According to last year’s Pew Research poll on the country’s religious landscape, 71 percent of those surveyed expressed absolute certainty in the existence of a God. An additional 17 percent weren’t without doubts, but counted themselves as believers nonetheless.
If you combine the remaining responses – from strong skepticism to outright rejection – you come to about 10 percent or less of the country that might entertain joining a group like USM’s own SMASH, the Southern Maine Association of Secular Humanists.
“There’s a big stigma attached to being a nonbeliever,” says Andrew Lovely, the student group’s founder and chair.
“Those of us who don’t follow a religion and don’t believe in a god, we’re often thought of as immoral people, selfish people, and I don’t think that’s the case at all.”
For Lovely and friends, it’s a lack of faith in the Bible, the Tanakh, or the Qur’an that brings them together every Monday in room 327 of Luther Bonney Hall. And he doesn’t mind comparisons between the gatherings, where members largely view God as an enticing myth, to those more well-known weekly meetings that take place on Sunday mornings.
“I don’t hate that,” he says. “I think religion has been so successful because of church providing a sense of community and hope.”
The concepts behind secular humanism can be traced to deism – the belief that God exists through evidence of reason and nature, not through a supernatural revelation – which made its first splash in American popular culture as early as 1795, with the publication of Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason.” The term turned into its current meaning sometime in the late 1950s.
But if the resistance to religious messages is a common thread between SMASH regulars – many of whom were raised in Christian families – they insist that it’s the ‘humanist’ part of the equation that inspires their work.
“We agree with having compassion for all human beings regardless of race, creed or gender,” says Lovely. “But logic and science are the best tools to understand the world we live in.”
As a result, the group distances itself from the “new atheist” movement that has descended on the media over the past several years, with best-selling books like Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion,” eye-grabbing ads on the sides of buses, and films like Bill Maher’s “Religulous” (though SMASH organized a trip to catch that docu-comedy over at the Nickelodeon last fall.)
They’re not anti-faith, members assert, just non-religious. Their sessions tend to emphasize the intricacies of Darwin’s theory of evolution, rather than trying to debunk Moses’ account of the creation. They’d like to promote more atheist and agnostic involvement at local soup kitchens. Their interfaith dialogues aren’t about arguing for or against a supreme being, just finding common ground.
“As a humanist group, we do not discriminate against anyone,” writes founding member Christine Bullard, also secretary and treasurer. “Which means just about anyone is more than welcome at a group meeting.”
Where exactly “just about” stops short may have been betrayed on a recent flier, currently plastered around campus. In addition to advertising their meetings, it also flatly states that “faith and intolerance need not apply.”*
Undergrad Gregor Clary is a member, but he also hosts his own lecture and discussion forum on Thursday nights in room 43 of Payson Smith Hall, where he tends to explore and advocate for a variety of alternative, metaphysical ideas.
“We’re embracing concepts of infinity here,” Clary says of his extra-curricular classroom. “Religion…is a control mechanism. It instills fear.”
Yet even Clary found time to praise Jesus – if not in a revivalist sense – in his first lecture to nearly a dozen like-minded students. He also had no qualms objecting to the confrontational tone of SMASH’s ad.
“I thought it might be controversial,” admits Lovely, noting that the group has been fired up of late over the debate surrounding gay marriage, which California voters opted to ban in last November’s election.
“But faith is believing in things without evidence,” he adds. “And that does not conform with secular humanist ideals.”
So what is it that brings the group together, rather than drawing them to longer-standing organizations devoted to science or philosophy?
For Lovely, it all comes back to the stigma, which he blames for keeping him silent about being his deeply-held non-belief until he came to USM.
“Being part of a minority can give people perspective on what it’s like to have beliefs that most people don’t like, and that leads them to be more tolerant,” he says.
Ultimately, the same guiding principles apply to atheism as to formal religions, says Lovely.
“It’s quite simply the golden rule. I think it’s intuitive.”
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* – Article originally, incorrectly quoted the SMASH flier as stating “the faithful and intolerant need not apply”; the actual line was “faith and intolerance need not apply” – targeting the sin, not the sinners.