Bill White
JAN/FEB Meetings
The Freethinkers gather Saturday, Jan 9th, 10:30-AM at the fellowship to mull over, “Are we born sinful (as Darwin might define it)?
The Panhandle Free Thought Society meets Saturday, Jan 16th, 10:30AM at the fellowship. Talk on tap, “How should Western culture deal with fundamentalism.” Timely topic, no?
Free thought folks gather Saturday, Feb 13th, 10:30AM at the fellowship. This time we’ll try to decide if “altruism” exists, or is it really self-interest in disguise?
Free thinkers gather Feb. 20th at the fellowship, 10:30AM. Topic to be tussled with, “Is there really free will, or is everything determined?” Hope your destiny is to join in.
Pat Duffy Hutcheon, Humanist in Canada (Spring, 1993), p. 28. (to the tune of “Amazing Grace”)
Amazing life, how great the code
that carves a course through me,
to futures yet uncharted from
some long forgotten sea.
No master hand defined my fate.
No gods created me.
Star dust and ocean wave did spark
the genes that led to me.
Amazing life, how great the code
that carves a course through me;
of life that first emerged from out
some long forgotten sea.
O’er eons of uncounted time,
like shifting dunes of sand;
from grasping paw on groping limb,
evolved the human hand.
Amazing hand, how great the tools
that humankind could wield.
How wide the world that hitherto
from animals was sealed.
But symbols were the crucial key
that opened culture’s gate;
for language carried consciousness,
and knowledge in its wake.
Amazing power of human thought
that carves a course through me;
to futures yet uncharted from
some long forgotten sea.
This poem by a fellow Canadian, coupled with a November 30th article in the New York Times Science section was a reminder another year is upon us. The Time’s piece declares biologists have found, along with our darker side, humans are born with an innate urge to help and cooperate with one another. Clearly, despite the pride, fear, greed and violence that still plague us – look where we’ve been. We’re here. We survived! Perhaps yet to become the aristocracy of species and true tender of this blue and fertile garden in space. Our track record seems to indicate we’ll continue to make our way through time. Perhaps the best is yet to come!
SHALOM