MY LIFE AND BELIEFS

AS I GROW NEARER TO MY OWN DEATH.

FROM FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN

T0

EVOLUTIONARY HUMANIST:

By

REV. DOUGLAS KENNETH PEARY

All of my ancestors in the 1600’s and 1700’s

came from England and settled in the Boston
area, Eastern Massachusetts, which later
became Southern Maine, and in Vermont. Some
of my ancestors fought In King Philips Indian
War in New England, the Revolutionary War and
the Civil War. We are distant cousins to Robert
E. Peary, the North Pole Explorer, and his
American and Inuit descendents.

All branches of my Great Grandparents and

their families moved to Aroostook County in
Northern, Maine in the mid 1800’s after Maine
became a State and opened to settlement. All of
those I know of were farmers. One of my great
grandmothers, from Vermont, was a cousin to U.
S. President Millard Fillmore, a Unitarian. Most
of the recent generations were American
Baptists, Advent Christians, with a few
Methodists earlier.

There were relatively few families in our

area of Washburn, Woodland, Perham, Caribou,
Mapleton, and Presque Isle, and they were large
families. There was intermarriage of these
families so I am related to many of the relatively
few families from the area.

Roy Peary, my grandfather and Lorena

Blackstone, my Grandmother, were raised in
Perham Maine. He went to Washington State
and worked in lumber camps. He returned to
Maine with a money belt full of gold coin,
married Lorena and purchased the farm in
Washburn and Woodland in 1904. They primarily
raised potatoes. My Father, Kenneth Roy Peary,
took over the farm, where we both grew up. Dad
was the last of many generations of American
farmers in our family. He was also a State of
Maine Potato Inspector for many years. He died
at home in 1974, at age 63, of Prostate cancer.

My Great Grandfather, Lorenzo Dow Hobbs,

served in the Civil War and later farmed and
made wagons and windmills. He was named
after Methodist Evangelist Lorenzo Dow.
Lorenzo, Jr., my grandfather, grew up in Caribou,
helped his father, later owned a General Motors
Car Dealership, ran his farm and set up a
Blacksmith shop. My Grandmother, Mabel
Blackstone grew up in Washburn. They farmed
in Caribou. My Grand mothers where very
distant cousins. My mother, Dorothy Mabel
Hobbs, was the last of many generations of
farmer’s daughter’s and a farmer’s wife. She
died in 2005.

Dad and Mom were intelligent, loving, farm

people with a basic rural high school education.
As I grew up I experienced the wonderful love
and care of my parents, family, and many other
wonderful people in the American Baptist Church
and then the Conservative Baptist church, with
what I took to be, the love of God. I felt
completely loved and believed in God’s love
totally, feeling at the time that I was safe and
secure forever.

I had severe migraine headaches from

childhood, like my mother. I was unable to play
hard like other children, work much, or do sports
because I became sick, with headache, physical
collapse, fever, heaving, and nightmares. Heat
alone made me sick. The migraines continued
weekly into my mid 40’s and occasionally since
then. My sister Janice had them worse. I read a
lot, played as I could, loved farm life and
animals, and was generally happy.
 At age 9, at the Aroostook Bible camp in
Allagash, Maine, I confessed, in prayer, that I
was a sinner and asked God to save me, in Jesus
name, from eternal hell. I had an emotional
experience, from years of religious hype, which
convinced me that I was “born again,” “saved.” I
now know that this is the same ecstasy anyone
experiences anytime we have a tremendous
insight into something we see as wonderful.

We were taught that anyone who didn’t

believe in being born again and ask God to save
them, in Jesus name, would go to hell. This
included all humanity.

I committed my life to God, hoping to please

God. I accepted it completely until I was a
teenager, reading the Bible through, several
times, memorizing the books of the Bible, verses
of Scripture and many Hymns. I began to
wonder more and more strongly about why the
creator of all people would send most people to
eternal hell of brimstone and fire, and why so
many strange and terrible things were in the
Word of God. I already had migraines, didn’t
want hell, and I didn’t know any freethinkers.

I spent several years from age 17 to 27,

mostly in Massachusetts, training to be a
mechanic, Auto and truck parts man and
working many jobs, torn emotionally between
wanting to please my parents and the loving God
I had learned about, and wondering why God
could do such terrible things. I married at age
20, and later attended Elohim Bible Institute in
Castile, New York for a year. I was told I would
not make it in the ministry married to my then
wife. She had issues but I was offended. I left
Castile and attended Thames Valley Bible School
in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada for a year. I left
there due to many doubts.

I considered divorce but feared it would hurt

my parents because marriage was, ‘til death do
us part.” Finally I informed my father that I was
getting a divorce. He said he didn’t know how I
stood it so long and he would have done it much
sooner. I divorced at age 26.

I wondered why God would order Moses in

Numbers 31 to tell the Jews to destroy a whole
nation of people and kill men, and boys, and
women who had slept with men, while keeping
many of them for slaves, and to keep the girls
who had not slept with men for themselves.
Their enemies did the same things to them. I
wondered why God would favor, as in
Deuteronomy 21, having children stoned for
stubbornness. I wondered why God would
approve, as in II Kings 2, the Prophet Elisha
calling out bears to kill children for calling him
baldhead.

I wondered why God would cause a flood to

destroy all life, by drowning, in absolute fear and
terror, except those on Noah’s Ark. I wondered
why God would tell the Jews, in Psalms, to take
infants and dash out their brains, and much
more.

I wondered why Jesus, in the New

Testament, would say to the majority of the
human race, “The Son of man shall send forth his
angels and gather all that offend and cast them
into a furnace of fire,” and continues on about
them suffering with wailing and gnashing of
teeth. He also said, “Depart from me, ye cursed
into everlasting fire, if thine hand offend thee,
cut it off, rather than having two hands to go into
hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched.

I received counseling from a more liberal

Christian. I told him I could not understand why
God would send so many people to an eternal
hell. He responded, “Douglas, I think in the long
run we will all be OK.” For some reason that
unlocked my mind. I had a very good year and
then relapsed in fear of being wrong. Finally, I
began to have relief emotionally. I don’t blame
my loving parents or non-scholar believers for
what misguided theologians and ministers
taught them.

At age 29, in December 1971, I discovered

the writings of philosopher Bertrand Russell,
“Why I am not a Christian,” and felt like I had
been reborn because I finally found someone
who could not accept certainty of knowledge of
God. I heard Unitarian Universalist (UU)
Minister, Nathaniel Lauriat, from Hartford,
Connecticut on television in January 1972.

I soon found the UU Society in Springfield,

Massachusetts, and began attending there. Rev.
Thomas Ahlburn called himself an Atheist and
was quoting Bertrand Russell. On February 12,
1972, at the church, I met a wonderful woman,
Joyce Lee Martin, who would become my wife
and mother of my children Brett and Brita.

Joyce had a Masters degree and put me

through college where I studied Business
Administration, philosophy, Psychology and more
and graduated from American International
College, (AIC), Springfield, in 1977 at age 34. I
met Dr. Lawrence Habermehl, my college
philosophy professor, at AIC. He introduced me
to Humanism. Because of our beliefs he became
my best friend.

Joyce and I spent one year at Andover

Newton Theological School in Newton Centre,
Massachusetts. I discovered William James
book “The Will to Believe,” which convinced me
that my thinking had been formed as a “sin sick
soul.” This helped turn me on a more positive
outlook of life. I found great satisfaction in
comforting adults and children.

I was student minister to Rev. Clark Welles

at the UU Society in West Newton,
Massachusetts and a student Chaplain at Boston
City Hospital on a ward with cancer patients,
gunshot and knifing victims and children with
life threatening brain tumors, water on the brain
and other problems.

The Christian language bothered me even

though it was non-fundamentalist. I decided I
needed a UU Humanist education instead of a
liberal Christian education. We moved to
Berkeley, California in September 1977, where I
attended the UU Starr King School for Religious
Leadership. Brett was born on October 28, 1977.
 We attended the Unitarian Society in
Oakland California where I was student minister
to Rev. Arnold Crompton. I was a student
Chaplain on the psychiatric ward at Contra
Costa County Hospital in California. I had a
wonderful experience of helping a physically
strong man discover why he was so emotionally
traumatized, to help his healing.

My speech Professor at Starr King, Humanist

Leader Ward Tabler, also a Professor of speech
at the University of California, and his wife
Barbara, were a great support to us at that time.
He introduced me to the writings of Robert
Ingersoll and much more about Humanism. The
rest of the school taught anything but
Humanism, in a New Age way, that seemed as
odd to me as fundamentalism. I obtained my
Masters degree in ministry from Starr King in
1979.

I was ordained as a UU minister in 1979 and

was certified as a Humanist Celebrant (minister).
I found it sad in those early years that I could no
longer believe in my wonderful Savior and Lord,
Jesus Christ, or in a loving God. Brita was born
on October 12, 1980.

I realized at that time that my education had

been more to learn what I could believe rather
than the need to be a full time minister. I did not
just deny the existence of Gods created by
humans. Secular thought is a large part of my
life.

I became a committed Religious Humanist,

as UU Humanist, Rev. Dr. William R. Murry,
explains in his book, “Reason and Reverence:
Religious Humanism for the Twenty-First
Century.” I believe in the use of Science and
Reason as well as the development of uplifted
Human emotions through community, education,
nature, art, poetry, celebrations, ceremonies,
and much more.

I have continued to study and learn. I began

working for Social Security in 1980 to get a
transfer to the National Labor Relations Board
(the NLRB) as a Federal labor investigator, in
1982. I worked there until December 1984. At
that time I transferred to the NLRB in Hartford
Connecticut. We attended the UU Society in
Manchester, Connecticut and raised our children
there. I am happy that they and their committed
mates are all strong skeptics today.

I studied the theories of scientists about the

Universe, the world, biology, evolution and
history. I found that scientific theories are not
just general theories as used by the public but
are backed by facts which reach the best level
of truth humanity can achieve. I found that most
scientists believe in evolution. Faith has no
theories and no facts. I must believe what the
evidence of the natural world reveals. I
developed peace of mind with my knowledge of
the natural world. The world reveals itself
through nature, and nature does not reveal a
creation or a God.

Far a while it made me sad to know I would

never see my deceased loved ones again. When
I realized this had never been an option in a
natural world I slowly gained peace of mind that
there was no hell or heaven, and that the peace
of eternal death is just the end of life in a natural
world and none of us will suffer anymore.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who gave up belief in

God and immortality, said it is only worthwhile
concentrating on what is excellent. Reject what
we don’t need. He believed the wonders of life
are revealed through science and nature, and
the inner life is revealed through the senses. He
said the only way to understand history is to
imagine everyone from the past in the present.
“When a thought of Plato becomes a thought to
me, when a truth that fired the soul of St. John,
fires mine, time is no more.” I like these ideas.

I have spent years studying the works of

Scholars of Higher Criticism of the Bible. For the
last two hundred years and more, the Bible has
been studied critically the way scholars study
the writings of Shakespeare and other literature.
The things I learned increased my doubt that
God had any part in the matter at all. I learned
that critical thinkers have discovered that much
of the Bible has been written, in the same
sections, in different writing styles, with
different words for God from different time
periods, such as Jehovah or Yahweh. Someone
had combined older thoughts.

The first 5 books of the Bible, which are the

first 5 books of the Jewish Bible, the
Pentateuch, were supposed to have been written
by Moses. They were written 100’s of years
after Moses, referring to Moses in the past tense
and referring to cities and coins that didn’t exist
until hundreds of years after Moses.

The New Testament was created by men,

from only a few of the numerous books written
about the Life of Jesus, hundreds of years after
Jesus lived, written in the names of long dead
followers of Jesus. I learned that the books that
were eventually included in the New Testament
were a selection of only a few, from numerous
documents that were written about the events.
Many books were written by more than one
person, or by someone different than historically
thought and usually hundreds of years after the
events.

Emperor Constantine murdered his wife and

son in 325 CE and then called the first Christian
Council at Nice that year, where it was decided,
by men, that Christ was God, not just a man.
Theodosius called the Council at Constantinople
in 381 CE, where it was decided, by men, that
the Holy Ghost came from God the Father.
Theodosius II ordered the death of Hypatia in
415 CE. He established a Council at Ephesus
that year, where it was decided by men, that the
Virgin Mary was the Mother of God. There were
other Councils in 451, 680 1274 CE and other
dates, where men decided the actions of the
Biblical God. Protestants later dropped some of
those views and molded the rest to their needs.

I have a full Presentation, called, “God’s

Word?, None!” with sources, on various
Scriptures. Some of the greatest sources of
Higher Criticism are available by looking up on
the Internet Secular Encyclopedia sources, the
writings of Professor Bart Ehrman, whose most
resent book is “Forged,” about the forgery of the
books of the Bible. They provide extensive
sources. The Internet is also flooded with
fundamentalist views of Higher Criticism burying
the real materials for thinkers. and Professor
Tyler Roberts, “Skeptics and Believers.”

I wanted the beliefs of Humanist thinkers

where I could get a lot of information quickly as I
wished I could have had when I was young. In
1986, I continued studying the beliefs of
Humanistic scientists, philosophers, Poets,
Comedians and others, so that I could have the
best thoughts of great skeptics. I began writing
presentations of these Humanist Heroes, Robert
Ingersoll, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Paine,
Voltaire, Einstein, Asimov, Sagan, Walt Whitman,
Steve Allen, and others.

I attended the first meeting of the,

“Humanists of Central Connecticut,” at the UU
Society of New Haven, in Hamden, Connecticut
in May 1989, and became a charter member.
The word Central was eventually removed. The
founders were Dr. David and June Schafer and
Rev. Dr. Robert and Joan Rafford.

I have been Vice-President for many years,

and have served as President and Treasurer. I
became an active speaker about Humanist
Heroes at Humanist and UU Societies
throughout the New England States. I perform
weddings, memorials and other celebratory
services.

Joyce discovered in about 1987 that she had

breast cancer. She would talk about the pain
and discomfort but never seemed to be
complaining, even though going through surgery
and much Chemotherapy. Her motto from Ralph
Waldo Emerson was, “I am defeated all the time,
yet to victory I was born.” The cancer
eventually spread. Joyce died on November 26,
1996, at age 53, when Brita was 16 and Brett
was 19. It was a hard blow for all of us. I would
never have had our wonderful life, our children,
my education, or my research without her. We
struggled and finally overcame the worst of our
grief.

In April 2000, I met Gabriella, a multilingual,

Intellectual, Educator, and UU. She loves me,
patiently listens to my speeches, critiques them,
helps me to be a better person and helps keep
me sane through the struggles of life. She is
also a writer and published poet. We both speak
in UU Societies throughout the Northeast U. S.,
Canada and the Virgin Islands. In 2003 I
published my book, “Humanist Heroes,” which
has now been quoted on the Internet from eleven
Countries on three Continents.

Brita, age 30, in 2010, is now married to

Devin Chambers, a wonderful African American
man, who is like a son to me. They are both
Respiratory Therapists. Devin has a teenage son
Quinten, and a young daughter Renee. They had,
on April 29, 2011, a new brother, Jayse, a name
similar to Joyce.

Brett, age 33 is a Monbusho Scholar at

Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, on Scholarship
from the Country of Japan, where he will
graduate with a PhD in the School of Global
Environmental Studies in 2012. Brett has a
wonderful Japanese Girlfriend Yuri Iwataka.

I have never ceased my search for

knowledge and understanding. Read much of it
in my book. I am completing another book, to be
called “Humanist Heroes and More.”

I am grateful to my parents, Kenneth and

Dorothy; and my sisters Janice and Carolyn (all
deceased) for their love for me even though what
I believe as an adult is so different from what
they believed. I am grateful to Janice and her
husband Ira, who lived near me in recent years,
for their emotional closeness to me. I still have
a younger brother Darryl and his family.

I am a moral and ethical person based on

reason, Science and nature rather than on faith
in teachings of primitive men. I do not try to
convert people. It is their choice and it is a hard
choice because we Humanists do not offer
eternal life. We only offer honesty and truth as
we discover it through reason, research, and
science, while we live in wonder and awe of the
Universe, even if it ends for us all, individually,
with this life. I did not try to convert my family
because even if they had considered my views it
would be traumatic to lose faith in older years,
without time to readjust. Besides, anyone who
doesn’t believe as we do is not punished and
does not go to hell.

To me it is important to live by the evidence

about reality as we find it. My beloved wife
Joyce died. I grieve but I have not gone back to
Christianity or Theology because of her death. I
believe that this life is our only life and we
should be as happy as we can be while we are
here, without fear, doubt or panic. All of my
ancestors and most of the heroes died and I
have no reason to believe they are suffering. I
am at peace and death is only eternal peace.

The people who portrayed the God of the Old

and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the
Koran, and others, and those who teach them
literally as Gods word, instead of the word of
men just trying to make sense of the world, are
wrong because the God they claim orders killing,
killing and killing, slavery and prostituting, and
sends billions of people to hell for not accepting
it or not even knowing about it. This is evil.
These were people who wanted power over
everyone else. I don’t blame any God for this.
This sounds more like the works of sick-minded
men rather than of a God. I also do not blame all
believers for the works of the sick ones. There
are more good people of all faiths, and of
believers in a natural world, than there are sick-
minded people.

Let people choose these things as they like

but Science, Historical Research, and Reason,
convince me that the existence of a loving God
or creator God is completely improbable, and I
will not accuse any God of having anything to do
with these books, which are blaming God for the
work of these sick people.

As stated by Sir Isaac Newton, “If I have

learned anything it is because I have stood on
the shoulders of giants.” The Humanist Heroes
presented in my book “Humanist Heroes,” others
in “Humanist Heroes and More,” and numerous
others not presented there, are among our
examples of what we can believe. I am more
grateful than anyone could imagine with the
Humanist Heroes and other humanists and great
thinkers and skeptics of all time.

There are numerous heroes of humanity,

such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F.
Kennedy, Barak Obama, and many, many, others,
who believe in God but are still admired by me
and other humanists for their humanity. Most of
our great American forefathers, George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin
Franklin, and others, and later, Abraham Lincoln,
and many others are among our great Humanist
examples, who rejected Fundamentalism style
thinking and Orthodoxy, and are already well
known by humanity.

I am a UU Humanist. This means I am a

religious Humanist in the manner of the writings
of UU Professor, William R. Murry. Unitarian
Universalism is open to people of all beliefs to
the extent they allow others to search for the
truth through their own beliefs. Unitarian
Universalism is a place to question and search
for truth.

I did my searching in UU Societies, books,

the Internet, and Christian and UU Seminaries.
A searcher could not find their answers in
Humanism alone because they have to hear
many ideas before they realize why they could
be a Humanist. I found my answers. No one
can grow spiritually without a place to search.
Spirituality to a UU Humanist has nothing to do
with God. I am an Agnostic Humanist like David
Hume, Thomas Huxley, Robert Ingersoll, and
Bertrand Russell. They did not, and I do not,
believe in any of the gods of humanity. They
were not Atheists because they knew that no
matter how certain believers or unbelievers are,
they couldn’t demonstrate what the great
mystery was before the Universe.

Believers claim the Universe is too great to

exist without a creator. They have faith that
something greater than the Universe, NAMELY
GOD, can exist without a creator. This is very
puzzling. Everything in nature evolves from the
simple to the complex so how did God come to
exist, or exist eternally. How was GOD created?
If God can be eternal why can’t matter be
eternal?

Remember always that I never attack or

hate God or the average believer. I attack false
human religious teachings about God. More
emphatically, Fundamentalism, Orthodoxy, the
Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and
others are just books written by humans, with no
God or Angel taking part in the writing. There
have been many critical studies of these books
showing many errors and much evil; very ungod
like things for believers to blame on God.

Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy',

Philosopher Richard Rorty, a strict atheist,
answered with the words: “My sense of the holy
is bound up with the hope that some day my
remote descendants will live in a global
civilization in which love is pretty much the only
law." I agree with Rorty.

These words by Bertrand Russell say what I

believe better than I can say it.

“What I Live For!”

Three passions, intense and powerful, have

guided my thinking and my living: the necessity
of love, the desire for certainty in knowledge,
and sympathy, sometimes unbearable, for the
suffering of human beings and animals. These
passions, like high winds, have blown my
emotions in many directions, over a wide ocean
of loneliness, uncertainty and pain. I sought love
first because everything else is harder without
love. Without love there is a great loneliness due
to the uncertainty of knowledge and the
suffering that goes on around us.

I also sought love because it brings ecstasy,

ecstasy so great I would often have sacrificed
all of the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I
sought love, finally, because in the union of love,
with Joyce and Gabriella, I have found, in
miniature, and love for my children and their
families, a vision of the heaven that saints and
poets have imagined.

With equal passion I sought knowledge. I

have wished to understand my human
companions. I have wished to know the world
and the universe. I have studied world religions,
philosophy, the sciences, sociology and
psychology. I have found some answers and
raised many questions. I have learned to trust
science and reason with caution, embracing
evolution but rejecting evils like nuclear
weapons. I have learned to enjoy skepticism and
emotions, believing in morality and decency,
rejecting the evils of theistic certainty and
teachings about hell and sin.

Love and knowledge, so far as possible,

have led me upwards toward the heavens. The
suffering of humans and animals has always
brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of
pain reverberate in my emotions. Children in
poverty and abuse, victims tormented by
oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden
to their children, and the whole world of
loneliness, poverty and pain make a mockery of
what life should be. I long to alleviate the evil,
but I cannot, and I too suffer. However, even
though I am often defeated, I was born to win,
and I do. I return these blessings. I have found
my life worth living, and I will continue to do so. I
am a Humanist.

If you ask me what I think of dying, my

answers are similar to these following:

Mark Twain said, “I wasn’t alive for billions

of years before I was born and it didn’t
inconvenience me in any way.”

Richard Feynman said people are terrified.

They think, how can you live and not know an
answer to the meaning of life? “It is not odd at
all. You only think that you know. It is possible
to live and not know. I don’t feel frightened by
not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious
universe without any purpose, which is the way
it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten
me.”

Carl Sagan said, “Six times now I have

looked Death in the face. And six times Death
has averted his gaze and let me pass.
Eventually, of course Death will claim me—as he
does each of us . . . I’ve learned much from our
confrontation—especially about the beauty and
poignancy of life, . . . the preciousness of friends
and family, and about the transforming power of
love

. . . I would love to believe that when I die I will

live again, that some thinking, feeling,
remembering part of me will continue. But as
much as I want to believe that, and despite the
ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that
assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest
that it is more than wishful thinking.

. . . The world is so exquisite, with so much love

and moral depth, that there is no reason to
deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which
there’s little good evidence. Far better, it seems
to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the
eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but
magnificent opportunity that life provides . . .”

I agree with them all.

Rev. Douglas Kenneth Peary, 2011