What we’re about
About Us and Our Values:
The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard & MIT works with atheists, agnostics, and allies at Harvard, MIT, and beyond: to create an inclusive new model for how humanists celebrate life, promote reason and compassion, and better the world for all.
Our organization was founded as the first-ever “humanist chaplaincy” to serve nonreligious students at a college or university. In addition to providing humanist philosophical guidance and counseling for over 40 years, we sponsor and advise humanist, secular, and interfaith groups at Harvard and MIT, and offer weekly secular mindfulness meditations.
Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment, aspiring to humanity's greater good -- it is, in short, good without god.
Please check out our website: https://www.humanistchaplaincy.org/.
Upcoming events (2)
See all- Book launch: TECH AGNOSTIC by Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard & MITMain Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge, MA
The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard and MIT, Harvard Book Store, and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Greg M. Epstein—Humanist Chaplain at Harvard & MIT—for a discussion of his new book Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation. He will be joined in conversation by award-winning author Chanda Prescod-Weinstein—Associate Professor of Physics and Core Faculty Member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire. RSVP/Tickets required: link below!
Greg M. Epstein serves as Humanist Chaplain at Harvard & MIT, where he advises students, faculty, and staff members on ethical and existential concerns from a humanist perspective. He was TechCrunch's first “ethicist in residence” and has been called “a symbol of the transition in how Americans relate to organized religion” (The Conversation). He is the author of the New York Times-bestselling book Good Without God and has also written for MIT Technology Review, CNN.com, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Newsweek.
This exciting event will fall on the evening of publication day for Tech Agnostic after six years of work on the book, during a semester in which Greg and the Humanist community mark 20 years since he became the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard.
### Ticketing
***Click here to RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket*** to reserve a copy of Tech Agnostic and pick it up at the event. There will be a book signing follwoing the presentation.
### About Tech Agnostic
Today's technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT's influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life. Without suggesting we return to a mythical pre-tech past, Epstein shows why we must maintain a freethinking critical perspective toward innovation until it proves itself worthy of our faith or not.
Epstein asks probing questions that center humanity at the heart of engineering: Who profits from an uncritical faith in technology? How can we remedy technology's problems while retaining its benefits? Showing how unbelief has always served humanity, Epstein revisits the historical apostates, skeptics, mystics, Cassandras, heretics, and whistleblowers who embody the tech reformation we desperately need. He argues that we must learn how to collectively demand that technology serve our pursuit of human lives that are deeply worth living.
In our tumultuous era of religious extremism and rampant capitalism, Tech Agnostic offers a new path forward, where we maintain enough critical distance to remember that all that glitters is not gold—nor is it God.### Praise for Tech Agnostic
“Greg Epstein makes the best case yet for why we have to withhold our faith from technology before its values become the given circumstances of our reality. Just because you’re not programming these intelligences doesn’t mean they’re not programming you. There’s still time to retrieve and celebrate our shared humanity, together. This book points the way.” —Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human, Survival of the Richest, and Present Shock
“An exciting intellectual adventure, Epstein’s ingenious book is sometimes deeply moving and vulnerable, occasionally chuckle-out-loud funny, and always insightful. This timely and urgently important meditation inspired me to completely rethink my relationship to technology.” —Skye C. Cleary, author of How to Be Authentic
“If tech is a religion, then there is no better guide than Greg Epstein. Informed, honest, and deeply urgent, Tech Agnostic leads us straight to the source of Silicon Valley dogma and, crucially, back out again with reason to hope.” —Lauren F. Klein, Winship Distinguished Research Professor, Emory University