I never met my grandfather (see the picture of him during WW1), because he died years before I was born, but one family story is that he used to have fun at parties telling people that he and my grandmother had met in an insane asylum – because they had. Both of them had been psychiatric nurses dealing with the trauma of shattered bodies and minds among returned soldiers after the so-called Great War.
Two decades later during World War Two, my other grandfather served as a volunteer fireman during the Blitz in England. He was often called to go out and extinguish fires at night after buildings had suffered from bomb damage. One night, according to family lore, he returned home greatly distressed – a bomb had hit an air raid shelter and killed many men, women, children and babies, and he had been forced to help sift through the rubble and carnage.
This is the reality – for all our admiration of Star Wars movies and Rambo flicks, for all our cultural hero worship of ANZACs and the Battle of Britain and the Trojan War, the reality is that war is hell. People and other living creatures suffer and die. Certain nations may boast of their military spending and campaigns, but they are actually making profit from the death of others.
But there is a greater reality – whether climate change (war against the environment) or politics (war against civic society) or world poverty (war on equality) or nature (war for survival).
Richard Dawkins summarises the reality of nature:
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease…”
The animal world is hell, and humans are part of that natural world – so why should the human world be any different?
The answer is obvious: because we can make it better. We have the capacity and therefore the moral responsibility. Our basic human intellect and ethics should make us not only humanist but also sentientist.
The war continues every day. What did you do during the war?
Whether star gazing or navel gazing, humans experience awe and wonder in their world. We see dragons in clouds, and Jesus’ face on a piece of toast; we hear cosmological choirs in a symphony orchestra, and we interpret design in the natural environment even though we evolved to fit inside its parameters. Our tendency towards Pareidolia makes us creatures who are hard wired to find comfort, security and meaning in patterns and interpretation. Sometimes those interpretations can be profoundly life changing.
“There are moments in your life that make you and [set] the course of who you’re going to be. Sometimes they’re little, subtle moments. Sometimes, they’re big moments you never saw coming. No one asks for their life to change, but it does. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.” – Unknown.
One of my earliest memories is from my very young childhood, when my family was out for a Sunday drive. Suddenly, we heard the sound of an ambulance siren, and my father (who was driving) pulled over to let the ambulance overtake and speed ahead – right through a red light intersection that lay ahead. I asked my parents why they were allowed to do that.
Mum and Dad explained that the ambulance had special permission under the law, because they were on their way to help save someone in an emergency. Over fifty years later, I recall that moment – I was dumbfounded and nearly burst into tears; deeply, profoundly touched that the law recognised the value of human life, and was prepared to allow ambulances to break ordinary laws if it meant helping to save someone. It was perhaps a definitive moment in my early life, when I understood that humans were capable of great nobility.
In subsequent years, I came to understand that many people value such transitional moments or flashes of insight, and they often seek vocabulary to clarify or express the import of those moments: spirituality, transcendence, the miraculous or the numinous. Whole religions have risen up in search of answers to explain such times of inner existential reflection.
But for me, this is one significant feature of the human creature – our ability to ponder and reflect, and find the extraordinary within the ordinary. We see it everywhere – from Harry Potter books that enrapt a generation with their implicit message of finding something magical in the everyday; to our ability to marvel at the night-time sky. For me, this is not divine revelation or fate; it is simply the ability of sentient humans to seek, find or create significance for themselves.
“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
A more recent transcendent moment took place after I had faced heart surgery and the possibility of my own mortality. Some relatives visited me in the hospital, and gave me a photo of a baby that had just been born into the family. I instantly fell in love with the child not only because he shared my DNA, but also because he represented something more fundamental: the potential and hopes for life itself. Amidst my lonely cogitations of possible mortality, here was a baby showing me that life goes on regardless of anyone’s individual circumstance. I was greatly comforted with the profundity that I was part of a species and an organic flow of life that would continue whether or not I was there to participate further. Where some people sought consolation in religion as something bigger than themselves, I was comforted to know that the human species – and life itself – offered its own version of collective immortality through biological survival.
Beyond humans, our biosphere is filled with other species that also share our biological imperative to survive. I wonder if, like humans, other sentient species also have their own versions of numinous experiences?
“What a piece of work is [humanity], How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty…” – Shakespeare..
Our search for ‘spirituality’ should be recognised as a pilgrimage in search of our secular selves, warts and all. Carl Sagan acknowledged that “We are a way for the universe to know itself” and such a revelation is both reassuring and terrifying in its aspiration and its possible outcomes. We do not need a stone age deity or a new age mystic to tell us that we are filled with potential; our individual ideals and visions are a Rorschach test of our inner personalities. Our self awareness compels us to seek enlightenment or significance in nature, music, arts, hobbies, or philosophies, but our answers – and the transcendent responses we elicit – come from within. I believe that the numinous is luminous: it lights the way ahead for us as we seek to improve ourselves and our world.
I don’t suppose there are too many 60 year-olds who can find documented evidence from 90% of their lifetime ago and discover that they were writing fan fiction. Helping my elderly mother clear out some drawers of old family memorabilia, I recently came across a booklet I had produced in 1966 (or thereabouts) which showed that my earliest surviving fan fiction was not Star Trek, Thunderbirds, UFO, McMillan and Wife or The Night Stalker. My earliest fic – holy jemoly! – was the Batman TV series.
Diversity starts early. In my case, having learnt to read before I even arrived at school, I recall reading Black Beauty from cover to cover, along with my mother’s assistance, at the age of four. When I began school, I was placed in a large class of children for whom reading was otherwise a largely alien concept. At recess and lunchtime, while the majority of my male classmates were learning to kick a football, my mixed-gender peer group busied itself playing elastics or role-playing ‘Lost in Space’, and generally not conforming to the stereotype of 1960s Aussie school kids. That peer group later grew up to mature into a collection of gay men, lesbians, cross dressers, and other diverse characters. They all loved science fiction from an early age.
As a teenager, while my male school friends were out playing footy (or other sport) every Saturday afternoon, I was curled up on my bed reading the latest Asimov or other science fiction paperback novel that I had purchased with that week’s pocket money. Such an intellectual investment has long-term implications: as an adult, I have more books in my house than any other item.
My passion for writing also began at an early age: the above photo features the front of a four-page booklet that I produced in the mid-1960s modeled on the Batman TV series – and in which a friend rather kindly suggested recently that I showed a better understanding of narrative structure at age six than some modern adult authors do today. Whatever the case, this humble venture spearheaded a lifetime of writing which began with fan fiction and evolved into more serious efforts – academic and otherwise – and which most recently includes this blog.
Aristotle spoke of how our basic personalities are formed at a young age. He foreshadowed the nature versus nurture debate regarding various aspects of our character: sexuality, addictions, mental health predispositions, etc. We accept that the answer to the nature versus nurture debate often appears to be that we are born this way and that our personality does not change. My own experiences of attending school or science fiction reunions – and finding my old classmates or Trek friends still pretty much the same people in middle age as they were when tender teenagers – is testimony to this fact.
And yet our early social conditioning – our nurture – is not immutable. My childhood upbringing included a strong religious component, from which I broke away in my twenties when intellectual and moral conflicts arose between religious dogma and real-life issues such as critical thinking, sexuality, world poverty, and the religious-based oppression of women, LGBT, and others. Secular utopian (and dystopian) science fiction provides much more relevant, grounded, thought-provoking and inspirational literature than does apocalyptic ancient Biblical mythology; real-life humanist activism helps to create a better world today than does deferring instead to an unproved religious afterlife.
At the time, my religious deconversion was like a cataclysmic nuclear explosion amongst toxic religious dictates that had accumulated in my life. The transition ended one life trajectory, and began another – one that was unexpected, unknown, and uncertain. Although painful at the time, in hindsight I now see 13 September 1987 as my day of liberation, encapsulated in a quote from science fiction TV series Space 1999:
“It’s better to live as your own man, than as a fool in someone else’s dream.”
(John Koenig, The Bringers of Wonder part 2, 1977).
Pain and trauma supply life experience that can lead to growth and personal development, and provide an opportunity to explore a vast cosmos of new ideas and fresh perspectives: To everything that might have been… To everything that was.
My life experience thereby suggests that there are aspects of free will which can be chosen and altered. I believe that we have a responsibility to choose betterment… every time.
Early exposure to science fiction and fan fiction instilled in me a sense of activist empowerment, and a strong optimism for the future despite what I see as humanity’s many flaws and weaknesses. That is my human journey, and I hope is it also your experience… and your daily choice within whatever aspects of free will you experience for yourself.
My speech at an Interfaith Dialogue in September 2017, alongside a Christian And Muslim Speaker at La Trobe University.
The 2017 poster of the Interfaith Event at La Trobe University.
I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation, past, present and emerging; and to the continued cultural and community practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Based up indigenous.gov.au and Reconciliation Australia
I begin with an Acknowledgement of Country because it is appropriate. Similarly, I am wearing a ‘Vote Yes’ T-shirt tonight not to confront people regarding the same-sex marriage postal vote, but because the T-Shirt and the AOC are pertinent to what I will be saying.
My name is Geoff and I am an atheist and humanist. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight at your Interfaith Dialogue, although I should start with some clarifications and definitions.
Unlike Islam, Christianity and other religions, atheism is not a faith position. It is the exact opposite – a lack of belief in a god or gods. Beyond that, there is no singular ‘atheist position’ on any issue or argument, which is probably why we generally do not have atheist churches or many social groups. Atheist views are as diverse as are the background cultures and societies of atheists around the world. Therefore, I am not here to give ‘the’ atheist perspective on happiness but simply one individual atheist perspective – my own.
Many atheists subscribe to humanism, an outlook that provides the foundation for much of our modern, secular world, and of our understandings of human rights, humanitarian charities, the humane treatment of animals, and a recognition of our common humanity.
In the words of Shakespeare: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.”
This is not some subverted form of religious worship inverted back upon the human ego, but an evidentiary recognition that humans have singular capabilities to solve the problems of the world – and a related responsibility to do so.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We all know the words and understand that these are three things to which humans presumable aspire. But what exactly is happiness? How might atheists and humanists view happiness?
In the words of one old song, happiness means different things to different people. We all understand and emotionally connect when we see the happiness on the face of a smiling, giggling baby; we all laugh when a friend shares a funny joke; we are all susceptible to the charms of advertisers who tell us that our lives will be happier if we purchase their product.
But happiness as an emotion is transitory and fleeting. It is unreliable and can be deceptive. I have been told by believers that their faith makes them happy or that, conversely, if they lost their faith, their lives would feel empty and unfulfilled. Either way, they are equating their religion with their happiness as some sort of supposed evidence of their faith. I have two problems with such a position. Firstly, as an atheist, my lack of belief gives me an equal sense of happiness and fulfillment – and I recall a Christian friend who admitted to me, a year after I lost my faith, that she could see that I had never been happier. So you with your beliefs and I with my non-belief may feel equally happy, but we cannot both be right.
Secondly, alcoholics and drug addicts find happiness in substance abuse. They actually feel happy even as they potentially destroy their lives or the lives of others. Their example shows me that the emotion of happiness is not a measure of whether something is necessarily good or bad, right or wrong, true or false.
But there is more to happiness than the emotional state. Happiness is also a sense of well being and fulfilment that comes about when our physical and psychological welfare needs are met. In his book ‘The Expanding Circle’, ethicist Peter Singer explores the evolution of our sense of welfare as both individuals and as a collective human society. Singer writes that reason leads to the principle that “one’s own interests are one among many sets of interests”, and that none of these other sets of interests are ordinarily more or less important than our own.
As we individually grow from childhood to adulthood, we learn that our welfare is interdependent with that of others around us. As children, we learn that the welfare of our siblings and parents is inextricably bound to our own. Beyond that, we learn similarly of our school friends, our neighbourhoods, our churches and other social circles, then ultimately of our nation and the world.
Such growth in understanding can also be seen in collective human societies as they evolve from small hunter gatherer clans, to larger city states, and beyond into widespread national and trans-national identities. Indeed, recent human understandings have expanded our welfare concerns to include those of animals and of the environment.
I view the holy books of the three Abrahamic religions as literary products of their pre-industrial and pre-enlightenment societies, conflating tribalism with particular religions, and concerning themselves with the preservation of those cultural identities. I also see that the world is evolving beyond such tribalism, and increasing numbers of people see religion as providing insufficient foundation for our identities as digital and global citizens. In response, and despite their insistence upon tradition, religions adapt and evolve in order to survive, as does all of human society.
This brings me back, full circle, to my beginning, with my Acknowledgement of Country, which recognises that everything we do can impact upon other people’s lives in ways that are positive, negative and neutral. My country also currently incarcerates refugees and asylum seekers in concentration camps under conditions that are cruel and inhumane. How can humanists respond to such injustice?
As a part answer, I offer my T-shirt, which concerns itself with the same-sex postal vote. I wear this ‘yes’ T-shirt with pride, fully aware that there may be others in this auditorium who disagree. But I ask for your indulgence in a quick thought experiment. If, instead of same-sex couples, the postal vote was asking us about another minority group. What if it asked whether Jews should enjoy equal rights in Australia? Or Muslims? Asian Australians? Catholics? Indigenous Australians? How would you vote then? I would hope that you might vote for equality and compassion, in recognition of our common humanity – as though your brother’s or sister’s human rights were under question, because indeed they are.
In all these cases, I would still vote the same way and still wear this T-shirt with equal pride, because I believe – as I hope you do – that we are all equal in worth and dignity, and should be entitled to equal protection under the law. Our entitlement to happiness as living, thinking beings, surely compels us to work towards the mutually beneficial welfare of all.
We are all here at university because we recognise that we do not and cannot know everything, but we wish to learn skills that will enable us to research wisely, to think critically, and to reach informed and reasoned, evidence-based conclusions as part of our individual journey towards becoming empowered global citizens. You may believe in an afterlife – I do not – but I hope that we share a similar desire to do our bit to help create a bit of heaven here on Earth, because our minds give us the capacity to do so and our conscience compels us to act.
Caring for the welfare of others, and working towards that end, helps to create fulfilled individuals and produces a society wherein an optimal amount of happiness might be created for all. My own quest for happiness inspires me to work for the happiness of others, as I hope your journey may similarly inspire you.
