Weekly Sermons

My theme today is humanism, a humanism that holds up under scrutiny, a humanism worthy of universal respect. Humanism concerns what is truly human; and it is truly human to judge what concerns us all. We wonder at not only what we are, but we wonder about what we ought to be. We are a species only recently rising to a consciousness of our common humanity, and we are curious about what will become of us. We find ourselves all asking the same questions, and wondering if old answers hold true.

We are bold enough to want to know our proper place in the world, and we are courageous enough to ask whether we growing properly. To grow, we must be prepared to learn, to learn from our trials and our explorations. We may not like what we learn. We may instead want to stay at home and stick to traditional ways, the soothingly unconscious habits. Keeping our heads down to look upon familiar ground can make us feel secure and rooted. We feel certain of what we are doing when we don't have to do very much. If we know exactly why we are here and what we are for, we don't have to think. But this sense of certainty is a trap, a dangerous trap for humanity. 

If we think we know our purpose, we lose the purpose to think. Certainty and thinking are forever opposed and unmixable. Certainty is not the appropriate conclusion to thinking; certainty only concludes from the death of thinking. Certainty happens when the mind refuses to try to think and judge. Certainty is poison to responsibility. But if purpose is undertaken thoughtfully, a person becomes responsive to realities, and responsible for actions. Taking reality into account is a high responsibility.

Religious people are sometimes heard to argue that because they know a higher reality and a higher purpose to life, then their religion is perfectly reasonable. Humanism look unreasonable if humanism denies any transcendent reality and any higher purpose to life. From a religious perspective, is humanism unrealistically blind and inhumanly cold towards the very notion of "higher purpose"?

Is this true? Does humanism refuse to look up, above human heads, for some higher purpose?

It's an ambiguous phrase, "a higher purpose to life," which can mean different things to different people. People can be heard to talk about "having a higher purpose in life." Some people say that they seek a "purpose higher than life." Others talk about wanting a "higher purpose for life." Can humanism endorse such ways of talking about a "higher purpose"?

Humanism agrees that people can find plenty of higher purpose in life, but humanism cannot see any higher purpose than life, and denies any higher purpose for life. It is easy to find a higher purposes in life: all those entrancing, engaging, empowering, and ennobling things that make life worth living. People should want to have a higher purpose in life - indeed, many higher purposes - because mere life, merely surviving by materialistic means, is not a path towards human dignity or excellence.  People like having a purpose-driven life, and they know that they weren't meant to live degrading and disposable lives. Humanism is about the search for what makes life great and what makes for great lives, and humanism wants to extend the opportunity for a purposeful and worthy life to all.

We need not doubt that there are worthy purposes. There are so many, in fact, that people disagree about which are more important. Furthermore, there are reasonable ways for people to compare and evaluate purposes. So, humanists encourage free thought, free inquiry, and free societies. Life is not merely purposeful, but life is also "purpose-full" - abounding in worthy purposes - and furthermore, life is "purpose-thought-ful" - requiring deliberate management of our purposes.

Humanists affirm the plentiful things that make life worth living, and encourage the expansion of these things to all. We now come to the next question: Is there any higher purpose than life? Why can't the answer be "yes," too? When people sacrifice themselves for others, or for social causes, or for moral ideals, aren't they pursuing a higher purpose than life? Yes, they are pursuing something higher than their own life, but not something higher than life itself. We sacrifice for love, or duty, or principle - but these things are ultimately meaningful and truly worthy only in service to something alive. Other people and living things around us, and our causes and ideals, are part of life as a whole. What could possibly have priority over life itself?

Humanism recognizes how life depends on such things as hospitable planets, natural laws, and the basic energies of the universe. We owe our lives to our environment, but humanism cannot see anything having priority over life. We should