HAM Members & Friends:

Our annual HAM Picnic and Gabfest is approaching:

Saturday, August 16, 2008; 1:00pm

THE GERSTEINS
400 HIGHLAND ST., WESTON, MA
(781) 891-8667 or (339) 927-1020

See full entry for travel instructions.

We guarantee great weather, based on past experience. If wrong, we’ll retreat inside and still have fun. We’ll have the usual beef, turkey and vegetarian burgers, regular and fat-free hot dogs, and fruit and sherbet desert. Please contact Tom prior to the 16th to register (by using his new gmail address above or call 617—547-1497) and plan to bring an appetizer, salad, fruit, or whatever. Please, if you are driving, bring an aluminum chair. We’ll have frigid alcohol-free beer & soft drinks available.

If you arrive early, please pull deep into the driveway behind the house so there will be room for everyone. If you need transportation, let Tom know if you need a pick-up at Riverside MBTA Station or at Kendall (Weston) Station on the North Station-Fitchburg Line.

See full entry for driving directions.

Tom suggests, for the PROGRAM, that we answer the question, “What Do I Believe?” It’s a picnic, now, so let’s not get too heavy. But we can imagine the question coming up at a school reunion. What words would you choose? Michael Shermer, editor of The Skeptic, answered the question his own way, as a person versed in science. Imagine your own answer. Read the rest of this entry.

You are cordially invited to our Summer Solstice Luncheon on Saturday, June 14 at 1:00 PM. As in past years, it will take place at the Royal East Restaurant, 782 Main Street, Cambridge.

It is important that you make your reservations by telephone before June 12 with a call to our number, (617— 547-1497). Leave your name and telephone, and we’ll confirm within days. Now would be just the time to dial us, (or use email). When you arrive present your check, (for $21.00 per person), and choose your seat.

We always have a good time at these luncheons; it’s a real pleasure to greet old friends and new. And the Chinese food is varied and plentiful.

Afterward we will hear Dr. Abby Hafer, an expert in Human Anatomy, present a special view of Evolution which she calls: Un-Intelligent Design. She examines five blunders in the "design" of the human body which confound the notion of a planned creation. Funny and surprising.

A true punk-rock philosopher will perform and speak about his life as a humanist musician and scientist! Greg Graffin, the lead singer and songwriter for seminal punk band Bad Religion, will receive the 2008 Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism. Graffin, who is also a life sciences professor at UCLA and an expert in religious belief among scientists, will speak about his experience in music and science and his views on humanism in general. The award, presented last year to novelist Salman Rushdie, is sponsored by the Humanist Chaplaincy and Harvard Secular Society. Graffin will follow his acceptance speech with an acoustic performance and a question and answer session. Tickets are available now from the Harvard Box Office: $5 for students, $10 for the general public.

Since forming Bad Religion in 1980 while still in high school, Greg Graffin and Bad Religion have recorded fourteen albums and toured extensively around the world. Hits such as 1988’s Suffer and 1994’s Stranger than Fiction have kept them at the forefront of punk music for almost three decades.

Dan Barker, leading spokesman for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, will speak in Phillips Brooks House, Harvard Yard, on Sunday, April 20 at 1:30 in the afternoon. It will be a talk on "Fighting the Imperial Presidency - Keep Church and State Separate."

His organization, for decades now, has constantly fought the right to be free from government's support of religion, both in the media and through lower jurisdictions up to the Supreme Court.

Visit FFRF.org for an amazing education; their radio programs will enlighten you. Dan Barker will also entertain us at the piano. Attendance is without charge and parking in the Law School lot is free.

Happy Spring from HAM! We have a special announcement in advance of our next newsletter to add to your personal calendars:

The First Annual HAM Spring Equinox Brunch

Sunday March 30, 2008 we invite HAM members and guests to celebrate the arrival of Spring at our first Equinox Brunch. We will gather at Changsho Restaurant (1712 Mass. Ave between Harvard and Porter Square) at 1:00 pm for food and good spirits. Changsho serves an all-you-care-to-eat Asian buffet including Chinese dishes and sushi for $18.95 a person (drinks are extra), and has a semi-private area with large tables we have reserved for the occasion. Payment by cash or check only, please.

Changsho has its own parking lot for customers across the street from the restaurant. There is street parking on Mass, Ave. as well. Please let Tom Ferrick know you are attending by Saturday morning, March 29 so we can fine-tune the reservations.

HAM is following up on our successful Winter and Summer Solstice luncheons in Central Square to add to our Humanist celebrations of the turning of the seasons, without supernaturalism. Please consider attending what promises to be a casual and very social Humanist celebration.

Bill O’Reilly rails against “secular progressives” nightly, and it has become fashionable among the far-right intelligentsia to bash secularism as morally bankrupt. In this speech, Rob Boston will explain why the secular state is the only vehicle that can ensure religious and philosophical freedom for all. Boston will discuss how an official policy of government secularism, far from being hostile to religion, is in many ways the best friend faith ever had.

Robert Boston is assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the assistant editor of AU's monthly magazine Church & State.

Boston, who joined the Americans United staff in 1987, is recognized as a leading writer and researcher on church-state topics and an articulate advocate for the separation of church and state He covers the U.S. Supreme Court for Church & State and has attended oral arguments in every church-state case at the high court since 1988.

Boston is the author of three books: Close Encounters with the Religious Right: Journeys into the Twilight Zone of Religion and Politics (Prometheus Books, 2000); The Most Dangerous Man in America? Pat Robertson and the Rise of the Christian Coalition (Prometheus Books, 1996) and Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State (Prometheus Books, 1993; second edition, 2003).

DIRECTIONS TO THE SCIENCE CENTER/LAW SCHOOL PARKING LOT

From Kirkland Street turn right onto Oxford Stret. Take the entrance road on your left at the Maxwell Dworkin Building, (across from the Museum of Natural History). Take first left and follow it to the parking lot closest to Littauer and the Science Center. Parking is free for guests of the Humanist Chaplaincy.

Do you have any doubt that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" are methods of torture? That they can cause severe and often irreversable harm, mentally and physically, that under American law, they are war crimes and that the use of torture against detainees in US custody has degraded the discipline, traditions, and honor of our armed services and our country? The counter argument is an obvious one – torture may save innumerable lives. Let’s engage in this debate as if we were policy makers for the US administration and then decide, as citizens, what we ought to do.

Nathaniel A. Raymond is currently the Senior Communications Strategist at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an organization that shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.  In this position he is responsible for crafting all communications strategies for PHR's No Torture Campaign and other work on armed conflict, as well as detention and asylum policy.

He has lectured on humanitarian and human rights issues, particularly famine and conflict on the Horn of Africa, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Harvard University, and other graduate programs dealing with international issues. (Editor’s Note: Nathaniel Raymond, in a long conversation by telephone, outlined his argument against torture, not just philosophically, but historically and politically, naming clearly those agencies and persons who have violated American principles and traditions, going back to our Revolution).

Also - Late last year the House of Representatives passed important anti-torture legislation as Section 327 of H.R. 2082, the Intelligence Authorization bill.  Section 327 would require all elements of the intelligence community, including the CIA, to abide by the restrictions in the Army Field Manual while conducting interrogations.  The Army Field Manual prohibits torture and many of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" being used by the CIA.

Notice to Members – We will hold our Annual Meeting, same day, Feb. 10, at 12 Noon, in Phillips Brooks House. We will have lunch (thanks to Joe Gerstein) while we order our business affairs and plan for the coming year. Then, promptly at 1:15 pm, we will walk over to Hall D in the Science Center.

Directions to the Harvard Science Center / Law School Parking Lot (free for event)

From Kirkland Street turn right onto Oxford Stret. Take the entrance road on your left at the Maxwell Dworkin Building, (across from the Museum of Natural History). Take first left and follow it to the parking lot closest to Littauer and the Science Center. Parking is free for guests of the Humanist Chaplaincy.

Jianli Yang, a well-known Chinese dissident who was imprisoned by the Beijing government for five terrible years, will speak about human rights in his address titled, "Ordeal and Hope: My Advocacy for Democracy in China."

You can read more about his ordeal on the website set up to petition for his release: yangjianli.com

Mr. Yang 's close friendship with Tom Ferrick goes back to the nineties when he earned a second doctorate at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and started his non-violent organization, The Foundation for China in the 21st Century. He is also a good friend of Rep. Barney Frank.

Mr. Yang will speak on Sunday, December 9, at 1:30 PM in Hall A, at Harvard's Science Center. (December 10 is Human Rights Day).

Parking will be available nearby in the Law School Lot.