Recap from January 22nd, 2017. Preview of January 29th, 2017.

I hope that everyone's Sunday has finished out well; it was really great seeing everyone today. As per usual, we had a great meeting.

We wandered around the topic of how to engage with believers. There are implications to our interactions from the get-go, and most often these are dictated by with whom we are interacting. Many of us have family, friends, and, of course, colleagues - many of whom we may like and respect - who are believers. Even to not respond directly to questions about our beliefs can be a kind of indication. People will form their own opinions, do their own research, and sometimes that can be even more professionally or socially damaging than a simple response. In view of the weekend's events, we talked about the implications of women's right's during the Trumpidency, and this article about Mike Pence. We also talked about problems within different political movements and the difficulty of engaging people who may never ever examine their own lives or empathize with us. 

There were suggestions: letter and e-mail writing (after, of course, you calm down), empathetic engagement, logical and reasonable responses, and any number of individual ideas. As I said, we all have our own ways of talking to people who might be judging us. We talked about empathy and its power to potentially bridge the gap between us and our fellow human beings. There are places where we can meet our fellow (wo)man and talk as human beings, but it is often important to find a common ground. Everyone sees themself (not a word, I know) as reasonable. This brought up the Woebegon Effect and the fact that by incorporating our audience's (supposed?) ability to reason, we can try to make the conversation more reasonable. 

We talked about the moment where the rubber, more or less, meets the road. These words:

"Oh, are you a believer?" or something like that. It comes with its own set of expectations, its own box - so to speak, its own "us vs. them" 

How do we respond to that? Whether its "I believe in one fewer religion than you," the Thomas Paine quote, "The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion," or (predicated on our own comfort with this) asking, "What is it that we should be afraid of?" (As, it was posited, that religions are generally based on the fear of something, whether it's hell or the void.) There are probably as many responses as their are situations - we need to know our audiences, our relationships, and ourselves. 

We also spoke about avoiding condescension that might come with a perspective that is based around empiricism - not just because it is off-putting to religious people. 22-23% of the United States do not identify with any major religion. That having been said, we are a diverse group. Organizing agnostics, atheists, and all manner of free-thinkers, has been compared to herding cats - hence the subheading(?) to the Greensboro Atheist Organization. Still, there is more that unites us than separates us, and we owe it to ourselves to act as a community.

That having been said, I was thinking that the time after next - to allow for a compilation of scriptures - it might be fun to do our first "unclouded Bible study." I think that next week, we will discuss the schizophrenic nature of the god of the Abrahamic faiths. What inconsistencies we find the most amusing, what stories we might have of trying to rectify them with family members and even ourselves, and what any of this might mean for our interactions with the world at large. I hope to see you all!

How Do You Engage?

The majority of the US population is religious. Every single one of us has to interact with Christians, whether it's at work, in our family, or the combative dude in the grocery score who wants to know why we said "Season's greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas."
There is a delicate balance between becoming the stereotype of the smug, pugilistic anti-theist (a label some people do not mind in the least) and just allowing people to steamroll your rights. People can share stories and strategies. Have you "come out" to your coworkers? What potential dangers exist in being upfront about your beliefs? Obviously, everyone is going to have a different threshold based on their own personal feelings, experiences, and context, but I think it would be really valuable to share these.
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone! Have a fantastic week!

First Secular Sunday of 2017

Hi everyone!

Our first Secular Sunday of 2017 was great and should provide us with a huge number of topics for the year. We covered a ton of ground for suggested discussions, and I'm going to do my best to summarize those here. We also brought up a lot of different content both for discussions and personal edification. Feel free to e-mail the group or me if you have other ideas for other topics. Also, we had once talked about the possibility of setting up in Edward McKay's big back room, but it would require us to change the time to noon - for this reason and a few others, the move idea did not seem popular. Because a lot of our discussions revolve around content, we have talked about the potential for film screenings (possibly in the Geeksboro basement, but I'd have to talk to Joe about that) and Potluck dinner/movie nights. This is something that I think we can bring up in the survey that I will be sending out somewhat soon.

Without further ado, here are some of the topics that we should be tackling soon!

Discussion topics:

- Quite a few of us have had uncomfortable situations with colleagues and family who feel the need to proselytize at us. We can talk about problems of this type - both to support each other as a community and to offer advice on how to handle uncomfortable situations. In a similar vein, there is the issue of prayers that are not only uncomfortable but potentially in violation of our constitutional rights - it wouldn't be a bad idea to conduct a sort of workshop as to whom to contact and what situations might necessitate litigation. Several members mentioned that they have looked into this before.

- Additionally, there are many situations that can single out atheists and agnostics who won't add, "I'll pray for you," to satisfy social expectations. What do people do? What about the absurdity of supposed "science" backing the power of prayer or "positive vibes"? How do we handle things like this on social media and in situations that could potentially have negative effects professionally or fiscally? What is a heathen to do?

- We've also talked about the "fragile Christian (or religious, really) ego" that causes so many people to feel as though their beliefs are being attacked by anyone who won't blindly follow along. We are literally contending with people who somehow feel that their beliefs are under attack when so much of the calendar revolves around their holidays. Politicians have to court the church to be electable in our supposedly secular system. Not only that, but a good discussion topic might be how we even talk to people who have never heard of Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli and subsequently believe that the United States either is or should be a Christian nation?

- Succinctly put: what is the deal with spiritualism? Super-naturalism? What terms are too close to religious? Is it possible to be a radical empiricist?

- How do we define truth? To riff off of this, how does one avoid fallibilism in the absence of a kind of "because I said so" from a deity? Is that important? How do we define evil? How do we define morality or goodness? (We've discussed the latter one before, but it wouldn't hurt to do it again.)

- The interplay of religion and history - things like the flood myth and its absence from cultures that should have been "destroyed" by the biblical deluge. Specifically, at what points does history directly conflict with religion? I forget which writer said it, but why is it that god supposedly decided to create the world as the Chinese were inventing writing?

- How do we engage people in a respectful discussion that doesn't come off as anti-theist proselytizing (if we want to avoid that) without allowing our own rights to be thrown under the bus? How do we "come out" to people as atheists? How can avoid the potential for literal physical danger?

- We also talked about the possibility of having guest speakers - even from local churches, debates, and even studying the more amusing points of religious texts - portions of Leviticus are particularly amusing in a contemporary context.

- Lastly, one thing that people seemed to respond positively to was the potential for an end-of-meeting announcements session where people can get some advice/support about issues that they may be having. 

God's Plan

So Ullr decided that we weren't going to have Secular Sunday this weekend and snowed us all in. Stay safe and warm everyone! I'll be posting soon about our First Secular Sunday of 2017 (Observed).

Love you all.

-Sean

1/9/17 Update:

We will be meeting on the 15th for Secular Sunday. Again, the topic will be a meta-topic. What do we want to talk about this year? How do we want the meetings to run? How many weekends should we set aside as Science Sundays? How can we come together as a community for support even more? Also, there's the possibility of meeting at Edward McKay's, but they don't open on Sundays until noon - does that sit well with everyone?

We have a lot to discuss!

The First Secular Sunday of 2017

It's a new year, and new topics are on their way! Also, I expect that in the coming months, we'll revisit some of our older topics. I thought, to set the tune for the new year, we could make this a sort of meta-discussion and talk about what topics/issues - scientific and secular - we want to do this year. I also have some suggestions about how we could set up our meetings.
For instance, we are attempting to be more of a community and more supportive of one another. I thought that at the close of meetings, if people were interested, people could talk about problems that they have had - at work, at home, in their daily lives - because of their atheism, agnosticism, or general lack of religious belief.
This is just one suggestion - I'm open to keeping things the way that they are or experimentation. I hope to see everyone there, and I hope that you have all made it through the un-holy-day season in tact!