How would Lori have gotten along with Rabbi Tauber we quoted yesterday?
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Secular humanists, free-thinkers, skeptics, nontheists, rationalists, atheists, agnostics and self-described infidels adore Lori Lipman Brown.
Religious people -- from many traditions -- like her a lot, too.
The soft-spoken, unfailingly pleasant Brown, director of the Secular Coalition of America, lobbies legislators in Washington, D.C., on issues of separation of church and state.
She visited Minnesota this week to talk to groups ranging from the University of Minnesota's Campus Atheists and Secular Humanists to Or Emet, also called the Minnesota Congregation for Humanistic Judaism.
Brown, 48, who grew up in New York in a close-knit secular Jewish family, is riding a tide of national interest in atheist and humanist philosophies. Books by outspoken atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have been bestsellers for months, and recently U.S. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., became the first member of Congress to say publicly that he does not believe in a supreme being.
"There's been a turning point," said Brown, a former high school teacher, law professor and Nevada state senator. "I think what happened was that the James Dobsons of this world went too far. Also, many people, including religious people, have been shocked by faith-based efforts to stop stem-cell research, and by the Terri Schiavo case, where politicians were diagnosing her medical condition based on video clips.
"The public has decided that it's no longer going to go along with everything outspoken religious people say," Brown said. "Look at all the people who went out and rewrote their living wills after the Schiavo debacle."
Still, Brown acknowledged that poll after poll finds that Americans say atheists are the demographic group they trust the least.
She is convinced that will change over time.
She has worked closely with "moderate people of faith" on many issues, including opposing proselytizing by military chaplains in Iraq ("they're supposed to serve the soldiers' needs, not their own agendas") and pressing Congress for greater scrutiny of faith-based initiatives, which she described as unfairly, lucratively and even illegally favoring the religious right.
Such efforts can protect nonbelievers and people of all faiths from discrimination and unfairness, she said.
Brown's activism does not include trying to talk religious people out of their faith. Still, she's forthright about being faith-free.
"There's a misconception that if you don't believe in a supreme being, you won't lead an ethical life," she said. "That's just not true. We all have consciences. All of us want to live in a society where we can be free and happy.
"Also, not believing in an afterlife means we are willing to work especially hard to make sure this life is as good as possible for all of us."
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God made the world or he didn't.
God made you or he didn't.
If he did, your little human life is, and has been, touched by the divine. If this is true, it would be true of all humans, not only some. And so--again, if it is true--each human life is precious, of infinite value, worthy of great respect.
Most--not all, but probably most--of those who support Terri Schiavo's right to live believe the above. This explains their passion and emotionalism. They believe they are fighting for an invaluable and irreplaceable human life. They are like the mother who is famously said to have lifted the back of a small car off the ground to save a child caught under a tire. You're desperate to save a life, you're shot through with adrenaline, your strength is for half a second superhuman, you do the impossible.
In Love With Death The bizarre passion of the pull-the-tube people.
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