What Humanism Means Today

[0:04] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. Pete Hegseth wants to cut government support to scouting America because they allow girls as members, but not because they exclude atheists. We remember Canadian humanist leader Bob Barnes, who passed away recently. Then we answer the question, what is humanism today? Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[1:00] The news came out the other day, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, had put out a memo that is planning for the military to sever all ties with Scouting America. And the reason why is he’s saying that the group, once known as the Boy Scouts, is no longer a meritocracy, and it’s become an organization designed to, quote, attack boy-friendly spaces, unquote, according to documents that were reviewed by NPR, which had this report. And it’s a draft memo to Congress.

[1:36] And it said that Hegseth criticized scouting for being genderless and for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it should be noted that the military has provided some form of support to the scouts for more than 100 years. I remember I was a Boy Scout many moons ago. And the Army, U.S. Army, provided .22 caliber rifle ammunition. For our summer camps. The other thing that they provide is logistical support and medical support for the National Scout Jamboree that’s held in West Virginia. And there are many scout troops on military bases. And I remember one time our scout troop stayed at Wright-Patterson Air Force space. They had a, uh, uh, we were there for the air show, the Dayton air show one year, and we camped out in, in the scout camp that they had at the end of one of the runways.

[2:42] At Wright Patterson. It was in the, there was trees. It was in the woods. It wasn’t on the runway, but it was pretty close. And, and I remember we had to go through security and have things checked out before they let us in. And, and then of course, then they also guarded us with, the with the air air police they came by a couple times during the evening and at night make sure we are all secure so the military has provided quite a bit of support over the years, i don’t know why they’re well i know why they’re doing it now.

[3:23] Because scouts america used to be called the boy scouts and the reason why they’re not called Boy Scouts anymore is because about five or six years ago, they decided to let girls join. And they’ve had girls involved in scouting for a long time, but not as, quote, Boy Scouts, unquote, the main group. They had women involved in leadership positions. You could be a den mother. In Cub Scouts, you were a den mother. That was the main thing. You couldn’t be a scout leader, but you could be a den mother. They also had women in explorer posts. Explorer posts were like police and fire. They also had women in the explorer posts that were connected to the waters, the sea, sailboats and things like that. But, you know, five or six years ago, they finally decided to allow women or girls into the main group of scouting, allow them to become Eagle Scouts. And I know I’ve seen recently some news reports about some girls here in the northwest Ohio area that have become Eagle Scouts.

[4:43] And they’ve also recognized and allowed in, after not allowing for many years, LGBT scouts, LGBT leaders, which is very progressive of them, except they still refuse to allow atheists. Boy Scouts, when it was still called the Boy Scouts, was taken over by evangelical Christians. And they really doubled down on the religious aspect. When I was a Boy Scout in the 80s, I was nominally religious. I didn’t go to church regularly. I kind of still believed. I didn’t pray. I was making that transition from being a believer to being an atheist and a humanist. And so it really didn’t bother me that much, but also the troop that I was in didn’t really—, lean into that. It did, but the scout leaders that I dealt with in the local troop that I was in, acknowledged that I was not religious per se, and they didn’t force me to be religious.

[6:03] The scout troop, I was in two scout troops, and both of them were sponsored by religious groups. One was a church, and the other one was the Knights of Columbus, which is a Catholic organization.

[6:17] And the reason why I switched, I switched from the one that was sponsored by the Protestant church to go to the Catholic troop was because a lot of my friends that I went to school with was in the Catholic troop. And again, I was nominally religious, so it really didn’t bother me. The biggest thing that we had to do when I was a scout was if we were camping on the weekend, we had to go to mass on Sunday mornings before we went home. Not a big deal because, you know, it’s a modern mass, so it only takes maybe an hour or so. I was not required to do everything. I couldn’t take communion because I wasn’t a member of the church, and I didn’t have to pray. They had the benches, the knee pads that they pulled down from the back of the pews so that you could be on your knees and pray. I didn’t have to do that. The only thing that I was required to do, and the leaders told me this on occasion, was I just had to be quiet and respectful. And that’s it. I didn’t get anything out of the masses at all. Didn’t appeal to me. Pretty much why religion didn’t appeal to me starting back then, back when I was a teenager.

[7:45] But, you know, it was something I had to do because I couldn’t drive. I didn’t have a driver’s license. I didn’t have my own car. So I had to go to Mass. The other thing in the troop that they really, they didn’t push, but for a lot of the Catholic boys that were part of the Catholic Church, It was something that they really, uh, push was the, uh, there was a metal you could get. It was called the, I think it was the, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Alatari day metal. I think if I remember probably not saying it right. And basically you just had to do some extra work about your faith and you had to talk to a priest and, uh, And the priest had to sign off on it, blah, blah, blah. You get a medal. So there was a lot of boys that did that that was in my troop. I didn’t have to do that. I didn’t want to do that.

[8:44] The Unitarians had a medal, and it was more of a patch than a metal medal for people that were of the Unitarian faith. They had that for several years. And in fact, when I was in Columbus in the humanist group, I signed up and volunteered to help lead people, lead scouts through that program if anybody needed somebody. Because when you work on merit badges and other awards, you have to have somebody that you talk to and who signs off on it. And I agreed to do that. But when I was a Boy Scout in the 80s, I didn’t have to do that. And so we met in the KFC hall. But yeah, we didn’t pray. It was just very chill when it came to religion. The Boy Scout oath wasn’t a problem because it said you had to do your duty to God in your country.

[9:45] But, you know, oaths, there was no consequences if you didn’t follow that oath. More so. I mean, if you were a bad kid or something, usually they kick you out. But if you didn’t want to obey God, they didn’t care. You know, the only thing that the Boy Scouts at the time cared about was, did you pay your dues? They cared about the money.

[10:13] And so that is one of the reasons why they started accepting women and girls into the main group, and they changed their name, was because they were in financial trouble. And the reason why they were in financial trouble is because they had thousands of sex abuse lawsuits filed against them from scout leaders and other people that had abused children in the program and that they did nothing about.

[10:44] I’m not sure if it’s still online or not, but there was paperwork, the files for the class action suit was released on the internet. And you could look up your specific areas, your towns, and see if there was any allegations. It was kind of like those abuse records that the Catholic Church had for decades. You know, they knew who the abusers were. They kept files on them. So did the Boy Scouts. They knew who the abusers were. They kept files on them. And the only thing that they did was they excluded those people from being leaders or being involved with scouts. That’s all they did. They didn’t call the cops. They didn’t report them. Nothing. And that’s why they had to pay out, I think it was close to a billion dollars or something. It was a lot of money. So that was one reason, was they were in money trouble. The other reason was they had lost a lot of members. And the reason why they lost a lot of members was because at that time, this is before probably 2000, you know, 2010, something like that, they were less than open, less than inclusive.

[11:55] You know, they excluded gay people. They excluded atheists. They excluded Muslims. You know, the whole host of things. And it was because these evangelicals that were on the board and guided the national organization, they leaned into that Christianity, now Christianity forever type deal. And so a lot of these other religions and no religions got shunted to the side. And so they lost a lot of people. Yeah.

[12:30] And because of the abuse allegations, you know, parents don’t want to have their kids in an organization that’s known for harboring predators, sex predators, or ignoring that the abuse is going on. And that’s what they were doing.

[12:48] So that so so Hegseth, the secretary of defense, is cutting ties. And I worked helped to work on some programs probably in the 90s trying to get the government to cut ties because they excluded atheists and they still exclude atheists. The scouts still do not allow atheist Boy Scouts. They claim it’s because the scout oath is religious, that they’re a religious organization. Okay, and so what it was is you had, they claimed that they were a religious group, and they had the Scout Oath and the Scout Law. And like I said, there wasn’t technically any real consequences for not following either for the boys. You know, like I said, if you were a really bad kid, like he got into fights or stole money or, you know, became a criminal or something like that, they’d kick you out. But if you didn’t follow the scout oath to the letter and if you didn’t follow the scout law, then they weren’t going to do much for you. But the Scout Oath goes, on my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and obey the Scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

[14:10] And then the scout law is just a set of values. It’s a scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. And we had to memorize that. What really came down for me when in the 90s, when I became a humanist and I really started supporting separation of church and state, and it led me to stop supporting Boy Scouts. I wasn’t going to give money to them. I wasn’t going to encourage people to join or anything. And the reason why was because the evangelicals that took over the group in the late 80s, early 90s, they really focused on the part of the scout oath where it says that you do your duty to God in your country and that you stay morally straight And morally straight, that’s how excluded LGBT boys was morally straight. They really doubled down on making sure that that excluded people. And then the other part that I had a problem with was reverent. They were taking it as reverent as in the religious context. And the reverent has more than one context, right?

[15:32] You know, the evangelicals were taking it as religious, that you’re reverent, that you pray to God and you obey God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, reverent, the definition of reverent is feeling or showing deep and solemn respect.

[15:50] So that’s the way I took it. But they had this form that you had to fill out where you agreed that the definitions were all religious-based and that you would support religion. And that was something I couldn’t do. So I was like, nope, I’m not going to become a leader. I’m not going to support the group. Nothing. Because if they’re forcing me to pledge to make a promise and sign a paper, I’m not going to support the group. With something that I did not personally believe, then I can’t work with that group. And I think a lot of people felt that way too. The other thing that happened too with Scouting America, besides allowing girls to join, was they lost one of their major sponsors, which was the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church had one of the largest groups of troops chartered to them. Temples around the country had a troop.

[16:57] The Mormon Church National Organization donated a lot of money, sums of money, because, and that was one of the reasons why it got so religiously conservative in the late 80s, early 90s, after I had left, was because of the Mormons. They were instituting a lot of their religious beliefs, and the Boy Scouts were acquiescing to what they wanted because that was a lot of people and a lot of money. So after they decided, the Boy Scouts decided to allow LGBT scouts and leaders, the Mormons quit. They withdrew. They severed ties with Boy Scouts. So that was a major blow to them. And so it ended up pushing Boy Scouts to file for bankruptcy. And one figure I saw was in the 80s when I was a scout they had like five million members, and now they currently are lucky if they have a million and then the Mormons went off and they started their own Boy Scout like group so.

[18:24] Getting back to Pete Hegseth’s action, you know, he is doing it for the wrong reasons. You know, he’s not doing it for reasons that it should be done, is that they exclude people and they’re too religious to be connected with the government, especially a particular religion, Christianity. And but he’s doing it because he claims that they let girls in and they are attacking uh boys or not not supporting boys so that is what happened with pete hegseth and cutting ties with scouting scouting america and it’s and he’s doing it for an absurd reason and.

[19:15] It should have been done, you know, probably 20 years ago. The government should have cut ties 20 years ago, and people tried. There was several, many cities across the country that passed ordinances that they would not allow the scouts to have the special privileges in renting facilities because they excluded people from their group. And again, they claim to be a private religious organization, so they can include or exclude anybody that they want. But our public government that is supposed to be about everybody, everybody in the country, we don’t have to support that. We don’t have to platform a group that discriminates. And that’s not taking anything away from that other group.

[20:20] They can get the benefit of being in the public or getting benefits from the

[20:27] public as long as they adopt the rules that are set for everybody else in the public. And that is not to discriminate and to be as inclusive as you can.

[20:47] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[21:07] I just wanted to take a minute or two to acknowledge the passing of a friend of the show, somebody that I interviewed at least twice in the last couple years, Bob Barnes. He was the president of the Blue Water Atheist Humanist Group in Sarnia, Ontario. He was the driving force and leader of their BajaCon that they’ve had for the past five or six years in the Sarnia area. Where they’ve had some pretty top flight, you know, A-list speakers such as Hemant Mehta. Seth Andrews has done speaking engagements, Aaron Ron, quite a few people.

[21:52] I believe this coming year in 2026, they’re going to have Ann-Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, along with some other people. And so I had the opportunity to interview Bob when he wanted to promote the event. And being that Toledo is roughly two hours away from Port Huron, which is across the river from Sarnia, you know, this was kind of a local conference for people in the Toledo area. So I was happy to do it. But unfortunately, I was not able to meet Bob in person for one reason or another. I think we had a booth thing or something going on the same weekend. I just never had the time to go. Maybe this year. Maybe I’ll try to go this year. But unfortunately, I won’t be able to meet Bob in person.

[22:46] And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to play a clip, a short clip, from the interview that I did for him for episode number 57. It was in May of 2023. We were just coming out of the pandemic, and he was promoting the conference. And so this is just a short clip that I just wanted to play in honor of Bob and acknowledge his passing. And again, he was a friend for the show, and our sympathies go to his family. And the people at Baha up in Sarnia. They’re good people. If you live in that area, you should check them out. Our goal is to make this the premier conference around, the one, the go-to one. And we’re going to have the best lineup, the best venue, the best food items and stuff like that. So that’s our goals.

[23:42] And we’re raising money for charity. Like I paid, my board, we all paid to go last year. None of us, we do a lot of work. I probably spent more money on gas and people pay to go, but we still pay. I want people to know that we’re not doing it to get a free ticket and we all pay just like everybody else. And we’ve got so many good friendships now from last year. It’s just amazing how it gets to be like a family get together. You know, like this year, like just about all the people here last year all re-registered already because they know it’s a good conference. They don’t want to miss out.

[24:41] This fall, I started my 30th year, might even be a little bit longer than that. I think it was 95, 1995, when I initially first got started with the humanist movement down in Columbus, Ohio with the humanist community of central Ohio. And so one of the biggest questions that I get as a humanist leader from people, when I talk to them about humanism, when we have our booths during the summer months, the info booth, a lot of times they’ll say, what is humanism? What does it mean?

[25:18] Humanist Manifesto 1, which was signed in 1933, was a religious document. There’s a lot of religious talk in there, a lot of God talk in there. Even though the people that wrote it didn’t believe that religion or God was the most important thing, but a lot of the Unitarians signed it. And so, as I said, personally, I’m ambivalent towards Unitarianism. I appreciate it. I’m glad that they’re our friends, that they’re open to us, atheists, us heathens, for the most part. It depends on the congregation, but we have a very nice congregation, too. We actually have two congregations in the Toledo area that have been very welcoming to me as a secular humanist. The primary one that we have is the First Unitarian Church of Toledo, and that is on Glendale Avenue. And the senior minister, Reverend T.K. Barger, is a member of Shole, my group. And he was also on our board initially when we were forming, and he helped get us started. He also helped us get there, use the church for some of our initial meetings when we first got started.

[26:37] Which I really appreciate. And, you know, we’ve exchanged information. We keep in touch, even though we don’t see each other every day. He’s a very nice guy. I appreciate that. I’m a friend. We’re friends.

[26:51] And so we have that. The second one, the second Unitarian congregation is the one that they don’t necessarily, they don’t have a minister per se. It’s Layled is the, I think Maumee Valley Unitarians, and that’s kind of halfway between Perrysburg and Bowling Green, and I’ve talked to them before.

[27:15] But recently, within the last year or two, the Unitarian Association, the big umbrella for the church, has really kind of had a seismic shift a little bit in that they dropped the word humanism from their church documents, whatever it is, their statement of beliefs or pillars. I think they call it pillars. I’m not sure. I’m not a Unitarian, so I’m sure Reverend Barger would have more details about that. And so this was a big thing. Some of the older Unitarians that came in through when humanism was really active or really upset, and some of the younger Unitarians really didn’t care because they didn’t have a history with humanism. And so the Unitarian Church is generally open to all belief systems. They are not dogmatic. They don’t require you to believe a certain way to be there. You just have to be open-minded. You just have to be welcoming. Yeah.

[28:22] And so they have services on Sundays, and majority of time it’s live-streamed. They started that during the pandemic so that they could still provide their services, and they’ve kept it. Luckily for us, they’ve kept it. And so this past Sunday after Thanksgiving, Reverend Barger did a sermon about what is humanism. And I think it’s very interesting. It’s not that long. It’s probably about 12, 13 minutes long. And what I wanted to do, and I’m not playing it because he mentions me and quotes me. That’s not why. I’m not that vain. But he makes some really good points.

[29:10] One, about the common threads of humanism, whether you’re a religious humanist or secular humanist or a Buddhist humanist or whatever. He talks about the common threads that bind us. And then he also points out the differences, which I think are very important to know about. And so I really appreciated this sermon, and that’s why I’m playing it today. And I did obtain his permission, and I’ll also throw a link to the live stream that they had last Sunday. If you want to watch the whole service, you can. His talk that I’m going to play for you now starts about the 50-minute mark in the live stream. And I really appreciate him taking the time to talk about it, to quote me. And I really believe that what he talked about is a fair accounting of what humanism is.

[30:14] Eight weeks ago, I brought you the sermon, What Does Unitarian Mean Today? And then four weeks ago, What Does Universalist Mean Today? Now I’m closing out this definition series, preaching on what does humanist mean today. The first two terms for us in a Unitarian Universalist congregation are obvious words for exploration I bring humanist because the humanist movement of the 20th century was a great influence on the development of Unitarianism And I personally hold a humanist outlook.

[31:01] You might say that humanism has a wide surface There’s a philosophical approach And it has religious aspects, Some look at the history of the humanities And ascribe the term of humanism To people or outlooks based, for example, on enlightenment thinking Plus there’s a forward aspect, transhumanism That is beyond the humanism I live One of several ways to define transhumanism Is to say that it’s humans incorporating technology and machinery into their being That they’re exploring being beyond human in a way.

[31:54] The meaning of humanist today continues to be dependent on the context. When I was a student at the Humanist Institute, the same time as I was also studying for the ministry at Meadville Lombard Theological School, I wrote a report on the book, Humanism Finding Meaning in the Word, and that was written by Nicholas Walter. That is a book about the word humanism, written, he said, to explore the various meanings of humanism in the past, so as to clarify the origins and development of what is now known as the humanist movement. He pointed out that the word has often been used to mean just what the user chooses it to mean, Which is of little help for my trying to tell you a meaning that isn’t just my own take, And today I’m trying to separate humanism in the present from its past contexts.

[33:10] So let’s do a little bit of defining. Merriam-Webster puts humanism with humanities and literary culture, in scholarship going back to the Renaissance, in social concerns as humanitarianism, and for philosophy leading to secular humanism. But that secular humanism definition stating a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason also applies to religious humanism. And a major point I want to make in this talk is that there is secular humanism, There is religious humanism. They have a lot of crossover, but they have some different qualities.

[34:14] One of the major differences is what gets to our Unitarian Universalist pluralism today. We have many beliefs, practices, ways of living, but we do that under the same roof or umbrella, supporting one another in our seeking and sometimes finding.

[34:41] We have religious humanist Unitarian Universalists and secular humanist Unitarian Universalists, and they, we, are alongside Christians and Buddhists and pagans and Jews and others. And it’s not quite accurate to say that if you’re a humanist and you come here every Sunday at 11 a.m. In congregation, you’re therefore a religious humanist and not a secular humanist. I try to make that point sometimes myself, but I know it’s not accurate. You can be secular and a regular churchgoer.

[35:32] That challenge in the humanist definition is because there are anti-religious secular humanists, there are religious secular humanists, and there are religious humanists who don’t separate the secular and the sacred. In Unitarian Universalism, we can coexist, can’t we?

[36:00] Anyway, humanist today includes all of those distinctions The differences are somewhat more easily seen if one takes in differences in belief Are all secular humanists atheists? Many are, but not all Are all religious humanists believers in God? No and then you have to ask what they mean by God. Because while most, I’d say, would dismiss the old white guy in the sky, there are other aspects of the divine that fit humanism better, like giving the unknown characteristics of nature a God label, or at least having more comfort using terms like spirit, soul, and faith. Everything is holy now, Peter Meyer asserted in the song that Jeffrey Maxey sang earlier.

[37:10] My friend Douglas Berger, the founder and president of Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, of which I’m a member and have served on the board, was quoted in the Toledo Blade a month ago saying, For me and people like me, it’s pretty simple. We are all biological organisms. We all have a life cycle. We’re born, we live, we die, and then we cease to exist For atheists across the board, we don’t believe that we have a soul We don’t believe that we exist after we die This life is the life that we have And we have to make the best of it End his quote.

[38:06] Religious humanists can have the same belief as Doug, but we’re more flexible about the religious terms, so we can accept the concept of soul while also knowing that it can be only a concept in the mind with no real-world matter. And we might not dismiss an afterlife in its entirety, preferring just to say, we don’t know and we’ll find out, or not, when we die.

[38:46] So, what does humanist mean today? It’s an outlook for what humans have become The thinking, doing, communal, social animals on this earth Homo sapiens being the species, you can say Which can determine how the world will advance or decline Because of humans’ behavior and actions It’s the humanists who have perhaps more awareness of humans’ influence And humanists are the ones who realize that it’s up to us to save the world And not exploit its resources Especially the non-renewable ones to the detriment of the health, safety, well-being of people and all aspects of the planet in the future.

[39:53] What does humanism mean today? It’s the realization that it’s on all of us, that it’s all on us, on people, not on any divine aspect outside of what people make, not on supernatural aspects, but on nature itself along with science. It’s on us to keep humanity and even this world in existence It won’t come from outside unless And I say this is highly unlikely There is an eventual visitation of friendly extraterrestrials We can’t depend on that and the science fiction we humans create would suffer from a reality like that, wouldn’t it? So let’s be the best humanists we can be and save the world.

[41:00] The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie website has this statement. If you support separation of church and state, science and reason, social justice, evidence-based solutions to human problems, then consider yourself a humanist. You don’t need to get to find points beyond those values, I’m a humanist And I’m appreciative that you look to me for religious leadership While you have the responsibility of taking on your own free and responsible search for truth and meaning I’m happy to share the humanist label with any of you, and I respect if you decide it’s a label that doesn’t fit, as long as you also accept that it’s a label for many people in our circle.

[42:14] What does humanist mean today? It gets to the final sentence of Keith Racey’s reading from the Humanist Manifesto 3, which is the current 21st century version of the Humanist Manifesto that originated in 1933. That sentence from 2003 is, The responsibility for our lives and the kind of world in which we live is ours and ours alone, One way to take on that solo responsibility is to do so in community Which I try to do as a Unitarian Universalist Humanist So be it and blessed.

[43:15] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.