4 | Anthony Pinn on Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

Sean Carroll

Physics, Science

4.7 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2018

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

According to atheism, God does not exist. But religions have traditionally done much more than simply proclaim God's existence: they have provided communities, promoted the arts, handed down moral guidance, and so on. Can atheism, or perhaps humanism, replicate these roles? Anthony Pinn grew up as a devout Methodist, but became a humanist when he felt that religion wasn't really helping the communities that he cared about. Today he is a professor of religion who works to bring together atheism and the black community. We talk about humanism, identity politics, and the way forward. [smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/seancarroll/anthony-pinn.mp3" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" hashtag="mindscapepodcast" ] Anthony Pinn received his Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University, and is currently the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, where he was the first African-American to hold an endowed chair at the university. He is the Founding Director of The Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning at Rice University, and Director of Research,The Institute for Humanist Studies. Among his many books are Writing God's Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist and When Colorblindness Isn't the Answer: Humanism and the Challenge of Race Home page Faculty page at Rice Wikipedia page Amazon.com page Online course at edX: Religion and Hip Hop Culture Talk on How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist Twitter Download Episode

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host Sean Carroll.
0:04.6	Today's guest is Dr. Anthony Pin, who's a professor in the Religion Department at Rice University.
0:10.9	Now do not be alarmed despite being a professor in the Religion Department and in fact,
0:15.8	despite describing himself as a theologian, Dr. Pin is an atheist, a humanist. That's not to say
0:22.8	that we will not occasionally have actual religious people, actual theologians on the podcast,
0:28.0	but that day is not today. Anthony Pin has a very interesting trajectory. He grew up in
0:33.4	upstate New York where he was a child preacher. So at age 12, he was standing up there in the pulpit,
0:39.9	preaching sermons, bringing people to Jesus, and he was really good at it. It actually was
0:44.4	quite the calling that he had. He went on to college, in fact, to Divinity School,
0:49.6	but then along the way he lost his faith. He got the idea that he was trying to help people
0:54.8	in underprivileged communities. He didn't really think that God was helping them. He didn't
1:00.0	really think that his Christianity was helping the cause of bringing these people's lives to a
1:06.0	better state. So he ultimately lost his faith, but he didn't lose interest in the idea of helping
1:11.6	people. So he stayed a self-described theologian, but now he tries to bring humanism to people
1:19.2	rather than Christianity. And in particular, he tries to bring humanism to the African-American
1:23.7	community where atheism, agnosticism, humanism are not very popular. If you look at different
1:30.6	demographic groups in the United States, I just looked it up. Only 2% of blacks in the United
1:35.8	States describe themselves as completely atheist. That's compared to something like 6% of Latinos,
1:42.0	11% of whites, 19% of Asians. So somehow, if you're an atheist, you're saying, what are we
1:48.7	doing wrong? Why aren't we reaching these people? If you're Christian, you might say, what are the
1:53.6	African-Americans doing right? Why are they so much better at maintaining their faith than the rest
1:58.3	of Americans are? Well, I can't imagine a better person to talk to about these issues than Anthony
	...

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