• Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

    Photo: Headshot of Rich Barlow, an older white man with dark grey hair and wearing a grey shirt and grey-blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 3 comments on Atheist or Agnostic, a Place for Humanists

  1. Though I am impressed by your statistic and that humanists may indeed be in the minority, I daresay that their perspective is not. I would say that the dominant perspective from which most university courses are taught is that of the secular humanist. As a student at the school of theology, despite its Methodist history, I would venture to say that many of the courses purport to be Christian, and may indeed focus on Christian texts, but treat them and teach from a secular humanist perspective. I think on a university campus you are more likely to find secular humanists who simply don’t identify because the term is obscure.

  2. Mr. Barker does not make clear whether the reference for “evidence lacking” came from Mr. McCarger or from his own “research.” In either case, “Mormon America: The Power and the Promise,” by Richard and Joan Ostling, is anything but a dispassionate, scholarly examination of Mormonism. Indeed, if the book helped to destroy the faith of Mr. McCarger, then the Ostlings succeeded in their purpose.

    The cover blurb of one edition betrays its agenda: “Revised and updated for the 2008 election. The True Story Behind Their Beliefs, Rituals, Business Practices, and Well-Guarded Secrets.”

    The Ostings’ sinister portrayal of the Mormon “hierarchy” contradicts my own 65 years of experience with them. I love our leaders for their unflagging testimony of Christ, their inspired and uplifting counsel, and their obvious and undying love for all of our Heavenly Father’s children.

    For a perceptive and penetrating review of the “Mormon America,” see “Faith with Caricature?” by Raymond Takashi Swenson, FARMS review, vol. 13, Issue 2, pp. 65-77

    http://tinyurl.com/caricature-of-faith

    Also see a trenchant review by Louis Midgley, who makes clear why the editors of another anti-Mormon book “heartily recommend” “Mormon America,” which they claim “will serve as an excellent companion” to their own attack on Latter-day Saint beliefs.

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/faulty-topology

    Undismayed, Midgley is encouraged to see such critics of the Book of Mormon ” . . . reach out for more subtle and sophisticated arguments to buttress their unfaith as the old ones fall by the wayside. And our past is not such that our faith can be toppled by carping about this or that incident, as the Ostlings do, or by celebrating some recent revisionist history, and certainly not by turning a former Mormon historian into a stick with which to beat the church.”

    The Ostlings’ dirty little secret is that the “liberal” and former Mormons whom they use to bash “traditional” Mormonism often espouse positions on moral issues that are antithetical to their own evangelical values. In fact, the ex-Mormon who is their primary source about the “Mormon hierarchy” is a homosexual activist.

    If you are looking for “lack of evidence,” you will find a lack in “Mormon America.” But as noted humanist Carl Sagan said, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

    Why drink downstream from the anti-Mormon feedlot when you can walk upstream to the pure source?

    Throw out all the other books and read, yes, actually read, “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” Then go to Mormon.org and talk to a believing Mormon. Seek, and ye shall find.

    http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng

    mormon.org

    Tracy Hall Jr

    hthalljr’gmail’com

  3. “Many atheists call themselves humanists because of the perceived baggage of the a-word”

    Though this may be accurate of some humanists, Humanism is not a soft term for atheism. They are 2 distinct things. The only thing that atheists have in common is a shared non-belief in any of the popular gods. Humanism is a step beyond this. Its a skeptical, evidence based philosophy focused on the improvement of the human condition.

    In other words not only do we not believe in gods, but not in big foot, nor in ghosts. That is until evidence can be provided that they exist. We realize that the challenges the human race face, may only be overcome by working together. With the best knowledge we can find through the the scientific process. Atheism, while being a part of humanism, is a very small piece.

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