent books, some by religionists or philosophers who he claims as influences, which come across as half-baked efforts to talk with authority on naturalism and science despite not having a firm grounding in the subject matter. In that way, Dworkin’s book is another sign of the times in which the fortunes of humanism and naturalism in the United States are rising.
Published in the January / February 2014 Humanist
Charles Murn is a philosopher and legal writer in Washington, DC.
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The Oscar-Commended, George Takei-Narrated Animated Short You Should See Now
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by Maggie Ardiente • 14 February 2014
Every year, the independent E Street Cinema in Washington, DC, [that’s per magazine house style; yours may differ] features a showing of films nominated in the Best Animated Short Film and Best Live-Action Short Film categories of the Academy Awards. As a movie-lover, I go every year. It’s an opportunity for me at Oscar parties (admit it: you love them!) to actually judge films most people haven’t had the opportunity to watch.
Two years ago, I was deeply moved by the animated film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (it will bring tears to your eyes, I guarantee it), which won the Academy Award that year. Since then, I’ve been hooked. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see, at this year’s showing, a film titled The Missing Scarf, directed by Irish filmmaker Eoin Duffy and narrated by actor (and the American Humanist Association’s 2011 LGBT Humanist Pride Awardee) George Takei. Watch the thirty-second trailer here.
Without giving everything away (after all, the film is only seven minutes long), story centers on Albert, a squirrel who is seeking his missing scarf and encounters three friends along the way who help put his problem into perspective. As perfectly described on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), the film explores “some of life’s common fears: fear of the unknown, of failure, rejection and finally, the fear of death”—topics which, no doubt, many humanists and atheists have encountered in their own path to secularism. Takei’s familiar, smooth voice adds humor to the story, especially during the film’s most heightened scenes.
The Missing Scarf, unfortunately, wasn’t nominated for an Oscar this year, but it was one of three “Highly Commended” animated shorts that followed the five officially nominated films: Feral, Get a Horse!, Mr. Hublot, Possessions, and Room on the Broom.
If you’re lucky to live in a town where the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films are being screened (check your local independent theater), go see them, and impress everyone at your Oscar party.
(If you can’t watch The Missing Scarf at your local theater, it’ll be available online later in the year. You can sign up for updates on the movie’s official site at www.themissingscarf.com.)
Tags: George Takei, Oscars, The Missing Scarf
Maggie ArdienteMaggie Ardiente is the director of development and communications at the American Humanist Association and senior editor of the TheHumanist.com. She graduated with a B.S. in sociology from James Madison University and served as Vice President of the JMU Freethinkers, a student group for atheists, agnostics, and humanists. She is a former board member of the Secular Student Alliance and a graduate (Class 15) and board member of The Humanist Institute.
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Seven Great Humanist Films
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by Sarah Ameigh • 1 March 2011
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Did you enjoy the last issue’s Humanist Anthems for your iPod Playlist? Thanks to you HNN readers for suggesting other songs to add to this growing list of humanist-themed music. In this week’s issue, we tackle movies—which films best capture our humanist hearts? We narrow the list down to seven great humanist movies that address themes such as love, compassion, intellect, and religion.
1. Shawshank Redemption: Based on a short story by Stephen King, Shawshank Redemption tells the tale of Andy Dufresne, a successful young banker imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit. As Andy comes to terms with prison life while serving under and the piously criminal Warden Norton, he discovers an inner strength of greater magnitude than Shawshank’s concrete walls.
“Remember Red, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.”
2. The Crucible: The adaptation of Arthur Miller’s famous McCarthy-era play of the same title recounts a small town’s journey into the Salem witch trials, where religion, power, and coercion swell into a frenzied and tragic fever pitch.
“I am but God’s finger, John. If he would condemn Elizabeth, she will be condemned.”
3. Inherit the Wind: Written in response to the McCarthy hearings, Inherit the Wind in based on the court transcript of 1925’s famous “Scope monkey trials.” A teacher espousing Darwin’s theory of evolution is prosecuted by a fundamentalist politician and defended by a passionate lawyer before the wide eyes of a courtroom.
“In a child’s power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted “amens” and “holy holies” and “hosannas.” An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.
4. Jesus Camp: This harrowing documentary explores the inner workings of an Evangelical Christian day camp in the Midwest. The staff, the ministers, the parents, and their children are shadowed by a film crew as the youth-oriented Evangelical machine is revealed.
“I can go into a playground of kids that don’t know anything about Christianity, lead them to the Lord in a matter of, just no time at all, and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God, because they’re so open. They are so usable in Christianity.”
5. Waking Life: This animated film follows a young man as he wanders from subconscious state to subconscious state, debating the greatest questions of life with the philosophical and peculiar characters he meets along the way.
“Resistance is not futile, we’re gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, we’re not a bunch of under-achievers! We’re gonna stand up, and we’re gonna be human beings. We’re going to get fired up about the real things, the things that matter! Creativity, and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit.”
6. The Invention of Lying: An original comedy starring The Office’s Ricky Gervais (also an atheist), the film spoofs religion, fame, and the lies we tell each other—and ourselves—to make it through the day.
“Today I stumbled upon something that no man has ever stumbled upon before. They’ll write about me in history books for generations to come. And yet, moments ago, it was unfathomable not only to myself but to mankind as a whole. It’s hard to describe but it was as easy as…how do I explain this? I said something that wasn’t!”
7. Annie Hall: Woody Allen, one of the country’s most famous skeptics, recalls his most recent failed relationship, interwoven with comical debate and intellectual rumination.
“I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”
What are your favorite humanist movies? Think we missed a great movie on our list? Add your comments below!
Sarah Ameigh is the former communications and policy assistant for the American Humanist Association.
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Film Review: Mother: Caring for 7 Billion
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Film Review by Kayley Whalen • 5 October 2011
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Mother: Caring for 7 Billion is a clear-eyed documentary on the often controversial topic of the long-term effects of human population growth on humanity’s ability to sustain itself in the face of the finite natural resources of the Earth. While clocking in at just under an hour, the film has a breathtakingly wide scope and breadth in the topics it addresses, especially environmentalism, family planning, feminism, agriculture, consumer culture, religion, and international development. It is Mother’s complex examination of the intersections between these different themes, its stance that all of humanity must work together to empower women to advocate for their reproductive rights, and that we must also work together to develop ethically responsible strategies to conserve the Earth’s natural resources that make it a distinctly humanist film.
The film often shies away from offering a unifying narrative voice and instead relies on direct testimonies from humanitarian experts, scientists and environmental advocates, in addition to featuring interviews with women in developing countries. This strategy allows a critical viewer to independently examine the political backgrounds of the various experts and come to their own conclusions rather than being subjected to a narrowly-defined ideological stance of wrong vs. right, such as in the populist documentaries of Michael Moore.
The film begins by centering itself in a historical re-examination of the “green revolution” of the 1960s, which refers to the boom in both agricultural production and population growth in developed countries that occurred thanks to industrialized farming methods and a seemingly endless supply of fossil fuels. Yet this “green revolution” could also refer to the various environmentalist and anti-population growth movements that sprung up to voice the concerns that such growth, and the consumer culture it was based on, was both ecologically unsustainable and ethically irresponsible, as exemplified by the first Earth Day protest on April 22, 1970.
Mother asserts that controlling population growth is a key environmentalist issue that has been almost forgotten over the decades since 1970 at great peril to humanity, especially as the rest of the developing world looks to the consumer patterns of the middle-class in the U.S. as a model. If the rest of the world bought and used as much consumer goods per-capita as the U.S., it would take six Earths to replenish and store all the natural resources needed and waste created. And, as the film asserts, with 78 million more people living on the Earth each year and 50 million new people joining the middle-class each year, worldwide consumption patterns create a “ticking bomb” scenario.
Indeed, Mother draws its particular strength from its unflinching examination of why population growth is often such a taboo subject in society, and Mother’s rejection of any solution that denies to women their basic reproductive rights—both their right to have children and their right to birth control and family planning—makes it a humanist film rather than a purely environmentalist film. A key fact that the film-makers go to great length to illustrate is that “in almost all countries the desired family size is lower than the actual family size,” and furthermore, “215 million women worldwide who wish to have smaller families [are unable to do so] largely because of informational or cultural barriers.” These barriers include fathers, male partners, religious leaders, lack of education, and other societal forces that coerce women into not seeking access to birth control and/or otherwise leaving reproductive decisions ‘up to God.’
Riane Eisler, president of the Center for Partnership Studies and recipient of the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Pioneer Award, emerges as one of the most powerful voices in the film as she challenges viewers to “start talking about that vexing thing called gender.” She alongside other women such as Esraa Bani from Population Action International, advocate that in order to address population growth, we must first elevate the position of women not just by imposing “Western ideologies” but, as Bani advocates, “from within their culture, within their religion, they have rights. But they don’t know…we can start from within the culture, and then go the next steps.”
The film’s most moving moments comes from its case study of a very successful educational initiative in Ethiopia by Population Media Center that uses serial radio dramas to provide women with powerful role models for how to stand up for their rights and freedoms in a country with deeply entrenched cultural values that often make birth control inaccessible. One particularly inspiring young woman, Zinet Mohammed, gives an impassioned testimony to how the radio drama changed her life and that of her family of 14 that “ate only once a day.” First she relates tearfully to the camera how listening to the radio drama made her seek out birth control for her mother—her father initially was resistant but changed his mind after Zinet brought both to the hospital and the doctor convinced her father that “the pill works.” Zinet later relates:
I had a chance to marry a rich man, but I said no. The character’s life from the radio drama taught me a lot, so I told my parents that I wouldn’t marry that person… After that my father listened to the radio dramas. He regretted a lot that he tried to force arranged marriages on his daughters.
Her father then explains to the camera how her entire family now looks up to Zinet and that she also is the primary provider for the family. Dr. Negussie Teffera, Population Media Center’s country representative for Ethiopia, further explains that as a direct result of the radio drama “we have received more than 30,000 letters from all over the country…demand for contraceptives has increased 157%. Spousal communication had also increased from 33% to 68%.”
The film’s conclusion wrenches the viewer back from its specific focus on Ethiopia to a sweeping historical and political examination of the various systems of oppression that allow, and even encourage, unbridled human population growth. Mother ends with a very strong environmentalist call to action that is less specific in offering solutions than its examination of feminism, but a stance that I personally agree with nonetheless. All in all, Mother is an excellent humanist film that urges humanity to work together as “one human family, connected in our challenges, connected in our solutions” to challenge oppressive systems such as sexism, classism, corporatism, and neo-liberal globalization through inter-connected social movements that demand social justice and ecological responsibility.
To learn more about Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, or to find a screening near you, visit www.motherthefilm.com.
Kayley Whalen is a former development associate for the American Humanist Association. She has published a story about playing women’s roller derby as a transgender skater in the anthology Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. She is a member of the American Humanist Association, skates with the DC Rollergirls, and also advocates for reforming U.S. drug policy to be informed by reason, compassion, and science.
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Movie Review: 12 Years a Slave
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Film Review by Christian Hagen • 7 November 2013
AHA Communications Assistant Christian Hagen calls 12 Years a Slave, a new movie starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Brad Pitt, a “challenging yet utterly essential” film.
The implications and horrors of slavery have been touched on time and again by Hollywood, with tales ranging from the political (Lincoln) to the epic (Roots) to the violently fantastical (Django Unchained).
But rarely has a film tackled the subject with such reality and nuance as director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, the harrowing true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York who was tricked, kidnapped, and sold into slavery for more than a decade. The film captures an artistic and humanistic beauty in its construction, and hauntingly captures the spirit of Northup’s memoirs.
In the process of telling a story of deep sorrow and complex history, 12 Years also accomplishes a surprising feat: It explores the positive and negative applications of religion in slavery, ultimately revealing that it is human nature, not spiritual ideologies, which guides the actions of the characters. Northup’s slavers quote Bible verses to justify their cruelty, while many of his fellow slaves use prayer to cope with their circumstances. In the end, the survival of the oppressed comes down to community and the help they can provide one another. The overtones of dogma’s hope and its errors drive the film beyond a simple recitation of facts and into a profound question of the roles of morality in our society.
Anchoring the film is a brilliant performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup, who shines through the film’s staggering cast (including Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano, Brad Pitt, and Paul Giamatti, among many others) with a portrayal as a flawed man whose endurance lies in his personal strength and his hope that one day he might be reunited with his family.
But to call this an actor’s exercise would be a detriment to the film’s incredible power. Beyond a keen visual eye and a stirring score, the film is a portrait of a time in our nation’s history we have long tried to repress from our collective memories. And a stark portrait it is; the vicious treatment Northup and the other slaves endure is nothing short of appalling.
A particularly heartbreaking scene midway through Northup’s enslavement shows him getting into an argument with one of his overseers (Dano). Angry, the overseer and his friends hang Northup from a tree, leaving him just enough rope that he can survive by standing on his toes in the mud. Though the overseer is sent away before completing the murder, Northup is left by his owners to hang the rest of the day.
McQueen films the experience with an impartial static shot that lasts several minutes, as Northup struggles to remain standing long enough to stay alive while the rest of the plantation carries on around him, trying to pretend that nothing is wrong. As an audience member, you can only hold out your hands and implore the characters in the background to stop what they’re doing and cut the rope to set him free.
And that is the most important lesson of 12 Years a Slave: We cannot pretend that these atrocities didn’t happen, nor that others like it happen today, without being culpable in their outcomes. Northup’s story is an exception, the rare man able to tell the story of his loss of freedom. The far more common tale is that rarely told, but which appears throughout this film in the lives of those Northup comes to know. It’s the story of a race of people in chains they cannot break alone.
What could have been a romanticized snapshot of a time long gone instead stands as a reminder that the past is not dead, that bondage should not be easily forgotten, and that those who can justify the enslavement of another can justify anything, no matter how horrible, and still be allowed their freedom. It’s a deeply challenging yet utterly essential film.
Christian Hagen is a former communications assistant with the American Humanist Association, a full-beard enthusiast, and the host of This! (the Podcast), available on iTunes. Follow him on Twitter @ChristianJHagen.
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