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."
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
