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MODERN TIMES Art Hobson NWA Times, 19 September 2010 [email protected] A personal philosophy People don't often ask me to preach, but I had the good fortune to be asked to preach to Fayetteville's Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on a recent Sunday morning. This article is based on my sermon. I was raised in a liberal Protestant home. As a physics student in college, I was attracted to Unitarianism. I came to Fayetteville at age 29, soon found myself divorced with full custody of my two children, joined the UU Fellowship for several years, and eventually drifted away from organized religion. Today, I'd describe myself as a secular humanist: non-religious, and supportive of people's well-being. What's the meaning of life? Religions are supposed to answer this, but maybe it's the wrong question. Life seems to me to be an experience, rather than something that necessarily has an overarching purpose. Asking the meaning of life is like asking the meaning of a roller coaster. It's something you do, not something that means. We're so lucky to be here! You could have been a rock, or a tree, or your molecules could have been strewn in the air, but you were privileged to be an aware human being. What a gift this is. What more could you want? Life has the meaning that you bring to it by the quality of your living. It's perhaps selfish to expect anything more, to expect a universal Meaning, or life after death. I can imagine God, if there were a God, saying "What? I've given you all this and you've got your hand out for more? Get outta' here." If you want a grander meaning, consider extraterrestrial life. Most scientists guess life exists on other planets around other stars, and that some of it evolved intelligence. If so, the entire universe is becoming aware of itself, human intelligence is part of that expanding awareness, and we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. I recently read several books by the "new atheists," including Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. One of his points that has stuck with me is that "universe" and "God" mean two different things. I'm certainly awed by the universe, and I'll bet you are too. This awe has something in common with religious experience, but it's misleading to claim that it amounts to a belief in God. It's important to use words properly. "God" normally means a personal God who can grant prayers, an extraphysical being with supernatural powers. It's best if those of us who don't believe in such a God but are awed by the universe don't confuse things by saying we believe in God. But, you may ask, where do ethics come from if not from religion? My first answer is that, even if I were religious, I would not want to derive my ethics from my religion or any other broad ideology. The reason is that, in accepting Christianity, or Marxism, or political liberalism, etcetera, I'm accepting a huge laundry list of beliefs. The Bible, for example, makes an enormous number of claims. Nobody could rationally agree with all of them. I prefer not to have such a laundry list of unexamined beliefs. In fact, I'd prefer to have no "beliefs" but to have only "conclusions" based on experience and reason. However, logicians know that no system of ideas can start from nothing. There must be a foundation, a postulate, a "belief." I considered this matter many decades ago and came down in favor of the "greatest happiness principle" as my foundation. It says that one's behavior should promote people's happiness. I don't claim that everybody should follow this principle, but I do claim it's a good idea to have some such general principle, rather than an entire ideology, behind your ethics. I've got high level backing for this notion. The Dalai Lama wrote an excellent non-religious book ten years ago titled "Ethics for the New Millenium." The greatest happiness principle is the basis for the entire book. Of course, "happiness" means long-term satisfaction, well-being, and achievement of one's potential, not just short-term fun. Once you've got a starting point for ethics, the thing to do is apply evidence-your own knowledge gained through living, reading, discussing, and so forth--and your own reasoning ability to any situation that requires it. A non-religious foundation of this sort for ethics is simple, flexible, and not so likely to lead to trouble as the dogmatic ideologies which religion and politics foist on us today. Maybe it's what the world needs now.