The Heart of Humanism

You may have noticed that there have been a few occasions over the past week in which our new Humanist Chaplaincy (http://hcs.harvard.edu/humanist) has been down/unavailable. In fact, it is down as I write this and will be unavailable until sometime Monday morning, September 25. This isn’t our site’s fault (I promise) but rather is due to the fact that our server, Harvard Computer Services (HCS), keeps crashing. Unfortunately we had to go with HCS, a student run group, for the time-being because it is free and the Humanist Chaplaincy’s budget is still so small. We’re working on fundraising, but we need your help to avoid such problems in the future!

In the meantime, here is a statement from Matt Fasman, a student at Harvard HCS, written Sunday morning:

“Yes, it is down. You certainly have a right to be frustrated by the instability,
especially as it occurs over such long periods of time and with such frequency. We are planning to scrap that machine this week and install a new one which will be more reliable. As for getting this one back online, we only have M-F, 9-5 access to the machines, so that won’t be an option until tomorrow morning. I’m really sorry about this, and we are going to fix it as soon as we can, but that will not be for another 20 hours.”

Of course, the above was written on Sunday and as of Wednesday we now know that those 20 hours were not at all sufficient. The site has been down most of the week! Here are some more comments from HCS about this latest “development:”

Greg,

Believe me when i tell you that we deserver the anger. I’m as upset
about this as any ones is. The problem is that our hardware is outdated
and being overused. We’re moving to new, much more powerful hardware
and the end of the week. Until then, access to hcs websites will be
intermittent as the machine is unstable.

I’m very sorry for the trouble and we’re working as qucikly as possible
to remedy the problem,

Grant Dasher
HCS Systems

We can’t wait to serve you, however, and aren’t willing to risk this happening again. So help us with your vote: do you prefer www.harvardhumanist.org or www.humanistchaplaincy.org as our new URL? Or something else? Leave a comment with your opinion!

And for the time being, don’t forget you can still access all of our upcoming events here, and if you’re looking for more information about Humanism right away, check back to my June 2006 post on “summer reading.”

Welcome back, everyone, and a hearty greetings to those either new to Harvard, new to my blog, or both. I hope this site will provide us with an excellent opportunity to learn from each other about Humanism over the coming year.

For my first post of the new school year, I wanted to provide something a little bit “extra,” and so I’m very pleased to present an exclusive (and perhaps temporary?) video link.

Did you know that Humanists, agnostics, atheists, and the non-religious have a professional Congressional lobbying office, called the Secular Coalition?

This, along with the other connected teams of Humanist lawyers being assembled around the US today, could end up being significant for some of you readers out there. For example, just last week I met with a Harvard student who is interested in becoming a Humanist activist and getting involved in our growing Graduate Humanist Community. She was enthusiastic, but worried because she knows she is going to spend at least a few years after school working in a very large, powerful corporation, where there might be some pressure to conform to traditional religious standards– ie, to be “in the closet” as a Humanist. Well, I was happy to tell her, that would be discrimination on the basis of religion, (or lack thereof) and with our new legal experts, there is no way any company would ever want to touch the issue.

Anyway, enough from me. Click the screen below to watch Lori Lipman Brown, the new Secular/Humanist/Atheist Lobbyist on Capitol Hill, in two Fox News interviews from last year.

Dear Incoming Freshmen:

On behalf of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard, the Harvard Secular Society, and the broader, century-old Humanist community surrounding our university, welcome to Harvard.

If you are reading this, you’ve learned of our website at today’s “Freshmen Fair,” as we have not yet officially launched our site or this blog nationwide– something we will be doing in the coming weeks, so please continue to follow but don’t forward the links to your friends quite yet.

If you are interested in Humanism, freethought, agnosticism, or atheism: you’ve picked the right university. You are just beginning to discover a community that is about to have a wonderful year, and that can provide you with a wonderful ‘home  away from home’ for the next four years.

Given that we haven’t officially launched yet, I don’t want to say much more right now. But let me emphasize that I truly hope to get to know you individually over the course of the coming year and years. Please drop by my office in Memorial Church or email me to set up a meeting, at your earliest convienience. I will be delighted to hear your questions, concerns, or interests, or just listen to your story and share with you a little about the Chaplaincy’s.

Sincerely,

Greg M. Epstein
Humanist Chaplain of Harvard University

Okay guys, here is a 2nd designer, Diane Connell of southern CA, USA. We are actually going to limit you to two choices because it is just slightly too exhausting for me to go chasing down every graphic designer on the planet that wants to doctor your photo because he/she believes deeply in Humanism.

So here is the question: Diane is more experienced than Elizabeth, whose stuff is below. But she will charge us 2x more. We could possibly afford her, but only if you think her design is much stronger. One thing in Diane’s favor is that later in the year, we will be needing much more professional flyers than what we need right now, and it seems that Diane has much more experience with this. But again, do we need her?

Keep in mind, again, that both designers are just supplying drafts. Professional designers generally take (& require) a lot of detailed feedback in order to do their best work. As far as Sean Bala’s interesting suggestion of including descriptions of the celebrities, we could direct people to HSS’s page on the (soon to debut) chaplaincy site, which could list them somewhere along with a link to celebatheists.com, instead of, as currently, just directing them to celebatheists. Or not.

Leave your comments, please!

So, the Chaplaincy now has 3-4 wonderful graphic designers competing to become our regular graphic designer for the year. This happened because I posted a description of us on elance.com and it turns out there are designers all over the world who are Humanists and would love this job because it would make their careers feel more meaningful. So, now we have to decide what we want, whose style we like. The designs below are all by the first of the designers, Elizabeth Tipping, a Humanist & atheist from the UK. Keep in mind she would charge around half of what a couple of the next designers you will see charge, and we do want to minimize spending if possible. I will hopefully post designs by other designers later in new entries.

If you are a Harvard student and want to give feedback on this in the next day or two, please send it to Amanda. I will be extremely busy and will barely have time to post the stuff for you to see. Amanda, after getting your feedback, will give me final feedback on which designer to go with.

Bear in mind: I know obviously the whole images may not be appearing here. That is just because I don’t have time to play on wordpress today & get it right. You guys are clever, I trust you’ll get the idea enough to choose wisely.

Finally, remember that these are all DRAFTS and we can ask for some changes over the weekend. We’re trying to choose the designer with the style we like.

Enjoy!