In April 2007, Sherwin Wine participated in a conference of the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy in Cambridge, Massachussets, called “The New Humanism.” In his address, Wine explored the new realities of modern life, the importance of maintaining a connection with one’s family culture, and his own story.
Continue to scroll down for all five parts of the presentation.
Many Sherwin Wine lectures are available for FREE download and listening. Click on the following pages for links to the downloads.
Bill and Hillary: Love, Hate and Opportunism (1999)
Capital Punishment: Execution in the Era of Timothy McVeigh (1997)
Cartoons of Mohammed: Freedom in Islam (2006)
The God Delusion: Richard Dawkins and Militant Atheism (2006)
Jamestown and Virginia: England and America (2007)
Journey to Cuba: Castro and Survival (2005)
Karl Marx: The Promise of Utopia (2007)
The Message of Jesus: The Continuing Controversy (2006)
The Muslim Split: War and Toleration (2007)
Parents and Children: Communication Without Guilt or Frustration (1997)
The Real Story of the Bible: Richard Friedman’s Hidden Book in the Bible (1999)
The Triumph of Science: From Darwin to Einstein (2007)
Vladimir Lenin: Tsar of the Bolsheviks (2007)
Recorded May 2007 by the Center for New Thinking.
Ulyanov was his real name. Lenin was his revolutionary name. His body still lies embalmed for public view in Red Square. Born to a bourgeois family, Lenin turned radical when his revolutionary brother was killed. Embracing Marxism, he became the boldest Marxist leader in Europe. The trauma of the First World War gave him an unexpected opportunity to seize power with his Bolshevik faction. Once in power, he became a dictator who transformed Russia. Would the story of Bolshevik Russia have been different had he not died early from a stroke?
Recorded April 2007 by the Center for New Thinking.
The 19th Century featured an explosion of scientific thinking and scientific exploration. The vision of the universe which traditional religion had championed was overthrown by the discoveries of science. From the age and history of the universe to the development of life, the old ideology yielded to a powerful assault of empirical evidence. Both Darwin and Einstein transformed the images of reality which guided human thinking. These scientists became the ‘prophets’ of the new secularism. Millions of people became their disciples.
Recorded February 1999 by the Center for New Thinking.
Richard Elliott Friedman, the author of Who Wrote the Bible?, wrote another challenging book, The Hidden Book in the Bible. Friedman claims to have uncovered the text of the document which is the oldest part of the Bible. Standing alone it is very different from the Bible as a whole. It forces us to rethink Biblical history. It is certainly an exciting new way to view the messages of the Bible.
Recorded in November 1997 by the Center for New Thinking.
Our most difficult audience is our own family. We have a strong emotional investment in their approval and success. Talking to parents is sometimes forbidding because they intimidate us with their disapproval. Talking to children is sometimes frustrating because they do not always give us the respect we think we deserve. Familiarity does breed a certain amount of contempt. Sharing, teaching and persuading in this environment demands both self-awareness and self-control. Our frustration sometimes leads us off on tangents that keep us from focusing on the goals we want to achieve in our family. Oftentimes our love sounds like hostility and is misunderstood.
Recorded April 2007 by the Center for New Thinking.
The early split in the Muslim world between Sunnis and Shiites led to many centuries of war and confrontation. The majority Sunnis dominated in most centuries. But the rise of the Shiite Fatimids in North Africa and Egypt led to the emergence of a powerful Shiite empire for two centuries. Had the Turks not been converted to Sunni Islam the entire Arab world would have fallen under the control of the Shiites? But war exhaustion often led to periods of toleration and peaceful co-existence. Nevertheless, hatred was sustained by religious fanaticism.
Recorded in 2006 by the Center for New Thinking.
The discovery of ‘other’ gospels at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945 has traumatized the world of Christian scholarship. The Jesus of these gospels is very different from the Jesus of the gospels in the New Testament. His message in the ‘other’ stories is vastly different. A message of enlightenment is not the same as a message of salvation. The problem was aggravated by the recent debut of the Gospel of Judas, which transforms Judas Iscariot from a villain into a hero. Can these two messages be reconciled. If not, which one is the real one?
Recorded by the Center for New Thinking.
Love is a universal value that comes in many forms. There is romantic love, parental love, friendship love, patriotic love and even nature love. All have found their celebrants in literature in poetry, literature and drama.
Recorded in February 2007 by the Center for New Thinking.
When Karl Marx died, his disciples were few in numbers. But within ten years his followers were numerous. And within 20 years they constituted millions. Of all the varieties of socialism, Marx’s scientific socialism was the most successful. The drama of revolution, the clash of the classes and the ultimate emergence of Utopia invited popular enthusiasm. Marx believed that progress was inevitable, guided by the inexorable laws of history. Fashioned in academic isolation, the vision of Marx became the philosophy of a brutal empire.