#255 | Christine Denario | Add "Reason" to Values

2023 Article II Amendment Idea Submissions Amendment Ideas
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Submission 255
Christine Denario
The Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill

What is your suggestion or idea?

Value to add: Reason

Reason: We appreciate that we are privileged to bear witness to the mysteries of life and the universe by our capacity to objectively observe. We treasure our ability to thoughtfully discern facts. We responsibly utilize the processes of science and reasoning to guide our relationships with one another and with the interconnected web of existence.

What is the reason for your amendment idea?

Unitarian Universalism as a faith tradition is distinguished by its ability to discern and embrace multiple sources of wisdom, and to balance the influences of rationality and spirituality. It thus creates a spiritual home that is welcoming to humanists, scientists, and nontheists, as well as to those who resonate with mystical, theistic, and heritage-based faith traditions. The addition of the value of Reason to those currently articulated in Section C-2.2 fills the gap left by the omission of science from our statement of values. The absence of reason from human discourse facilitates the emergence of irrationality (as is often evidenced in our current political climate), which is not compatible with the ““free and responsible search for truth and meaning,”” that has long been espoused by UUism. Reason is a fundamental value that is consistent with previous iterations of our shared ethic. Reason should be included in our next articulation of that shared ethic to assure that science and rationality continue to be welcomed in our faith tradition.

Have you discussed this idea with your congregation or other UUs?

I have discussed this idea with the UUs who are closest to me, and they are in support of this proposal. My congregation has not yet discussed the Article II revision, but I wanted to get this idea submitted for discussion before the deadline. I hope you appreciate my reasoning :wink:

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I believe “reason”, when used as a verb, is an important aspect to my experience as a UU.
To reason is to make sense of what we take in, to understand those around us, and to find common ground within differing points of view.

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Reasoning is what we’re doing on this discussion forum! Thanks for your comment.

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I really appreciate the idea of including reason.

At the same time, I also wonder if “our capacity to objectively observe” actually exists. Sometimes the idea that we “objectively observe” can interfere with our ability to acknowledge our own (and many) subjectivities that constantly shape both our observations as well as our immediate and long-term interpretations thereof.

Secondly, I question the proposition that “irrationality” seems incompatible with the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Does not such a search imply the ability (perhaps inevitably) to wander across a wide variety of terrain including that which many might not deem rational? Indeed, Einstein didn’t find aspects of quantum physics rational (or acceptable). Where does that leave us our search?

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Thanks for your comments, Anthony. I appreciate your musings on the notion of our ability to “objectively observe.” I wonder if a better phrase might be to “critically think?”
Point taken on how we manage to wander into potentially irrational territory when we search for truth. Do you have any suggestions on how I might better emphasize the “responsible” aspect of that search for truth and meaning? That’s really what I was going for.
I welcome ideas to refine and revise this proposal of an additional Value of Reason to find what fully resonates with UUs. As the proposed Value of Transformation states, “never complete and never perfect.” So, let’s revise! I’ll appreciate your help.

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Thank you, Christine, for your response and thoughts. I do like “critically think” (it reminds me of Noam Chomsky’s preferred term “critical inquiry”).

“Do you have any suggestions on how I might better emphasize the ‘responsible’ aspect of that search for truth and meaning? That’s really what I was going for.”

I hear you but I don’t have a solution. Probably because I see the matter essentially as resolved as much as one can get with the original formulation: “We affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” with “responsible” admittedly carrying a lot of weight there but ostensibly sufficient. (Same goes for the revised version “We covenant to learn from one another in our free and responsible search for truth and meaning”).

In the end, I believe we really only have and bear that responsibility in each dialogue, each rumination, each study session, each sharing circle, each decision-making process that we participate in. We cannot rely on any text—not even guiding Principles—to resolve the matter for us. The current focus on revising the Principles may rekindle that illusory (irrational?) hope but I suspect that the actual wording that UUs choose matters far less than the norms and institutions that UUs build, repair, and maintain to facilitate critical thinking and fruitful exchange. (For example, this very forum—and we didn’t need more than the original Seven Principles to get us here!)

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I do like the idea of emphasizing “Reason” either in its own value or emphasized more within the other values, as suggested in suggestion #164. “Critical thinking” is also OK but less reflective of our worthy traditions, the ones we value and want to encourage and preserve. Our history as UUs was shaped profoundly by those came from the “The Age of Reason”, not “The Age of Critical Thinking”.

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So, if I had a “do over” option on this thread, I might replace “objectively observe” with “critically think” in my amendment proposal, and delete “The absence of reason from human discourse facilitates the emergence of irrationality (as is often evidenced in our current political climate), which is not compatible with the ““free and responsible search for truth and meaning,”” that has long been espoused by UUism,” and instead suggest a line from Melissa Egbertson’s commentary that came after your reply, Anthony. She says, “Our history as UUs was shaped profoundly by those came from the “The Age of Reason.”
Thanks for this thoughtful dialogue on the value of Reason. I welcome the feedback!

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Hi Melissa, thanks for your response. Please note in my above response to Anthony that I appreciate your discerning comment, "Our history as UUs was shaped profoundly by those came from the “The Age of Reason”. If there is some way to revise my response to “What is the reason for your amendment or idea?”, would it be OK with you if I used your phrase, instead?

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Yes, please feel free to take whatever inspiration you do from what I wrote.

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@cdenario I agree, too, with Melissa that UUs have historically drawn inspiration from the “Age of Reason” or “Enlightenment” (even if I find both terms problematic as they center European “development” in a very specific point in time coinciding with colonialism and the corresponding false dichotomy of “European reason” and “savage superstition” in which the unjustified belief in the former helped provide ideological fuel for domination and extremely un-reason-able institutions, beliefs, and practices against those characterized as the latter). In that light, it could make sense to reference “Age of Reason” if one wants to recall that history.

I would note, however, that in another thread on this very topic, @JoAnn Mulready-Shick #164 proposed to include “reason” by writing in the value section now titled “Pluralism”:
“We embrace our differences and commonalities with Love, curiosity, reason, and respect.”
Perhaps that too might satisfy people’s wishes to include the term?

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Yes, Anthony, you make another good point on the “Age of Reason” reference to European reason as a rationale for colonialism. Perhaps the proposal would do better without that reference.

I have also been watching JoAnn Mulready-Shick’s post #164 and do appreciate it. However, I am still convinced that Reason is an important additional value not captured by the existing proposed values. None of the discussions in this forum would be taking place without some form of reasoning going on, and so I cite that as evidence that Reason is a popular and integral value to UUism.

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I agree that science and reason are critic sources of inspiration for spiritual UU feeling. It is critical that atheists, humanists, agnostics, scientists, students and many, many others in a secular society have somewhere to go to talk about the fact that reality itself is worthy of our awe and our concerted investigations.

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Indeed! Hard to argue with that, ha ha. But then once we try to define reason, it might get stickier. It reminds me of a point raised in a different thread ( #17) about the benefit of restricting ourselves to 7 Principles (activity) rather than spilling over into discourse about values (beliefs).

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Wow, Amanda, you nailed that! That is what I hoped to express when I wrote:

Of course, as I mentioned to Anthony above, I’m now thinking that I might want to replace “objectively observe” with the phrase, “critically think.”
In any case, you capture my own sentiment when you say,

For example, the more I learn in the field of biology, the more I marvel at the intricacies of the mechanisms that keep our living, breathing planet as dynamic as it is.
Thanks so much for your comments!

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Yes, defining each of the proposed values has been sticky. Unlimited pluralism, for example, could be argued to require inclusion of all ideologies, including such unsavory “-isms” as racism, terrorism, etc. I came to identify with UUism because all of the existing Principles and all existing Sources resonate with me.
My proposal of an additional value of Reason has been my constructive effort to resolve my emotional reaction to learning that the Principles and Sources would be abandoned if the proposed Article II changes are approved. My initial, purely emotional, reactions to this proposal were sadness and panic at the thought of losing the source of my UU identity. It has been through my capacity to reason with myself that I have chosen to make a solid effort at accepting the proposed changes by adding the value of Reason to this discussion. It is through my capacity to reason that I have chosen to embrace the value of Transformation by working within the new proposed values, rather than against them. Without my willingness to reason through this newly proposed paradigm, I would simply reject the Article II proposal altogether based entirely on my emotional response.
I see the value of Reason as a corollary to that of Transformation. How can we embody “Openness to change” (as the proposed value of Transformation points out “is fundamental to our Unitarian and Universalist heritages”) without valuing the usefulness of Reason to motivate the effective response to what our emotions are trying to tell us?

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@cdenario

Yes, defining each of the proposed values has been sticky. Unlimited pluralism, for example, could be argued to require inclusion of all ideologies, including such unsavory “-isms” as racism, terrorism, etc. I came to identify with UUism because all of the existing Principles and all existing Sources resonate with me.

As I understand it the revised version would automatically reject “racism, terrorism, etc.” in the “Justice” clause either directly or indirectly by opposing “all forms of systemic oppression.” So it seems like maybe another route to get to the same (or similar) spot?

[Weirdly enough this forum sent me an automated message suggesting I write directly to you instead of posting yet another comment publicly but then did not allow me to do so. “An error occurred: You are not permitted to view the requested resource”. Which didn’t even make sense. Talk about “irrational”… just wait until “rational” AI begins to steer most public discourse, ha ha! Anyway, I’ve subsequently redacted my longer intended commentary. I’ll just conclude with Phil Ochs’ “The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles”]

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Thanks so much to everyone who has contributed their thoughts to this discussion! This promises to be an interesting year for those who will be attending GA!

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You are right. It is not possible for one person to “be objective.” However, we can collectively approach the truth (objective reality) if we use our observations and our reason together to make sense of our world. This is actually what science is all about – it is not about one individual being objective. It is about a community of individuals who share scientific values such as rigor, humility, curiosity, truthfulness. Jonathan Rauch, in his book The Constitution of Knowledge makes an accessible and compelling case for this collective understanding of “objectivity.”

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@Janet Thank you, Janet. I appreciate this point. I also believe that stories and practices of “science” offer many useful tools in various areas of life.

At the same time, the quest for the security of “objectivity” seems more emotional than rational. We very much want to believe in “objectivity” and yet keep finding ourselves mired in persistent “wicked problems”. After all, the issues that UUs debate, for example, tend to turn not on questions of math or falsifiable experiments but on more diificult and nuanced conversations (such as this one). I don’t imagine that placing “reason” or “science” among UU values will erase these difficulties (but this does not mean that I oppose its inclusion).

Also, the idea of “reality-based communities” seems to simply kick the can of “objectivity” further up the hill to the level of “collective understanding” without resolving the same issues of cultural bias, disciplinary limitations, and implicit subjectivity at all levels of research that pertain to individuals.

The list of values you cited, for example, implicitly and ordinarily also includes Aristotelian logic because it seems so obvious and basic. And yet, many cultures use non-Aristotelian logic (including, for example, contradiction), bio-regional relational concepts, and entirely different language configurations that re-organize not only conclusions of our observations but what and how we observe. (Do we see race, numbers, sex, sanctity, taboos, categories of life, and, if so, how many and which ones?).

Physicist David Bohm saw Native American languages as better suited to describe quantum “reality” than English. Yet, without escaping the subjective bubble of English (and countless corresponding assumptions), we cannot even see that which we don’t see— including the ways that our very language shapes our supposedly “objective” understandings (whether individual or collective).

If interested, Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methologies and Timothy Fitzgerald’s Discourse on Civility and Barbarity give nice introductions to similar critiques of “objectivity.”