The Ashes: A Humanist Sermon
December 23, 2016 by Adam Lee
For those of us who believe in liberality and human progress, 2016 has been a terrible year. Our hopes for positive change, which for a time blazed so brightly, have collapsed into cinders. Now we’re faced with the prospect of a cold and dark season to come.
This year was a painful reminder that there’s no narrative to history, no inexorable trend toward redemption. History isn’t a smooth arc, but a jagged sawtooth, with dramatic drops and plunges. Atheists, especially, ought to know that there’s no wise planner in control of the world, no prophetic guarantees that all will be well in the end. There’s only us human beings, hobbled by our own ignorance, benighted by our own cruelty, divided from each other by our petty differences.
It’s not just America where many people’s hopes lie in ashes. Looking out at the headlines, it’s hard not to feel that a trend of disintegration is running wild, as if an irresistible centrifugal force is tearing at the world’s foundations. Europe is paralyzed, consumed by squabbling, beset with homegrown racism and xenophobia. Syria has been annihilated as a nation, its people scattered to the winds. It seems as if the only groups on the ascent are bigots, thugs, strongmen and fascist wannabes. Things fall apart, the center can’t hold.
Was all of this inevitable? Were there larger historical forces that nobody could have resisted, or is it a failing in us? Our ancestors fought greater evils and won. Were we not up to the task?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2016/12/ashes-humanist-sermon/#sthash.eGnIVMBc.dpuf
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