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!