Day 2 Humanist Community Panel-Sam Ilangovan-Moderator
Day 2 Saroja Ilangovan
Day 2 Toni Van Pelt
Day 2 Debra Smietanski
Day 2 Carol Ann Johnson
Day 2 Legal Issues
Day 2 Janis Landis
Day 2 Sarah Morehead
Day 2 Massimo Pigliucci
Day 2 Closing Q&A
Day 1
Humanist organizations, sites, writings are the most available indicators ofthe wide range of persons who identify as “humanist.” Those are also thebest correctives for humanists’ many hostile critics. Some of us are“religious,” some “secular.” But our values are typically“secular/modernist,” stemming from the Enlightenment, emergent fromreasoning, enlarged by the sciences, enhanced by the arts, fostered by theemergence of democratic societies.In contrast, the values of traditional religions are conservative, resistant toprogress from cultural status quos. For humanists, there is but this world;values are human-made -- and tested by consequences: will they promotehuman well-being.
The “right-to-die movement,” is rooted in ideas of classical Greece andgained momentum from the rights-based culture of the sixties. It hassince become a more prominent movement due to a expansion of life-prolonging technologies that alter the dying process as well as evolvingpatterns of disease burden and mortality included (but not limited to) theHIV/AIDS pandemic, whose many faces have forced us to re-imagineinevitable death and suffering.Recently, Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman from California withterminal brain cancer, ended her life with physician prescribedmedications. Currently, only five states in the United States authorizedeath with dignity, including Oregon, where Maynard and her familymoved. However, her decision has prompted both support and criticismof aid-in-dying. The Vatican official Ignacio Carrasco de Paulacondemns assisted suicide and calls Brittany Maynard’s act‘reprehensible,’ although Brittany was not a Catholic.
There are two major secular arguments against despair suicide: 1) whatyou mean to the community, and 2) what you owe to your future self.Historically people have been aware that suicides can lead to moresuicides; in a school, a town, a profession and other groups. Sociologystatistics now bear out these observations. Because a suicide can do fatalharm to others, it is not a morally neutral act. That means that just bypersisting we are making a life-saving contribution to our community.It can be a great relief to realize that as much as you might be a burden,your suicide would be an exponentially worse burden, so you are nolonger responsible for assessing your worth. As to your future self, youdo not know what you will have or what you will be wise to in ten years.You owe your future self a little respect - at least don't kill yourself. Dr.Hecht will describe some of the philosophical antecedents to these ideasthroughout history.
For myriad reasons, many Americans hold beliefs and ideas that precludethem from donating their bodies to research after death. This talkexamines some of these reasons, and further discusses how these concernscan be addressed, and even dismissed. The case hasn’t yet been madewell enough, but as we witness increasing rates of organ donation, makingthe choice an easy one, telling the story of how others will benefit couldturn the tide such that there may be more families and individuals makingthe choice for body donation.
Rosa Parks’ arrest for civil disobedience in December 1955 inspired themodern civil rights movement for equality, which eventually led to the1960s civil and voting rights legislation victories. The modern gay pridemovement for equality was given impetus at Stonewall in 1969, when theLGBT community began relentlessly protesting their second-class status.The secular community of humanists, atheists, agnostics and freethinkers,however, still seems to be in denial about the nationwide religiousdiscrimination we face when we enter a hospital, hospice, rehabilitationcenter, assisted living facility or nursing home. We will examine religiousdiscrimination at medical facilities in New York, Florida and California,and discuss the changes needed in order for the secular community toreceive the same recognition and support as is provided to the religiouscommunity.
Psychological difficulties in the context of cancer warrant a referral to apsychiatrist if those difficulties have become a source of functionalimpairment, such as disabling anxiety or depression leading to socialwithdrawal. Cancer patients with more average, expectable emotional andexistential struggles can be served by other kinds of professionals. Amongthose other professionals are hospital chaplains, who often serve as avalued source of support for religiously oriented patients.Secular patients generally do not avail themselves of chaplaincy services,and chaplains tend to avoid engaging non-believers. This need not be so.Many chaplains are skilled at providing general emotional support. Theyare also capable of engaging in existential counselling without invoking“God-talk”. Dr. Lewis is working with hospital chaplains in Toronto andat the national level in Canada to help them to better understand and servenon-believing patients.
Felix Adler, founder of Ethical Culture, wrote, “The dead are not dead ifwe have loved them truly. In our own lives we can give them a kind ofimmortality. Let us arise and take up the work they have left unfinished.”I use this quotation whenever I officiate at a non-theistic memorial andinvite family and friends to recall something about the person who hasdied that they can imagine incorporating into their own lives, some way inwhich they can take up the work that loved one has left unfinished.It addresses an experience of both mourning and celebrating our finitelives. Awareness of our mortality and accepting that there is no life afterdeath frees us to be more fully ourselves: appreciating life with all its joysand sorrow, recognizing that we are part of the natural world, realizingour potential and responsibilities as human beings, and choosing toengage in ethical relationships.
Preoccupation with death and the process of dying is probably as old asthe appearance of self-consciousness in human beings. Once wedeveloped the ability to reflect on who we are and what we do, werealized that “we” were one day going to cease to exist. Arguably, theresulting existential anxiety has been a major force behind thedevelopment and success of worldwide religions, with their frequentpromise of an afterlife.But there have always been alternative, more secular, ways of dealingwith death, developed since the time of the Graeco- Roman philosophersof antiquity. While Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno (the founder ofStoicism) were not atheists, their philosophies had, and still have, much tooffer in terms of non-religious approaches to dying. In this paper I explorehow the major schools of Graeco-Roman philosophy took on the laststage of human life, and how a modern, scientifically informed secularperson can profit from an update to that ancient wisdom.
Questio
Opening PanelQuestion and Answer Session
Humanist Community PanelQuestion & Answer Session
Perspectives on Death and Dying“Dying Without Deity”April 10 - 11, 2015 Symposium Videos
The Broad Range of Humanismsby Robert Tapp, ISHV Board Member
Do people have the "right to die"?by Ana Lita
"Stay" and the Secular Argument Against Suicideby Jennifer Michael Hecht
Body Not Soul: Encouraging Organ and Body DonationAfter Deathby Jamila Bey
The Paul Kurtz Legacyby Robert Tapp
The Human Prospect: A Neohumanist Perspective”
Secular Patients Graciously Accept Second Class Statusby Joseph Beck
Attorneys will discuss the drafting of various documents to ensure thatreligion will not be thrust upon an unwilling non-religious person. Theseadvance directives include wills, trusts, health care surrogacy, powers ofattorney, living wills, special needs trusts and other documents describingthe manner in which one wishes to have one's serious or final illnessconducted.
Keeping Clergy Away: Preventing Unwanted ReligiousIntrusion Through Advance Directives.by Carol Anne Johnson
Attorneys will discuss the drafting of various documents to ensure thatreligion will not be thrust upon an unwilling non-religious person. Theseadvance directives include wills, trusts, health care surrogacy, powers ofattorney, living wills, special needs trusts and other documents describingthe manner in which one wishes to have one's serious or final illnessconducted.
Legal Issues Around Death and Dying PanelQuestion & Answer Session
Why does the concept of suicide cause such outrage?by Janis Landis
Dying with Dignity: Lessons from Stoicism & Co.by Massimo Pigliucci
A Different Kind of Immortalityby Anne Klaeysen
Cancer as Existential Crisis:Coping styles of believers and nonbelieversby Ralph Lewis
by Charles Murn, Editor
The executive director shares the story of this international non-profitorganization that helps people who have left or are in the process ofleaving religion to deal with any impacts of leaving their faith bycreating support groups, providing a telephone hotline for “people intheir most urgent time of need”, as well as offering a range of onlinetools and practical resources
Recovering from Religionby Sarah Morehead
Closing PanelQuestion & Answer Session
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, a great man, aHumanist and a socialrevolutionist who fought for women’s rights and eradication of caste inTamilnadu , India, said, in the 1930s, “Scientific advances will allow manto easily live to 100 years or more. Scientists will be working on easierways to die.” There is a multitude of research, scientific and otherwise,being conducted today on longevity.
Moderator ~ Saroja Ilangovan
Legal Issues Around Death and Dying PanelModerator Marcia Cohen, ISHV Pro Bono Attorney
Closing SessionModerator Stuart Jordan, ISHV Board Member
ISHV Programs and Progressby Toni Van Pelt
The President of ISHV shares the founding story, history and mission ofISHV. As the Public Policy Director she discusses executive orders by thePresident and the introduction and passage of laws by the Congress thatfavor religion, threatening secular democracy.
Humanist Community Panel ModeratorSomasundaram Ilangovan, ISHV Board Member
The Human Prospect is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, scholarly andprofessional journal founded by Dr. Paul Kurtz to advance society’sunderstanding of the juncture of science and values in the form ofhumanist ethics. The journal focuses on contributions addressing the tasksof: (1) understanding the implications of recent scientific discoveries andconclusions for daily life, (2) discerning how refinements in naturalistepistemology support, or compel refinement of, specific humanist valuesand ethics flowing from them, and (3) with the tools of reason andscience, deriving pluralistic ethical rules on specific issues that implementhumanist values based in scientific understanding.
The Paul Kurtz legacy trumps that of any academic I have known:scholar, activist, publisher, organizer, fundraiser, international facilitator,manifesto stylist and mentor to many successors. On a few occasions hishumanist pioneering led to institutional rejections, from which herecovered. The humanism he shaped and lived was indeed planetary.
There are humanists all over the world, with the prevailing view that,regardless of our heritage, race, creed, gender, age, sexual orientation,status, age or physical ability, we are all brothers and sisters. Humanistsstrive to make the world a better place now and in the future byemploying the scientific viewpoint, using compassion, reason andobservation to look for answers to questions concerning ethics andrespecting human rights. In 1952 in Amsterdam humanists brought some groups together to formthe International Humanist Ethical Union (IHEU). At the UN in March2015 a resolution by the IHEU called for the eradication of the deep-rooted, inhumane caste system in India. Paul Kurtz wanted to create amore inclusive organization. The Institute of Science and Human Valuesis his vision to bring about a more progressive, purposeful and exuberanthumanism to the world.
Why do many psychologists allege that ‘rational suicide’ is anoxymoron? The Final Exit Network (FEN) is the only organization inthe United States that advocates for the right of competent adults todetermine that due to irremediable medical conditions, the quality oftheir life is insufficient. This paper looks at the legal landscape in several States that have wagedwar against FEN and the right to self-determination. It provides anupdate on current rules, including the Canadian Supreme Court decision,and it examines why the right to individual autonomy in the way we exitlife has become the next battleground in the evolution of basic humanrights.
Day 2 Marcia Cohen
Religious Influence In Secular Hospitals:The Bayfront Medical Center Caseby Marcia S.Cohen
When religious hospitals, particularly those of the Catholic faith, mergeor otherwise affiliate with non-religious hospitals, or those of anotherfaith, religious doctrine almost always influences patient care. Wherethe affiliated hospital is of a secular nature, its patients are unaware thattheir health care will be governed by religious dictates they may notshare.Often, there is little that the community can do about such hospitalalliances, but when one of the hospitals is owned by a governmententity, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution can protect againstreligious entanglement with a publicly owned institution.
Day 2 D. J. Grothe
Is aging a curable disease? Surveying both recent advances in the medicalsciences aiming to extend human life indefinitely, and also the secularsocial movements promoting and supporting such technologies, D.J.Grothe details how much of the life-extension trends are based on falsehopes and delusion vs. solid science and evidence-based medicine. If youcould live forever, or at least dramatically extend your life expectancy,should you? Or should you just accept the fact that everyone should die atsome point?
Against the Dying of the Light: Is Radical Life ExtensionPseudoscientific Quackery, Medical Science, or a MoralImperative?by D. J. Grothe