Missionary Dating

Secular Sunday

February 24, 2019

Attendees:

·         Ann Brady	·         Joe	·         Molly
·         Lyn	·         Brian	·         Rachel
·         Bob	·         Lisa	·         Derek
·         Roberta	·         Toni	·         Josh
·         Tara	·         Mike	·         Charles
·         Jessica	·         Stephanie	·         James
·         Dawn	·         John	·         Katie
·	·	·

Announcements:

Lisa – Jim Helton is interested in talking to any groups in NC (American Atheists). Topics include conversion therapy, onboarding, Gideon bibles in public schools, sex education, toolkits for activism. Starter kit from them. Last week of March. Tues 26^th, Wed. 27^th, Thursday 28^th. Can we vote online? Should we partner with another group so that we can meet people outside our area?

Lisa – American Atheist convention is at the end of April. Starts on April 18^th (Thursday). Tickets are roughly $100. Rooms are $105 a night. (3 nights). In Cincinnati.

Molly – if you are interested in the book club give Molly your email by the end of the meeting.

Brian – lending library. Sign up. Brian will bring the book next week.

Lyn – last couple of weeks there were a letter in the paper about praying for Trump. Also 2 amendments were struck down by Winston Salem Superior Court judge.

Fair Districts NC will come to speak to a group about gerrymandering if anyone wants.

Discussion Notes:

Missionary dating – Christians date atheists to try to convert them. OMG.

Charles – married a Christian, was a Christian himself. Lost his faith when his children were growing up. It was very difficult. He does not date Christians now.

Molly – dated a Christian who never tried to convert her.

Derek – dated a fundie but she never tried to convert him.

Katie – her last Christian boyfriend was anti-science.

Rachel – her husband is religious but is not a problem. They argue about Trump, but not religion.

Sean – were any of us in religions that forbid dating outside the religion. Premarital sex will get you kicked out in JW. Being JW is banned in some countries.

Charles and Josh – discussion about Ruth (Moabite) and whether the bible indicates that that disqualified David and Jesus from being Jewish. 2Cor6:14 – Do not yoke yourself to unbelievers.

Sean – Heller – God Knows – the David story from David’s perspective in a Catch-22 way.

John – how has being married to a believer affected your marriage.

Lisa – grew up Catholic but was still looking for something Christian. Her husband was not religious (maybe an agnostic theist). He is conservative and is uncomfortable with her lack of faith. He is concerned that she will influence her son and maybe they will think he is stupid.

Josh is uncomfortable with the term atheist because he feels that it is off-putting to many – seems to be taken as an attack on them. Fear and seeing have the same root in Hebrew. It maybe that they have a fear of something that is unknown.

Jess – religious people are not really well equipped for the unknown because they are used to having answers for everything. If you take God out they don’t have answers.

Back to dating believers – Quiverful Christians. They have conventions where they take their sons and daughters to make matches. Have bunches of kids to populate the world with Christians.

JW – conventions amount to the same thing.

Jesus Camp – movie

Every religion allows loop holes that allow about any kind of behavior. (Josh – Muslims having “marriages” with prostitutes). The divider (in this discussion) is not religion, it’s how dogmatic or tolerant or accepting they are of other ideas. Presenting narrow-mindedness as a virtue is not attractive whether it’s religion or atheism.

Pam – her husband is concerned that his clients will find out she is atheist. He feels outnumbered by Pam and kids. The only way to take the sting out of the word is to use it.

Sean – we are trying to address broader goals in that we have people who are believers.

Charles – likes free thinker.

Josh – words are the way we communicate and miscommunicate. 

YourMorals.org

Secular Sunday

February 24, 2019

Attendees:

·         Ann Brady	·         Pam Hill	·         Sean Bienert
·         Ronnie	·         Derek	·         John
·         Joe	·         Molly	·         Sean
·         Bob	·         Brian	·         Michael
·         Geoff	·         Caro	·         Tara
·         Josh	·         Lyn	·
·	·	·
·	·	·

Announcements:

Brian brought a book list from library

Bylaws – there have been some questions about the bylaws but consensus seems to be to wait until they pass, then change them.

Book club interest meeting right after meeting.

Bible club once a month.

Discussion Notes:

Started with a weird discussion of morality. Gene had posted some stuff in Plato’s Cave about “what if…” scenarios. Website “YourMorals.org” Moral foundation theory – six categories of how you lie on the Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian scale.

Subjectivity of morality – topic

John has a fascination with skulls (don’t judge) but sometimes the collection of them seems weird to him. This has been since high school. He knows how to boil them down and reassemble the skeleton. He hastens to say that this is not an obsession. He hit a hawk with his truck and it was injured enough that he had to mercifully kill it but removing the head seemed not quite right to him. There is no logical reason for this.

Tara pointed out that dead is dead. Think back to the terrorists who cut off their captives heads and how horrified we all were. There is no logical reason this should bother us more than shooting for example.

6 moral foundations

Care/harm – feeling others’ pain. The degree to which this is important in our judgements.

Fairness/cheating – ideas of justice, right and proportionality

Loyalty/betrayal – tribal ideas. Patriotism,

Authority/subversion – hierarchical social order

sanctity/degradation – disgust, contamination. Religious ideas.

liberty/oppression – hatred of bullies

When data was parsed conservatives are more equal in all areas. Liberals weighted towards care/harm and fairness/cheating. Libertarians weighted more towards liberty/oppression.

Example – the wall. Conservatives post things like “do you lock your door at night?” Difficult to argue with that. When you question them, they will say it protects us from enemies, but can’t name specific ways it does that.

Knowing where someone is on the scale helps you to figure out how to discuss things with people of opposing views in a way that will help you convince them of your position.

Josh - “All the arguments I’ve heard are either … or …” We make decisions then look for reasons to justify it. We have to give up the need to be right. Opinions and arguments are not the same. Arguments are things you need to win. Opinions are ideas you form.

We need to give up making things binary. That promotes argument. Nothing is as simple as this or that. It is a sorting mechanism that allows us to think more quickly and make decisions.

Kluge – talks about the haphazard organization of the brain.

Tribalism tends into this too. Binary arguments allow us to identify our “group” more quickly.

Unless we are being really intentional about our thinking, we are on “autopilot” most of the time. Lyn objects to this idea. She feels that we are often very rational.

Michael – The Economist podcast says that learning more things doesn’t so much broaden our minds and make us more open to new ideas. No evidence of this.

Back to equality/proportionality – liberals tend to look more for equality. Conservatives lean more towards proportionality (people pulling their own weight).

Sean asked if the study Gene mentioned was based in the US. Mostly. Some in India. Depending on your socio-economic status, your moral foundations will be different. Same results worldwide.

The definition of liberal, conservative, etc is different in other parts of the world but the divisions stay the same. Political systems are not binary, but the ideas tend to be.

Josh – some differences in regionalism, what is important historically, etc. but there are areas of broad commonality. It’s more like a color blob with the colors shifting around the edges, but mostly the same, depending on the issues that are important. Morality is not dependent on a position on the wall, but it is being made into a moral issue by both sides. Morality in politics is different than morality in general. Need to look at ethics too. Moral positions have some things/groups that remain the same over time. Political and ethical standards do shift over time.

Sean - Where our morals are right now is not where they are going to be in 50-100 years. Good idea to try to figure out where we are headed and how our legacy will be impacted.

John – question for Gene – did the study look at how religion affects your moral foundation? Not so much the affect of religion, but more political ideology. Conservatives have an advantage because they operate more evenly across all areas of foundation. Liberals have more trouble with this.

Sean points out that this accounts for 3 groups, but most studies look at 4 areas. Economic x-axis, authoritarianism on the y-axis. (Ronnie) Some of these do not lend themselves to states, only individuals. Authoritarian is based on how much control/power the central government has so most modern democratic states are authoritarian in this model.

You have to differentiate between how groups label themselves and what they actually do. Ridiculous to call Stalin a communist, he was totalitarian. What do people actually do? Figure out what you are trying to assess, then look at the actions and how they line up with the thing you want to assess.

We create our own fictions about what we do and are willing to do. A lot of conservatives will answer questions more liberal than they would think but who label themselves as conservatives because it’s what they are comfortable with.

Examples – Insane Clown Posse – born again Christians who talk about rape and murder and very bad things. People identified with them and then got left in confusion (I don’t get this cultural reference, so maybe Sean should elaborate).

Bob – what about those who don’t identify with any of these groups? Gene – doesn’t really address them.

Some labels don’t make any sense to us now – Liberal Republican, for example. We make sense of our world using words. If we don’t have a word to describe something, we make one up. Changing world zeitgeist.

Gene – example - voluntary human extinction movement – moral questions that are very difficult will continue to challenge us. Fritz Haber invented nitrogen fertilizer. Also invented chlorine gas used in WWI. He was also a nationalist German Jew who was run out of Germany. He also invented Zyklon gas which was used to exterminate Jews during WWII.

How We Can Care For Each Other

Secular Sunday

February 4, 2019

Attendees:

·         Ann Brady	·         Pam Hill	·         Sean Bienert
·         James	·         Gina	·         Amber
·         Tara	·         Pearl	·         James
·         Geoff	·         Brian	·         John
·         Lisa	·         Chris	·         Derek
·         Penny	·         Adrienne	·         Annette
·         Caro	·         Rachel	·         Ronnie
·         Antonio	·         Bob	·         Josh

Announcements:

·         Bill requests prayers for the Patriots tonight.

·         Movie night on the 16^th.

·         Drinking Skeptically is the 22^nd.

·         James Milloways’ birthday is the 21^st.

·         Bylaws have been completed by Brian. We will be sending them out ASAP.

·         Need to set up something for the IRC and adopt-a-street

·         Directory was sent out – some names updated. Let Sean know if you want in

·         Brian will bring books if you let him know (he will post a list)

·         Need a shared space like a Google Drive.

·         Indivisible is having their rural canvas. Need drivers this afternoon. See Tara.

·         John’s brother (pancreatic cancer). His brother is doing some better but the cancer is still growing. They have given him stronger meds. He has learned that his wife will be taken care of so he is relieved and doing better because of it.

·         Need some way for the community to support our members. Josh – how do we find the language to support others even though we aren’t religious? “I will hold you in the light” – Quakers. Pastoral care. These are good reasons for having the directory – so we can help each other.

·         Excommunication is the opposite of communication.

Notes

The discussion about John’s brother has morphed into a discussion of how we can care for each other. Josh pointed out that it takes courage to ask for care from others. Sean says that it helps to know what others have gone through. Our stories of religious deconversion help with this. Shared experience helps in so many ways.

Penny – it’s hard not believing sometimes. When stuff happens you can’t say “God has a plan.” You have to just accept that stuff happens sometimes. It’s just chance.

Geoff – can’t remember having been asked what church do you go to. Almost all of us raised our hands when asked if they had had that question. Younger members do not have as much experience with that as we do. Ronnie said he is not asked because he works mostly with Indian software engineers. Sean says that he is a human Labrador so a lot of people talk to him, so he gets asked a lot.

Power of prayer – there are studies that show there is a measurable effect from prayer to believers.

Everyone Sean knows who says they love church don’t really. It’s like a box to check – I’ve done Jesus this week. We are like that because we seem to feel guilty if we don’t show up for a while. But overall, we seem to enjoy being here.

Rachel says that just knowing that we’re here helps.

Sean says there are other groups near by who do the same things, but it is encouraging to see that we as a society are making progress.

Discussion of slavery in early America. Example – Josh said that G. Washington’s house in Philadelphia had slave quarters.

Josh – the founding fathers understood the awfulness of slavery and did it anyway. The Constitution referred to white MEN when they were discussing rights. We live with ambiguity on many levels. Their real values were the ones they lived by, not the ones they wrote about.

Sean – we discus this sort of thing all the time in reference to televangelists. Aesop’s fable of the lion and the lamb. Those with power (wealth) set their own rules.

Josh – the question is who is being hurt by what I allow myself to do.

James M. – not really. How outcome oriented are we?

Josh – there is a difference between saying “I’m a vegan but I wear wool” and owning slaves, although some vegans equate eating animals to slavery.

James – less prominent people do things without getting into trouble.

Sean – analogies will always have something that doesn’t work.

Discussion of Quakers, Shakers, Mennonites, Amish.

Fake curse words. Oh Fudge. Holy Guacamole. Kicking thebucket (??)

We have resolved to get everybody to stop saying “based off of” instead of “based on”. - Josh

“Fucking A” comes from WWII. A book.

Thank you, Ann - these are wonderful notes!