Humanists of MN

It’s taken awhile. The Humanists of Minnesota have finally moved the website into the 21st century.

As with most all volunteer organizations finding a good webgeek is hard work, keeping one can be more. We’ve moved forward in fits and starts and it’s finally ready to go.

Special thanks to Ryan Sutter for a Titanic sized load of work. A website nowadays is an organizations most important connection point to people, while we still have people who get excited about a paper newsletter, we’ll be doing more with the site. So keep stopping by, we’ll add new and old “Humanist Views” as we convert them. Let us know what you think, join comments, point out things we can add, find typos, whatever.

We’ll do our best to add our voice to the chorus of reason and rationality on the web.  See how many people thought “god” was making a statement back in August here in Minneapolis with a tornado, rather than it being a average storm system, our presence is needed.

Thanks for stopping by.

Scott Lohman
President,
Humanists of Minnesota

During the 3rd week of August 2009 the ELCA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, held one of their biannual  conferences here in Minneapolis.  The convention was tasked to deal with dealing with issues of sexuality, specifically issues related to homosexuality.  Homosexuality has been a big issue in a number of Christian denominations.  Now the ELCA is one of the more “more liberal” mainstream denominations.  They have been discussing sexuality for a number of years.  This year the decision needed to be made about allowing what the religious like to call clergy who are “practicing homosexuals”.  This curious term is what they call gay couples who have sex.  Now from a Humanist point of view, this is not a big deal for adults who are gay in a relationship.  However we Humanists are not homophobic religious believers.  Now I know that there are a great many religious people who are not discriminatory.  What makes this interesting is that the ELCA did decide to allow gay clergy, but leaves the actual calls to parishes up to individual congregations.

Now this is a step forward, but what really makes it interesting is the weather.  Yes, the weather.  Just a the time the conference was getting ready to take a vote a tornado went through downtown Minneapolis, damaging the Minneapolis Convention Center, as well as Central Lutheran Church.  Now Humanists would not consider this anything but severe weather.  Well not to the religious right types.  This tornado was not sever weather but, wait for it, a message from God.  John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote on his blog at “Desiring God”:  “Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.”  http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1965_the_tornado_the_lutherans_and_homosexuality/

Piper is not the only one.  The whole KKMS Saturday line up and a number of callers also said the same thing.  So weather apparently can be changed by God because of “the gays”.  If we pursue the apparent logic of this, it seems that we can cause severe weather with gay people gathering.  Now how God missed the Pride celebration at the end of June, I’m not sure.

Our work is cut out for us.  It seems that people have made it to the 21st century still believing that invisible beings control the weather.  It seems that the best approach here is to point out that this really quite stupid to think that a God is going to use a tornado to send a message.  Why God couldn’t use the big screens and Powerpoint to send his message, I don’t know.  Apparently manipulating the weather is much easier. It’s too bad that magical thinking is so tough to get rid off.

-Scott Lohman

There is (has been and will continue to be) much discussion within the Humanist community on whether a Humanist must be an atheist. Most Humanists would agree that it is difficult to be a freethinker and not come at least to agnosticism. But is an atheist, by definition, a Humanist?

On April 26, Sunday morning’s “Atheist Talk” aired a radio show that reminded us in no uncertain terms that simply being an atheist does not make you a Humanist. It showed how atheism can easily be coopted to push an ideology and how that ideology can be used to lie, create fear and rewrite history.

Sunsara Taylor certainly seems like an honest, caring person. After all, she is a leading figure in the antiwar movement, speaks passionately about poverty, and ably points out the corruption and greed that seems to have taken over our corporate system.  And what freethinker wouldn’t love her going toe to toe with the right-wing stars of the Fox Network (watch the interviews via the link on the Minnesota Atheists website if you haven’t already).

But it is the very passion that she shows in those encounters that tip you off to her blind commitment to communism. Skepticism and critical thinking, the hallmarks of free thought, are out the window:  Slums and the rush to the cities are blamed on globalization (never mind that these trends have existed for hundreds [thousands?] of years).  Food shortages are not due to scarcity … it’s just a distribution problem (the world is not facing an overpopulation crisis??).  And, of course, the capitalistic state is the bad guy. (Communist states are better? Could it be that it is the corruption of the state by those hungry for power that is problem regardless of the system?)

Like the most rabid religious ideologue, she has mastered all the diversionary skills including rewriting history. Mao’s pushing people out of the cities into the country and killing millions in the process (didn’t happen, of course) was a good thing! Reagan is the villain who started deregulation (never mind that it stemmed the runaway inflation that we were suffering at the time due to blooming deficits). Religious oppression equals economic oppression (nice sound bite!). She even denied the label of ideologue, claiming we are all ideologues (what about those of us who are skeptics?).  Despite the best attempts of many of the listeners to call Sunsara accountable, she diverted every question, labeling the callers  “misinformed.”

In the end, Ms. Taylor was there to push the book of her mentor, Robert Arakian, president of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA. By her postering and words, she reminded us that if we want to kill the American freethought movement, all we have to do is align ourselves with communism (or any other dogmatism).