Humanitas

I’m an atheist. Religion and spirituality don’t resonate with me, and historically, I believe they have more often than not contributed to unnecessary human suffering. That is my honest view.

However, I also recognize something equally important. Most people of faith or spirituality are not motivated by hate or division. They are guided by love, community, meaning, and a desire to do good. Over the past year, I have come to appreciate how many religious and spiritual people share many, if not most, of my core values and hopes for a better world.

The greatest threats to humanity are not ordinary people who believe in God or Buddha, or who follow Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Sikhism, or any other deeply human tradition, or even those who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or nothing at all, like me. The real danger comes from extremist movements and ideologies that weaponize belief, particularly ethnonationalist and theocratic ideologies that twist and pervert faith beyond recognition in their selfish pursuit of power.

In the United States, white Christian nationalism is one such movement. It seeks to impose a rigid, authoritarian vision of society at any cost, however harsh, contradictory, or harmful to democratic principles and basic human rights. That does not represent the average believer and should not be mistaken for good faith religious expression.

To those of you who follow me, whatever you believe or do not believe, what matters most is this: if we can agree that every human being on this planet deserves dignity, compassion, fairness, equal opportunity, and freedom; that no one should be diminished because of their race, who they love, how they identify, what language they speak, or where they come from; then we have far more uniting us than will ever divide us.

A pluralistic, open, and free society depends on that shared foundation and on those simple truths. It requires us to reject the manufactured divisions that keep ordinary, hardworking people exhausted and at odds with one another while extreme power and wealth consolidates at the very top among the most cynical and destructive actors in our society.

Many religious traditions, at their core, call for justice, mercy, and care for the vulnerable. Those principles are not at odds with humanism; they overlap. If we center our common humanity first, we can build the kind of society the overwhelming majority of us around the world, believers and nonbelievers alike, actually want to live in.

So while you may, from time to time, see me critique religion, question it, or express my personal distaste for aspects of it, understand where that comes from and what it does not mean. It does not mean I reject the people who hold those beliefs, nor does it mean I oppose the values of compassion, justice, mercy, and human dignity that so many faith traditions attempt to uphold.

Irrespective of what you believe or do not believe, and regardless of your race, orientation, identity, language, nationality, culture, or background, I am always willing to work alongside you if we share that fundamental commitment to freedom, human dignity, and equal opportunity for all.

If we can agree that every human being deserves safety without condition, education without debt, healthcare as a free and universal human right irrespective of where you live, the freedom to exist as one’s true self, and a fair shot at a meaningful and fulfilling life, then the world most of us dream about, the one we want our children to inherit, can be built—by people of different beliefs choosing cooperation over division, principle over dogma, and humanity over ego. That is something worth committing to, and I am fully committed to it.

In the image below, taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured Saturn’s rings with Earth and its moon suspended in the same frame, a humbling reminder of how small and fragile our world is within the vastness of space and how trivial our divisions appear from that distance.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia17171-the-day-the-earth-smiled-sneak-preview/l