January 27th, 2019

Hi everyone!

Below are Ann's notes. They are fantastic. We had a lot of people today, and if I didn't get to talk to you personally, I wish I had. There will be an e-mail coming out soon with some updates about 1) directory 2) book club 3) next drinking skeptically and 4) street cleanup! Love you all!

Secular Sunday

January 27, 2019

Attendees:

·         Ann Brady	·         Bill Sparks	·         Sean Bienert
·         Richard	·         Pearl	·         Brian
·         Kia	·         Pam	·         Nora
·         Greg	·         Lyn	·         Diane
·         Adrienne	·         Geoff	·         Chelsea
·         Derek	·         Tara	·         Molly
·         Joe	·         Chris	·         Dawn
·         Josh	·         Antonio	·         Ronnie
·         Annette	·         John	·         Bob

Announcements:

·         Directory – if you want to be in it, let Sean know

·         Need pictures for the meetup site

·         Ann will get with the Parks and Rec department about getting a street for cleanup

·         Lyn says that we have had a blurb in the religion section about FAACT. We need a new blurb with our new name.

·         Book club – Randal Hayes, Greensboro Science Café has a book club but it is science centered. If we would like to have an atheist book club we can do our own or maybe meet with them if the book is scientific. We need to talk about this. Ideas for books? Seems to be a lot of interest from the email. Saturday looks like it might be a good day. Sean will send out a poll.

·         If you are not on the email list, let Sean know and he will add you.

·         Josh wants to know if there would be any interest in a non-religious interpretation of the Bible study group. He teaches this at his school and would be willing to lead. We could do other religious texts too. Maybe we can pick a time, every other Sunday, for example.

·         We have a website – JovialityBeforeMortality.org

·         John wants to know if all the “important” communications for the group are at the website. Sean said not emails, but everything else.

Discussion Notes:

Lyn wanted to discuss conventional medicine versus alternative medicine. Sacred clay from church yard in Boho Highlands in N. Ireland (Sacred Heart Church) contains a strain of bacteria that has been proven to halt the growth of dangerous bacteria. So science doesn’t know what it doesn’t know.

Sean – science as a religion. We (most of us) will say we “believe” in science, until science bumps into something we feel intuitively. Then we discount science. But this is what science does – it self-corrects. If we have a uniting principle as a group is it science or something else. This is a topic that has been suggested and segues nicely into what Lyn said.

Josh – it’s an odd binary, science vs. religion. They aren’t comparable. “Believing in science” is a convenient language tool because we are used to talking about belief. If you talk about science in the language of cults, we are doing the same thing as Scientology. We need to understand what the science says.

Lyn says that science is not what connects her to the group.

Adrienne – why do we need to define a unifying principle?

Derek – that’s not why he joined the group. He just wanted a sense of community. That’s what binds him to the group.

Lyn – we have Christians in the group too

Diane – science is something we all seem to agree on so it’s an easy way to relate (not sure I got this right.)

Sean – a lot of what we discuss comes down to semantics and we can’t dismiss that. We have to be careful how we discuss things. The language we use can unite or divide. We need to be fairly precise in our language if we are going to understand things. (Paraphrased). I believe this is happening.

Josh – I accept vs I believe. “I believe in the Church” is something that even abused people say and this is dangerous.

Lyn – why do they believe? (Understands that this may be not the best language) Like abused women who stay with their abuser – they want and need security.

Derek – we need some belief in something. If you try to prove everything that you believe it requires too much energy. We have to accept some things without spending too much time on it.

Josh – we need to accept things, but it isn’t necessary to believe them. We could be living in a simulation, but he doesn’t need to spend a lot of energy on it because it doesn’t make any difference.

Antonio – it’s like the free will debate. You can’t unpull the wool from over your eyes. Do we have the tools to understand every single thing in our world? Being a scientist is a full time, hard job.

Chris – blind faith is different than believing in science.

Derek – experience can inform your beliefs and helps you understand science without having to completely understand everything about it.

Sean – we are inundated with data. You have to ignore some of it. Scientific studies show correlations, they don’t prove anything.

Josh – some studies show causality. Not all of them though.

Sean at some point you have to look at the bulk of the evidence and decide where the evidence is pointing.

Josh – we depend on assumptions all the time. We assume that doors won’t fall on us and bridges won’t collapse. We have to function on assumptions.

Ronnie – if we’ve been told that we can’t spend all our time checking everything, doesn’t this validate faith? We trust our parents. Shouldn’t we believe them. If we can’t check every bridge why should we check every book?

Derek – experience teaches us that doors don’t fall.

Josh – there are assumptions that we’ve been taught don’t have to be checked. Example – satan is in people’s heart – how do we check that? Some things can’t be disproved. Some things can be. We identify with our opinions. Opinion questions don’t yield to change. Para-something-matic assumptions.

Lyn – how do we deal with entrenched faith? You can only plant a seed.

Molly – we don’t have to challenge everything about faith. We need to challenge hateful views.

Lyn – she misspoke – no need to confront beliefs so much as behaviors, prejudice (Adrienne too)

Derek – we have to be open to other people’s ideas too.

Ann – open minded vs hole in the head

Bill we have our own entrenched ideas

Derek – we have to recognize our own entrenched ideas

Pam – people who say “I wasn’t raised that way” – have you never rebelled?

John – why do we spend time talking about this? If we just wanted community we could join a hiking group. We are looking for something else. Like minded people we want to associate with. As Josh said, it’s how we think, not what we think. We are learning how to think in this group. We have a hunger for deep stuff. John wants to know 1) is there deep stuff and 2) how do we think about it in a productive way 3) what place does emotion have. In college, liberal protestants were the progressives. If you don’t believe in god how do we fit in with that. Talking to about god to some people is an emotional swamp. He got frustrated in the discussion about free will  vs determinism. What difference does it make in real life?

Josh – in that discussion, scientists overstate their case by extending assumptions they can’t prove (ex. Sam Harris).

Diane – it’s interesting to discuss these ideas even though they don’t affect our day to day life.

John – question is why are we coming? This will help us define what the group does and keep everyone interested in coming.

Sean – we are trying to do that especially since our reorganization. We have talked a lot about chunking – especially in relationship to concepts. Ex. socialism. Clear out the emotional baggage. You can get to the point where you understand the basics – now what? Are we trying to understand it to the most minute detail or do we want to understand it and use the information in some way? When we are talking about interfacing with other people this is one of the things we need to figure out.

Tara – we are planting a stake in the ground and saying that religion doesn’t have to define us as a country or a people.

Lyn – religion is oppressive and suffocating because it’s everywhere. We need the moment to be with like minded people and away from religion.

Derek – has not had the persecution for his atheism that some of us have had. He wants genuine discussions and would appreciate having more religious people in our group to discuss thing.

Sean – lots of reasons for why people come to the group. Maybe next time we should discuss again.

Josh – this is a little like a Quaker meeting except everyone talks. It’s kind of meditative. Our discussions move in similar ways. We start with topics that Sean or other people suggest and the topic migrates. No one tells us what the topic is or what to do. We come up with ideas that occur to us in the moment.

Bill – tries to start conversations about atheism with people.

Antonio – sometimes it’s not a discussion with people outside our group. They want to grill us.

Sean – recent converts (to religion or outside it) are the firebrands

Bill – lots of people with no direction.

Sean – to Lyn’s point – there are some people with whom there is no point in having discussions. But some times you have to intervene – if someone believes that strychnine in large quantities can cure anything, you may want to disabuse them of that idea (or not).

Lyn – some ideas have to be challenged.

Josh – we live in More Better Land (??) If you believe that you need to believe in God to go to heaven, you will try to convince people of it. But we share public space.

Bill – dialogue without challenging. That pushes people back into their corner.

Lyn – does anybody have an idea of what really happened with the MAGA hat kids?

Kia – the Daily Show segment – depending on who was filming different groups look like the victims. It was a mess. Ignorance more than malice with the kids.

Joe – the kids were not as innocent as you may think.

Kia – in this particular case may not be as bad as people would have you think.

Pam – his body positioning was threatening

Josh – cameras change the dynamics of situations. Black Israelites were using this in their confrontations.

Molly – some people are attracted to that kind of self-righteous victimization.

Kia – they are horribly confrontational.

Meeting Notes - January 20th, 2019

Seventeen people showed up.

As per usual, we had a discussion that meandered wherever it damn well pleased. It began with Michael making reference to the movie night movie, "Dogma," and a scene where Ben Affleck's fallen angel character rejects god because of his behavior, in full knowledge of his existence. At least one of the iterations of Satanism promotes this idea: rejection of god isn't contingent upon his existence, practitioners of that philosophy reject the idea of being ruled by this, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, "god character." (This is, in part, my after the fact editorializing.)
This led to Derek bringing up Marcus Aurelius' (potentially apocryphal):

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

There's an absolute world of bun-fighting associated with this quote... if you have time, the Google rabbit hole is very, very deep.

James M. then segued us into a discussion of whether or not there would be good without bad, or if a gray area would if there could be joy without suffering. Ronnie pointed out that it wouldn't be terribly difficult to conceive of a world that was created better than the one we live in. (No matter what Leibniz said.) Steven pointed out that there are different kinds of suffering. E.g. - striving and working toward goals and having your food stolen and your children killed by a dictator.

From here we sort of got into the nature of god and his *ahem* "works."

Joey pointed out that good gods and bad gods are easier to understand and therefore believe in. Antonio made the point that, well, for a god so powerful, his actions are pretty mundane. A being that can create the universe is pretty silly when he shows up in toast (or, and I chuckle butt cannot help myself). James commented that that is a reflection of human hubris, and Ronnie brought us back to the God of the Gaps. Joey filled this in by pointing out that we use god for explanations of what we don't understand. People project themselves onto whatever god they believe in. I added that the Jews of the old testament were actually polytheistic, but believed that YHWH was just better. There's a scene where the King of Moab burns his own kid as a sacrifice, and it works so that he can beat the Israelites. Additionally, I brought up the "scapegoat" ritual of putting the sins of the early Israelite community out into the wilderness "for Azazel." I'm now reading that Azazel might be the word for scapegoat? Dunno - let me know if you know!
Then, we got into Lord of the Rings as a potential religion and how The Silmarillion fits the specs for religious texts - unreadable and fake.
We talked about God on Trial.
There was some back and forth for a while about faith, science, and money. For instance, on larger, more abstract things, we cannot directly observe our effect on, say, climate change. And, while scientists can be bought, it is scientific research that exposes any mistakes or transgressions on the part of individual scientists. However, there were some differing opinions on human health. This went from the anti-vax movement to GMOs to regulation of sterilization in hospitals.
Then, eventually we rounded back to politics, the electoral college, gerrymandering, and reasonable sizes for congressional districts. There were a lot more comments made, arguments had, and jokes. Forgive me, or let me know if I've omitted something.
Right at the end of the meeting, Michael was talking about a book concerned with honor culture and violence. I think this was it, but let me know if I'm wrong.

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.