Since your Pizza People seem so intrigued by "A Religion For A New Age," I thought they might be interested in reading a few excerpts from some of my other published works that deal with humanism.
John J. Dunphy
"The concept of a Supreme Being who childishly demands to be constantly placated by prayers and sacrifices and dispenses justice like some corrupt petty judge whose decisions may be swayed by a bit of well-timed flattery should be relegated to the trash bin of history, along with the belief in a flat earth and the notion that diseases are caused by demonic possession. Ironically, the case for the involuntary retirement of God may have been stated best by one Saul or Paul of Tarsus, a first century tentmaker and Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, who wrote, 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.' (I Corinthians 13:11). Those words are no less relevant today than they were some two thousand years ago."
- John J. Dunphy
"The Serpent and the Tower"
The American Rationalist, March-April 1985
(This essay was a winner in The Humanist magazine's Second Annual North American Essay Contest)
"Have I mellowed over the past 11 years? Of course, who hasn't? But have I repudiated or even questioned the basic tenets of 'A Religion For A New Age"? No, nor can I envision myself ever doing so. How do I respond to the fundamentalists who are so incensed by the essay? If they have the decency to confront me to my face instead of sending anonymous hate-letters, I usually say something to the effect that Pat Buchanan was right at the 1992 Republican National Convention when he stated that a cultural civil war rages across America. While the struggle is certainly quite complex and multi-faceted, I continue, a significant aspect of it is comprised of the conflict between the totalitarian Christianity of the Radical Right and the force of humanism. And then I add, 'But here's something that Mr. Buchanan neglected to mention in his address: humanism is going to win.' "
- John J. Dunphy
"Dunphy Strikes Again"
Secular Humanist Bulletin
Summer 1994
"There nothing detached or wimpy about the kind of humanism I advocated in 'A Religion For A New Age' and other writings. It's a fighting philosophy that recognizes that this life is all we have, so we had damn well better make the most of it by working to build the kind of world where poverty, war, bigotry and every other evil that progressives have battled through the ages have no place....the kind of world where totalitarian religionists never succeed in establishing theocracies that substitute scripture for science and dogma for reason."
- John J. Dunphy
"No Milk-and-Water Faith Indeed"
Free Inquiry
Fall 2002