I Fear the Greeks and Their Gifts

Hi everyone!

Today's Summary:

We our initial discussion today centered around entitlement, privilege, and tribalism. James brought up this TED talk. We talked a bit about the kind of mindset that people enter into when they enter into the anonymity of being part of a crowd or a team. Ann pointed out that this famous experiment has been banned (? I can't remember if you said "banned" or if it just wouldn't be acceptable in today's society.) Steve brought up Lies My Teacher Told Me, and the idea that public school was essentially design to turn children into productive cogs in a machine. I talked a little bit about the fact that education is becoming more of a reinforcement about the entitlement that comes with money and the competitive aspects of a zero sum society.

At this, James brought up a topic that a lot of people in our group have probably had to deal with: whether or not to accept anything from religious organizations at work. James presented several of his own thoughts on the topic, each of which we discussed in some detail.

1) Religious organizations making donations to places of work often make the assumption that everyone there is Christian. It's an errant assumption or, if you prefer, an attempted negation of the identity of those who are unlike what the church members see as their "tribe."

2) Slimy feeling for accepting something from a group whose *ahem* philosophical inclinations do not match our own - if it was the NRA, would you take the food? What about the Westboro Baptist church?

3) Take advantage or a stand for yourself - if no one can start a conversation with you about the food because you're in a secure area and there is no "prayer card" or whatever to add strings to the meal, what's the harm in taking advantage of a bunch of people who are clearly not interested in maintaining equity in the world anyway? Or would it be better to stay true to ourselves in such a case - don't take food from a church because it is not something that we agree with?

4) Bait - does it seem like a person is participating as prey in a predatory activity? Does it seem like the normalization of an activity that should be in no way normal? Churches use bait all over the place - Charles pointed out that many Christians became that way, either first or second hand, because of predatory churches in the developing world. "Come to our meeting; we have food." Or, as I liked to put it, everyone is being baited into Christianity with the use of bait-after-death.

Ann continued our discussion by bringing up another local concern: a church meeting being held in a public school gym - it's apparently being rented by the group, but run by adults (please correct me if my notes are wrong). We talked about that kind of thing in a professional setting - whether a person is working in the public or private sector. While we are often, if not always, well within our rights to take issue with this sort of thing, it might not be a hill worth dying on, so to speak. We shared anecdotes of people losing out professionally and even at the high school level (This sounded like what we talked about, but I'm not entirely sure that it's the same). Subjective attacks can be really, really difficult to combat - once our colleagues decide that they don't like our faces because of our beliefs, it can be a short trip out the door. Economic reprisals are surprisingly, insanely easy for Christian colleagues to use against us in the sense that we can easily be professionally undermined, simply for not believing what the rest of the "tribe" believes.

We talked about how, as people get farther along in their careers, they become less and less interested in "playing nice" or *ahem* "caring about our jobs." Again, we come back to the debate over whether its important to not allow the normalization of prejudice against us in the workplace or to not have to worry about our career because of what we believe.

Ann told us an anecdote about the entitlement of some preachers who deigned it necessary to knock on her door at 8:30 one evening. The conversation wended toward, "Well, what are you going to do when you die?"

Ann: "Be dead!"

This turned our discussion to the insanity that surrounds funerals and death - Charles talked about the Egyptians imagining that their rulers would continue to need food and other comforts after dying. We talked about the whole industry surrounding the treatment of corpses - which is antithetical toward a lot of Christianity anyway. Why does a body need to be sealed in a leak proof tomb if the soul is going to heaven? What if there is a resurrection and the bodies are sealed under six feet of dirt in a coffin, inside of a metal container? Would this complicate a zombie apocalypse? Obviously, we went a little ad absurdum with this, but zombies are written into Christianity from the get-go. After all, what would you call a group of people beyond death, who have no free will? Does that mean that heaven is full of zombies? After all, heaven wouldn't have any evil in it, right? Soooooo... will-less post-death corpses, right? There are some great takes on heaven - Twain and Dar Williams. 

Charles brought up the man who asked Jesus for a seat next to him in his kingdom - (James or John, I think?) It does seem a lot like heaven's just an extended church session. Yikes. I jokingly added that in the time period when Jesus was living, the idea of having a chair may have been very, very attractive - even just having the ability to sit around at leisure may have been blissful at the time it was written. Dunno. Wasn't there.

We talked a bit more about the many faces of YHWH, El, and, eventually, Kal El and Jor El

Steve brought up a book that Lyn has spoken of many times: The Chalice and the Blade. I'm probably adding that and, maybe, Stargate - according to Joe and James (I saw the original, but never the tv show), which is about the USAF killing alien gods - to my queue of Things to Check Out.

Next Time:

I won't be around on the 15th or the 29th. If someone has a topic, that'd be awesome (let me know, and I'll e-mail everyone). If not, by all means, get together and be a community. I plan to have a topic for the 22nd, but I'll update you about that soon! Have a great week! See everyone as soon as I can! Have an awesome week! 

Not Your Average Sunday Summary

Hi everyone!

Our conversation ranged sort of all over the place, but we started with the definitions of

"tautological" and "teleological." *Ahem* Per Wikipedia:


In rhetoric, a tautology (from Greek ταὐτός, "the same" and λόγος, "word/idea") is a logical argument constructed in such a way, generally by repeating the same concept or assertion using different phrasing or terminology, that the proposition as stated is logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion.

TL;DR: tautological pertains to reasoning that we don't want to use.

Teleological is as follows:

teleology

[tel-ee-ol-uh-jee, tee-lee-] 

 


Word Origin
noun, Philosophy.
1.
the doctrine that final causes exist.
2.
the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature.
3.
such design or purpose.
4.
the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent innature.
5.
(in vitalist philosophy) the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of self-realization.

---

I think it is safe to say that these are related. Teleology will use tautology to obscure the fact that "design" and "purpose" are often illusions brought on by the human resistance to the idea that the universe is (at very least often) an indifferent and random place.

We, then, went on to talk about potential future topics, future activities, the ins and outs, as it were, of those future activities.

There will be more posts on this page and on our content page in the coming days. I hope that everyone has a fantastic week and joins us next time for our Spectacular Secular Sunday! In the meantime, here are some notes about our discussion:

Also, I think, next time we're planning on having a topic - so stay tuned!

-Sean

Short, Sweet Summary for September 10th.

Today:

As per usual, we had a meandering discussion that wound around a variety of topics. This time, we touched on politics, philosophy, and linguistics - to name a few. I'm going to endeavor to keep my summaries short from here on out because this time of year (the beginning of the school year) I'm up to my armpits in work. We talked about the structuring of the education system and the boons and banes of public/private sector of education. People shared personal experiences in public and private education. We talked a lot about nuance and the necessity in expressing clarity and being concise. Specific points touched on tribalism, America's arrival at its "place" in the world, what that place is, and what people believe it to be. Jon pointed out that the government generally does not do a great job of changing tracks once certain programs have momentum. We talked about competition vs domination and the future of the school system.

There was discussion of why politics come up in our discussions so much and whether or not that can be avoided. Lyn showed off her oh-so-stylish FAACT t-shirt and told us about this great wine. So, we joked about infowars' Alex Jones hocking his junk - not a goal of our group.

We talked about future discussion topics - Artificial Intelligence and That Which We Do Actually Believe came to the surface as good ideas. I'll be in touch for when we are going to do those, but we also said if you have any ideas for future topics, let me know. 

Upcoming events:

Don't forget! Next weekend is Greensboro Beautiful! If you're interested, here is the sign up!

Also, Lyn's movie night and potluck is nigh!

OH! CHECK THE CONTENT PAGE OF THIS SITE FOR SOME OLDER UPDATES!!!

Sunday, July 30th: Ghosts and Memories and Information and the Hadron Collider

This Sunday: Information, Identity, Memories, and Ghosts!!!

We've talked in the past about the possibility of a deity-free life after death scenario. Well, there are a few articles that have come to my attention recently that are pretty wild.

1) http://gizmodo.com/does-the-large-hadron-collider-actually-disprove-ghosts-1792686748

2) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ghosts-brian-cox-large-hadron-collider-cern-real-truth-standard-model-physics-a7598026.html

3)  http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/scientists-have-discovered-how-to-implant-false-memories


One and two are at odds. Three is an interesting point because it speaks to what a person's existence sort of is. Check them out or just come join the conversation! I'm back from Pennsylvania and will be happy to see anyone who comes on the 30th.

Come and talk. Come and listen. This is a judgement free zone. Hope to see you some Sunday!

Secular Sunday - New Setup!

For the foreseeable future at least, our Secular Sunday page will read as follows:

This is us getting together and being a community. We meet every Sunday at Geeksboro. Sometimes, there are specific topics: morality without divinity, deconversion stories, historical relativism, etc. 
Come and talk. Come and listen. This is a judgement free zone. Hope to see you some Sunday! 

We still may have specific topics from time to time - as people suggest them, but it was recently decided that discussions often open up more and can go deeper if there isn't some sort of "central goal" to them. I will still update this site with notes (as well as an e-mail) whenever I can. Have a great day everyone!

Open Forum Notes

As per usual, we had a lively and many faceted discussion today. We began with a discussion of the Elevation church (someone's daughter has taken a recent interest in it).  This begat the reasoning that churches have evolved into a capitalist mindset - of course they want their preachers to be trendy and have outgoing personalities - how else will they save as many people as possible? (Lining their pockets, of course, in the meantime.)

Steve pointed out one of Marx's comments on religion - no, not that one: Religion is the cry of the oppressed.

It was then discovered that this was part of a chain of churches. Franchurches - to coin a portmanteau. Joe found their website (link above) and regaled us with some information about their various, *ahem* services. The idea that we are all inherently sinners is a pretty capitalistic thing from the get-go. After all, what is a sinner but someone needs something (absolution, for instance)? We talked briefly about how one might go about persuading a younger family member to understand that this whole thing might be a pretty terrible idea, which we  circled back around to again later. At the time, we left it at the idea that people who have been raised without religion and come to it later have at least been given an alternative (Gina, I believe said that.) An intelligent person who has been shown an alternative will most likely not choose religion when all is said and done. The idea of choice segued our conversation around to a topic at which it often seems to arrive these days, good old 45. We also spoke of the Tree Effect (sorry, can't find a citation for that one) that confronts many people when they see just how vast and interrelated societal problems can be.

People began making comparisons between the current administration and other countries where leaders are allowed to push religious agendas. After a few references to covfefe, we eventually landed on the idea that the religious (and other) conservatives may be taking advantage of something like dementia. Joe refuted this by pointing out that many of 45's gaffs may be more intentionally timed than not - look at the passage of certain bills and the timing of said gaffs. We talked briefly about which would be worse: if Trump was being led astray or if he was consciously making decisions that buoyed the Christian right, as it were. Joe, again, pointed out that the gestalt effect makes it inconsequential. We got back to our discussion of some weeks ago about evil, prompting a reference to Hitler and Charles mentioning that it is quite likely that Hitler believed in what he was doing. This brought up Godwin's Law. Something that should be more hyperbolic than it is these days: the more insane elements of the far right literally are Nazis - no Godwin involved. We hit upon the repetition of history, the idea that History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce (Marx), and the idea of history being a Markovian process. (Not actually just a Bad Religion song - it's a mathematical idea where variables cancel out and cause cyclical repetition.)

We talked a bit about progress and pendulum swings to the left and to the right, that things have been worse in human history, just not recently. Bob at one point objected to the idea that "we" elected 45 because so many of us actively worked against that outcome. There was discussion of how we might have stopped it and how perhaps our own hubris, thinking "there's just no way that he'll ever be elected," and "I do not need to extend any kind of olive branches to people who might vote for him,"  and - let's not forget - the infighting and finger pointing that caused the anti-Fascists to lose the Spanish Civil War... And we've Godwinned ourselves, again.

A great many opinions were voiced about intellectual laziness, the lack of critical analysis, and how used people are to being lied to. We talked about the difference between being educated and intelligent. Cheryl brought up, I believe, this article from the New York Times. There were parallels drawn between faith, dogma, and a lack of ability to think of things in a nuanced fashion. Part of what allows our brains to function as well as they do, chunking, is one of the things that begets every avenue of racism, prejudice, and intellectual laziness. Throughout history, more intellectual groups of people, who do not agree on every single facet of every single point refuse to walk in lockstep with each other - I believe Lyn pointed this out - and are regularly defeated because they cannot do that to muster the numbers to achieve victories. Often, those that do will excuse their lack of citation as "common sense" and bury their fear of change in tradition and its ilk.

We talked about the New Economy and how easy it is to contribute money to something and not even know that you are doing it. James pointed out that clickbait ads, such as weather.com's prognostications of doom, are often evidence of "if you are not paying for a product, you are the product." Sensationalist news editorial will garner more attention than honest - and relatively boring but truthful - reporting every time. We got back into a few different points dealing with how different  viewpoints - cue Obi Wan Kenobi - can color our truth of events. And how one political party might see a president's inaction as positive while the other side can see him as an empty suit - or perhaps, Schrödinger's President: someone who takes away your rights while not doing anything at all. We tried to orbit back to our original discussion topic and brought up that there are more intellectually dominating religions that one could be pulled into. A cursory, critical, and objective look at a religious text generally comes to the conclusion that most of them are on the same page. After all, if one is going to be led skyward (and keep in mind what science tells us is actually up in the sky) by a musical group of winged people after their brain dies, it might not be prudent for someone who believes that to laugh at the Mormon idea that Jesus is hanging out on another planet or something of that sort.

I apologize for missing any points that anyone brought up - there was at least one from Michael and one from Suzy that I cannot summon, and my notes are failing me. Sorry!

We closed up shortly after the conversation got onto G. Gordon Liddy, Human, Nietzsche's All Too Human, and Camus. Here's a picture associated with at least two of those. Love you all. Good night. See you next weekend or sooner!

Laughter!

Today's Secular Sunday conversation discussed Laughter and Humor. Oddly enough, it was fairly dark.

We started out by bringing up the point that most evolutionary biologists believe that laughter developed as a coping mechanism, but Francie quickly pointed out that there are all sorts of laughter. People chimed in by talking about nervous laughter, joyous laughter, and even (later) scornful laughter - these are all things that represent extreme displays of emotion, but aren't necessarily coming from the same place. Additionally, there are culturally specific responses that involve laughter. Schadenfreude, for instance, might seem callous, but many of us have experienced it. Though, as Francie pointed out, the context of this is very important - laughing at the misfortune of someone who has seemingly earned their "reward" is inherently more humorous than someone who is helpless or - in our estimation - undeserving.

What might cause amusement in certain situations could easily cause stress in others. In many countries, laughter is seen as a way to add levity to a difficult situation - some westerners have a very difficult time adapting to this. Especially, when it appears that someone is laughing at a misfortune that we've suffered.

Obviously, laughter is one of few external "extreme" displays (as opposed to smirking, etc.) of emotion that we have at our disposal, so it is going to have to pull double or triple or whatever duty - to wit, laughter isn't just laughter.

A few people said that slapstick is not their cup of tea and more likely to make them uncomfortable than cause them laughter.

Obviously, tickling, for instance, is a display of a kind of distress. This might have developed so that children had an instinctual and audible reaction to being touched - for safety's sake.

Bob pointed out that different cultures find different things funny. Betty pointed out that at times, forcing laughter can have a "fake it till you make it" sort of effect on people. Even if a situation isn't funny, laughing can help us rise above it. Cheryl then produced a study from Mt. Sinai hospital that showed how many positive physiological effects laughter can have: relief of stress to better functioning of many of the body's systems. Additionally, the article mentioned that, while uncommon, laughter has had some bad side effects - most notably, monocular blindness and syncope (fainting). I would very much like to be the comedian who could say that they caused someone to go blind from laughter - can you imagine?

We also talked about maturity and laughter - what seems funny to us at a young age often doesn't after some time. We talked about the maturing of comedy in pop-culture. The early episodes of South Park, for instance, we completely scatology. The newer episodes, while still having some similarly low-brow stuff, often have political and social commentary. While we did enjoy talking about Charlie Chaplin's Hard Times and The Great Dictator, it seems that a lot of the mass media entertainments have become more sophisticated - Sitcoms, with plenty of exceptions, have to be relate-able, humorous, and, at certain levels, compelling in order to keep an audience. As terrible as some of them are, comparing, say, The Big Bang Theory to Leave It to Beaver, shows a lot more ability on the writers' parts.

We talked about humor not being a coping mechanism anymore - just as the desire to accumulate resources for survival eventually gives way to greed in some people. Humor cannot entirely be attributed to a coping mechanism. We talked about situational comedy and the subversion of expectations in things like the Zucker Brothers' Airplane! and Top Secret. We brought up that as our society has matured, Chaplin's words, that life is a tragedy in close up and comedy in long shot, makes a lot of sense in terms of some darkly comedic jokes about some of the greater tragedies in human history.

This led to a discussion of the current presidential administration and its need to be taken seriously. We bantered about whether or not Trump has ever been responding jovially to a quip at his expense - something that even George W. Bush found a way to do. I pointed out that Trump's brand of humor is often the kind of thing that would make the average person sick. Take, for instance, his imitation of the handicapped reporter. There are people out there that, no doubt, found that to be the kind of thing that he "has the balls to say". It is, however, humor of a certain type.

This brought us through another round of the cultural appropriateness of certain types of humor, and, eventually, to the point where we talked about politically correctness, the book Infidel, the horror of silencing protest in the name of not offending people, and our discussion for next time. 

Joseph Lantz felt - and for good reason - that our comedy discussion was a tad depressing. So, he pointed out that KFC has released this in time for Mother's Day. Thank you Joe. That's amazing.

I hope to see you all there! Have a fantastic week!