David Evans

I was a senior at Skyline High School when I began to question my faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.

I was addicted to Isaac Asimov, having read his Foundation series. The only thing I could relate his books to were Carl Sagan's Cosmos series that I had watched avidly as a child, and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: Space Odyssey. However, with exposure to these authors, conflict was inevitable. In January of 1992, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction released its February issue. In it was Isaac Asimov's last article for the magazine before his death: "Of Human Folly."

For the first time in my life, the idea that personal revelation was no different from superstition, that the belief in God itself was a myth, hit me. My first reaction was not fear of death, or a feeling of dread that I would not live again. My first thought was, "What will people think of me? What will my family think of me?" So strong was this fear, this amazingly potent anxiety, that I spent the next four years of my life trying to reason my way out of it.

I bought many books on Mormonism, mostly church institute manuals, and Deseret Book publications. I spent countless hours in the library, literally spending most of my time there. I found Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible.

During these searches in the library, I also came across The Humanist magazine, having just been placed there, unbeknownst to me, by the newly formed Humanists of Utah. Isaac Asimov was listed as part of the editorial advisory staff, and president of the American Humanist Association. My mother caught me at it, and told me I shouldn't read magazines like that. My father expressed concern at my purchase of Guide to the Bible, saying that he feared I was relying on the book when I should be relying on the advice of church authorities. At nineteen, I had just broken up with my first girl friend. College was shaky. My father wasn't sure he could pay my way, and felt that I wasn't working hard enough for the sacrifice it would take. The contradictions of my readings weighed heavy on my mind, but heavier weighed the social pressures of going on a mission. I finally bent, reasoning that a mission would be a good way to gain the "spiritual understanding" (testimony) necessary to overcome my skepticisms.

On a LDS mission, however, my skepticisms were only amplified. The more I taught Mormon doctrine the more it seemed like fantasy. Exposed to the doctrines in a way that required relying on them to their fullest extent, I found that they failed me miserably. It was then that I remembered The Humanist magazine I had found in the library. In July or August of 1995, I traded all of my Institute Manuals for a beat up copy of The Philosophy of Humanism. I devoured it twice, getting up at 5 each morning so that my companion wouldn't ask what I was reading. For the remainder of my mission I was a heretic, but the thought of the social repercussions of going home early, and the commitment to completing a task I had started (a responsibility that my father and grandfather had engrained into me), pushed me through to the end of my mission. I committed to investigating both humanism and Mormonism fully when I returned from my mission that December. In July of 1996, I moved from home. Once out from under the eyes of my parents, and the people I had grown up with, I never went to church again. There were only four exceptions: two funerals, a missionary home coming, and a date. The date was an inactive member of the church, but the relationship finally ended at the beginning of November 1996, only a few days after I had joined the American Humanist Association. I still wonder if that was the basis for our breaking up.

I attended meetings of the Humanists of Utah, beginning with a board meeting in July of 1997, formally joining in June of 1997 (I had been taking the newsletter since March on a trial subscription). At that time I made the first suggestions to Wayne Wilson, then editor of The Utah Humanist, about a website he had put up for the Humanists of Utah. It was not long after that I took over the project, registered the humanistsofutah.org name, and was elected to the Board to fulfill it.

"The universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. [This] does not deny the possibility of realities as yet undiscovered, but it does insist that the way to determine the existence and value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the assessment of their relation to human needs. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method."

This has since been the approach I have taken in everything I do, from computers to religion, from the work place to inter-personal relationships.

As I write this in October of 2001, it is exactly five years from the time I made the decision to join the American Humanist Association. Philosophically, I have come a long way from that time. This has only increased my dedication to the humanist philosophy as expressed in Humanist Manifesto II. I don't regret having become a humanist. In fact, I don't think I could think of being anything else. I'm a humanist, and that's as good as it gets.

--David Evans