3022 If Not God, What? A Humanist Elevator Speech

Dr. David E. Schafer

IF NOT GOD, WHAT? – A UU HUMANIST ELEVATOR SPEECH
By David Schafer

[Note: This is nearly a verbatim transcript of the third of four contributions by panel members in workshop #3022 at GA 2003. Some of the remarks, noted in brackets, are ad libbed references to those of earlier speakers. Others have been edited for clarity.]

Now you may think after you’ve heard all our talks that we passed them around and just used the same material in different ways. I assure you we haven’t. So I think I’ll try to stress some differences—and one way to do that, of course, is to say that I’ve never lived on a farm for any length of time [like two of the other speakers]. I was, however, born in Kansas, in Wichita, to a fundamentalist family, and I was not happy with the fundamentalism that I was brought up with—from the very beginning, almost—and I asked a lot of questions (too many, I guess, for my own good), and I spent a lot of time studying, first, Christianity and then other religions that I learned about. And then I began to study them in their original languages, and I adopted a very intellectual approach to this subject. And ultimately I found, after about fifteen years of this, that I came to Humanism, mostly through my study of science and the philosophy of science.

I became a physiologist, and I discovered that there are many people who are a little afraid of science, and of physiology in particular. My grandmother came to celebrate with me my getting my Ph.D. She flew from Columbus, Ohio, to Minneapolis (by the way, I’m part of the Minnesota mafia [like two of the other speakers] who are sitting up here). And she sat in the rocking chair in my living room and rocked and rocked, and suddenly she said, “Well, David, what does a physiologist do, anyway?” And after a moment’s thought I answered, “Grandma, a physiologist studies the various parts of the human body and tries to find out how they work.” And she stopped rocking, and she sat up straight, and she said, “Well, David, that’s none of your business!”

Now, she may have been right; still, in any case, you know, it’s often said that Humanists fail to emphasize sufficiently the awe and the wonder of the Universe, but I must say that I have found that scientists are motivated by awe and wonder of the subjects that they work on. And I find the molecular and cellular structures of our bodies to be perfectly amazing, and I think there’s enough awe and wonder in our world to satisfy anyone’s craving for these things. In fact, I would tend to define the difference between people in this regard as between those who, when a single mystery has been resolved by research, may find that change to be a loss and a source of sadness to them, because they preferred the mystery before it was solved, and others who may find, as I do, the discovery to be a source of satisfaction, because there are always going to be more mysteries, and more awe, and more wonderful things to learn about.

My Humanism, as that of a scientist, has absolutely no place for supernaturalism. I not only don’t need it, but I find that if there were such a thing as supernatural effects in the world they would screw things up powerfully. I don’t like to think there are agencies that go around with their fingers on every molecule in my body, and I have absolutely no evidence for them.

My introduction to organized Humanism occurred in quite a different way. I didn’t mention this before, but I grew up as a musician. At the age of 13 I had been the organist in the West Side Baptist Church in Wichita, and later I was the organist at the University Baptist Church in Minneapolis even after I became a philosophical Humanist. One day someone from the music committee at the Minneapolis First Unitarian Society called me and asked me, “Would you like to become chairman of our music committee?” And my answer was, “Well, now, that’s an interesting offer, but I’m not a member of the Unitarian Society.” They said, “Oh, that doesn’t matter—just come on down.”

When I got down there I discovered that the songs that these people were trying to sing were enough to stifle anybody’s interest in singing. In an earlier phase of my education I had been teaching assistant to a famous poet in a course on “Interpretation of Poetry,” and I thought that the verses left something to be desired, so I spent quite a bit of my time as chairman of the committee writing “hymns”—sometimes the text, sometimes the music, sometimes both—and I’ve been writing music for Humanist texts ever since.
In this connection you might be interested to discover that on the 2nd of November the Unitarian ociety of New Haven, where I’m a member (it happens to be in Hamden, CT), will be dedicating a new building, with a beautiful air-conditioned interior, and the guest speaker will be President Sinkford. I’ve been invited to write music for our chorus to sing on that occasion, so I’m working on an appropriate text.

In any case, after my introduction to organized Humanism I discovered that my interest in comparative religion worked together with my interest in scientific research, and about the time that other people were going into the Peace Corps I arranged to do teaching and research in South Asia, so I spent two and a half years in Calcutta with my family, and a year and a half in Bangkok, doing research on cholera. And the particular effect that it had on me was that I now know that if anybody is having difficulty getting emancipated from any religious background, the fastest way to get over that is to have extended experience in another culture and discover what other people believe, the similarities and differences. I was also confirmed in my Humanist belief that we are all one basic human family, and we should try to make it a functional human family.

As I looked at the first title we had for today’s panel, “If Not God, What?” I thought about that, and decided, first of all, that it needed a verb. And as I began to try different verbs in there, I concluded that it was difficult for me to find any subject or object that I could substitute for the word “god” in the question and make any sense. For me as a Humanist, I don’t just have any substitute for “god.” I have Humanist values, but I don’t worship humans or anything else, and I don’t need this instrumental “god” that many people believe in, who goes around dispensing rewards and punishments for good and bad behaviors, respectively, or who just helps us to have the strength to get through the day, and not to misbehave—such a god really doesn’t have any purpose for me. I think we simply have to do those things for ourselves, or they won’t get done at all.

To me the real title here is “What Is My ‘Elevator Speech’?” and the ‘elevator speech’ should be about’ “What Do We Value as Humanists?” And in this respect what I would say is very similar in many ways to what my colleagues have said or will say.

I had a friend in the Yonkers Unitarian Church around 1960 who was a mathematician for IBM at Tarrytown. His job there was to develop an algorithm in information theory which would enable IBM to reduce any statement to a minimum length without loss of information. Now there’s the rub—“without loss of information.”

And I think that that’s essentially the problem of the elevator speech. The problem is that as you shorten the elevator speech down, you reach a point where it doesn’t mean anything any more. You have to stop and define every word in order to make any sense out of it. An illustration of what I mean is Woody Allen’s statement, when asked about his religion, “I’m Jewish—with an explanation.” And if you say, “I’m a Humanist, blah, blah, blah,” then you have to give the explanation. And that’s what takes a little time.

The shortest statement about Humanism that I’ve ever encountered was one that definitely requires an explanation. John Dietrich, one of the fathers of modern Humanism, and a signer of Humanist Manifesto I (1933), who was the minister of the very same First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis that I attended, but about twenty years earlier, said that “science” and “democracy” are the essence of Humanism. Now you can’t get much shorter than that: “science” and “democracy.” But what does it mean? By “science” I think he meant that we live in an orderly Universe, and that there are methods and conclusions of science that enable us to get a handle on the kind of Universe we live in, and that the scientific approach is essential in order to be able to make and carry out any value judgments, because we first have to know what is possible in such a world. We have to know, for example, if we are dealing with health, whether we should pray, or whether we should take foul-smelling medicines, or whether we should see a respectable doctor, or stand on our head, or what. The scientific viewpoint will give us some information that will be helpful for this. As far as “democracy” is concerned, what Dietrich was saying, I think, was that we respect all human beings as equals and believe in their right to have maximum freedom to help determine their own destiny.

Today I would say that if I were to try to modify Dietrich’s definition, and still keep it brief, I would add something about the fact that human beings are lucky to have rational analytical minds, but that we are basically apes who don’t use those rational, analytical minds all that much, and to be happy human beings we also have to have a system of life and of thought that will take into account our emotions, our very powerful emotions, that have to be dealt with. That’s where music comes in, and the poetry that I studied. Wallace Stevens, the American poet, wrote in his Adagia that “after one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.” Well, poetry, music, dance, architecture, any form of beauty, natural or human-made—which again, is completely natural, I assure you—is important to all of us. So I would want to paraphrase Dietrich’s statement, and at the same time to add to it: Humanism requires at least three things that are essential, in my value system: Those three things, from which all other necessities such as beauty flow, are life, love, and truth.
My wife pointed out to me that a 45-second monologue in an elevator defining Humanism is not only impossible, but is likely to be rude, and she suggested that I put the whole thing down on a card, with my e-mail address, and hand it.to the person who asks about Humanism. But anyway, here goes:

MY UU HUMANIST “ELEVATOR SPEECH”

“We hold conscious life precious, and we cherish the inherent worth and dignity of every member of our human family. Our beliefs are driven by a free and responsible search for truth, through careful observation and analysis, which continually increases our understanding of ourselves and the natural Universe of which we are an integral part. Because that Universe is hostile to life and Earth is a tiny oasis supporting life, we struggle to preserve our fragile environment here. So that every member of our human family may achieve the greatest possible fulfillment, we strive to create for all humanity the conditions of a joyful life – beauty, love, health, education, justice, freedom, peace.”

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