The first speaker, the Rev. Kendyl Gibbons of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, MN , focused on the transition in today's world in how we know what we know, or, more precisely, that we no longer have the confidence that was once so easy that we knew what we knew. In the philosophical, scientific, economic and social realms, all of which have informed the liberal religious tradition including religious humanism, many people today are skeptical of truth claims, sometimes producing a moral cynicism and even a kind of crankiness. We are no longer sure that human beings are capable of genuine reason, we find that we aren't as nice as we supposed ourselves to be, we recognize that our motives are ambiguous and we glimpse that we should take our own claimed motivations with a grain of salt. Our ways of knowing are in transition, and we can despair or we can hope. In magisterial humanism, there's an emphasis on human control as a triumph over the messiness of nature.
Science is seen as the way to make our way to the best of all possible worlds.
The good life is a life that is free from error. The result of magisterial humanism in today's world, said Gibbons, is frustrated, cranky humanists. Elementary humanism emphasizes that order is a natural evolutionary outcome. The future is seen as open and unpredictable. Mistakes are seen as essential to living, and as opportunities for learning.