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.