The Heart of Humanism

You may have discovered this blog because of the recent Associated Press story that has run in the New York Times, Washington Post, and quite a few other papers, featuring my work as the Humanist Chaplain of Harvard. If so, a warm welcome!

I haven’t been maintaining my blog much because of all the hard work we are doing right now putting together the conference featured in the article, so please be sure to visit the conference website, which will also provide some insight as to how I feel about the story and whether it accurately reflected some of my opinions: http://thenewhumanism.org.

Thanks again for visiting, please register and attend the conference if you can, or please consider making a donation in support of our hard work, or just leave a comment!

Some of Richard Dawkins’ colleagues have let me know that they feel he’d enjoy hearing surprise happy birthday wishes from the Harvard Humanist community early next week.

Some of you know I have been ‘taking on’ Richard lately in the media, critiquing the idea that we Humanists, atheists, agnostics, and non-religious are best represented by the attacking, anti-religious tone of The God Delusion.
I feel we can afford to be more generous, given the diverse, inclusive, and inspiring community we are.

But one of the many things I do appreciate about Richard is that he does genuinely listen to opposing views, and genuinely wants to represent us well, even if I don’t always agree with every word he says in doing so. And clearly he’s a brilliant man who has contributed much to science and human thought in recent years. I am proud to know him, even a little bit, and whatever my disagreements, I sure am glad we have him on ‘our’ side!

So, if you want to wish him a happy birthday with me, please post your birthday wishes here as a comment to this post, by the end of Saturday March 24.

And don’t post anything about this on any of the Dawkins Foundation’s websites or forums– we’re trying to keep it a surprise.