New belongings

I’m long since retired, and as of last year don’t anymore hold any executive positions in any local organizations, which were basically environmental. So, still wanting to help build a better world, I have recently joined three national organizations.

The National Center for Science Education, NCSE, is based in San Francisco but I was fortunate to meet some of their staff at a meeting locally a few months ago. Their focus is to provide information and advice about keeping the teaching of evolution and climate change in our science classrooms. The NCSE has been behind some of the high-profile court cases – mostly successful – where some schoolboards have tried to introduce religiously-based alternatives to evolution in public schools. Perhaps the most famous case was in Dover, PA in 2005 when the judge, a Republican, basically caught the school-board representatives in a lie when they tried to claim that they were simply trying to promote looking at the possibility of ‘intelligent design’ when it was shown that they had inserted this phrase in their document where it had previously said ‘creationism’ which is a religious term and therefore against the US First Amendment forbidding the promotion of religion in public education. Nevertheless, a recent survey showed that 23% of biology teachers in public schools in America refuse to teach evolution – the very basis for understanding the wonderfulness of all the living creatures in this world of ours, as well as how our own bodies work. For more on NCSE’s work see their website at www.ncse.org

The Union of Concerned Scientists, UCS, is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Traditionally it has worked for greater nuclear safety, but now is in the forefront of tackling the disturbing number of broadcasters such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and our amazing Republican Presidential candidates and the Republican controlled Congress, in their climate change denial.

We’ve known since the 19^th century that CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat. You don’t need a high school diploma to know that if you burn coal, oil, natural gas or gasoline – all of which we’re doing on a vast scale – it’s going to raise the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and lead to global warming. Our planet is the blue planet because it’s mostly water – heat water and it expands. A new report released this week predicts sea level rises of as much as ten feet by the end of the century. I won’t be around but my grandchildren will be. But Miami and both coasts of Florida won’t be, New York and parts of Boston will be inundated, and several entire Pacific island nations will disappear. A move away from fossil fuels to other forms of energy is worth fighting for, urgently. www.uscusa.org

The third organization that I’ve joined is the American Humanist Association. None of these three organizations is loved in certain obvious quarters in America; but the AHA is perhaps the most misunderstood. Here’s AHA’s own definition of itself in it’s latest newsletter: “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”  In the same article written by AHA’s President and Vice-President, they go on to say: “Atheism is what we don’t believe; humanism is what we do believe.” They conclude: “It’s up to us humanists and our allies to make sure that we create a desirable, fair, and just world to live in.”  www.americanhumanist.org 

Those of you who’ve known me for a while know that for many years I worked for the inter-religious organization Moral Re-Armament (MRA), now known as Initiatives of Change. www.us.iofc.org  During the years that I worked with MRA I saw it move from a basically Christian organization to an inter-religious one, and in that way be able to play an important role in facilitating dialogue between the different faith groups in the world - something very much needed today with threats from extremist groups from more than one religion.

Being true to what I honestly believe to be true about us humans and the universe we live in, I hope to use the rest of my life working with these three organizations that I’ve described to help try and leave this world in a bit better shape than it’s in at present.