THE INTERNATIONAL SECULAR HUMANIST MAGAZINE That Information Not Available OUI pOUCE KEEP GHT i MORE ON Soldhagen and German Guilt > SPRING 1997, VOL. 17, NO. 2 ISSN 0272-0701 Five Xr "6rX--/- Editor: Paul Kurtz Executive Editor: Timothy J. Madigan Contents Managing Editor: Andrea Szalanski Senior Editors: Vern Bullough, Thomas W. Flynn, James Haught, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Gerald Larue Contributing Editors: 3 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Robert S. Alley, Joe E. Barnhart, David Berman, H. James Birx, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Edwards, 4 SEEING THINGS Albert Ellis, Roy P. Fairfield, Charles W. Faulkner, Antony Flew, Levi Fragell, Martin Gardner, Adolf 4 Tampa Bay's `Virgin Mary Apparition' Gary P Posner Grünbaum, Marvin Kohl, Jean Kotkin, Thelma Lavine, Tibor Machan, Ronald A. Lindsay, Michael 5 Those Tearful Icons Joe Nickell Martin, Delos B. McKown, Lee Nisbet, John Novak, Skipp Porteous, Howard Radest, Robert Rimmer, Michael Rockier, Svetozar Stojanoviu, Thomas Szasz, 8 The Honest Agnostic: V. M. Tarkunde, Richard Taylor, Rob Tielman Battling Demons of the Mind James A. Haught Associate Editors: Molleen Matsumura, Lois Porter Editorial Associates: 10 NOTES FROM THE EDITOR Doris Doyle, Thomas P. Franczyk, Roger Greeley, James Martin-Diaz, Steven L. Mitchell, Warren 10 Surviving Bypass and Enjoying the Exuberant Life: Allen Smith A Personal Account Paul Kurtz Cartoonist: Don Addis Council for Secular Humanism: Chairman: Paul Kurtz 14 THE FREEDOM TO INQUIRE Board of Directors: Vern Bullough, David Henehan, Joseph Levee, Kenneth Marsalek, Jean Millholland, 14 Introduction George D. Smith Lee Nisbet, Robert Worsfold 16 Atheism and Inquiry David Berman Chief Operating Officer: Timothy J. Madigan Executive Director: Matt Cherry 21 Inquiry: A Core Concept of John Dewey's Philosophy ... Larry Hickman Chief Development Officer: James Kimberly 22 Freely Ye Have Inquired? Skipp Porteous Associate Dir. of Development: Anthony Battaglia Public Relations Director: Norm R. 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Letters to the Editor This is misleading: the Germans, not the world, were pro-Hitler and put up with him; the Germans, not the world, could have locked him up. Power does not exist Is Humanism a Religion? tions by directly stimulating the brain, I in a vacuum: it is people who put someone believe the science behind the machine to into the position of power, even absolute It seems obvious to me that humanism is be less than credible. First, Cotton (a power, whether by electing Hitler, idoliz- not a religion. The trickier problem is future subject) talks at length with ing Stalin, or surrendering an empire to the whether humanism has any sort of faith Persinger about the effects of the experi- fanatical bishops of an aggressive church dimension ("Defining Humanism," FI, ment. Then just before the experiment he in the fourth century of the Common Era. Fall 1996). Obviously, the answer is asked a series of questions that in them- Never forget that Mein Kampf was depends on what one means by faith. In a selves suggest possible outcomes of the published in 1925, long before the failed study of New Zealand rationalists and experiment. Finally, he is put in a room painter became Führer, and that it became humanists for a Ph.D. thesis, I have found very much like a deprivation chamber. No a bestseller in a Germany that had the that they have overwhelmingly shared the mention is made of a control group, nor is largest reading public of any country in notion that involves some acceptance of it suggested that Persinger's group evalu- the world. As Konrad Heiden, who wrote otherwise unverifiable revelations about ated the results without knowing whether the introduction to the American edition God or gods, and as such, have not the subjects were in the control group or of Hitler's book, put it, "That such a man wanted to use the term. This is intriguing the experimental group (i.e, double blind). could go so far toward realizing his ambi- in the light of a recent Ph.D. thesis in this It is my belief that the results of the exper- tions, and—above all—could find mil- country that contrived to portray human- iments would be the same even without lions of willing tools and helpers; that is a ism as a "path of faith." This work was the machine being turned on. phenomenon the world will ponder for heavily indebted to the theories of Wilfred Of course, it is valid to discuss the centuries to come." Cantwell Smith, who sees faith as a basic ethics of how such a machine should be human response of commitment to living. used if it could truly control the brain, but César Tort Ironically, it used Paul Kurtz's conception in this case I believe more scrutiny should Houston, Tex. of eupraxophy as evidence of faith com- be applied to the experiments themselves. mitment, ignoring Kurtz's strongly worded argument to the contrary. Ralph Davis I must take exception to Hans Askenasy's So, certainly one could find definitions Tampa, Fla. review. Goldhagen clearly sets forth his of faith that would include humanism, but thesis that ordinary Germans not only par- why bother, when other definitions have ticipated in the Holocaust but did so will- the advantage of corresponding with the Hitler's Germany ingly and, in many cases, enthusiastically. experience of humanists on the ground? And he documents this thesis with con- Humanism is not a faith because it Hans Askenasy's review of Hitler's vincing evidence. What Goldhagen pro- demands a sensible skepticism and open- Willing Executioners (FI, Winter 1996/97) vides is a case for the proximate cause of ness in the face of unseen things, not con- is not the first critical review of Daniel the Holocaust. What Askenasy seems to fidence in their existence because some- Goldhagen's controversial book I have be seeking is an ultimate (root) cause. one else has told us of them. It gets down read. A way to address this controversy is Once that distinction is made, it can be to the currently unfashionable fact that to compare the Nazi totalitarian society seen that the root cause is not the fact that faith and reason are fundamentally differ- with other equally murderous societies in non-Jews were also killed. It is not the ent operations. the twentieth-century world. Russians fact that Hitler was paranoid. And it is not weren't fully aware of what had been the fact that other European countries Bill Cooke, President going on in the Gulag (just as the average also killed Jews. But this last fact gives us New Zealand Rationalist German wasn't fully aware of Ausch- a clue. Association witz), much less did they endorse it. In his 1950 book Europe and the Jews, Auckland, New Zealand However, ordinary folk can indeed Malcolm Hay finds, traces, and carefully become ideologically mad. For humanists documents the root cause of the the major lesson of Western history should Holocaust. It is Christian anti-Semitism, The God Machine be, I believe, the decline of the Roman plain and simple. Empire.