Dietrich Unitarianism and Humanism

Wow.  I'm under extreme time pressure from work, pressure even to not go to Chicago, so to some extent I have been feeling like my work in this class was for naught.  Compounding this, I'm almost entirely apathetic toward history, but Unitarian Universalist history especially due to the rapid changes since the consolidation.  We claim so many people as ancestors who I think would not be pleased by our theology, policies and practices, that the name-only ancestry sometimes wears on me.

But all of that lethargy for history went out the window with this reading.  First, I have had a self-declared blind spot for non-theists.  I didn't get it.  I've talked to them, asked them, but their answers are like they're being delivered in another language.  I feel like the dog on the Simpsons - especially when I talk to the real no-G/god atheists.  I can handle the probably-not-G/god conversations OK, but the no-G/god ones really spin my head around.

And then here comes this guy.  And I've had this book on my shelf for years (an anomaly as I don't like collecting or keeping things - I get rid of almost everything) and wanted to get around to reading it.  This particular passage was spectacular and if its the only thing that sticks due to the whole work pressure, thing, it was worth all the work and effort.

So, basically, what he's saying is that the difference between theism and humanism is the focus.  Basically, theism is putting first our study/knowledge of God and our duty to him.  Humanism is putting first our study knowledge of man and our duty toward him.   Ok, so that's not what I believe, I'm more both-and.  So, using his phrasing, for me, religion is putting first the study of God's relationship with man and man with each other so that we can know our duty to ourselves.  Love God and love each other.  Different order on the front end, but similar results.

For a while, he rambles on in things that don't seem to matter, or at least they don't matter to me.  Call it "old school" attention to cause and effect, expansiveness of science, act.  I don't think these make his point, I would have left them out.

Then he gets to the (his?) four tenants of humanism:

1.  That man is an end unto himself, not a means to something else (God?) 

2.  Human life can be improved.  By us.

3.  The unity of man is a necessity to get #2 done.

4.  You must believe that man can do it.

I wander in and out with him on some of the details.  He seems to be wanting to say "man instead of God", or that "if God does exist, who cares".  I'm not going to get there, I don't think.  I prefer man with God, or Man and God in tandem or cooperation, but he ends on a high note.  He says that (paraphrasing) that religion will die if it doesn't get more of these humanistic qualities.  On that I will agree, but I would just caution that his interpretation and living of other faiths might be jaded.  Many of the most top-down, imperial churches in the world are most concerned with humanity.  I think you can be a humanist AND a theist.  We'd need a new word, but you could.

I wish they'd dated it.