> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://thedailyeudemon.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# August Comte Clapping from His Grave
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/1067/
- Published: 2005-05-19T23:53:14.000Z
- Updated: 2005-05-19T23:53:14.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: TWE, #wpChunk

Harvard has a humanist chaplaincy for atheist and agnostic students.

He's retiring, hence this story, but we're more interested in the mental machinations of Ivy League types that hire a chaplain for atheists.

Ah heck, why not? And while we're at it, we'll get combs for bald people and a flat screen TV for the Amish.

[Link](http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/05/14/for%5Fharvard%5Fhumanists%5Fend%5Fof%5Fan%5Fera/?ref=thedailyeudemon.com). Excerpts:

> A presence on campus for more than 30 years, the humanist chaplaincy sponsors, among other things, the Harvard Secular Society, a group with about 20 active undergraduates who meet to discuss philosophical matters. Humanists bow before reason and science rather than the shrine of a deity; their prophets are rationalist thinkers such as Erich Fromm and Bertrand Russell.

> Harvard humanists are preparing for a milestone this summer, the retirement of the man who started it all, chaplain Thomas Ferrick. A former priest, Ferrick lost his parents to tuberculosis as a child and found refuge from the loneliness of foster care in the idea of a loving God. But as an adult, he left Catholicism and the clergy after several disagreements. (His I'm-out-of-here moment came with the church's rejection of birth control.) Today, he says, he is one of only 10 or so humanist chaplains on American campuses.

> Harvard's chaplaincy is in particularly good shape, having been endowed both financially, by a wealthy alumnus 10 years ago, and communally, by what campus humanists call the warm embrace of the school's religious chaplains and students.

Thanks, [Zorak](http://e-pression.blogspot.com/?ref=thedailyeudemon.com).