The Free Seeker

E-Newsletter of the Unitarian Fellowship of Huntington

Jack Wilkinson, Editor

Issue 22,  June 9, 2010

Program for Sunday, June 13, 2010

Ed Necco speaking on "American Secularism"

            The voices of American Secularism resonate in our history:  Thomas Payne, Walt Whitman, Robert Ingersol; Felix Adler, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, the list goes on.  These are people that spoke up for common men and women otherwise without a voice and who did it without a sectarian platform.  However, it must also be recognized that these people were very cozy with the Unitarians and Universalists. 

            Of these secular leaders my paternal grandmother's special favorite was Robert Ingersol, to whom she used to listen at the Alhambra Hall in Syracuse, New York.  After one of his lectures she held out a collection of his essays for him to sign, which he did and then added the words, "Love was the first to dream of immortality," thereby reducing my grandmother to tears.  These are the words of a secularist, perhaps, but not those of an atheist, which Ingersol has been often called..  The same might be said of Walt Whitman.  A secularist is not necessarily an atheist.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that for a secularist God negotiates with individuals, not churches, and that He/She/It loves them all equally, which is also pretty close to Universalism.

            Ed Necco is a rich, clear and emphatic voice of our Fellowship.  He is an atheist, a humanist, a secularist, and a Unitarian Universalist.  He will remind us of our heritage and urge us to think boldly into the future.  This is a presentation not to be missed. 

Future Sunday Programs

June 20:  Jack Wilkinson portrays Robert Frost

June 27:  Jacqueline Muth on:  "The Gaza Freedom Flotilla:  the USS Liberty Revisited"

July   4:  Open Discussion

July 11:  The Ballet/Modern Dance that Nixon Saw in China

July 18:  Part Two of what Nixon Saw in China

July 25:  Discussion, "China Then and Now" with commentaries by a few local experts

Retrospective of Last Sunday's Open Discussion

            In the rush of relocation from living room to front porch I utterly forgot to take notes.  This new venue gave us the air of a Greek agora, the informal commercial atmosphere of which included a plea on the part of Jacqueline Muth for an apartment that would allow her to maintain her cat hospital.  It can be anywhere in the Tri-State area, and she would prefer 2 bedrooms to1.  She can be reached at (304) 522-32246. 

            Many people are back that we had not seen for a while.  We touched on a variety of topics:  the Israeli boarding of the flotilla from Turkey, the clean-up of the Gulf, the expo in China, and energy strategies.  Of all the issues, the one that boggles the mind most, as I see it, is the fact of a deep sea oil rupture that utterly defeats collective conjecture.  At home my son, John IV, expressed his frustration by saying he'd like to be Obama's idea man and just put forth solutions for his consideration.  Too bad our nation's experts couldn't have had this conversation earlier, but, alas!, that was before Necessity became a mother. 

Light from Jack's Lantern:  A Historical Perspective on Religion

            Next Sunday Ed Necco will be discussing an important development in the history of religion by highlighting its secular side..  To prepare for it let me suggest an historical perspective in broad terms:  religion as it was in the past, is in the present and will be in the future.  the time periods are roughly as follows:

                             Phase One:     Prior to 1250 BCE

                             Phase Two:    From 1250 BCE to the present and beyond

                             Phase Three:  From now into the future

            Religion during Phase One consists of a condition that might be called "spiritual fullness" or Ken Patton's favorite, "plenitude of Being."  That is a wonderful way of thinking of early humans.  They knew the universe not as mass or an aggregate of masses but rather as Personality or an aggregate of personalities.  That is because they were still in possession of their clairvoyant faculties.  However, our spiritual handlers had other ideas for us.  In short, they slowly weaned us off the Spirit, thereby preparing us for Phase Two, which can be characterized as a condition of spiritual emptiness.  Why did they do this? 

            Their motive was to make us autonomous.  To become so we had to grow into our individual egos and intellects.  We had to learn how to think..  Over time one of the effects of this was to lead some of us into the erroneous opinion that the religion of Phase One was mere superstition or childish imagining.  The reality was that converse with spiritual beings was so commonplace that not much was made of it at the time.  It was only when the spiritual world made its strategic withdrawal that religious longing developed.  Here are some of the fault lines between Phase One and Phase Two. 

            1250 BCE    * The Twilight of the gods.  Exit Osiris;  enter Yahweh

                                 * Exit Demeter as goddess of inner moral witness.  She is re-

                                    placed by law, such as the 10 commandments.

            1000 BCE:    * The distancing of Yahweh and King David's appeal for his return

                                    in the form of the Psalms.

                                  * At the same time in India Prince Arjuna, via the Bhagavad Gita,

                                     chronicles humanity's standing forth from Nature in emerging

                                     egohood.

            16th Century CE:  * The Ptolomaic view of the spiritual relationship of the

                                             planets is supplanted by the Copernican mechanical view. 

                                             Both views are correct, each in its own sphere.

            Phase Two of Religion, the phase of spiritual emptiness, gave us the following world faiths:  Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, each of which poured something into the emptiness that was a human substitute for indwelling divine insight.  Judaism poured in ecclesiastical law, Buddhism a code of rectitude, Christianity something called 'faith' and Islam the holy war.  All of these infusions were heavy on human willfulness and light on genuine spiritual insight.  Over the past few millennia these four faiths have been transformed into the social gospel and secular humanism, which is the social gospel without theological underpinnings.  Its most significant contribution is the abolition of slavery, an endeavor in which both Unitarians and Universalists were heavily invested.  Now, what about Phase Three?

            Phase Three will recoup the plenitude of Phase One while retaining the emptiness of Phase Two.  These two conditions will co-exist in various combinations.  In the course of this development the superstitions and fantasies of empirical science will be gradually overcome.  Presently, empirical science worships idols.  What is an idol?  An idol is a dead thing to which one erroneously imputes life.  Behind Nature stands the life of Spirit.  However, contemporary science misses the spirit and ends up worshipping Nature's corpse instead, turning Nature into a demonic entity.  For Science every day is Halloween.  We look forward to a science of the spirit.