Andy Berman was the scheduled speaker at Semi-Programmed Meeting for Worship on February 4, 2018.

My dad, the 8th child of poor immigrants, quit school in the 7th grade to find work. He was always sensitive about his lack of formal education, but few people knew of it because dad did two things that hid it well:  He read the New York Times thoroughly every day, an obsessive habit that he passed on to me, and he socialized with left-wing people in the arts.

So dad could often join a conversation about events in far away countries, talk about Broadway shows, and tell funny stories about meeting Paul Robeson and shaking hands with W.E.B. Dubois. And dad could talk rationally about the truly important matters of human existence, questions that are traditionally addressed mainly in the context of the world’s religions. What is the purpose of life? Why do we exist? What is the basis of morality?

Our family had a strong Jewish cultural identity, filled with joyful Passover gatherings and endless Yiddish language witticisms, and mandatory Bar Mitzvahs.

But theism, the belief in any notion of a supreme being, was completely rejected. While tolerance for people of all faiths, creeds, and colors was firmly imbued in us, the Jewish god, the Christian god, and the gods of all organized religions were privately derided, even mocked.

The Marxist suspicion of organized religion as the “opium of the masses”, a tool to keep people from rebelling against the injustices in their lives, was the attitude my parents shared. Gods were created by man, not the other way around.

We must be kind to each other. We must not kill other human beings, or steal from them or exploit them. Why these rules for human behavior? Because these are truths that are self-evident!   Not because they are mandated in some ancient text or some deity on high.

The answers to those basic questions about the origin of existence and the origin of life lay in science, not faith. And while science is far from explaining everything, it has proven to be the most worthy tool for advancing human knowledge.

And for understanding questions of morality, science and Marxism provide a reasonable approach. Today we think of human slavery as horribly abhorrent. Yet not very long ago human slavery was widely accepted, and widely accepted by the world’s greatest proponents of liberty, from Thomas Jefferson to religious leaders worldwide. Was it a grievous misreading of ancient religious texts on their part? Or did changing moral attitudes toward slavery come from more mundane factors, such as the changing economic relations as agricultural societies industrialized?

This then was, and largely remains, a foundation of my personal belief system.

But over the years of the extraordinarily fortunate life I have been blessed with, I have felt the need to expand my spiritual beliefs, even to the extent of participating in organized religion. In Chicago for many years I fell in with a warm community in the Unitarian Church. Here in Minneapolis, I have learned to appreciate the immense power of the Silence prayer of the Friends Meeting House, and the Quaker commitment to peace and social justice.

And, having spent many years working in science and technology, I have come to realize that there are many things about the universe and about life that are probably beyond the reach of human comprehension.

A dog is an intelligent animal, with a remarkable brain. Yet it can never solve quadratic equations or build and fly an airplane. These are things that a dog brain will never accomplish. The brain of a human animal is certainly larger and more complex than that of a dog, but it too has a finite size and composition. It is only reasonable to conclude that there are concepts, ideas, truths, and understandings that are simply beyond the comprehension of human brains.

And so, I now believe that we are obliged to accept the existence of things and concepts that are beyond us, and likely to remain beyond us.

This then is the spiritual world in which I believe. It is the world in which human community and worship together are truly fitting.

I join you today in our silent worship.