New Year New Post

Hello everyone!

So, the Secular Sunday group and its attendant Drinking Skeptically and volunteer projects are going through some administrative restructuring. Everything will continue as it has, but we're going to be under a new name. If you're on the e-mail list or a member of our new Meetup, you've gotten the link to be able to vote on the name.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

Yours,

Current Website Organizer

September Updated

Good afternoon everyone!

Today:

Susan started things off today, talking about Factfulness and Active Measures. We had a great meeting today. We went around the group and asked what people wanted out of how we, as non-religious people, are seen by the outside world. While there were a lot of different responses, common themes were basically that a person can be "good without god," that we're tired of being seen as amoral, that we are a community, and that we are individuals who have as many or more different interests and beliefs as the rest of the world.

I guess a good way to say it might be that we're interested in atheist personhood. While not being hyperbolic, I wish that that were more of a joke.

Coming soon:

In other news, this weekend is Pride! Come see us!

Also, the 29th will be our next Drinking Skeptically!

I hope that everyone is having a fantastic September, and I hope to see you all soon!!!

September

First of all, sorry this email is only just getting out now. I was waiting on some things and trying to rush others. Anyway, it may not have been to late to order FAACT shirts for Pride, but I'm pretty certain that it is now. At any rate, here is a picture of the specific shirt (it's not date specific and it's a nice design - but, vista print is making me enter a name and password to get the order... so, you must need an account) as well as a link to the FAACT store.

Also, here's the email!

September 2nd

So this past weekend, we had another discussion similar to our reoccurring theme of "how do you interface"? This time, we talked about whether or not it's wise to be a part of a group whose main goal(s) you support but, perhaps, take issue with some of the things that are being said/done? Or, perhaps, put better in the words of Dumbledore about Neville Longbottom.

This was, in my opinion, an interesting and not entirely comfortable conversation - which is not a bad thing. A lot of us attend FAACT meetups because of the oft mentioned "definition of that which we Are Not" and this turned into a discussion of how to handle disagreements on how to interface with those who Are... so to speak. A few people had anecdotes to share with regard to the splintering of good causes because of carelessness or promoting one less popular issue over a more popular issue. Ann talked about criticisms of her own dealings with those who are *ahem* politcally different; Penny talked about the Women's March; I talked about the Teacher's March; Josh talked about his son's experience at Black Lives Matter rally, and while the agreement was that these things were all tools being used to achieve a bigger, broader good, there were elements of disagreement and discord in how and in what way to proceed.

Josh brought up the term "thin commonalities" from Walzer's Thick and Thin, basically that in order to achieve a goal, it's important to focus on the commonalities that we have with those with whom we are working. Someone (forgive me, but I forget who) brought up Maslow's Heirarchy of needs and how it's important to prioritize when it comes to a struggle like this. To wit, I am not going to worry about being a tad hungry if I am engulfed in flames. 

Uzma pointed out that many on the right wing are single issue voters who are mostly after things like making abortion illegal. It isn't hard to find a commonality with people who are pro choice when really, very few people would classify themselves as "pro abortion."

Forgive me, but this isn't summary. Instead, this is more of an evaluation of the information gleaned from my notes as a whole. It would appear to me that when an issue comes up as big as the denial of basic human rights, whether they are being denied because of gender, race, or socioeconomic status, naturally, people of every stripe and belief structure are going to come to bat for it. It's not the differences that are drawing those people together. It's the commonality of their belief in those rights. That having been said, you may find yourself, some day very soon, walking with a group of people who believe that you're going to hell for your lifestyle but who are also trying to help along an issue about which you feel very strongly. It's not only possible; I would say that the more active you are in terms of issues, the likelier it is that that exact scenario will play out. Even within FAACT, a lot of things unite us, but every single person is an individual.

In closing, I love you all for who you are - even if I haven't seen you in a while, even if there are things on which we might not agree. This is a fantastic group, and I hope that it continues that way.

September 9th

Open topic! Email me soon!

September 15th

LGBT Pride - we will have a table at pride... with a banner and pamphlets and a canopy and everything... so I'm informed. I will be there periodically to relieve others, but a number of volunteers have already stepped up. RSVP and come!

September 29th

There is a 5k race that I am planning to run to raise money for burn victims and for counselors for said burn victims. The race is commemorating Will Caviness, a Greensboro firefighter, who died running in the Chicago marathon to raise money for the same group. There will be a block party afterwards. If you're interested in running and/or donating, here's a link.

August

It's been a while, so I thought I'd start off with a bang.

August 12th and 19th

August 12th saw the unveiling of our terrific new banner for FAACT tables and an engaging conversation that dealt with victim blaming. Josh and Lyn brought up the us vs. them mentality that allows us to devalue members of our own species. To wit, it's easier to see someone as at fault for their own misfortune if they aren't one of "us". The conversation went from how people are comfortable distancing themselves from the world at large by assuming that somehow victims of tragedies have earned said tragedies and that religion gives them a corroborating narrative. The aphorism "let go, let god" came up, and - I believe it was Ann - pointed out that some people find solace in allowing themselves to believe that any terrible tragedy is part of a larger plan. It's psychologically comforting for us to believe that the universe is not an indifferent and random place where anything can happen at any time.

Uzma brought up that some people who see fault with victims may be projecting from their own unresolved past tragedies. If I blame myself for something that is patently not my fault, it becomes easier for me to do the same to you. It's a patently religious philosophy that brought us back to at least one reference to Max Weber.

We talked about whether or not people are *ahem* Naughty by Nature or nice. Joe C. brought up the fact that even in criminal trials, people are not judged, their actions are judged - which might seem like a very fine distinction to make, but it is true. A murderer is tried and put away for a single action or several individual actions - not quite so much for being "a bad person." This, sort of necessarily, segued into the talk of psychopaths - to which I think we should dedicate a Sunday. Yes, it sounds a bit bizarre, but I there's so much to talk about! I mentioned We Need to Talk about Kevin, a deeply disturbing but very thought-provoking movie.

We talked about punishment vs. justice and whether or not there is any value in punishing people who cannot harm others anymore. Clearly, a serial killer needs to be removed from society in some way - obviously, there are fierce defenders on all sides of the issue of how that is accomplished - but is it justice to harm someone because they've harmed someone else.

At the end of the meeting, Pam passed around our list of materials for IRC contributions. More on that in a follow up e-mail.

Last week's discussion centered around relationships between believers and non-believers. Charlene shared an experience about someone proselytizing at her and wondered what the group's various reactions were to that kind of behavior. We've discussed this before, but we came back around again to taking action based on the characters and setting involved (sorry, I am an English teacher). A few people brought up different experiences of prayer in the work place and how that has plagued or not affected them. Rob, amusingly, pointed out that his wife has a particular good strategy for dealing with the various door-knocking religions:

"I'll be right back."

Never returns to the door.

Someone else, I didn't write down the name (sorry) mentioned asking when it might be inconvenient for us to visit them to talk about religion (Brian?)

We talked about relationships between people who are of different religions and how that might work, why that might happen, etc. Douglas brought up James Carville and Mary Matalin  which I knew nothing about but can only imagine is sort of like the differently religious/religious/irreligious marriages that regularly occur. We talked about the codependency of believers and how the belief factor can transfer to state worship. So, we got in our weekly mention of Hitler, which caused a reference to Orwell's review of Mein Kampf.

Eventually, Josh brought up the idea of us having a discussion about what our core topics might be. We discussed a couple of those - the ones I wrote down were:

Free will

the Nature of Evil

How We Interface with Others

Tribalism

Deconversion

Reason

Compassion (We aim to be reasonably compassionate -  a good mission statement for our group)

Feel free to e-mail me, and I'll add some more!

I will be sending another short e-mail after this week's meeting, but as of right now - there is no topic for tomorrow. I hope everyone's week is going well. Monday starts the school year, so don't pray for me!

Love you all!

More Updates and Events

Yesterday

We discussed the connection between observation and causality that seems to imply subjectivity on the part of the universe. As usual, our conversation turned a few corners, stopped for a while on Big Cancer (the link, as I promised - sorryt, it wasn't last week tonight, I was referencing a very old episode of the Daily Show, and this archive link is tough to navigate, but it's worth a watch), the obligatory mention of Prez 45, and what do we do with the possible elimination of free will?

As John pointed out, a lot of our discussion is meaningless unless we have something we can take away from it and apply in our own lives. So, the slit experiment (I don't think that anyone NEEDS this explained to them like they are five, but it's just internet parlance for having things broken down to a basic level) shows us that we were always going to pick x or y? Great. What do I do with that information. Well, as Ann, and I believe several others pointed out, it should cause us to rethink our views of criminal justice. If we look at antisocial behavior as a problem and not an act of, say, "evil," we can get at its causes and perhaps prevent them more easily - rather than just making judgments punitive.

Wednesday the 1st

I think I forgot to mention this at the meeting, but the Rally for our Lives is going to be stopping in Greensboro. This ISN'T a side protest or anything like this. The actual heads of the movement are going to be here, speaking at Lebauer Park in downtown GSO. The FAACT event page is here.

Next Week

There will be an open topic - (no topic?) - this Sunday. I will be up Fluffya with the Jehovah's Witnesses and hopefully having a relatively peaceful time. Will my father try to re-convert me? Will we discuss the fact that his religion teaches that the world is less than 7,000 years old? We shall see!!!

I will return on the 12th of August.

Drinking Skeptically

There will be a Drinking Skeptically in Asheboro on August 18th. The event is here.

IRC Donations

We're doing IRC donations again soon. I believe that we decided on October for the donation date, but I will have more information (sorry, Pam, I should have gotten a picture/copy of that from you at the meetup) for what specific supplies are needed soon. We are going to be creating a meetup for putting together a meal for the homeless, to test the waters of how much interest and availability there is for that kind of an event.

Links for Next time! ALSO AN UPDATE ON ACTIVISM!

Good evening everyone

We had a great discussion, particularly dealing with how "hands on" to be when it comes to allowing them to make their own choices with regard to religion. There were some differences of opinion, interesting ideas, and cookies! (Thanks, Courtney!)

I'll be in attendance on the 29th, where we will be discussing Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics. Here are a few points, in different media, all except the second one are courtesy of Gene Garner, to give us some food for thought:

1) TED talk, regarding what consciousness is

2) BBC article, the link between consciousness and quantum mechanics

3) Newsweek article, "life" after death?

4) LIVE SCIENCE post, brain activity under anestheisa - this, IMO, begs the question, if we are unaware of so many of our mental processes, how does anyone draw a line, saying, "my consciousness starts here; this constitutes 'me'"?

I will, over the course of the next week, try to cobble together a coherent question that encapsulates these, so that we have a diving in point for discussion. Hope to see any and all of you there!

---

ALSO, I didn't mention it my last update, August 1st is Rally for Our Lives. The meetup RSVP is here.

Love you all!

The end of July and the beginning of August

Good afternoon everyone!

I hope that this e-mail finds everyone well. I just wanted to throw a few things out there for this month and next:

Last Sunday

Not one of my prouder moments, but I should probably have planned to be absent from the meetup after the Bastille Day shindig. Thank you to everyone who made Secular Sunday grand, sans me. I heard that it was a good conversation and am sorry that I missed it.

This Sunday (the 22nd)

I don't know if anyone came up with a topic last time, but I was thinking that we could talk a bit more about things that we can do for kids/growing up secular/growing up religious/growing up in a cult/how weird must it be to be Suri Cruise? (mom Catholic, dad Scientologist). There are going to be a few people there who I know have kids - if they feel like dedicating a meetup to that. As any good organizer would do: I am abdicating all responsibility for this event - just let me know what YOU want to talk about  

Next Sunday (the 29th)

Hardball time, everybody. Gene has sent me a bunch and a half of articles dealing with consciousness and quantum physics. It's time we talked about them. I'll send some of his links and mine by next time. If you can message me before, say, five on Sunday, I should be able to include any articles that people would like sent out to the group.

Drinking Skeptically and Sundays Beeeeeeyond:

The 5th of August, I will be in Pennsylvania and cannot astral project myself to Greensboro (yet.) I leave this meeting in all of your very capable hands. Love you all.

Additionally, I'll be adding another Drinking Skeptically for August, but this is going to be the last one that I organize for a while because the school year is starting. And while summer is a great time to wake up on weekends praying to a god for death even though I don't believe in him, the I am getting old and cannot do that when I have to confront teach the children who are the future of our world. Let me know if you have any suggestions for locations, days, themes, etc.

Objective Right

Hi everyone!

I hope all of you are well. We had a great meeting today - twenty-one people in attendance (maybe more - I don't remember if people came after I counted.) At the opening of the meeting, I mentioned that Ann Brady, Joe Lantz, Lyn McCoy (who sent me some information on the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which led me to this), and I have all been promoted to Co-Organizers and are planning to put together some new initiatives to help the group grow interactively and transparently. Also, we would like a single coop jet. Kidding. Seriously, if anyone has ideas for new activities, volunteering, or modifications that we could make, please let us know. Afterwards, we discussed, again, the objectivity of morality... um... at first. As usual, the conversation wended its way around to it over and over again after finding various tangents to follow.

Lily opened up with a thought experiment very similar to this one I plagiarized from the internet:

It's war time, and you're hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you're found, you'll all be killed immediately. A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Assume that the parents of the baby are unknown and not present and there will be no penalty for killing the child. Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would? 

(There's an article in first link on that page, but the morality quiz has been taken down. Perhaps, we live in too different a world than that of 2007...)

We batted a few notions around dealing with the morality of killing and the subjectivity of what makes something "good." Historical relativism made its predictable appearance, as did Godwin's Law. This segued (a few times in different directions) into the polarization of politics. Ann narrated a very good model of what it might look like if the United States were to descend into... well, where we have descended, with the dividing up of families as something that some people might find morally excusable. What some of us might, with a bit of acidic taste in our mouths, refer to as "the New Normal."
Joe(y) brought up the quote from Martin Niemöller:


Rob made a lot of good points regarding historical relativism, regarding whether or not someone would be able to understand that their society was wrong if it had been normalized for them for their entire lives. A couple people pointed out that anything like slavery or human sacrifice would have been probably seen as not great from the point of view of the slaves and sacrifices - no matter how the oppressors saw it. That having been said, I think a great number of people echoed the idea that they would be able to allow for someone to die for the greater good, but they would not be able to kill for it.
That having been said, and I mentioned this during the meetup, if any thinking person were to weigh heaven and hell, it would be completely rational to do whatever necessary to attain one and escape the other. To wit, if they can get you to believe absurdities, they can get you to commit atrocities. (Francie sent me this related article.) Simply because a society socializes something into normality doesn't mean that everyone is going to accept it. Otherwise, we might never have social progress. After all, how hard would it be to discount the cries of people who have been degraded by a society to be seen as inhuman. We would have had no progress if our empathy couldn't overpower conditioning - if that makes sense.
And, as Rob pointed out, we've lived through some pretty tremendous and positive social change. While all of that seems threatened right now, there have been a number of smaller, local victories. These may translate into greater ones as time goes on.  The important thing is to stay sane about what we think and do. There was a great amount of discussion dealing with the political left being pulled right in America and the inherent danger therein. Most of Europe would see the American left as, perhaps, center right. Whereas our right wing would seem ultra-nationalist to many Europeans. Our far right would be quite literally illegal in many places.
In summation, we, as members of the most stigmatized group in the United States, do actually live in a golden era, in the sense that we cannot yet be imprisoned in our home country for our beliefs, but that we must be ready to be as politically active as possible to prevent backsliding in terms of civil rights and liberties. Yes, morality may be subjective, but history (provided that there are people left to write it) will judge us on where we stand right now. I know that there is a variety of political opinions within this mailing list, but I do believe that we all share more than separates us as far as looking at something like civil rights. After all, who wants to have to go to church?

Lastly, check this website from time to time to see some changes. Joe and I will be attacking it a bit here and there. Have a great one, and I hope to see any and all of you at Secular Sunday!!!

New Beginnings and a Newer, Betterer Me

Hey everyone,

As I mentioned before, summer is coming up, and I will have fewer responsibilities as the 2017-2018 school year recedes into the realm of memory and, if I am honest, a few nightmares. I have some ambitious goals for this summer and several of them are related to our humble meetup. But, before I get into that, let's do a wrap up for our first two meetings at our new location:

June 3rd, 2018 was our first time meeting at Earth Fare, and I think it went fantastically well. We had close to - later I was told more than - thirty people. Fantastic... aside from the fact that we may already be outgrowing the new location... on the first day... I'll return to that later on. The subject of this was basically, "newness." We talked a lot about the different directions in which our group could head, and a people had a few suggestions regarding this: 1) start with talk of lunch before the meeting, so that we don't hem and haw about where/if we're going to go anywhere once it's done. 2) Make a couple of announcements at the end of the meeting per what people are planning to do during the course of the upcoming week - if you'd like some company seeing a movie or going to an event, or if you'd like a few numbers to add in the even that you're doing something more community oriented.
We also talked a lot about charity and children. While our group has done some fantastic philanthropic work, we don't really have the numbers or money to really do some of the projects that some of the bigger and less insane (yes, I know that's a very sliding scale) churches do. We also talked about the discussed the fact that probably any organization that would have us along would see it as an opportunity to proselytize to us, which we would, in turn, have to expect. The simple faact of the matter is that what a lot of religious people do not realize is that by being Good without God, we're rocking the very foundation of what most of them believe and could easily be achieving that end ourselves. So many people have such a difficult time accepting the very notion that someone would be altruistic without the hope of some divinely given gift. They've been taught that over and over again, that that is how people work.
On a very related note, with children, we talked about the value/dangers of exposing the young to different religions. Critical thinking, questioning, and educating oneself before concluding anything are all valuable as life skills. A few people suggested that to force a child away from religion would be an indoctrination of its own kind. However, allowing a child's friends to dictate truth by popularity is at least equally damaging. So, we talked a bit about what potential resources and activities could be provided by our group for families with children - and, if I am honest, I don't know how much we came up with. We talked about the idea of bringing in some local religious rabbis, reverends, priests, shamans, etc. to have a very nerfed discussion with the group and the possible boons and banes that that could create. Again, we didn't really come to a conclusion (correct me if I am mistaken), but I think this warrants further attention. There are a lot ways that that could turn out well (better understanding within the community, more of a partnership for things that we want to achieve that happen to be in line with the ideals of local houses of faith, etc.) or terribly (shouting matches, awkward silences, Kia converting all of our dogs to Southern Baptist style Christianity, etc.)

This brings me to what I wanted to talk about with regard to our last meeting, but before I move on to that, I wanted to include links to a few of the things we talked about on the third:

Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell

Lamb

On June 10th, we talked about this (I copied and pasted it from the pre-meeting e-mail):

Aaaaannyyyyyway, I was thinking that this Sunday, we'd talk a bit about the "how do you interact" piece upon which we have touched so frequently. There are some specific facets of this that I'd like to address, but they are all connected. So instead of listing them, I'll give you a scenario:

Kia and I went to the Guilford County Commisioner's meeting last night to Oliver Twist them into funding the public school budget a little more. In a room where the Ten Commandments sit above the elected representatives of the local government, Kia and I sat while a good few of the citizens stood to be led in prayer. Not everyone did, though. Shortly after that, they did the quasi-religious Pledge of Allegiance. By the time this was over, Kia was fuming so badly that I halfway expected her to pull one of these and be escorted from the room. And, I'd have felt guiltier than OJ Simpson's use of the conditional tense because she'd have been right - I think.

But, that brings something larger into the picture. I don't think that even the most Panglossian/Pollyanna view of society can get around admitting that there's a lot of stuff out there that needs to change, and the only way it can change is with numbers. So, we march with people with whom we do not fully agree on every issue. A little something like this with the added bonus of the fact that you're not even a herder; you're a cat. At what point though, do you have to split with the others and say, "Sorry, my being a(n) freethinker/atheist/agnostic is more important to me than X"? It's going to be different for everyone, and this is as important a topic as it is complex. But, and we have done this before at the meet ups, perhaps we could cobble together a heuristic that makes a difficult decision a more easily navigable one. Or, maybe, it's fallacious to think that because it's too situationally dependent with too many moving parts... 

The two sides that were the most presented were that it can feel like we ourselves are being disingenuous or even immoral to not take a stand when no one else is - this is counterbalanced with the fact that you can't die on every hill - to borrow Ann's words. I mentioned that as far as a heuristic goes, it might be advantageous to take stock of priorities. I am a lot more worried about sitting next to a hungry tiger than maybe being a little thirsty - deal with things in accordance to their severity. Joe Crawford brought up the idea of having material goals that we can check off as far as what we're working toward: is what I am doing going to have some tangible result (sway a vote, build something, feed someone), or am I just basically hanging out with a bunch of people who have an imaginary friend?

People shared experiences and possibilities as far as good work that can be done with allies in the religious community - several people (I think Cheryl mentioned it first) talked about the possibility of pairing with someone like Rev. William Barber for the Moral Monday Movement. Bob talked about working with Habitat for Humanity and the varying degrees of religiosity therein. Preston talked about Dr. King, his power as an orator, his effect on history, and the relationship of these things to his having been a reverend.

INTO THE FUTURE

So, I plan to keep this page better updated, and, maybe - just maybe, I'll try to make it a bit prettier. Over the summer, I'd like to organize a few things like hiking trips, more drinking skepticallys, and some more outreach with the IRC. Please, e-mail me if you have any suggestions. For the time being, here we go:

Beer, Baseball, and Blasphemy!

Adopt a Highway to Hell!

I will keep you posted and continue posting more updates on here.

Lastly but not leastly, Sunday the 17th - let's have a topic-less talk! We've done two meetings in a row with specific ones. Let's just make some jokes, keep each other company, and air grievances! See you Sunday!!!

love,

Rev. Sean Bienert

Storms

Hi everyone,

Hope you're all safe and under decent roofs. Kia and I were okay after last night, but we were a bit wigged out to see just how close the storm came to where we live - we didn't get any kind of warnings or anything from our phones. Nothing of any import happened to us. The extent of it was something like this:

Sean is grading on the couch; Kia is in the shower

Sean: Wow, it's really raining hard out there. Like, sheets of rain.

Kia: What?

Fin.

Then again, I hear that some of the worst devastation occurred... *ahem* very close to Summit and Cone boulevard... that's a section of town that should be familiar to several of you.

If you are a member of the FAACT community, are having any issues from the storm (or, I mean, really any issues - we're a community for all seasons, right?), please reach out to us. There is a lot of need out there right now; some people have been displaced and are without access to things like drinking water. Anyone who has already volunteered to help out: good on ya. Anyone who would like to do something/more, check this out.

Be safe and keep your noses clean.

love,

Sean

Two Recent E-mails in One Post (Sorry, I've Been Slacking!)

Below is the more recent of the two: April 15th, 2018

Hi everyone!

Last Week

I'm late again with the summary - apologies. I'll dive right into the morbid details of our discussion on the 8th: we talked about death. We started off with the strange phenomenon of the fear of death in those who believe in an afterlife. It is next to impossible for me to open up my Facebook page without seeing a call for "Prayer Warriors" in an attempt to help out someone sick or otherwise suffering. Within that same feed, it's not uncommon for people to happily comment on the passing of friends and relatives with "s/he's with God now."

The conversation found its way to the opportunistic nature of coffin salespeople and what we, as agnostics, atheists, etc., might want our remains handled. There are plenty of options for the nonreligious.

This Week

We talked about the future of religion - will the god of the gaps eventually shrink to the point where there just isn't any space left for him? Or, as was pointed out today, religious people have a tendency to move the goalposts when confronted with incontrovertible evidence. There is also the possibility that religious people

John pointed out that people do have certain needs that are met by religion - whether it's a sense of community or some kind of connection with the eternal. We batted around different reasons for those needs and how they can be/have been met. We also talked about the limits of a community before it becomes a religion. We talked about religion's place in western society as it reflects or inspires capitalism. We talked about the purported inclusivity of Christianity, its history of oppression, and the role of the church in some progressive movements.

Yesterday was the Science March, and while I missed the beginning of it, the ending was great. It was good to see some support for Science in the Piedmont Triad. Keep up the energy, everyone! There are a lot of opportunities to help with science education, and we should try to show support for any of them that we can! 

Next Week

First and foremost, I forgot to make an announcement today - on the 22nd at Secular Sunday, we'll be hearing from an ACLU rep. about getting status as legal observers for any protests, marches, etc. that we might be attending. If you'd like to be a part of that, please, come this coming Sunday! 

For a topic, we have talked a lot about humor at Secular Sunday already. I'd like to address a few of the attendant issues that we've already touched on, but I think that the discussion would do really well to discuss 1) what Randall brought up a couple of weeks ago - using humor to take the sting out of the confrontational nature of discussing religion. 2) are there limits to what is in good taste with humor? If humor is a coping mechanism, is there a line that, objectively, should not be crossed? Or, is life truly a comedy in long shot and tragedy in close up?

Lastly, Drinking Skeptically will be at my place at 730 Julian street in Greensboro. We're theming it for the 90s - which isn't a big deal because, you know, 90s were kinda, like, whatever anyway. Right? This will be the inaugural fire pit night of 2018 - Kia and I will be providing some snacks, vegan hot dogs, and a six pack of Zima to be drunk with skittles in it... just like the 90s. I'll have some beer, as well, but BYOB - alcoholic or non. Hope to see you there, but please, RSVP or e-mail me back so that Kia and I can get an accurate headcount!

That's it! Love you all!

This one is from March 31st, note the edits:

Last Sunday
We started off last Sunday with an announcement from Randall about the March for Science - which can be found here, here, and here. Any and all political leaning aside, I think that the one of the main things that unites us is a healthy skepticism toward dogma, the hallmark of organized religion. That having been said, I know that a lot of these marches are predominantly left wing (though there is often a healthy amount of Libertarian presence), but scientific thinking is something that innoculates society against the kind of blanket acceptance that lays the foundation for religiosity.

The conversation made its way, from there, to morality clauses in schools and the ways in which the current zeitgeist filters teachers and information. We brushed on the topic of a "moral majority" or a majority of one, as it were. The topic arrived upon and repeatedly returned to how school dress codes penalize women and girls more than their male counterparts. We batted around the intents, types, and outcomes of different uniform policies in public school and the workforce. This eventually led to discussing school budgets and arming students with rocks. We talked about the Walk Up movement and victim blaming. 

Victim blaming, it would seem, is the correlatory of the religious notion that because everything is part of a plan, if something bad happens to you, surely, you must deserve it somehow. We talked briefly about the legal and social ramifications of labelling shooters as "terrorists" vs. anything else that may positive of negative connotations. To wit, if someone trains with a hate group, surely they can be labelled as a terrorist. What about someone who just claims allegiance to one?

Antonio brought up the idea of economic desperation and how it can feed into people joining stigmatized groups at all levels. (Forgive me, Antonio, my notes indicate that, but I can't really remember what it was that you said - correct me if I am misrepresenting.) Kia talked about the book The Hate U Give and its handling of some of our society's recent problems and its proposed, albiet implied, solutions. This moved on to the lack of uniformity in sentencing of felons and the various factors, societal, ethnic, economic, etc. that cause said lack. Someone brought up that Christians have a tendency toward the No True Scotsman fallacy with regard to not claiming Christians who have acted in accordance with, say, the old Testament. This, of course, brought up cognitive biases and the prima facie rejection of ethical atheists by some Christians. 

We talked about the causes of this sort of rationale and the way that we Interface. Eventually, this rounded into the point that nobody forms political opinions in a vacuum. We talked about the fact that people who have not internalized ethics and still need to be rewarded for doing good or punished for doing bad are that way because they have somehow been hobbled morally. Francie spoke out about how infuriating it can be to have people try to come to terms, audibly, with our own perceived lack of morals, despite the fact that we are not doing things for any sort of cosmic carrot. 

We talked about the othering of atheist because people cannot accept that people like Hitler could bear any resemblance to them, as human beings. Everyone's favorite person to blame is whoever is not connected to them. We talked about potential solutions to lessening the strange threat that we pose to people, how we can make ourselves seem more approachable (which, I think, most of us understand is as necessary as it is insane that we might need to). Randall therapy had some great thoughts about making the transition to acceptance easier through humor and a kind of distancing abstraction. Self-deprecating humor allows us to appear to be on the side of people who might hate us, and it takes away some of their proverbial fire. But, it has the added benefit of allowing them to laugh at the ridiculousness of attacking us because it is ridiculous. This digressed into using "The Planet of the Apes" to talk about evolution, which digressed into this actual batshit crazy experiment. I had to mention Oryx and Crake because it's such a fantastic book (I might add that you should probably just imagine that the series to which it belongs ends there. The later parts of the trilogy are disappointing.) We then spoke of Oliver the Chimp and the differentiation between humans and chimpanzees. Eventually, we returned to the humor, the recent sentencing from the not so recent Nazi pug scandal, and Ricky Gervais's commentary on humor that is rape adjacent. From here, we finished talking about Ireland's blasphemy laws and good ole Santorum (all definitions).

Tomorrow

As mentioned, I shan't be there tomorrow, and I know that a few of our other regulars are going to be out of town for familial functions that may even necessitate some atheist taquiya. I am up in Pennsylvania with my Jehovah's Witness family. In about an hour, we will be on our way to "Creepy Jesus Funeral" to borrow a Kiaologism. My brother, who has previously paid lip service to our former faith, has made light of the religious observances in earshot of my parents, even mentioning that he might show up to the Memorial service drunk. This has elicited eyerolls from my parents.
While I shan't be there, I have noticed that our discussions do tend to work a little better at least when there are topics. To this end, I was thinking that the attendees could:
1) Compile a list of topics to be posted on the FAACT facebook wall. That might lead to some good conversation by itself, and I think it would be nice to have that kind of an on-going thread.
2) Talk about humor - there's SO MUCH to discuss! Evolutionary biologists believe that we developed it to cope, but there are so many other facets that humor uses to find its way into our lives. We've done humor as a topic before, but there's absolutely no way that with a) the different members we have b) the infinitively creative nature of language (Chomsky) that the conversation would be dull.

Next Week
I plan to return next week - if the group doesn't come up with a discussion topic this weekend, I'll come up with one sooner.
Drinking Skeptically
The weekend of the 7th, Kia and I were thinking about doing a 90s night/firepit/the birthday of the Joes (Lantz and Crawford - also, Joel and Antonio) for a Drinking Skeptically. St. Joe's of the 90s? Maybe, you guys could come up with what you would want to be Patron Atheist Saint of? Up to you guys! Let me know if that sort of a Drinking Skeptically (BYOB) firepit night would be interesting to everyone. Flannels or band t-shirts and busted jeans for dress code? Let me know!
Love you guys! I am the proudest atheist reverand (irreverand?) I know!
-Sean "Save Me from Being Saved" Bienert

Social Media, the Hive Mind, and Dunbar's Number

If you're familiar with the above reference, I have influenced you to hear this in his voice, and I feel like I can almost guarantee that.

...aaaaaaaaaaanyway...

Tribalism

We had an amazing discussion today, and while I love our discussions in general, this one was even better than usual. Last time, we talked about tribalism and ended up mostly talking about our own tribe. Randall's blog post was particularly lauded, and if you missed it, you can read it here. I don't remember anyone directly addressing this last time, (though Randall's post mentions it twice) but Brian gave a name to the anthropological hypothesis that a person can only track a certain number of people at a time: Dunbar's Number.  Susan brought up this commencement address that she felt was inspirational. Jayne mentioned something that she had read (and forgive me Jayne, I'm having trouble finding articles about this - help me out and e-mail the group?) about the psychedelic drug tests that question basic notions about the "self. "

This sort of segued into a discussion of inter-tribalism. Everyone obviously belongs to any number of tribes from familial to collegial, etc. We discussed nationalism at some length and whether or not it will eventually go the way of the dodo because of the internet creating a new, strange uniculture. Eventually, the conversation sort of distilled down to one of our older discussions: how do we interact with religious people (non-members of our strange little tribe)? We talked a bit about the diversity of belief and skepticism within our own group. Our acronym, Freethinkers, Atheists, and Agnostics is really the only way to describe us, and the "herding cats" (not to be confused with hurting cats - which my neuroticism always causes me to worry that people are hearing when I say that) bon mot from our meetup site. Eventually, the conversation came to how we identify ourselves to others who ask, as they often do, "where do you go to church?" Or, "what religion are you?"

A lot of us said that it was situationally dependent, but "I'm not religious" was a place where many of us started.

If someone persists, more of us said that we'd reveal more, but it was, again, situationally dependent. A Jehovah's Witness or Mormon on your front door is, according to many, more likely to get a debate than a random person who approaches on, say, a hiking trail. Colleagues are also accorded a special range of responses and, as a few members pointed out, the positioning of our family members can influence how we might interact with the community at large. We talked about the possibility of courting other faiths to hang out with us as a method of humanization - several people talked about how believers have been surprised to learn that they were atheists. "Really? But you're such a good person."

To paraphrase Mark Twain, exposures is fatal to prejudices. So, we joked a bit about "share a meal with an atheist" and things of that nature. John brought up that there are already some similar efforts in progress. Lastly, today's discussion was really awesome, and I think that I should mention here that the friendliness and warmth of the Secular Sunday group has been really fantastic. You guys are wonderful, and I hope to see you all again next week!

Social Media and Announcements

We have opened some new social media accounts:

There's a Twitter account:  @FAACTgreensboro 

A secret Facebook account so that those of us who do not want to be outed to the community at large can retain our anonymity. 

Next Time:

We're going to be discussing the possibility of group consciousness. Are groupthink and mob mentality evidence of a more substantial link between people? I suppose we'll find out what you think next time!

Discussion of Different Types of Cakes

Hello Everyone!

Announcements and Philanthropy

We are trying to put together a few items for the IRC; 

In that vein, and I don't mean to pester anyone, but I think it's worth our time... We're going to do a packing event where we put together any donated items. Also, socks, backpacks, shoes, and other items are appreciated.

Adopt-a-Highway is on the February 10th! DO EEET! DO EET! I'm seeing a high of 51° F. Should be a good day for it! I will be there, and my mom says that I am awesome!

Sunday's Meeting Wrap Up

We had a fantastic Secular Sunday discussion this week, and it was great to see everyone - there were, I think, more than twenty people. Lyn brought up this, though I think her source was FFRF. That segued into the idea of taking a knee and a few of the tests that we've recently seen with regard to the US Constitution's First Amendment. Our announced topic for the weekend dealt directly with that: if religious bakers should be made to bake cakes for non-traditional weddings, should *ahem* non-nazi bakers be forced to make cakes for Nazis? 

(Also, WHAT THE &%$#?)

Zoe was quick to point out that being a Nazi is a choice and therefore not really analogous to being a member of the cis-hetero community. While this very nearly ended our discussion very early, someone mentioned that until the government recognizes this fact, it doesn't really do much good. The conversation meandered a bit around personal and hypothetical circumstance - is it more of a help or a hindrance to be an atheist when it comes to being a small business owner. To wit, is it easier to serve a broader community when you recognize that all of the deities out there have the same amount of actual indignation as the Easter Bunny?

THEN...

Christian brought us to the subject of government coercion - he may have only been the first one to use that word, let me know if my notes are inaccurate. This subject more or less dominated the remainder of the meeting. Because the argument is as clear as it is old: if the government has the power to force you to do something, simply because you agree with what they are making you do right now, does not mean that you will agree with it in the future. Obviously, a person who is objectively right in resisting an oppressive regime, (sorry, Godwin) represents a moral majority of one, like those who, at times alone, resisted the Nazis. However, if we strip the government of the right to enforce its rule of law, we can end up with very unjust pockets of society, such as places that resisted racial integration. Or, in a lot of cases, the power to oppress minorities can be given by the government - as it was in places like the antebellum United States.

Statistics were marshaled. Supreme Court decisions were cited. By the time the dust had cleared, we had solved this age old social question, for good. Everyone walked away completely satisfied, and we had planned to submit our findings to the UN and all large government bodies.

BUT

I forgot exactly what our outcome was. So, yeah, that's lost.

LASTLY, but still very importantly

Yes, Geeksboro was a tad leaky last time. We love them very much, however, and Joe Scott works very hard to keep our location as awesome, safe, and welcoming as it can be. So, please, please, please, be cool about stuff like that. We're lucky to have a spot like Geeksboro.

Next Weekend

A lot of you will not care that it is Superbowl weekend, BUT bear with me. I think this is a good time to talk about tribalism. I get the sense that most of us are going to agree that in most of its forms, tribalism is bad. Are there any where it isn't? I used to joke that nationalism had its place, and that place was sports, but a number of people have pointed out that that sort of thing can still get really, really ugly - after all, I am phrom Philthadelphia. ...and if there is one thing that the City of Brotherly love does really well, it's having the most cantankerous, nasty, and brutish sports fans. (Though, they did not actually throw batteries at Santa Claus. That was two separate incidents. They threw snowballs at Santa.) And Europe? It seems like some countries have an inverse correlation between progressive social policies and bellicosity about things that do not actually matter.

Anyway, this topic can clearly be extended beyond sports, and I think it would make for some good discussion: it's easy to patronize people whom we see as being followers, but if we're all going to be cats, it's going to be really rather difficult to accomplish anything, isn't it?

I hope to see any of you and all of you there! Have a great rest of your week!

January 21st and January 28th

1) Here are some books that have been brought up in the past few meetings:

• Bill Bryson's At Home - 19th century English country rectors contributed heavily to scientific discovery because of the preponderance of free time that they had to pursue everything from architecture to biology.

• Nasim Taleb's Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder - He actually references the previous information, in the previous book, but he also brings up a point about education that I wish I had had the presence of mind to bring up today, and that is this: education tends to spring from wealth, rather than the other way around. People who are in the middle class tend to be able to stay in the middle class because they can afford to go to college. Many of the current educational systems that are viewed in a positive light were created after said country achieved wealth, not the other way around. It's an interesting point.

• Atul Gawande's Being Mortal - Michael has brought this up, I've added it to my "to read" list, and I felt it worth a mention here. 

2) The link for the FAACT store:
https://www.zazzle.com/faact_shop

3) This week, we batted around a lot of topics, but (perhaps I was paying more attention because of how close to home this is) I felt that at least one of the largest chunks of our discussion centered around education. We talked about the level of education and employment among parents and what potential effects that can have on children. We also talked about the evolution of American society into one where people lack critical reasoning ability and a few of the causes of that. We also talked about the conflicting and potentially outdated goals of educational systems. If society simply needs fewer people working because of automation, what will happen to people at the lowest strata of socioeconomics? What happens to the people at its topmost echelons?


4) For next week's discussion, I'd say that this topic is as controversial as it is important. We're going to talk about legislating morality. To wit, I think all of us would agree that refusing to make a cake for a gay couple is wrong. But if the Westboro Baptist church wanted you to make a cake for one of their events, most of us would probably like the right to refuse that. I know that our group tends to be very left leaning, but I would really, really like to encourage some of the independent or right leaning FAACT members to chime in here. I bring up this topic specifically because I don't believe that it is easy to talk about. Come! Discuss! Argue! I hope to see you on Sunday the 28th!