A Development of an Unreligious Philosophy
by Dan Pierce
Northern Hills Fellowship
November 7, 1999

These presentations are usually called "Spiritual Journeys." But this is mine. I think a more meaningful title would be "A Development of an Unreligious Philosophy."

My early years were in South Carolina. When I was eight we moved out in the country for three years, and I spent a great deal of time alone in the woods and swamps. It was my arena. I developed a oneness with Nature that has stayed with me for a lifetime. I sensed that I was part of it. I wanted to mesh with Nature as I perceived an Indian would. I would often take my back pack, a canteen of water, and a bite to eat into the woods and then dig up sassafras roots to make hot tea over a little fire. I watched the wild animals. I found that if you sit quietly you can hear and see the bugs crawling through the leaves. I also noted interesting carnivorous plants such as Venus fly traps and Jack-in-the-pulpits.

Years before, my Dad had studied to become a minister but aborted the effort because he had difficulty accepting the religious doctrines being taught at Mars Hill College, a Baptist school in North Carolina. Apparently, he spoke with the Dean about this and was told that it didn't matter if he believed it or not. It was his responsibility to give the people what they needed. He chose not to pursue this career.

Mom's health was poor and only continued to get worse with time. As I grew to recognize this I assumed the role of her protector and helped her in every way that a youngster knew how. She couldn't drive a car and was limited as to what she could do with us. I never knew her to read the Bible, pray or do the things that strong Christians do, nor do I recall her encouraging us to do those things. I suspect that Dad would have reacted rather sternly to that. I do know that she wanted to take us three kids to church. The few times when Dad did take us he would usually sit in the car and read.

Dad was not to become aware of Unitarianism for another forty years. In the meantime his rejection of the Traditional Christian concepts, coupled with an innate harshness, contributed to a home environment that was task oriented and demonstrated little love. It was up to me to develop my own religious thought processes as I became older. During my youth, my ignorance of the subject caused me to feel different from my friends and at times unacceptable as a person.

On a visit to a friend's house I was asked to say grace over lunch. I had no idea what to say or do. I just sat there and shook my head. The man of the house had some unkind comments about my up-bringing and I felt a negative spotlight the rest of the day. On a visit to another house, in an effort to protect myself from being asked to say grace again, I simply refused to sit at the table and eat with them.

My family moved to the coast of North Carolina when I was eleven. The school teachers there counted hands every Monday morning as to who went to church during the past week. Recognition was given to those classes that had the highest attendance percentages. To keep from being the goat and penalizing the class for my lack of attendance, I often lied. Many times I would walk through a local churchyard during the week so I could feel better about saying I had gone to church. Sometimes as a bit of silent protest I would raise my hand twice indicating both that I did and did not attend. The teacher never said anything. Either she didn't have the heart to embarrass me or her math wasn't too good.

My family moved to Tennessee during my seventh grade, and again I could spend enjoyable time in the woods. As in my earlier years, I was comfortable being a part of Nature.

It was at this time that a life-long relationship began with my friend, John. His family had moved into the area about the same time as mine. His mother became like my second mother.

There was an old grave yard back in the woods where I hunted. I got to wondering what the caskets and skeletons would look like after some hundred years, so one day I took a shovel with me. I didn't rightly know which side of the headstones to dig on, so I slid off the concrete cover from one of the vaults, removed all the nuts that the squirrels had stored and started digging. This exercise caused an eerie feeling in and around me. I wasn't sure about the stories of evil spirits being in graveyards but, sometimes you gotta feel the fear and do it anyway. You know, I dug and dug and never did find anything of interest. Even though I wasn't struck down during the dig I was a bit wary of some evil spell following me around afterwards, but nothing bad happened to me that I could attribute to it. Eventually the concern of being hexed faded. My final deduction was that there wasn't anything to this evil spirit stuff. I did feel a little bit naughty, but I also enjoyed the challenge.

The summer I turned sixteen I went to Bible School at the Charleston, Tennessee Baptist Church. I intended this to be just a social event for me. It turned out to be my real beginning of religious thinking and education. For the first time I listened to the Bible stories from the mothers of my friends, but I also listened with great doubts. I found the music and singing to be calming and to this day I enjoy religious music. It did please me, however, that people at church cared enough for me to pray for me. I had never had that experience before.

At the close of Bible School the minister asked for all the kids that had grown spiritually to come forward. There were eleven of my friends that went to the front of the church that day, including my friend John. I really had had an enjoyable time, and I didn't want to have to answer the inevitable questions of why I didn't get up and go. So after some hesitation I went but was the last one to go down the aisle. The minister, with tears of happiness in his eyes, went to each person shaking hands and asking, "are you here on a profession of faith?" All the other kids were saying "yes", so when he came to me I said "yes" too. I had no idea what I was agreeing to or what was to come. To my great surprise I had joined the Baptist church and indicated that I accepted Jesus as my Savior. The following Sunday we were baptized one by one in the big aquarium up behind the pulpit.

Now that I had inadvertently stepped over this line of religion, I was curious if I might be changed in some way. But I couldn't tell that I was any different as a person — other than feeling a bit guilty. Later that summer I checked books out of the library on various religions and read at least parts of them and still didn't feel moved in any particular religious direction.

I greatly admired my Granddaddy Pierce. Somewhere about this time frame he took me to visit an old-timey alcoholic country lawyer. He was said to be of some kin to us. His reputation was of being a smart man when sober, but apparently that wasn't very often. He was a rather small, grubby man with deep intelligent eyes and walked with a cane because most of his left foot was missing. He lived in a dim smoky one-room cabin with a bed, a small light and a fireplace. I was told that many years ago in his drunkenness he had stuck his foot in the fire and didn't pull it out until much too late. The message to me was supposed to be that I shouldn't drink alcohol, but that wasn't the message that stuck with me. There was a Bible beside his bed that obviously had been used. With amusement in my Granddaddy's voice he asked him, "What is the Good Book doing in your possession"? His strained response was something like, "I read it. I don't believe half of it, but I'm scared not to." For some reason I liked him. Maybe it was because he was unique, or of some kin or that he was so plainly honest. I puzzled with that comment off and on through the years as my own thinking was solidifying. I could understand that response as ringing true. It still sounds to me like a reasonable response for some other folks even today.

After I got my driver's license, one or more of my buddies and I would go to other churches in the area to see how they conducted their services and what they said. Being in a strong Pentecostal area, we saw some interesting and disturbing activities such as, Hell Fire and Damnation hollering (or preaching as they would call it), mothers throwing babies to prove that God was with the baby by someone catching it, women encircling a teenage girl with chants that caused the girl to lie in the floor, shake and tremble, and go into an emotional state that looked very unhealthy to me.

I never did get to one of the snake-handling services: They didn't have those every Sunday.

I changed high schools for my senior year in order to get classes necessary for college. It was there that I met a tall, slender, pretty girl named Sandy. She was a Methodist at the time, and I started going to church with her. I found it an oasis of kindness, but it had no real religious effect on me.

While in college I deducted that my life needed improvement and I reached out for religious messages. Perhaps I could be a better person for Sandy, and maybe it would benefit my grades. I tried to read the Bible that Sandy had given me, but the words just wouldn't flow. I went to the Baptist Student Union and listened to others have Bible discussions. At times I seemed I to get an emotional lift from the effects of these discussions but there wasn't anything that I could sustain. The people at the BSU were caring and gentle. I ate their doughnuts, played chess tournaments, played ping-pong and even tried to sing with them: I enjoyed the atmosphere but could not get to where they said they were with respect to God and religion. This caused me enormous guilt. I prayed for help, but it never came. I even prayed for forgiveness. I wondered about the "sins" I had committed that I wasn't aware of? Did I have to be specific or was asking forgiveness for "all of my sins" sufficient? After a while it didn't seem appropriate that I should keep going back so often and asking for another forgiveness package and not seemingly getting any better at being good.

I couldn't see where any prayers were being answered. I wondered if God appreciated us more if we prayed for forgiveness on a regular basis, or was it just necessary to have a bare minimum backlog of unforgiven sins in case we should die unexpectedly? I wondered if it made a difference to ask for something often or to have lots of people praying for the same thing and if there was a compounding effect that implied that God could be influenced by gang prayer?

I suspected that in this forgiveness process that good deeds should be required to offset negative activities. Perhaps there would be a weighted system. One serious apology must be worth more than one little "thank you," or helping someone in need should be weighted higher than just being friendly. I recall reading a study by a psychologist indicating that in a work force it usually takes seven "atta boys" to overcome one "chewing out" of an employee. I had no idea of what God's ratio would be.

I did notice that the more religious students did not necessarily make the best grades or have immunity from problems in their lives, and that was a significant observation for that time of my life. My deduction was that those that followed God didn't have any special care taken of them.

I wondered about Satan and why God would tolerate this messing around with all the good folks made in His image. If I were an all powerful God I would have taken care of that Devil in a skinny minute.

I never could figure out this business about souls. A person was apparently merged very early in life with a soul provided by the Christian God and the person was considered to be responsible for protecting "this invisible passenger" to assure acceptance into Heaven. The soul had no direct influence over the person's thinking or actions, but the soul was said to experience eternal Glory or Damnation because of the thoughts and actions of the person it inhabited. I didn't find this "luck-of-the-draw" accountability very plausible. I wondered what would God say to a soul that had just been banished to Hell? "Sorry, my son. I realize that you were simply a passenger in the body that I gave you, but it didn't do so well, so why don't you just Go to Hell".

Neither could I accept the concept of miracles. In my view there are no miracles. They are misrepresentations or misdiagnoses of actual occurrences. If the erroneous description is caused by ignorance, the skewing of the story could be considered unintentional. However, it is also recognized that special enhancements can add spiritual respect to a story. I plead guilty to have enhanced a few of my own stories for what seemed to be a greater effect at the time. I suspect that many of religion's miracles can be attributed to what seemed to be extraordinary happenings viewed through emotional filters.

It never made sense to me that the Christian God wouldn't also be a God for the simple worms in my garden or the trees or the animals in the forest - all of nature. It did seem reasonable that as the human developed an increasing level of intelligence accompanied by a mental need to explain happenings in the person's environment, that a mind could deduct that perhaps there may be something at work greater than this person doing the thinking. This apparently happens in most, if not all, cultures. The extensions of this concept seemed so unreasonable ... for the Christian God to encompass His creatures they not only must have an intellectual ability to reason, but they must have the inclination to worship Him. I rejected this one-sided concept.

Christians are encouraged to thank God every day for all the good things in life that they didn't ask for. They call these occurrences blessings as opposed to answers to prayers. I don't know if Christians earn blessings for being good, or if God has some unique schedule, or if they are just passed out at random. It has been interesting to me that I have surely gotten my share of these "blessings", even after asking all these unreligious questions for all these years. It makes me wonder if God has paid any attention to me and my thinking.

A growing understanding of Science through studies in Engineering and Geology, and plain old observations of causes and effects, allowed me to deduct that attempting to define a world with unbelievable stories, fear, miracles and begging for forgiveness and the like did not fit the finite world that I lived in.

Sandy graduated from college before I did, and we were married in the same Methodist Church that we attended in high school. I had not had a loving family relationship, and Sandy taught me what love could be and has made a life of confirming it.

My Mom died almost three years after Sandy and I were married. I had this lingering question about Mom's life of poor health. I wondered, "If such conditions are a result of God's will and there is good in all of His directives, who or what was the good in her unfair life?" I asked the Methodist minister about this concept and his response was, "Everything that happens is not necessarily for the best." I felt a profound relief. At last a religious man had said something that made sense. I stopped seeking some evasive goodness in this unfortunate situation. I respect this man to this day for his honesty.

Sandy and I went on to have two children, plus a foster child later on. I deferred to her as to what the kids would be taught about religion, basically because I had evolved to where I had none to share. She came to know Unitarianism and began taking the kids to a small fellowship in Florence, Alabama. I attended with them on an irregular basis.

Prior to our kids starting the first grade, Sandy and I were pulled into a sting operation. We trusted a wealthy local individual, who was also a Sunday School teacher, with our UU thoughts. He faked interest and even attended church with us, then violated that trust in the name of his Christian religious beliefs. He could not understand how anyone could not accept religion as he knew it, and those that did not were Heathens to be treated harshly and ostracized, including the children involved. Our participation in community activities was not to be welcomed. People in the community didn't agree with all of his pronouncements and exclusions of us, but they needed his money for the private school that was being established so all their kids would not have to go to school with the descendants of their families' slaves. We moved. We planned to move anyway, but that made it mandatory and a bit sooner. I have had no desire to forgive this individual.

What may seem a little odd is that the minister of that person's church was one of my good friends at the time, although I did not attend his services. We spent time together catching fish, helping each other, sipping a little wine and figuring out what was right or wrong with the world. We respected each other and enjoyed each other's company as did our wives.

I suppose that it would be fair to state that through my work years I was a workaholic. It was important to me to be ethical, of good character and a respected Engineer and Manager. I wondered many times when all hell broke loose how I had gotten myself into that particular mess and how I was going to get through it. (Retirement finally solved that problem.) I really thought that even if there were a God, He was not a specific resource that cared the least bit when or if my boilers came on line or how much pulp and paper my company produced. It was my responsibility to use other resources to get the technical and people problems solved. However, I do suspect that most all of us will say a little prayer under a severe crisis condition. As a last resort it just seems to pop out of our minds.

We should be able to go about our normal working day without having to tap God on the ear drum and whispering, "God, haven't you noticed that I'm getting concerned about this situation? I think I need your intervention... right about now." If I had been inclined to try that approach I surely would have had to deduct that God must be considering the best thing for some other overlapping condition, because I certainly didn't believe that I was going to get any noticeable help. A Christian could return to the statement that, "God helps those who help themselves." It would seem important that God's followers be able to sort out rather quickly which approach God is using: God helping you, or God watching you helping yourself. The actions required for each would be totally different.

There is no doubt that Carl Sagan influenced me to wonder about the possibility of other life in this vast universe. His TV series of "Cosmos" (1980) opened my mind to the "billions and billions of stars" and caused me to pay attention to astronomy. The universe is far more exciting than most of us can imagine. Findings from the Hubbell Space Telescope are as fascinating to me as splitting the atom. I am awed and humbled by the seemingly never ending discoveries of star formations, supernovas, brown dwarfs, planets around other stars, black holes, and the like. Spectrometers have indicated that water vapor and "the stuff of life" are scattered throughout the universe. Whatever we are, the basic elements and building blocks were generated by the reactions taking place out there in the Cosmos.

The complexity of the human body begs to be explained. I cannot accept that we humans were created by a God or in the image of that God any more than the worm or the virus or the tree or the rock from Mars was. Neither are we just some accident. Certainly, evolution has occurred and continues to occur on this earth. Although on a different basis, evolution continues in the cosmos as well. We humans are but one of the results of finite possibilities under a specific series of conditions that existed, but there has been no predestination of final results.

The concepts of gravity, magnetism, electricity, the strong and weak forces, dark matter, worm holes, and the like boggle my mind and cause me to wonder how all this "Order" came to be. I don't know where this Order originated. The Christians don't either. The Laws of Nature are the same throughout the universe and are never violated. It's the understanding of them that changes and is so fascinating.

A perspective develops for me as to where this planet fits into the Cosmos. It's a small watery blue planet orbiting a medium star near the outer edge of an ordinary galaxy (one of perhaps a hundred billion) and harbors an array of Lifeforms. It would seem so out of proportion that any form of "life" (not just human life) would have been intentionally selected for only this little planet — at no other place and at no other time in the immenseness of this twelve billion year old universe. Can our sun be the only star with conditions ever-so-right for any type of life? Can we be that singularly special? I don't know. I suspect not.

If any other form of a living organism is found any where else in the cosmos, the Christian theory of our "Specific Creation" will be formally disproven. If folks will read a few of the modern scientific articles available, there are ample evidences to indicate evolution is a reality. Fossils of numerous plants and animals are found in virtually every part of the earth. Changes with the ages are easily determined.

I am but a brief and tiny observer with whatever ignorance, innocence and guilt that I may have. I, as a human, have not been chosen to be at the center of any Supernatural creation. I don't have any special answers. I do have hundreds of unanswered questions. I do not consider myself a spiritual person. I have to deal with concepts on a more concrete basis. When I die, it is all over. There is no after life. The only things that I will permanently leave behind are a couple of dollars worth of chemicals that nobody needs or wants, some memories in the minds of a few people in overlapping generations, a few writings and an increase of entropy.

I can't prevent what I think and believe. I am enough of a maverick to not want to change my mind or actions just because it may be popular with my peers to do so. Many traditional Christians indicate that we Non-Traditional thinkers are "free to believe anything we want to about religion." This does not represent how the thought process actually functions. The statement for me is revised to, "I am free to deduct what I can believe."

When I deal with people I sense a range of perspectives extending from one extreme to another. The position of truth for an individual lies someplace on this continuum. Where it lies depends upon their experiences, biases, thought processes and personal needs. On a professional basis it can be my responsibility to get them to envision another perspective that supports the goals of a particular action or organization. On a religious or social basis it is my responsibility to be more tolerant, although I can enjoy discussing their and my rationales.

The comfort from Traditional religions is in the believing, not what is in the specifics of those beliefs. The final mental resolution of religion can have profound effects on individuals and their social relationships, but it does not affect the daily earthly events very much, nor does it affect the population of a heaven or hell. I do profess to be a Non-Traditionalist in religious thinking and life style as well. I do however conform to most social rules, particularly if I agree with them.

I can find no rationale to convince me that religion is the only part of my existence that I should not be able to question for a better understanding. It has to be accountable to some logic greater than the concept of "Faith". Science throws out or revises old concepts as it learns more and enhances them with new findings and interpretations. Christianity rejects the efforts of proofs and remains stagnated with two-thousand-year old concepts. It has not convinced me of its authenticity.

I fully recognize that Christianity has provided many people a highly valued system of moral and ethical codes which have in turn provided considerable comfort, guidance and emotional relief.

I am closer to being a Unitarian than any other religion that I know of right now. If I had to declare a personal religion, it would be one of my own definition, something like "A Reverence for the Continuity of all Nature." Unitarian Universalism provides me with an opportunity to nurture a Nontraditional philosophy. I am able to share my views with like-minded people, and I appreciate that.

Reader Response
Did you like this publication? Was it helpful to you? What elements do you agree with? In what ways do you have a different view? You may send your comments and thoughts to Dan Pierce at dpierce@uunhf.org.

Copyright ©1999 Northern Hills Fellowship