In the past month, I have lost a number of things. A cat that was given to me escaped the first night. On a journey with my family abroad, my wallet fell out of my pocket while juggling my squirming son. On the way home, my wife couldn't find her green card. And then on the flight home, I left two bottles of booze (mine) and two cartons of smokes (for a friend) in the overhead. I felt both stupid and unlucky. I imagined a happy cleaning crew enjoying the liquor and smokes (and wasn't too pissed about that image, actually- Happy New Year!). I imagined someone pocketing the cash out of the wallet. I imagined spending the night in a hotel and making desperate pleas in the Embassy for an emergency travel document, leveraging my fragile (at the time) health and my son's fever.
After some panicked running around to officials who had no answers, my wife did a second search of secret places in bags and it turns out it was only misplaced. The security guys found my booze and turned it in, and I convinced the airline to let me check it without a fee. The same afternoon (it was a 10 hour layover), I got a call that a crew in a completely different city from my itinerary found my wallet between the cushions- after the security crew at my airport had found nothing. And tonight I saw the missing cat in my yard- now working on seducing him with offerings of canned food.
What does this have to do with atheism? Well, just that shit happens- good shit and bad shit- and that it sometimes happens in clusters. If I were religious, I probably would have prayed at these various misfortunes (not sure about praying for the recovery of booze and smokes, but fuck- Jesus didn't turn the water into Kool-Aid). And I might have regarded the rapid succession of finding lost things as God looking out for me, answering my prayers. But I didn't pray, and I got all my stuff back anyway. I can hear the saved, washed in the blood sorts saying that God loves me too, so that's why He was so nice to me, or some shit. But the point is, prayer is not needed for good fortune. It simply happens sometimes. Am I thankful? Yes, to the people who found things and returned things. These events have renewed my faith in humanity. And in such moments, yes, Humanism is like a religion, because you kind of have a religious experience when someone you never met and never will meet does the right thing by you- extends an empathy evolved in close knit family and tribe to include someone beyond their circle of self interest. And I believe that churchgoing or not, there are lots of people who would do the right thing. And I applaud all of you for recognizing an interconnectedness among our our species (we can talk about the biosphere later) that transcends our individual experience of this life- the glory and triumph of realizing and reaching for a greater good, that benefits all. That is a "spiritual" experience Humanists revel in, yet one which requires no spirit to have. It is a sort of an intellectual epiphany. It is this selfless and noble idea, fortunately not uncommon, that has ensured the "golden rule" has been enshrined in many religions. I think the good part of religion is an effort to multiply that idea, and inasmuch as it succeeds in doing so, has a contribution to make to the potential social evolution of our species (the other selfish, violent "evil" animal instincts also clearly in play). However, the social control and institutional aspects of many religions, and their infection by self-interested control freaks, tug at the coattails of that good.
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