Living the Secular Life Quotes

“secular people don’t believe in life after death, but rather, they believe in life before death.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“What does and should unite us as Americans is our adherence to and respect for the U.S. Constitution—and that’s about it. Love of, belief in, and a willingness to defend freedom, liberty, and democracy: government by the consent of the governed. But as for metaphysical, spiritual, otherworldly, religious, or transcendental matters—is there a God? What happens after we die? Why are we here? How does karma operate? Who was Jesus? Where does chi reside? What is the Holy Ghost? How can we best mollify jinn?—the answers to such questions, whatever they may be, are not what define us as Americans, as citizens, or as human beings. And to suggest—as more and more politicians seem to be doing—that to be a good, decent American requires faith in a Creator, or to imply that Christian values are the only values, or to argue that our laws are given to us solely by God, or to constantly denigrate nonbelievers as somehow less-than-welcome partners in the American enterprise . . . that’s all, quite frankly, very un-American.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“And while I definitely do not think that secular Americans have ever faced the kind of prejudice, exclusion, or hostility experienced by Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, or homosexuals, there is still no question that atheists, agnostics, secularists, and others who eschew religion are often disliked and distrusted, or widely regarded as immoral, or not considered fully American.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“I’ve written this book to explore and illuminate the lives, values, and experiences of just such people, and to offer a glimpse at how we raise our kids with love, optimism, and a predilection for independence of thought, how we foster a practical, this-worldly morality based on empathy, how we employ self-reliance in the face of life’s difficulties, how we handle and accept death as best we can, how and why we do or do not engage in a plethora of rituals and traditions, how we create various forms of community while still maintaining our proclivity for autonomy, and what it means for us to experience awe in the midst of this world, this time, this life.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“when we compare these types of nations, we see that the religiosity/secularity correlation holds true the world over: the poorer, more chaotic, more troubled countries tend to be among the most religious, while the wealthier, more stable, more well-functioning countries tend to be among the most secular.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“The founding fathers went out of their way to establish a clear “wall of separation” between religion and state, to quote Thomas Jefferson. They reasoned, as James Madison so cleverly articulated, that both religion and government exist in greater purity if kept apart.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“Sure, we can hear the reverberating echoes of the Big Bang. Yet that cosmic vibration tells us nothing about what was before the Big Bang, or what was before that, or how or why there was even a bang to be binged at all. This mostly wet ball full of ptarmigans, ponytails, and poverty is floating in space among a billion other balls, and there are galaxies swirling and there is a universe expanding, which itself may actually just be an undulating freckle on the cusp of something we can’t even conceive of, amid an endless soup of ever more unfathomables. And I find such a situation to be utterly, manifestly, psychedelically amazing—and far more spine-tinglingly awe-inspiring than any story I’ve ever read in the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Upanishads, Dianetics, the Doctrine and Covenants, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So smell that satchel of tangerines and nimbly hammer a dulcimer or pluck a chicken and listen to your conscience or master a new algorithm or walk to work or hitch a ride. Because we’re here. And we will never, ever know why or exactly how this all comes about. That’s the situation. Deal with it. Accept it. Let the mystery be.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“In Luke’s own experience with loss, he didn’t turn to God for comfort. Although a believer as a child, he had become an atheist by his mid-twenties. And it was then, just as his atheism was overshadowing his theism, that his beloved father unexpectedly died the day after Christmas. “So that was really a test of my atheism, when my dad died. I mean, I was like, ‘If this is true that there isn’t a God, then I’ll never see my dad again. He’s not in heaven. There is no afterlife.’ I really had to seriously think about the implications of that. And I did—very deeply and very seriously. And I knew that I just couldn’t believe any of it. My dad was gone, and that was that. But it was actually not as traumatic as you might expect, because I found that I didn’t need to believe all that religious stuff from my childhood in order to feel better. I still had the memory of my father, and that was good enough. The things that I valued about my dad were still there, inside of me. He lives on in me, and in my brothers. Why did I need to think he was in heaven looking down at me? Why did I need to think I would someday meet him again? In all honesty, I think those things seem kind of weird to me now.” But how did he cope, exactly, when his dad died? “Friends and family. Friends and family. That’s it.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“I remember that as I sat there, my initial reaction was: flummoxed. Pray to God to heal a baby’s defective heart? Really? But doesn’t God, being omniscient, already know that this baby’s heart is defective? And doesn’t God, being omnipotent, already have the ability to heal the baby’s heart if he wants to? Isn’t the defective heart thus part of God’s plan? What good is prayer, then? Do these people really think that God will alter his will if they only pray hard enough? And if they don’t pray hard enough, he’ll let the baby die? What kind of a God is that? Such coldly skeptical thoughts percolated through my fifteen-year-old brain. But they soon fizzled out. As I sat there looking at the crying couple, listening to the murmur of prayers all around me, my initial skepticism was soon supplanted by a sober appreciation and empathetic recognition of what I was witnessing and experiencing. Here was an entire body of people all expressing their love and sympathy for a young couple with a dying baby. Here were hundreds of people caringly, genuinely, warmly pouring out their hearts to this poor unfortunate man, woman, and child. The love and sadness in the gathering were palpable, and I “got” it. I could see the intangible benefit of such a communal act. There was that poor couple at the front of the church, crying, while everyone around them was showering them with support and hope. While I didn’t buy the literal words of the pastor, I surely understood their deeper significance: they were making these suffering people feel a bit better. And while I didn’t think the congregation’s prayers would realistically count for a hill of beans toward actually curing that baby, I was still able to see that it was a serenely beneficial act nonetheless, for it offered hope and solace to these unlucky parents, as well as to everyone else present there in that church who was feeling sadness for them, or for themselves and their own personal misfortunes. So while I sat there, absolutely convinced that there exists no God who heals defective baby hearts, I also sat there equally convinced that this mass prayer session was a deeply good thing. Or if not a deeply good thing, then at least a deeply understandable thing. I felt so sad for that young couple that day. I could not, and still cannot, fathom the pain of having a new baby who, after only a few months of life, begins to die.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“If secularism is to be understood as a political ideology or social-movement agenda that advocates (at least) the separation of church and state or (at most) the diminishment of religion in society, then humanism can be understood as a related and yet distinct phenomenon; it is more of an optimistic cultural expression or personal worldview, defined by what beliefs it eschews as well as what beliefs it affirms. Simply put, humanism rejects belief in heaven, hell, God, gods, and all things supernatural, while at the same time affirming belief in the positive potential for humans to do and be good, loving, and altruistic. Humanism rejects faith in favor of reason, it rejects superstition in favor of evidence-based thinking, and it replaces worship of a deity with an appreciation for and love of humankind and the natural world.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“secular parents are far from amoral. They may not raise their children religiously, but that does not mean that they raise them without values or ethical precepts. Some common, consistent moral principles secular parents impart to their children include valuing and obeying the Golden Rule, being environmentally conscious, developing empathy, cultivating independent thinking, and relying upon rational problem solving.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“So she and Jim decided to check out the single small atheist group in Sandy Cliffs that met once a month in a back room of a public library. But it just wasn’t what Jim and June were looking for. As Jim explained, “The vibe was too negative. It was a lot of criticizing religion, and that’s not what we we’re about. There was a lot of ‘rage against the nativity scene’ stuff—there is a nativity scene in front of city hall, and they were against that. Or it was ‘rage against the bumper sticker’—someone had seen a religious bumper sticker on a city vehicle and they wanted it removed. You know, that sort of thing. And that’s just not what we were looking for. We wanted something positive. And it was also a lot of talking. But where was the doing? We wanted to be out doing things, being motivated by our humanist values. And we didn’t want to be in a group that was solely defined by its opposition to something. That feels too negative. We wanted to be for something, to be our own thing, and to find opportunities to be doing good.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“Sure, the God question has come up on occasion. Not a problem for Debbie. She has had no difficulty answering her sons’ questions about God. “I always start by just saying that I think life is really wonderful, really beautiful, and that we are so lucky to be here, so lucky to be alive, so lucky that we can appreciate the beauty of the world. But I tell them that I don’t feel the need to put God in there somewhere in order to appreciate all those things. So we tell them that. And then we say that some people do believe in God, but we don’t.” And what about when the kids ask about what happens when we die? Again, Debbie handles this topic with relative ease. “I have just told them that it is a time of peace. You’re not alive anymore. You’re part of the world. You just go back to being part of the world, and your body becomes a part of everything. I always try to be positive, to put it in positive terms—that you will become part of the world and return to the earth.” What I admire most about the way Debbie handles such questions is her ability to be clear and honest about her lack of supernatural beliefs while at the same time not putting down religion, not condemning it or mocking it. It is important that her kids know where Debbie stands on these topics, while at the same time healthy and good that she doesn’t sour them on the bulk of humanity—those billions of people who do believe in God or life after death. Debbie’s answers exude confidence rather than defensiveness, ease rather than stress, and openness rather than closed-mindedness. This may simply be the result of her own personality. But it may also be a result of the sociological fact that her daily life is devoid of religious bullying, zealous proselytizing, or fervent faith,”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“for religious parents, passing on their own beliefs and values is generally an uncomplicated, straightforward endeavor. Religious parents typically find it a joy and duty to simply pass on their own religious beliefs and traditions. They don’t worry about unduly influencing their children’s belief system. Quite the opposite—you actively seek to influence your children’s beliefs in accordance with your religious faith. But many secular parents see this very process of passing on one’s religion to one’s kids as a form of indoctrination. They see religious faith as something that is directly and unfairly imposed on kids. They view young children as intellectually vulnerable, willing and perhaps even evolutionarily designed to believe almost anything their parents teach them about the nature of the world.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions

“I asked Professor Manning to describe in her own words some of the more significant things that she has learned from all of her conversations with secular parents over the years. Is there anything that secular parents have in common? “A key pattern that I uncovered in my research—and this applies to parents from all over the country, and it held, overall, in all of my interviews—is that secular parents value the idea of having choices. This emphasis on having choices just really stands out. Secular parents want their children to have a choice about what to believe in and what to practice. And this makes them quite different from religious parents. You know, your typical Catholic parent will send their kids to CCD—catechism class—and Jewish parents will send their kids to Hebrew school, and what they want is to pass on their own worldview. But secular parents do not necessarily want their kids to turn out secular. Rather, what they talk about, what they emphasize is, ‘I want my son or daughter to be able to freely choose his or her own worldview.’ So many secular parents will even try to expose them to religion because they think it would help them make their own choices.”
― Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions