MY LIFE AND BELIEFS

AS I GROW NEARER TO MY OWN DEATH.

FROM FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN

T0

EVOLUTIONARY HUMANIST:

By

REV. DOUGLAS KENNETH PEARY

All of my ancestors in the 1600’s and 1700’s came from England and settled in the Boston area, Eastern Massachusetts, which later became Southern Maine, and in Vermont. Some of my ancestors fought In King Philips Indian War in New England, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. We are distant cousins to Robert E. Peary, the North Pole Explorer, and his American and Inuit descendents.

All branches of my Great Grandparents and their families moved to Aroostook County in Northern, Maine in the mid 1800’s after Maine became a State and opened to settlement. All of those I know of were farmers. One of my great grandmothers, from Vermont, was a cousin to U. S. President Millard Fillmore, a Unitarian. Most of the recent generations were American Baptists, Advent Christians, with a few Methodists earlier.

There were relatively few families in our area of Washburn, Woodland, Perham, Caribou, Mapleton, and Presque Isle, and they were large families. There was intermarriage of these families so I am

related to many of the relatively few families from the area.

Roy Peary, my grandfather and Lorena Blackstone, my Grandmother, were raised in Perham Maine. He went to Washington State and worked in lumber camps. He returned to Maine with a money belt full of gold coin, married Lorena and purchased the farm in Washburn and Woodland in 1904. They primarily raised potatoes. My Father, Kenneth Roy Peary, took over the farm, where we both grew up. Dad was the last of many generations of American farmers in our family. He was also a State of Maine Potato Inspector for many years. He died at home in 1974, at age 63, of Prostate cancer.

My Great Grandfather, Lorenzo Dow Hobbs, served in the Civil War and later farmed and made wagons and windmills. He was named after Methodist Evangelist Lorenzo Dow. Lorenzo, Jr., my grandfather, grew up in Caribou, helped his father, later owned a General Motors Car Dealership, ran his farm and set up a Blacksmith shop. My Grandmother, Mabel Blackstone grew up in Washburn. They farmed in Caribou. My Grand mothers where very distant cousins. My mother, Dorothy Mabel Hobbs, was the last of many generations of farmer’s daughter’s and a farmer’s wife. She died in 2005.

Dad and Mom were intelligent, loving, farm people with a basic rural high school education. As I grew up I experienced the wonderful love and care of my parents, family, and many other wonderful people in the American Baptist Church and then the Conservative Baptist church, with what I took to be,

the love of God. I felt completely loved and believed in God’s love totally, feeling at the time that I was safe and secure forever.

I had severe migraine headaches from childhood, like my mother. I was unable to play hard like other children, work much, or do sports because I became sick, with headache, physical collapse, fever, heaving, and nightmares. Heat alone made me sick. The migraines continued weekly into my mid 40’s and occasionally since then. My sister Janice had them worse. I read a lot, played as I could, loved farm life and animals, and was generally happy.

At age 9, at the Aroostook Bible camp in Allagash, Maine, I confessed, in prayer, that I was a sinner and asked God to save me, in Jesus name, from eternal hell. I had an emotional experience, from years of religious hype, which convinced me that I was “born again,” “saved.” I now know that this is the same ecstasy anyone experiences anytime we have a tremendous insight into something we see as wonderful.

We were taught that anyone who didn’t believe in being born again and ask God to save them, in Jesus name, would go to hell. This included all humanity.

I committed my life to God, hoping to please God. I accepted it completely until I was a teenager, reading the Bible through, several times, memorizing the books of the Bible, verses of Scripture and many Hymns. I began to wonder more and more strongly about why the creator of all people would send most people to eternal hell of brimstone and fire, and why

so many strange and terrible things were in the Word of God. I already had migraines, didn’t want hell, and I didn’t know any freethinkers.

I spent several years from age 17 to 27, mostly in Massachusetts, training to be a mechanic, Auto and truck parts man and working many jobs, torn emotionally between wanting to please my parents and the loving God I had learned about, and wondering why God could do such terrible things. I married at age 20, and later attended Elohim Bible Institute in Castile, New York for a year. I was told I would not make it in the ministry married to my then wife. She had issues but I was offended. I left Castile and attended Thames Valley Bible School in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada for a year. I left there due to many doubts.

I considered divorce but feared it would hurt my parents because marriage was, ‘til death do us part.” Finally I informed my father that I was getting a divorce. He said he didn’t know how I stood it so long and he would have done it much sooner. I divorced at age 26.

I wondered why God would order Moses in Numbers 31 to tell the Jews to destroy a whole nation of people and kill men, and boys, and women who had slept with men, while keeping many of them for slaves, and to keep the girls who had not slept with men for themselves. Their enemies did the same things to them. I wondered why God would favor, as in Deuteronomy 21, having children stoned for stubbornness. I wondered why God would approve, as in II Kings 2, the Prophet Elisha calling out bears to kill children for calling him baldhead.

I wondered why God would cause a flood to destroy all life, by drowning, in absolute fear and terror, except those on Noah’s Ark. I wondered why God would tell the Jews, in Psalms, to take infants and dash out their brains, and much more.

I wondered why Jesus, in the New Testament, would say to the majority of the human race, “The Son of man shall send forth his angels and gather all that offend and cast them into a furnace of fire,” and continues on about them suffering with wailing and gnashing of teeth. He also said, “Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire, if thine hand offend thee, cut it off, rather than having two hands to go into hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.

I received counseling from a more liberal Christian. I told him I could not understand why God would send so many people to an eternal hell. He responded, “Douglas, I think in the long run we will all be OK.” For some reason that unlocked my mind. I had a very good year and then relapsed in fear of being wrong. Finally, I began to have relief emotionally. I don’t blame my loving parents or non-scholar believers for what misguided theologians and ministers taught them.

At age 29, in December 1971, I discovered the writings of philosopher Bertrand Russell, “Why I am not a Christian,” and felt like I had been reborn because I finally found someone who could not accept certainty of knowledge of God. I heard Unitarian Universalist (UU) Minister, Nathaniel Lauriat, from Hartford, Connecticut on television in January 1972.

I soon found the UU Society in Springfield, Massachusetts, and began attending there. Rev. Thomas Ahlburn called himself an Atheist and was quoting Bertrand Russell. On February 12, 1972, at the church, I met a wonderful woman, Joyce Lee Martin, who would become my wife and mother of my children Brett and Brita.

Joyce had a Masters degree and put me through college where I studied Business Administration, philosophy, Psychology and more and graduated from American International College, (AIC), Springfield, in 1977 at age 34. I met Dr. Lawrence Habermehl, my college philosophy professor, at AIC. He introduced me to Humanism. Because of our beliefs he became my best friend.

Joyce and I spent one year at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. I discovered William James book “The Will to Believe,” which convinced me that my thinking had been formed as a “sin sick soul.” This helped turn me on a more positive outlook of life. I found great satisfaction in comforting adults and children.

I was student minister to Rev. Clark Welles at the UU Society in West Newton, Massachusetts and a student Chaplain at Boston City Hospital on a ward with cancer patients, gunshot and knifing victims and children with life threatening brain tumors, water on the brain and other problems.

The Christian language bothered me even though it was non-fundamentalist. I decided I needed a UU Humanist education instead of a liberal Christian education. We moved to Berkeley, California in September 1977, where I attended the UU Starr King School for Religious Leadership. Brett was born on October 28, 1977.

We attended the Unitarian Society in Oakland California where I was student minister to Rev. Arnold Crompton. I was a student Chaplain on the psychiatric ward at Contra Costa County Hospital in California. I had a wonderful experience of helping a physically strong man discover why he was so emotionally traumatized, to help his healing.

My speech Professor at Starr King, Humanist Leader Ward Tabler, also a Professor of speech at the University of California, and his wife Barbara, were a great support to us at that time. He introduced me to the writings of Robert Ingersoll and much more about Humanism. The rest of the school taught anything but Humanism, in a New Age way, that seemed as odd to me as fundamentalism. I obtained my Masters degree in ministry from Starr King in 1979.

I was ordained as a UU minister in 1979 and was certified as a Humanist Celebrant (minister). I found it sad in those early years that I could no longer believe in my wonderful Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, or in a loving God. Brita was born on October 12, 1980.

I realized at that time that my education had been more to learn what I could believe rather than the need to be a full time minister. I did not just deny the existence of Gods created by humans. Secular thought is a large part of my life.

I became a committed Religious Humanist, as UU Humanist, Rev. Dr. William R. Murry, explains in his book, “Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the Twenty-First Century.” I believe in the use of Science and Reason as well as the development of uplifted Human emotions through community, education, nature, art, poetry, celebrations, ceremonies, and much more.

I have continued to study and learn. I began working for Social Security in 1980 to get a transfer to the National Labor Relations Board (the NLRB) as a Federal labor investigator, in 1982. I worked there until December 1984. At that time I transferred to the NLRB in Hartford Connecticut. We attended the UU Society in Manchester, Connecticut and raised our children there. I am happy that they and their committed mates are all strong skeptics today.

I studied the theories of scientists about the Universe, the world, biology, evolution and history. I found that scientific theories are not just general theories as used by the public but are backed by facts which reach the best level of truth humanity can achieve. I found that most scientists believe in evolution. Faith has no theories and no facts. I must believe what the evidence of the natural world reveals. I developed peace of mind with my knowledge of the natural world. The world reveals

itself through nature, and nature does not reveal a creation or a God.

Far a while it made me sad to know I would never see my deceased loved ones again. When I realized this had never been an option in a natural world I slowly gained peace of mind that there was no hell or heaven, and that the peace of eternal death is just the end of life in a natural world and none of us will suffer anymore.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who gave up belief in God and immortality, said it is only worthwhile concentrating on what is excellent. Reject what we don’t need. He believed the wonders of life are revealed through science and nature, and the inner life is revealed through the senses. He said the only way to understand history is to imagine everyone from the past in the present. “When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, when a truth that fired the soul of St. John, fires mine, time is no more.” I like these ideas.

I have spent years studying the works of Scholars of Higher Criticism of the Bible. For the last two hundred years and more, the Bible has been studied critically the way scholars study the writings of Shakespeare and other literature. The things I learned increased my doubt that God had any part in the matter at all. I learned that critical thinkers have discovered that much of the Bible has been written, in the same sections, in different writing styles, with different words for God from different time periods, such as Jehovah or Yahweh. Someone had combined older thoughts.

The first 5 books of the Bible, which are the first 5 books of the Jewish Bible, the Pentateuch, were supposed to have been written by Moses. They were written 100’s of years after Moses, referring to Moses in the past tense and referring to cities and coins that didn’t exist until hundreds of years after Moses.

The New Testament was created by men, from only a few of the numerous books written about the Life of Jesus, hundreds of years after Jesus lived, written in the names of long dead followers of Jesus. I learned that the books that were eventually included in the New Testament were a selection of only a few, from numerous documents that were written about the events. Many books were written by more than one person, or by someone different than historically thought and usually hundreds of years after the events.

Emperor Constantine murdered his wife and son in 325 CE and then called the first Christian Council at Nice that year, where it was decided, by men, that Christ was God, not just a man. Theodosius called the Council at Constantinople in 381 CE, where it was decided, by men, that the Holy Ghost came from God the Father. Theodosius II ordered the death of Hypatia in 415 CE. He established a Council at Ephesus that year, where it was decided by men, that the Virgin Mary was the Mother of God. There were other Councils in 451, 680 1274 CE and other dates, where men decided the actions of the Biblical God. Protestants later dropped some of those views and molded the rest to their needs.

I have a full Presentation, called, “God’s Word?, None!” with sources, on various Scriptures. Some of the greatest sources of Higher Criticism are available by looking up on the Internet Secular Encyclopedia sources, the writings of Professor Bart Ehrman, whose most resent book is “Forged,” about the forgery of the books of the Bible. They provide extensive sources. The Internet is also flooded with fundamentalist views of Higher Criticism burying the real materials for thinkers. and Professor Tyler Roberts, “Skeptics and Believers.”

I wanted the beliefs of Humanist thinkers where I could get a lot of information quickly as I wished I could have had when I was young. In 1986, I continued studying the beliefs of Humanistic scientists, philosophers, Poets, Comedians and others, so that I could have the best thoughts of great skeptics. I began writing presentations of these Humanist Heroes, Robert Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Einstein, Asimov, Sagan, Walt Whitman, Steve Allen, and others.

I attended the first meeting of the, “Humanists of Central Connecticut,” at the UU Society of New Haven, in Hamden, Connecticut in May 1989, and became a charter member. The word Central was eventually removed. The founders were Dr. David and June Schafer and Rev. Dr. Robert and Joan Rafford.

I have been Vice-President for many years, and have served as President and Treasurer. I became an active speaker about Humanist Heroes at

Humanist and UU Societies throughout the New England States. I perform weddings, memorials and other celebratory services.

Joyce discovered in about 1987 that she had breast cancer. She would talk about the pain and discomfort but never seemed to be complaining, even though going through surgery and much Chemotherapy. Her motto from Ralph Waldo Emerson was, “I am defeated all the time, yet to victory I was born.” The cancer eventually spread. Joyce died on November 26, 1996, at age 53, when Brita was 16 and Brett was 19. It was a hard blow for all of us. I would never have had our wonderful life, our children, my education, or my research without her. We struggled and finally overcame the worst of our grief.

In April 2000, I met Gabriella, a multilingual, Intellectual, Educator, and UU. She loves me, patiently listens to my speeches, critiques them, helps me to be a better person and helps keep me sane through the struggles of life. She is also a writer and published poet. We both speak in UU Societies throughout the Northeast U. S., Canada and the Virgin Islands. In 2003 I published my book, “Humanist Heroes,” which has now been quoted on the Internet from eleven Countries on three Continents.

Brita, age 30, in 2010, is now married to Devin Chambers, a wonderful African American man, who is like a son to me. They are both Respiratory Therapists. Devin has a teenage son Quinten, and a young daughter Renee. They had, on April 29, 2011, a new brother, Jayse, a name similar to Joyce.

Brett, age 33 is a Monbusho Scholar at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, on Scholarship from the Country of Japan, where he will graduate with a PhD in the School of Global Environmental Studies in 2012. Brett has a wonderful Japanese Girlfriend Yuri Iwataka.

I have never ceased my search for knowledge and understanding. Read much of it in my book. I am completing another book, to be called “Humanist Heroes and More.”

I am grateful to my parents, Kenneth and Dorothy; and my sisters Janice and Carolyn (all deceased) for their love for me even though what I believe as an adult is so different from what they believed. I am grateful to Janice and her husband Ira, who lived near me in recent years, for their emotional closeness to me. I still have a younger brother Darryl and his family.

I am a moral and ethical person based on reason, Science and nature rather than on faith in teachings of primitive men. I do not try to convert people. It is their choice and it is a hard choice because we Humanists do not offer eternal life. We only offer honesty and truth as we discover it through reason, research, and science, while we live in wonder and awe of the Universe, even if it ends for us all, individually, with this life. I did not try to convert my family because even if they had considered my views it would be traumatic to lose faith in older years, without time to readjust. Besides, anyone who doesn’t believe as we do is not punished and does not go to hell.

To me it is important to live by the evidence about reality as we find it. My beloved wife Joyce died. I grieve but I have not gone back to Christianity or Theology because of her death. I believe that this life is our only life and we should be as happy as we can be while we are here, without fear, doubt or panic. All of my ancestors and most of the heroes died and I have no reason to believe they are suffering. I am at peace and death is only eternal peace.

The people who portrayed the God of the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the Koran, and others, and those who teach them literally as Gods word, instead of the word of men just trying to make sense of the world, are wrong because the God they claim orders killing, killing and killing, slavery and prostituting, and sends billions of people to hell for not accepting it or not even knowing about it. This is evil. These were people who wanted power over everyone else. I don’t blame any God for this. This sounds more like the works of sick-minded men rather than of a God. I also do not blame all believers for the works of the sick ones. There are more good people of all faiths, and of believers in a natural world, than there are sick-minded people.

Let people choose these things as they like but Science, Historical Research, and Reason, convince me that the existence of a loving God or creator God is completely improbable, and I will not accuse any

God of having anything to do with these books, which are blaming God for the work of these sick people.

As stated by Sir Isaac Newton, “If I have learned anything it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” The Humanist Heroes presented in my book “Humanist Heroes,” others in “Humanist Heroes and More,” and numerous others not presented there, are among our examples of what we can believe. I am more grateful than anyone could imagine with the Humanist Heroes and other humanists and great thinkers and skeptics of all time.

There are numerous heroes of humanity, such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Barak Obama, and many, many, others, who believe in God but are still admired by me and other humanists for their humanity. Most of our great American forefathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others, and later, Abraham Lincoln, and many others are among our great Humanist examples, who rejected Fundamentalism style thinking and Orthodoxy, and are already well known by humanity.

I am a UU Humanist. This means I am a religious Humanist in the manner of the writings of UU Professor, William R. Murry. Unitarian Universalism is open to people of all beliefs to the extent they allow others to search for the truth through their own beliefs. Unitarian Universalism is a place to question and search for truth.

I did my searching in UU Societies, books, the Internet, and Christian and UU Seminaries. A

searcher could not find their answers in Humanism alone because they have to hear many ideas before they realize why they could be a Humanist. I found my answers. No one can grow spiritually without a place to search. Spirituality to a UU Humanist has nothing to do with God. I am an Agnostic Humanist like David Hume, Thomas Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, and Bertrand Russell. They did not, and I do not, believe in any of the gods of humanity. They were not Atheists because they knew that no matter how certain believers or unbelievers are, they couldn’t demonstrate what the great mystery was before the Universe.

Believers claim the Universe is too great to exist without a creator. They have faith that something greater than the Universe, NAMELY GOD, can exist without a creator. This is very puzzling. Everything in nature evolves from the simple to the complex so how did God come to exist, or exist eternally. How was GOD created? If God can be eternal why can’t matter be eternal?

Remember always that I never attack or hate God or the average believer. I attack false human religious teachings about God. More emphatically, Fundamentalism, Orthodoxy, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and others are just books written by humans, with no God or Angel taking part in the writing. There have been many critical studies of these books showing many errors and much evil; very ungod like things for believers to blame on God.

Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', Philosopher Richard Rorty, a strict atheist, answered with the words: “My sense of the holy is bound up

with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law." I agree with Rorty.

These words by Bertrand Russell say what I believe better than I can say it.

“What I Live For!”

Three passions, intense and powerful, have guided my thinking and my living: the necessity of love, the desire for certainty in knowledge, and sympathy, sometimes unbearable, for the suffering of human beings and animals. These passions, like high winds, have blown my emotions in many directions, over a wide ocean of loneliness, uncertainty and pain. I sought love first because everything else is harder without love. Without love there is a great loneliness due to the uncertainty of knowledge and the suffering that goes on around us.

I also sought love because it brings ecstasy, ecstasy so great I would often have sacrificed all of the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I sought love, finally, because in the union of love, with Joyce and Gabriella, I have found, in miniature, and love for my children and their families, a vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I sought knowledge. I have wished to understand my human companions. I have wished to know the world and the universe. I have studied world religions, philosophy, the sciences, sociology and psychology. I have found some answers and raised many questions. I have learned to trust science and reason with caution, embracing evolution but rejecting evils like nuclear weapons. I

have learned to enjoy skepticism and emotions, believing in morality and decency, rejecting the evils of theistic certainty and teachings about hell and sin.

Love and knowledge, so far as possible, have led me upwards toward the heavens. The suffering of humans and animals has always brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my emotions. Children in poverty and abuse, victims tormented by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their children, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty and pain make a mockery of what life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. However, even though I am often defeated, I was born to win, and I do. I return these blessings. I have found my life worth living, and I will continue to do so. I am a Humanist.

If you ask me what I think of dying, my answers are similar to these following:

Mark Twain said, “I wasn’t alive for billions of years before I was born and it didn’t inconvenience me in any way.”

Richard Feynman said people are terrified. They think, how can you live and not know an answer to the meaning of life? “It is not odd at all. You only think that you know. It is possible to live and not know. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”

Carl Sagan said, “Six times now I have looked Death in the face. And six times Death has averted his gaze and let me pass. Eventually, of course Death

will claim me—as he does each of us . . . I’ve learned much from our confrontation—especially about the beauty and poignancy of life, . . . the preciousness of friends and family, and about the transforming power of love

. . . I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

. . . The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides . . .”

I agree with them all.

Rev. Douglas Kenneth Peary, 2011