At our holiday celebration dinner December 14, 2006, former chapter president Flo Wineriter made the following remarks during the open mike period.

I would like to spend a few minutes thinking out loud about the positive aspects of our humanist philosophy. I believe that can best be done by reading the inspiring words of two great American humanists. First, the words of a song written by the founder of the American Humanist Association, the Humanists of Utah, and a minister of this Unitarian Church in the 1940's, Edwin H. Wilson. The title of his song is: Where is Our Holy Church?

Ed Wilson's song exemplifies his high regard for human potential.

Another respected humanist scholar, Robert Ingersoll, glorified human intelligence in an essay on morality. He wrote:

What is morality? In this world we need certain things. We have many wants. We are exposed to many dangers. We need food, fuel, raiment, and shelter, and besides these wants, there is, what may be called, the hunger of the mind.
Happiness, including its highest forms, is after all the only good, and everything, the result of which is to produce or secure happiness, is good, that is to say, moral. Everything that destroys or diminishes well-being is bad, that is to say, immoral. In other words, all that is good is moral, and all that is bad is immoral.
What then is, or can be called, a moral guide? The shortest possible answer is one word: Intelligence.
We cannot depend on what are called "inspired books," or the religions of the world. These religions are based on the supernatural, and according to them we are under obligation to worship and obey some supernatural being, or beings. All these religions are inconsistent with intellectual liberty. They are the enemies of thought, of investigation, of mental honesty. They destroy the manliness of man. They promise eternal rewards for belief, for credulity, for what they call faith.
And all "inspired books," teaching that only those who obey the commands of the supernatural are, or can be, truly virtuous, and that unquestioning faith will be rewarded with eternal joy, are grossly immoral.

Again I say: Intelligence is the only moral guide.

It is my hope that the ideals of these two humanist pioneers will inspire us to proudly explain and exclaim the principles of humanism.

--Flo Wineriter