Joseph Ben-David & The Sticker Dude

This past Sunday we were privileged to have two guests at our monthly program, Joseph Ben-David as our speaker and musical entertainment with The Sticker Dude.

Rev. Ben-David is currently the Senior Minister of the Naturalistic Church of Humanism, and has been a lifelong activist in humanitarian and Unitarian causes. His topic was "Revolution in Humanism: Putting Humanism on the Map."

Joe, as he encouraged us to call him, said we need to act as radical reformers but function within a set of values in order to improve a situation. I view this as a constructive rather than a destructive form of radicalism.

His "nutshell" definition of humanism is an ultimate concern for the human condition in the universal context, including the self, the environment and the cosmos. As he pointed out, a person who has helped humanity is a "humanist" by his definition even if this person is a theist.

Rev. Ben-David defined three types of humanism:

1. Atheism: a radical attack on irrationality, superstition and the political power of traditional religions.

2. Agnosticism acknowledges that there is a lot we don't understand. It encompasses a belief in the scientific method.

3. Theism: how is this possible for humanists, he asked? He sees it as possible if one takes a naturalistic approach to the concept of God. Naturalism includes both the Darwinian "law of the jungle" environment but it also includes a socially positive process wherein animals protect each other and perform positive and creative behavior. (Remember the generous vampire bats I mentioned in my talk on "Rambam's Ladder," who shared their unique type of food with other bats when asked?) Humans have both sides of this naturalism within them.

In terms of the creative process, humans are capable of transcending into a higher environment where values are actualized. Humans have a spiritual capacity to affect society in positive, creative ways.

Humans operate in 3 basic modes: the mode of ideas and rational thinking is the one that has until recently been most cherished by humanists, who often dwell in the realm of thinking. But, we also operate in the mode of feelings, which humanists have often ignored. Third, we operate in the mode of politics.

Reason is basic: we must have rationality and ideas in order not to dwell in chaos. But we must also have a place for feelings and psychology, Rev. Ben-David pointed out. While rationality leads us to science, feelings lead us into the arts, which allow us to understand concepts not expressible in any other way. Third, we must also incorporate politics in the sense that we must actualize.

It is in that actualization that the Humanist Revolution must begin. Here Rev. Ben-David gave us a brief history of the Humanist movement and discussed the introduction of humanist psychology into the movement. He pointed out that we need to encompass the three-dimensional nature of human existence: ideas, feelings and politics, in order to put Humanism on the map and make it attractive to large numbers of people.

In a nutshell, Rev. Ben-David's idea is that we need a humanistic, ethical, naturalistic, unitarian universalist idea of God. We need to find and mobilize people who affirm the God concept in its realistic form in order to engage people to whom that word does mean something. He pointed out that approximately 10-15% of the US population identifies as atheist, but that we need to reach the rest as well.

Accordingly, Rev. Ben-David shared that he has written a highly researched essay, meant to be distributed to academicians, on this humanist concept of "God." At the end of his talk he took email addresses and will send copies of his essay to those who are interested.

I was impressed with the depth of his thinking and the vision of a humanism that will appeal to people who believe in a God but perhaps are not affiliated with a formal religion. Attracting more people to the Humanist movement, and in our particular case, to our small but dynamic Brooklyn Humanist Community, would be a great achievement.

The talk and some questions and answers were followed by songs and sing-alongs with The Sticker Dude. His final song was his "theme song" for the Brooklyn Humanist Community, and spoke of the long, hard time we have been through but that we won't give it up and we have the love of our friends to help us along. Joel spoke some touching words about his feeling of connection to our group, even if he isn't able to attend often. It was so good to know we occupy a place in his heart, as he does in ours.

Our thanks to Joseph Ben-David, his wife Alyson Ben-David who drove him to the meeting and filmed his talk, and to our dear friend Joel, the Sticker Dude. We hope they will all choose to visit us more often.