I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. :-)

Black Women Who Use The “A” Word (Jamila Bey/The Root; May 19)

In the movie The Color Purple, sisters Celie and Nettie reunite after being separated by decades, oceans and the spite of an abusive Mister.

Running through a lush pasture, neither quite believes her fortune upon reuniting. Old women now, they stumble through the field, arms outstretched, calling to one another, “Ceeeeeelieeeee!” “Nettieeeeee!”

I got to enjoy my very own “Celie-Nettie” moment when I walked into the Center for Inquiry on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., last Sunday afternoon. The African Americans for Humanism conference hosted four to five dozen non-believers – the largest gathering of African-American atheists in history. (As a member of the Center, I was part of the planning committee, and I was also a speaker at the event; “Spare the Rod, Save Your Child,” was my topic.)

Of course, the Internet has helped me realize that I’m not the only black atheist around, but until actually being able to embrace and do the “sister-friend squeal” with a couple dozen of other black women who use the “A” word (atheist or agnostic), I have been rather lonely for girlfriends who don’t need to schedule activities around their pious obligations.

Within this incredibly religious culture, black Americans are the most devout and routinely rate at the top of every index that measures religiosity. It’s difficult – if not impossible – to divorce religion from black culture. We can hardly get on the bus without invoking or thanking Jesus that we’ll make it to work on time.

Among black folks, if you’re a criminal who shows up at a service on whatever Sabbath you subscribe to, you’re just a fallen human who is worthy of love and redemption. But if you’re a moral and decent human who doesn’t believe in a supernatural force, you’ll soon find that your kind is most unwelcome.

One conference participant from the Bible Belt summed it up this way: “Christianity’s grasp on black people makes it almost impossible to admit that you’re a black atheist. We have to hide our non-belief, otherwise we are excluded. And if we give voice to any objection or doubt, we’re ostracized and isolated – or just banished! So any time religion comes up, it’s simpler to just change the subject or say nothing if you can’t bring yourself to fake an ‘amen.’… But don’t use my name ‘cause my mother told me when she saw me reading God is Not Great that if any of her children actually believed ‘that mess,’ she’d have one less child.”

Craig Lowery’s mother took it pretty hard when he told her almost a year ago that he didn’t think her assurances that she’d “pray on it” would actually do anything. He said, “She cried like a baby when I told her. She said, ‘I don’t believe you, Craig!’” His mother and my own have the same pat response whenever issues of faith versus science or reason arise: “Baby, I don’t want to talk about it!”

It’s fair to say that everyone was pretty excited to come and fellowship with like-minded types from around the country, and one atheist who flew in from India. It was the first time many conference-goers knowingly met another black atheist in the flesh. And for those of us from the nation’s capitol, we met a few people who are new to such events, though many take part in message boards and Internet discussion groups.

Ronnelle Adams, a D.C.-area resident, says just coming to the event was thrilling. “I walked in and saw all these black atheists,” he said. “I’m not the only one! I was so happy for the discussion and the chance to meet other like-minded people just like me.”

Norm Allen, executive director of African Americans for Humanism, kicked off the conference with the discussion “Why it is Time for African American Humanists to Come Out of the Closet.” He told the group that he wished more black folks would simply admit their non-belief without pushing their worldview. Also, he asserted that using the term “humanist” rather than the more charged label “atheist” could be a step toward helping black non-believers find some acceptance in their communities.

Naima Washington is a D.C. resident who says she was so excited about the conference that she didn’t sleep the night before. Washington says she’s tired of trying the gentle and pandering approach. “We’re not trying to convince people whose noses are stuck in Bibles or Korans of anything. I’m trying to find other atheists, and we don’t need to hide.”

A number of attendees agreed that they don’t believe they ever made a deliberate decision to “become” an atheist; rather it’s a realization that came about after study and simple absence of proof.

Ken Granderson, who calls himself a lifelong thinker, came to the conference from Boston. “You don’t choose to be an atheist; you’re born that way. Not believing in the Judeo-Christian God is no different than not believing in Thor or Poseidon or Osiris. Someone told me that there’s this God, but once I learned to question, I understood that the God I was told about – and the stories about that God – were no different from the mythologies of any other people who created stories to explain their worlds.”

A common thread throughout the conference was the conviction that African Americans need to do a better job at thinking critically and challenging the ideas put before them. Donald Wright, author of The Only Prayer I’ll Ever Pray: Let My People Go , explains that his book calls “for blacks in America to critically examine their loyalty and dedication to religion, and to begin adapting a lifestyle centered on rational thinking. It is time to break the chains of mental bondage caused by religious dogma.”

The conference concluded with a discussion about how to both encourage more diversity within the atheist or humanist or free-thought movement and how to simply handle going back home to our (sometimes) lonely little corners.

Washington said she was encouraged by the number of black secularists at the convention, but she laments that there is so much more work to be done, especially when considering those who are shaping American atheist policy. “The lack of diversity is a real issue. Are we just to be followers or are we helping to drive this vehicle that is the secular movement?”

Washington’s point was echoed in a summary by Center for Inquiry On Campus organizer Debbie Goddard. Goddard called out the skeptic movement for being overwhelmingly white, male and older, but she also noted that there’s a thriving college skeptic scene that could likely yield some age, race and gender diversity to the movement as well.

If nothing else, the group assembled was a rational one. And while “fired up,” we realize that Americans who claim to have no religious affiliation is only around 15 percent. The number for blacks is even lower, at 12 percent. So as a minority within a deeply closeted minority, we’re going to have to work to gain visibility and influence. Those of us who are “out” mustn’t apologize for our stance. We also need to join larger non-theistic groups.

And as Celie yelled to Mister when she moved away to her own home, black atheists need to affirm, “I may be black… but I’m here!”

(Jamila Bey is an atheist and a writer based in Washington, D.C.)

(To learn more about the topic Bey spoke on at the conference, go here and here. To see my own critique of the Biblical “Spare the rod and spoil the child” point of view, see the two-part entry I posted back on Feb 21, 2004.)

Related posts:

1. A Black Atheist Speaks Out
2. Oh my god – atheists want to speak out?
3. Irish Atheists Speak Out!

I’m still unsure of mine….

Does Anyone Believe In An Afterlife? (Susan Jacoby/The Spirited Atheist blog/The Washington Post; May 17)

A 90-year-old friend of mine – an atheist raised as a Roman Catholic – recently visited her younger sister, who is dying of cancer. “She told me she wasn’t afraid,” my friend recounted, “because she knew that the moment she drew her last breath, she would see her husband again. I felt envy for the first time, because I don’t have any such faith to sustain me. But then I thought that if she really believes what she’s saying, there is no reason for her to be putting herself through horrible cancer chemotherapy at the age of 88. Why hang around here and put off the reunion?”

This question has long puzzled me too. I have often been asked by believers how it is possible for an atheist to live with the conviction that this life is the only life we have. But most human beings, whatever their religious beliefs, will go to immense lengths to continue in this vale of tears. For me, the evidence that people will do almost anything to go on living another day raises the question of whether anyone facing the inevitable end truly believes that his or her last breath is only the portal to another, better plane of existence.

[To learn how devout theists in the process of dying are apparently more likely to insist on extraordinary medical measures to stay alive than dying atheists are, see the entry I posted on May 3, 2009.]

It has frequently been argued, and not only by religious believers, that explaining faith in the supernatural as the ultimate defense against fear of dying is too simplistic. I think that the need to find more elaborate and complicated explanations for religion, whether in anthropology or genetics, actually supports the idea that the denial of death explains the fundamental appeal of religion. If the whole edifice of religion serves mainly to insulate us from the terror inspired by certain knowledge of our own extinction, that also explains the ferocity of the anti-evolution sentiment professed by nearly one-third of Christians in this country. Belief in eternal life, or the resurrection of the body, requires that humanity be placed in a special category above, beyond and outside nature.

And I think that my friend, with her 90 years of experience, is absolutely right in her conclusion that belief in life after death, even among people who profess it most strongly, is always undermined by doubt and fear. To have faith in reunions beyond the grave is to continuously deny the evidence of one’s own senses, to ignore the ultimately unignorable knowledge that our dead loved ones return to us only in dreams – a natural phenomenon. That is why the atheist, who accepts the knowledge of future extinction, is seen by many fundamentalist believers as a threat rather than an object of bemused tolerance. To all who deal with the knowledge of their own mortality by telling themselves that another, richer life awaits them, the atheist gives voice to their greatest fear by saying, “This is it, our one time around.”

Need to Know, a new PBS program filling Bill Moyers’s much-mourned slot on Friday nights, recently aired a segment featuring the proceedings of the Texas State Board of Education. The elected Texas board, having already creationized the biology curriculum, is about to give final approval to new social studies standards that Christianize American history. The most interesting part of the segment was an interview with Dr. Don McElroy, a dentist and leader for the past few years of the conservative faction on the Texas board. Dr. McElroy, who presumably spends a good deal of his life fighting natural decay in a part of the body especially prone to erosion, talked about the incompatibility of his belief in a divine creator with evolution. I actually found myself sympathizing with his consistency, since he was recently defeated for a new term by a lobbyist who believes both in God and evolution. In a sense, the McElroys are more logical, within their frame of reference, in their view of the world. They say, in essence, “If man is a special creation of God, then evolution has to be a crock.” What liberal believers say is that the evolution described by science is real, but God stepped in (or extended his finger) at some point to make man the one exception in nature. And man must be an exception in nature in order to support belief in life after death. Liberal religion, which requires its adherents to hold conflicting beliefs, poses a much more formidable (though for humans, entirely possible) psychological task than right-wing religion, which rejects any science that challenges the nature-defying concept of immortality.

The point is not that atheists are any more eager to shuffle off this mortal coil than religious believers are; it is that religious believers are no more eager for bodily death, even though they claim to believe in an afterlife, than atheists are.

Over the centuries, one of the more comical spectacles has been that of Catholic and orthodox Protestant churches condemning spiritualism as a form of superstition. The idea that communicating with the dead is any more superstitious than believing that a god-man rose from the grave and will come to decide our fates at the Last Judgment makes sense only if one upholds a particular religion as the route to eternal life. Organized religion loses its main reason for being if it cannot maintain its status as the single pathway to life beyond the grave. If all you have to do is consult an ouija board or turn out the lights and tap on a wall to talk to the dead, why bother to tithe? I should say here that I am speaking primarily of western religion, particularly of Christianity and Islam (the relationship of Judaism to the afterlife being more complicated than the space of this column allows). Many eastern religious concepts, such as reincarnation as members of another species, are just as contrary to scientific evidence as bodily resurrection, but they do not offer the same emotional promise of continuing consciousness that could facilitate reunion with loved ones.

The desire of certain churches to control the eternal life franchise also explains the new emphasis of the Catholic Church, and some right-wing Protestant sects, on opposition to physician-assisted suicide and, in the case of the Vatican, to the right of terminal patients to refuse artificial feeding tubes. The ticket to the afterlife offered by such religions is good only if you live this life according to their rules – and one of those rules is that only God has the right to decide when earthly suffering should end.

In “Patrimony”, Philip Roth’s account of his father’s death from a brain tumor, the author describes his father’s anger at this diagnosis. “…maybe he was furious over that question he had not bothered to ask Dr. Benjamin or Dr. Meyerson or me, the writer son, because he knew that none of us, even with all our schooling, our degrees, our smooth sentences and clever words, could make any more sense of it than he did. Why should a man die? It was enough to put anybody in a rage, that question. He was indispensable, goddamnit, if no longer to others than to himself. So why should he die? Someone with brains answer that!”

The exigency of nature does not answer the question why – only how. And so it is easy to understand the appeal of an answer maintaining – contrary to all evidence of reason and flesh-and-blood experience – that death is only temporary. Like my friend, I might envy that faith – if I thought that anyone, fighting to draw one more breath, really believes that his or her last breath is not the last.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Susan Biali Revisited
2. A Question Of Justice – Or Of Sanity?
3. Dr. Susan Biali Explains Her Theism

Here’s the best story I’ve ever found about the two people who run FFRF.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Dan Barker And Annie Laurie Gaylor Are Happily God-Free (Ann Grauvogl/Isthmus; Dec 18, 2009)

(Sub-Title: The co-presidents of Madison’s Freedom From Religion Foundation relish standing up to true believers)

Dangling from the brick fireplace in Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker’s near-west-side home are three ornaments: a shiny Santa, a Hello Kitty head with a wreath around its neck, and a miniature “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” book. They are not out early for this year’s holiday celebration, but left over from the year before.

The ornaments are at first a bit disconcerting, given that Gaylor and Barker are co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison-based national advocacy group. And during the Christmas season, the group tends to come off as a bit of a Grinch. Recently, for the 14th year in a row, FFRF’s solstice message went up in the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda, proclaiming its wish that “reason prevail.” It also says, “Religion is but a myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Yet Gaylor sees no disconnect between the ornaments in their home and this anti-religious stance. She says the couple’s daughter Sabrina, now 20, still gets a kick out of Hello Kitty. And for the whole family, the solstice season is special.

“Christians stole Christmas,” she says, noting the holiday’s pre-Christian origins. “We’re pleased to share it with them — just so they don’t try to hog the whole winter solstice season.”

The Gaylor-Barker family celebrates the solstice in a Sears house that’s a smaller version of one Gaylor grew up in. The celebration of the sun’s rebirth looks a lot like any holiday celebration, with food, family, gifts and often a tree.

“It’s a natural holiday,” Gaylor says. “You need to have something to look forward to.”

It’s late November and dark. After a long day, Gaylor, 54, curls into herself on her sofa in a living room arranged more for solitude than conversation. Oriental rugs provide the biggest spark of color on wooden floors.

Gaylor is exhausted after spending five hours being deposed for a federal lawsuit against the National Day of Prayer. “When you’re suing your president (Barack Obama) and his press secretary,” she says, “that’s a very time-consuming case.”

Petite with flyaway blond hair and direct eyes, she exudes competence as well as confidence. Yet she’s surprisingly taken aback by negative reactions to her group’s anti-religion message. The effect is an unsettling blend of iron fist in a delicate organza glove.

A little more than a week earlier, Gaylor was sharing animal stories with author Ursula LeGuin and laughing with radio host Ron Reagan, the former president’s son, at the Freedom From Religion convention in Seattle. The next Monday, Jay Leno told a joke about the group: “When asked if they were happy to be in Seattle, they said, ‘We’re just praying it doesn’t rain.’”

Home again, Gaylor is juggling six lawsuits, including a National Day of Prayer suit in Colorado, a Pledge of Allegiance appeal, a new case challenging a federal tax deduction for clergy housing, and a local case against a Manitowoc crèche. FFRF unsuccessfully filed suit to stop the engraving of “In God We Trust” on the Capitol visitor center in Washington, D.C.

“They went ahead and did it,” she says. “Now we are really injured. Now we have to duke it out.” The first hurdle is getting a green light to sue, which recent court rulings have made more difficult.

Barker, 60, is traveling. In a flurry of activity after Seattle, the tall, laid-back musician in black jeans and a black blazer found time to paint over graffiti on the FFRF building before leaving for 10 events in eight days in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. This included a debate with Dinesh D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About Christianity, with its purposeful lack of a question mark. After another brief stop in Madison, he was on his way to London, then Memphis, to look at complaints about prayer in city hall.

These days Gaylor and Barker are working longer hours than ever, often not coming home until after dinnertime. With Sabrina away to school at the UW-Whitewater, there’s no reason to get home early enough for a healthy meal. The couple instead focus on their growing sense of urgency about FFRF’s work.

Gaylor sees too many church/state violations and can’t fix them all. The noise level — the intensity of the crank calls, four death threats so far this year — is the worst she remembers. “I think things are getting a little unsettled,” she says.

Annie Laurie Gaylor and her mother, Anne Gaylor, started the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1976. It grew out of the reproductive rights movement after the Gaylors saw legislative hearings packed with Catholic nuns, priests and schoolchildren and concluded religion was the root of women’s inequality. Anne Gaylor took FFRF national two years later.

The foundation’s current repertoire includes legal action, billboards, bus signs, a weekly radio show on Air America, the monthly newsletter Freethought Today, and Barker’s national and international lectures and debates. There’s also hope for a television show.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation was formed to educate the public about nontheistic belief and promote the separation of church and state. In practice, this has two components: legal action against perceived local, state and federal violations of the First Amendment; and education, including liberal doses of anti-religion rhetoric.

Freethought Today has for years run page after page of “Black Collar Crime Blotter.” These are listings of transgressions against morality and public safety committed by clergy.

The term “freethinkers” is an umbrella for atheists, agnostics and rationalists. “To the freethinker,” says the group’s website, “revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Freethinkers test God the way they test any fact, with the scientific method.

FFRF’s membership has doubled since 2006, to 14,000, and its staff has increased by 3.5 since October 2008, to a total of eight full-time employees. Its new staff attorney was involved in 20 nativity cases in her first three months and wrote 150 church/state violation letters her first year. The cases generally start with outside contacts, usually emails, about half of which come from FFRF members. School issues are a priority. Recent cases included kindergarteners forced to say prayers and a fifth-grade Bible distribution.

The group operates out of Freethought Hall, a stately 1855 home and former rectory two blocks from the Capitol. The location is not publicized and the doors remain locked, but harassing emails and calls find their way in. “There’s a little feeling of being under siege most of the time,” says Gaylor, “yet they (theists) say we’re assaulting them.”

The most virulent emails [see sidebar included below] and calls come in response to the group’s church/state work — “and they are really mad at us,” Gaylor says. The most common theme is the suggestion that Gaylor and Barker move somewhere else: Pakistan, China, Siberia, Afghanistan, Canada.

But intense criticism of the foundation is surprisingly broad-based. Madison radio talk-show host Sly, for instance, in September called Gaylor “filthy, rotten, vicious and hate-filled” for purportedly protesting a monument in Chippewa County to a police officer killed in the line of duty that contained a religious message. “Has she now ventured into the territory of harassing dead Christians? This woman has now gone from fringy, atheist activist to terrorist.”

“I wonder if that is actionable, calling me a terrorist?” Gaylor wonders. But she has other things to do.

For Gaylor, being at the helm of an advocacy group for nonbelievers is hard work, and she often feels marginalized and demoralized.

She cites a Minnesota poll showing that every minority group in the nation is more widely accepted now than in the 1960s — except atheists. Barker, a former true believer, is not surprised: “When you’re talking about somebody’s religion, you’re talking about who they are. It’s like attacking them and their grandma. There’s nothing we could possibly say, no matter how gentle, that challenges their beliefs that’s going to make them feel good.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation says that its goal is to educate, not just provoke, and that it targets only governments, not people. But, adds Barker, “What’s wrong with stirring things up? Isn’t that the point of dialogue and free speech? We want to be part of the quilt that makes America America.”

Consider the recent controversy over a full-page FFRF ad in the Unitarian Universalist’s quarterly magazine. It included six anti-religion quotes, including one in which Clarence Darrow equates God with Mother Goose. Some church members thought the ad mocked all religions; others felt the Unitarians should be thick-skinned enough to take it. The magazine apologized.

The Wisconsin State Journal quoted Gaylor expressing shock at this reaction from a group that includes atheists. But Scott Ulrich, a Unitarian official, wrote that the ad didn’t just defend the rights of nontheists, it “negatively and very broadly characterized ‘religion”‘ and ‘faith’ in ways that were guaranteed to sound to many of our readers like an attack.”

Similarly, many of those who fill local churches and synagogues agree with FFRF’s advocacy of church/state separation but are angered by its anti-religion billboards and bus signs. After decades of being turned down, the Freedom From Religion Foundation bought its first billboard in Madison in 2007, with the message “Imagine No Religion.” Its first exterior bus sign, “Sleep in on Sundays,” went up earlier this year.

Now the foundation has billboards all over, including 10 in Albuquerque and eight in Las Vegas. And it has adorned 100 Seattle buses with ads of Santa saying, “Yes Virginia…there is no God.”

Gaylor says such efforts are a response to FFRF members who wanted the group to be less ambiguous. Isn’t this taking a cue from the Christian right? Gaylor doesn’t think so.

“The religious right has billboards with blood on them,” she says, “oversized miscarriage objects on their placards talking about ‘God says do not kill.’ That is gross. There’s nothing gross about our bus sign.”

As with the Unitarian ads, Gaylor expresses surprise that anyone would be angry about the bus signs. They’re “gentle snowball lobs, not a war on Christmas,” she says. “If (Christians) are so insecure that they can’t even stand that somebody has a bus sign, a funny bus sign saying there’s no God, what does that say about their beliefs? They must have a lack of confidence…to be so angry just because there’s something saying there are atheists and agnostics in this country and here’s our view.”

Gaylor urges critics to consider what nonbelievers are expected to endure. “Here we are, crosses everywhere we go, religious signs and steeples, and being preached at and told we’re sinners 24/7 on TV and radio,” she says. “And for the first time, we are being allowed to market our ideas too, and we have to be very clear about them.”

What about tolerance?

“Well, what about it?” she responds. “Nonreligious people in this country are scarcely tolerated. It’s considered aggressive to even tell somebody in the context of a conversation about religion that you’re an atheist.”

Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker grew up at opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum.

Gaylor, a third-generation freethinker on her mother’s side, grew up without religion or even much talk about it at home, though she attended church with her paternal grandparents. Barker grew up fundamentalist Christian turned charismatic, singing in the family’s evangelical music group.

Gaylor remembers coming home from school in fifth grade and proudly reciting to her mom the Pledge of Allegiance, with its “under God” addition. “I still remember her face, the shock,” she says. “She didn’t know the pledge had been interfered with.”

As a freethinking parent, Anne Gaylor believed in providing a safe, stimulating environment for her children but not indoctrinating them. She was a businesswoman, an early feminist and abortion rights activist, a mother of four who liked Jackie O suits and the smell of Chanel. Anne, who stepped down as FFRF president in 2004, “wasn’t Superwoman,” her daughter insists; but she was a super role model and a laid-back but devoted parent. “I greatly admired her.”

Her mother returns the compliments. “She’s very bright,” says Anne, now 83. “She is not easily dissuaded. You cannot be a shrinking violet and be a freethinker. She is not a shrinking violet.”

Anne is glad that her daughter did not feel a need to fit in: “When you grow up free from religion and the people around you are free from religion or indifferent, to be irreligious seems quite normal.”

Barker, in contrast, had been “born again” by the time he was in high school, confessing he was a sinner, accepting the death of Jesus as payment for his sin, and asking Christ into his heart. At 15, he received his call to ministry during a revival meeting in Anaheim, Calif., knowing God was talking directly to him about how to live his life. He started carrying a Bible (sometimes two) to school, preached his first sermon on the dusty bank of a Mexican irrigation canal, and was crushed when a Supreme Court decision ended daily Bible broadcasts into Anaheim classrooms. He won his first soul before his 16th birthday, and later converted his agnostic Spanish teacher.

“I had a star in my crown,” he writes in his 2008 autobiography, godless. “Of course, I gave all the credit to the Holy Spirit, but I accepted it as authentication of my calling.”

When Gaylor was a sophomore at the UW-Madison, she and her mother and a friend formed the Freedom From Religion Foundation. No one expected it would become a career. By the time she graduated, with a degree in journalism, Annie Laurie had successfully petitioned the university to eliminate prayer from commencement.

Barker studied religion at Azusa Pacific College. He was a soul winner, playing accordion in the park, singing about salvation in restaurants, hiking Mexico for Jesus. He married, had four children, spoke in tongues, faith healed. He was invited to schools that believed religion added moral value. He wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” a popular Christian children’s musical for which he still gets royalties.

Barker’s de-conversion began in 1979, when he realized he could not condemn others who did not take the Bible literally, as his faith instructed. After five years of reassessment, he migrated all the way to atheism. He soon persuaded both of his parents to follow him.

Barker and the Gaylors met in 1984 on Oprah Winfrey’s AM Chicago. The Gaylors suggested Barker as a co-guest sight unseen, having heard of his journey. “We felt we had met a kindred non-spirit,” jokes Annie Laurie. “I was very impressed with him. My mother was too.” They married in 1987.

Gaylor says she’s the practical one; Barker is philosophical.

For her, not believing in God is simple: “If something isn’t true, you shouldn’t believe in it.” She refers any detailed theological questions to him.

Barker’s lengthy legalistic arguments take the Bible apart phrase by phrase, to decry its claims to truth and morality. He contends that neither God nor Jesus is worthy of emulation. If Christians happen to be good people, he argues, it’s despite their religion and not because of it.

Gaylor likes reading newspapers. Barker reads science, history and mythology. She tends a spectacular perennial garden. He loves jazz piano and plays about 110 paid gigs a year with local combos.

“If we can sneak in a movie on the weekend, I’m lucky,” Gaylor says. When both are home, he brings her morning coffee in bed, while she finishes the Wisconsin State Journal and The New York Times. With Sabrina gone, he can play piano for a half-hour before work.

Gaylor and Barker both insist they are not focused on religion, though they must be conversant with it. They are encouraged by signs of a growing freethinking base, and such gestures as President Obama referring to “nonbelievers” in his Inaugural.

“I think we make society more interesting, and there are people who appreciate that,” Gaylor says. “And on the philosophical side,” adds Barker, “the more criticism you get, the more you’re being noticed.”

Gaylor and Barker are fulfilled in their work. Barker calls it “an emotional thrill fighting for the views our founders fought for.” Gaylor sees the Freedom From Religion Foundation as part of creating the great American experiment. “It’s been a ride, a blast, as Dan would say. I’ve enjoyed almost every minute of it.”

Sidebar: God is going to strike you dead

A sampling of recent emails (spelling and punctuation not corrected) received by the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

“Take a hike with your f*ckin’ lawsuit against In God We Trust! God haters, maggots! — Nedd Kareiva

“Dear Atheists, God is going to strike you dead for messing with religion. When you, your staff or their families have a bad accident, don’t say I didn’t warn you or that you don’t deserve it because you do. You must be stopped at any costs.” God’s Squad, Jim Franklin

“Just read an article about your long nose sticking into other people’s business. (It’s going to get broken, you know.) SO, STICKIT WHERE THE GOD MADE SUN DOESN’T SHINE. — A GRY HAIRED GROUCHY OLD S.O.B. P.S. DON’T PICK FIGHTS WITH OLD PEOPLE. YOU WILL NOT WIN. THEY WILL DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE THEN LET GOD SORT YOU OUT.”

“JUST WONDER WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? I REALLY FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. TO BAD THEY’LL BE RAISED BY PEOPLE LIKE YOU. YOU THINK ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS THREATEN WITH A LAW SUITE? I’LL BET YOU THAT IF YOU BELIEVED IN ANYTHING YOUR LIFE WOULDN’T BE SO MISERABLE THAT YOU HAD TO TRY AND SCREW UP EVERYONE ELSES. AND THAT’S MY OPINION.” Deborah Lortz

“You Atheists just don’t get it! Fuck all you God Haters! Jesus will win in the end! I hope you’re happy when this all goes down. Hellfire awaits!” Brad

“I am telling you to stay out of our community. There are plenty of places in this country where people likeyou thrive, places like California where moral decline and crime are running wild. Here in Lake Township WE DO BELIEVE IN GOD! If you want to bring your simple-minded, big bang-gorilla evolving beliefs here to live that’s fine. You people need to mind your own business and stay in Wisconsin!” Jeremy Wise

“I just cannot believe that you even are allowed to do the things you do. Do not respond tothis email. I don’t want to hear a thing you have to say about what a wonderful world this would be without jesus to believe in. What should we do believ in you???? That is sick.” Ann Doty

Related posts:

1. Another Act Of Vandalism
2. Meet Sherwin Wine
3. Notable Atheist: Dan Barker

Indonesia is the world most populous Muslim-majority country, with more than 200 million Muslim from about 240 million Indonesians. It is a religious country, although not a mono-religious country. It is more of a ’six-religious’ country, with the government acknowledging every citizen’s right to choose one religion out of six provided, without any option of opting out. Religion column is in almost every official form, from marriage (both the man and the woman must have the same religion), job application, even on citizens ID card. We Indonesians, whatever we believe or not believe, are forced to put a mask out of six. And the saddest part is, it has been that way since a long time ago, so long that many Indonesians stop realizing how wrong that is, and most of us eventually just cope with the condition and forget the ideal.

So today, although this is just a symbol, even though they make me pay 25€ before I can officially leave the church (Kirchenaustritt fee), I can finally tear up the mask other people forced me to wear in my whole life.

Religion: -

At last, first time in my life, I’m an atheist, officially, and I’m very thankful and proud about it.

Karl.

Related posts:

1. A Black Atheist Speaks Out
2. Atheism not officially recognized in India
3. My Path to Atheist

Blame it on my parents. They always told me to “think for myself”. I doubt they ever considered what would happen if I really did that. 

Now, I suspect what they meant was, “Think what we tell you but do it in your own words.” Too late. When I was 13, I began to question everything and soon the total absurdity of religion became apparent. 

Because I have been “encouraged” (forced) to read the bible many times, it was easy for me to see the contradictions in the book, what christians professed to believe, and how they lived. 

When I refused to go with them to their church, they said they “Would make me go.” 

I asked them, “How are you going to make me? How will forcing me to attend church change my mind?” Already, their attitude was starting to harden me against everything else they would tell me. 

Their next idea was to have their minister talk to me. I told them it was a waste of everyone’s time. They persisted and had him come to the house to “Talk some sense into me.” (as if they ever works for anyone) After about 15 minutes, of him quoting the bible to me and me pointing out that he was either wrong in his quotes or showing him how it said something else in another place, he became very angry and told me I was going to hell. I suspect it was because I knew the bible better than he did and was, at age 13, able to prove how ridiculous his arguments were. 

I told him, “If there is a Hell I’ll see you there. Save me a nice place, OK?” He said I was an impertinent, disrespectful child. By then, I was angry myself and for the first time, I told a christian that he was a hypocrite, a liar, and a fool. My parents insisted that I apologize. I refused and left the room to a lot of yelling and threats. 

For the next four years, I heard about this at least once a week. So the night I graduated high school, I left my parent’s home and didn’t see them again for well over a year. By then, I had completed a couple of years of college, which fortunately, I was able to pay for myself. I was entering the army and wanted to try to make peace with them, but had to listen to the same old recriminations and arguments again. 

The next time I saw them was two years later when I was getting married. After several years of an on-again, off-again relationship they finally agreed to just not discuss it any more. I’d like to say that worked, but slowly subtle hints became outright condemnation. Then I took a job transfer from Ohio to Arizona, so family meetings were rare enough to become occasions for something other than contention. 

What did I learn? Even your family can turn against you if you refuse to share in their illusions.

Related posts:

1. My Path to Atheist
2. A Christian Whose Mind Was Changed
3. Meet Chris Redford!

In his latest post, which details the story of a young teenager who died of a ruptured appendix because his family chose faith over medical care. This one, however, hit especially close to home. As a preface to the story, Perry has included his own brush with death under extremely similar circumstances. This you really have to read:

Keeping this archive updated can be down right depressing at times. There is no end to the cruel abuses perpetrated on children by religious believers. Only a small percentage of that abuse ever makes it into a news or magazine article, however, and this blog only archives some of those articles. Nevertheless, in less than a year and a half, I have already accumulated over 1300 articles. Some of them hit closer to home for me than others, such as the article below, which triggered some traumatic memories for me.

You see, I was 17 years old, the same age as the teen in this article, when I came down with appendicitis. Just over a year earlier, in 1972, I had joined the Children of God cult, now known as The Family International. After several intense months of indoctrination, I was sent to the ‘mission field’ of Japan. The cult was just getting rooted there, with only a few scattered communes, so new-comers like me were immediately sent on the road, two by two, to sell literature. While staying in a youth hostel, I began to get severe abdominal pains during the night. As morning dawned I was in obvious agony, so my partner informed the hostel manager who immediately suggested I go the hospital, which was right across the street. I refused to go, however, because I had effectively been indoctrinated by the cult to believe that any sickness or medical problem was a sign of disobedience to God. I was also taught that going to doctors showed a lack of faith — if I was sick it was a test of my faith in God — and that sickness was often a sign of yielding to the devil. I had also seen others in the cult punished, reprimanded or criticized for being sick. In short, the cult believed, and still does, that physical ailments have spiritual origins—either God is testing you or the devil is attacking you.

Doubled over in agony, barely able to walk, I continued to resist going to the hospital for several hours out of fear of displeasing God and my cult leaders. The pain became so unbearable, however, that I eventually gave in and went to the emergency ward. It took a few hours for the test results, during which time I thought I might die, the pain was so bad. Finally, the doctor told me I either had a severe infection or appendicitis and gave me the option of two courses of action. By that time, I was almost delireous with pain, I could hardly think straight, so I told him I just wanted the pain to stop and he should decide for me. He decided to open me up, and after the emergency surgery he told me I had had acute appendicitis and that my appendix could have burst at any time.

I spent several days recuperating, during which time my partner contacted the cult leaders hundreds of miles away in Tokyo. After I was released, I went to the nearest cult commune to recuperate, and the cult leaders came down to speak to me, or I should say, to punish me. That’s exactly what they did. They told me that I had endangered the work of God in Japan, and as punishment I would be sent back to America. To cult members, that was like a death sentence, since this apocalyptic cult believe the deranged teachings of David Berg, who claimed America would soon be destroyed by God for their wickedness.

I nearly suffered the same fate as the teen in the article below, because of religious indoctrination. When I refused medical care, I was not doing so from an informed, rational, uncoerced position, but out of fear instilled in me through indoctrination into Christian fundamentalism. So keep that in mind as you ponder whether the teen in this article was freely exercising his religious rights, or was under undue influence and pressure not to seek medical treatment.

Fortunately, we now have Perry with us to give us this great service. Imagine what may have become of this child and so many others who were not so lucky.

Related posts:

1. The End of Hereditary Religion
2. Newt’s Conversion Story
3. One Death Too Many…

Back in March I described how one of these missionaries, who used to be an atheist until the age of 16, came to the Mormon faith:

After searching out a few religions, he got a good feeling about Mormonism (I can’t imagine what about Mormonism made him feel good) – one that filled him from head to toe. Then he read the Book of Mormon and became convinced that it could not have possibly been made up byJoseph Smith (even though there is no independent external evidence for Hebrews living in the Americas). After much praying, he felt like God answered him in some indescribable manner and he is now 100% certain of the truth of his religious beliefs.

After my last encounter with the missionaries I wrote a post concluding that they are essentially self-deluded. As with the person quoted above, their reasons for belief essentially boil down to it feels right! When you ask them how you, too, can come to know that Mormonism is true their answer is you have to pray over the book of Mormon and wait for God to tell you that it is true. In other words, you have to fool yourself into believing that you are receiving divine signals from God. The more warm and fuzzy you feel, the more that is a sign that it is all true.

Let’s be clear here about something. The missionaries are young, usually late teens and early twenties. Based on my experience with several of them, they are not particuarly well versed in apologetics and deflect the most serious challenges to their faith. Rather, they seemed to be trained to simply introduce the faith and then facilitate in creating some sort of emotional connection. They do this by asking you to read out loud various verses from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, to pray with them, and then by inviting you to a local worship service where you can experience the faith in action.

None of this was surprising to me, to say the least. After the last meeting it seemed to me that I had gone about as far as I could with them. They obviously thought otherwise by contacting me yet again to arrange another meeting with two new missionaries. Since I didn’t really give them the chance in prior meetings to fully explain the intricacies of their faith to me I decided that I would hear them out this time around.

After they arrived, I let them go through their entire explanation of the Mormon ‘plan of salvation’ with little interruption. In a nut shell, it goes something like this: You lived with God as a spirit body before you were born on Earth. During this pre-Earth life, you were already told all about the plan of salvation and about Jesus Christ. However, you won’t remember this after you are born because all of your memories of it are withheld from you (makes sense, right?). As with Christianity, once you come to Earth in a physical body you must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior and for atonement for the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is God’s masterful plan, mind you. After death, your spiritual body leaves your physical body and travels to the ’spirit world’ which is more or less like a holding place. In this case, your memories of Earth are not withheld from you. If you had accepted Jesus Christ during your life, you will end up in the better half of the spirit world (where you can just relax). Otherwise, you end up in a spirit prison. At some point in the future Jesus will return and reign on Earth for a thousand years. God will then physically ressurect everyone who has lived and died in order to be judged. From there you will proceed to one of three different kingdoms. Those who are sinful and do not repent go to the Telesial Kingdom. Those who did not accept Jesus but lived honorable lives go to the Terrestrial Kingdom. All others go the the great Celestial Kingdom of bountiless joy.

I was immediatley struck by how their doctrines allow you to get around some of the stickier aspects of plain Christianity. For example, what happens to all of those people who lived and died before Jesus or did not have an opportunity to hear the gospel after Jesus? According to the missionaries, everyone who dies will get another opportunity in the spirit world to learn about and accept the Gospel. That almost gets you there. Another requirement if you want to get into that coveted Celestial Kingdom is baptism into the Mormon Church on Earth. Well, shucks. How can you be physically baptised after death? No fear, however, they thought of a way around this problem, too. A Mormon priest on Earth can baptise anybody who has died by ‘proxy’ or after the fact.

Well, that’s just sweet. Unfortunately the consequences of these doctrines gives a person little incentive to do anything in this life if you can easily convert after death while in the spirit world. I pointed this out to them and asked what my incentive is to convert (especially if I am, ehem, highly skeptical of their claims anyway)? I don’t think that they had ever thought about this question before because they seemed to be a bit baffled by it. So I was like, OK, if I end up in a spirit prison after I die and spirit Mormons are there telling me that this was in fact all true, then that would be sufficient proof for me. Apparently I am good to go so long as I am baptized by proxy by a Mormon on Earth, which the missionaries claimed will be done for everyone anyway during the 1,000 years that Christ reigns on Earth!

In response, they said that it would be much better if you accepted the doctrines now because there would be less work in the after life for you to do. So – with Christianity I am risking eternal hellfire by not accepting their doctrines but with Mormonism I am only risking a little more work in the afterlife. That settles that for me!

Even if I were Blaise Pascal then I wouldn’t worry if Mormonism was true or not right now.

Related posts:

1. Why a Mormon Likes Atheists
2. An Exercise in Self-Delusion
3. Atheism and Rational Thinking

—– “Out Of The Closet” – Black Atheists (Sikivu Hutchinson/LA Watts Times; May 18)

In some black communities it’s akin to donning a white sheet and a Confederate flag. In others, it’s ostensibly tolerated yet whispered about, branded culturally incorrect and bad form, if not outright sacrilege.

For black atheists like myself, proclaiming one’s non-belief amidst genial wishes to “have a blessed day” is never easy in the seemingly innocuous context of casual chit chat between black folk.

Yet, according to The New York Times, a small but growing segment of the American population, galvanized by the hyper-evangelical climate of the Republican Pleistocene, have begun organizing nationwide and becoming more vocal about their atheism.

Although African Americans are not visible in the “movement,” some are easing away from religion. For black atheists, actively breaking with religious tradition is an even graver rejection than that of white intellectuals electrified by the “pew-storming” rhetoric of atheist gurus such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.

This is partly due to the fact that the history of African American civil and human rights resistance is heavily steeped in Judeo-Christian religious dogma.

Despite the White Anglo Saxon Protestant religious justification for slavery and domestic terrorism, African Americans converted to Christianity and utilized it as a source of succor, community and spiritual redemption.

No matter one’s actual deeds, life path or personal mores, to be unquestioningly religious in some quarters is to be inoculated from criticism. Noting this historical irony in his blog “The Black Atheist,” Wrath James White states, “In these (black) communities you find more tolerance towards gangbangers, drug addicts, and prostitutes, who pray to God for forgiveness than for honest productive citizens who deny the existence of God. This, for me, is one of the most embarrassing elements of Black culture, our zealous embrace of the God of our kidnappers, murderers, slave masters and oppressors.”

While there have been critical appraisals of African American adoption of Christianity within the context of European conquest and racial slavery, few propose atheism as a corrective. Indeed, atheism would seem to fly in the face of a cultural ethos that frames earthly pain and suffering as a crucible for achieving rewards in the afterlife.

In the midst of extreme brutality, religious faith can either be seen as a means to mental health, or, as Karl Marx put it more bluntly, an opiate.

In this sense, contemporary black religiosity is the legacy of a culturally specific survival strategy. Many black community-based organizations still look to the black church as a coalition partner and resource. Disturbingly, the church is often uncritically perceived as the “backbone” of the black community.

However, as the debate over California’s Proposition 8 demonstrated, the notion that there is a monolithic “marching in lockstep” black community is terminally outdated.

On issues of gender and sexual orientation, the overwhelming opposition of many prominent black churches to granting civil rights to partnered African American gays and lesbians is morally indefensible.

When it comes to attitudes about traditional gender roles, gender-based assumptions about black female religiosity are double-edged. While black male non-believers are given more leeway to be heretics, black women who openly profess atheist views are deemed especially traitorous, having eschewed their family role as purveyors of culture and religious tradition.

Images of black women faithfully shuttling their children to church and socializing them into Christianity are a prominent part of mainstream black culture. If being black and being Christian are synonymous, then being black, female and religious (whatever the denomination) is practically compulsory. Black women with children who don’t fall in line, who raise their children as atheists, may find their race credentials revoked.

On the national level, the contradictions between American secularism and religion have produced a schizoid tension in the U.S., whereby religious fundamentalism and intolerance for secular thought have become the norm. When it’s practiced in the non-Western world, Americans routinely brand this kind of propaganda as backward and extremist.

Yet, in this, the most swaggeringly liberal humanist of all nations, “coming out” as an atheist in a culture that parades religious dogma as a substitute for true morality may be the final frontier.

(Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a commentator for KPFK 90.7 FM)

Related posts:

1. Black Female Atheists Speak Out!
2. My Path to Atheist
3. Staks Rosch Speaks Out!

My persona is Chris Agnostic.  No, this is not my real name, simply a name to be easily identified.  Think of it as a stage name if you will.

My path towards Atheism started when I was young.  I grew up in a family (Mother and Father) who didn’t go to church.  The only time I went was when I visit my Grandmother, who was a devout Pentecostal.  When you are young and go to Church, all of it seems awesome (and intimidating).  My Grandmother’s church was a small one, few people went.  Looking back, I realized that many of them were as old as my Grandmother.  We had Sunday School and went to Church twice on Sunday’s, which the night service was always boring and I remember always thinking, When will it end?

As I grew older, I began to see flaws.  My Grandmother was well liked at her Church, everyone thought she was sweet and a delight to have around.  But once she came home, she changed.  Me and her were on different ends.  She herself had 6 daughters, and each daughter on the average had 2 children, giving me about 11 other cousins.  Out of all of the Cousins, I was the only one who didn’t get along with her.  I was a Star Trek fan.  I was a fan of Sci-Fi.  She constantly made fun of my likes and my dreams.  She was meaner to me than any other.  How could this be the same person who was well loved at Church?  I didn’t like her.  It is interesting how Christians are always quick to point out that it is wrong for me not to like my Grandmother, or Brother, or any other family member.  But Love, like Trust and Respect, is something that is earned and not automatically assumed.

I digress…

This was perhaps the seed that started me towards the path, but at the time it left me in a state of wanting to learn more.  As I grew older, I found that I knew little of religion.  As I had mentioned my parents were not religious.  My Mother growing up in the world of my Grandmother, left her despising religion.  When I got to High School, I was certain (without a doubt) there was a God.  Just the Bible remained a mystery.  I grew up in Mesa, Arizona.  For those who don’t know, it is a predominately a Mormon Town.  It was founded by Mormons.  I am not inciting hate here, but my growth was limited due to growing up with people of the Morman faith.  I had found that many children of the faith despise the pratice and were quickly wishing to escape from it.  I did try talking to those of the devout, but I never found the answers I was looking for.

By High School I had met other Christians, even went to a club called FCA (For Christian Atheletes, which most of the people there were not Athletes, perhaps they should opt to change their name).  I went for a whole year, but was still left empty by the experience.  I even dated a girl and fell madly in love with her who was a devout Christian.  But she didn’t return that love back.  She helped me on my guide but it didn’t solidify me in faith.  Also during the time of High School, I learned of Evolution and felt that God and Evolution were mutually exclusive.  But I felt I was the only one who thought like that.  It wasn’t until a few years ago I came across Kenneth L. Miller that I found I was wrong in thinking I was alone.

After High School I joined the Air Force, where I encountered many different people of faith.  I went to Church on Sunday, which was interesting but found myself often falling alseep.  I tried going to different Church each week and found them all to be boring.  Eventually I stopped going.  Once I was out of Basic, on few occasions I went to church but I still questioned everything.  There was a girl there I met who was devout in her beliefs and she knew of my situation.  We became friends, good friends.  We talked a lot.  During our time together, I was able to get her to question her beliefs, stating that the only reason she believed in what she does is because that is what her parents told her she believed in.  For a short time she questioned that and open herself up to new possibilities, but then decided that she wanted to hold onto what she already believed in.  I am OK with that, at the very least she questioned it.

Another person I met in the Military gave me a Bible.  I complained that I had trouble understanding the Bible since it was written in Old English and was written like poetry.  I wanted to read it like a book in modern times.  I would often get a response that you cannot change the word of God, thus why it cannot be translated.  I wish I had the insight I do now back then and point out the books of the bible were not originally in English.  This other person gave me a Bible that was a “Living Translation” so now I could better understand the bible.  I was told that it was not best to read the Bible straight through and in fact you needed to read in a specific order contrary to chronlogically.  So I started with Corinthians, and I encountered a verse that stated “Women do not have a voice in Church”.  This angered me and I suddenly realized (though I knew before, just didn’t really connect the dots) that the Bible was bad as it has been used to discriminate against people through history.  That started me on the path that while I believed in God, I felt the bible was wrong.

But I was alone.  Who could I talk to about any of this.  No one.  I didn’t realize I was now Agnostic.  I felt I was still Christian, just not according to the Christians.  Over time, I learned that I was Agnostic Theism.  And that was pretty much my life until about a year ago.  I was working, and suddenly without any other thought leading up to this, it hit me, Why do I believe in God?

Until then, I was always certain I believed in God.  I event went to Church a few times, but often found myself alone as I often disagreed with the message being delievered (also I once brought up the teaching of Buddah when discussing that of Solomon).  No matter what else I had a lack of faith in, my devotion of God remained.  But I realized the only reason I believed in God was because somewhere along the way, someone told me there was a God and thus, I believed in God.  When I took a step back and looked at everything, I realized, there is no evidence for God.  I never came to God on my own, I just accepted what Authority figures told me.

I felt conflicted.  For 28 years of my life, I was certain there was a God, and now I couldn’t hold on to that belief.  It pained me.  I still had no one to talk to.  I didn’t know what to do.  So I started to try to find evidence for God, see if I could come back to the notion that there was a God.  Often times in great distressed, I relied on asking help from God and wondered if my doing so was evidence that there was a God.  But I came to the conclusion it was mere instinct to do it, possibly one set by my own evolution.  But I am not controlled by my instincts.  The only thing that held true for me was evolution.  That at least had evidence.  So, the first task to my becoming Atheist was to train myself not to turn to God in distress.  That was difficult at first, and I knew it to be the right thing to do, although at first I questioned if I was being dishonest with myself.

During my time of questioning my faith and being on the path towards Atheism, I met some people who were also Atheist in a Guild for Team Fortress 2.  I suddenly didn’t feel alone and I also discovered that YouTube had a lot to offer me.  Specifically of Penn & Teller show (you know the name), and the work of Thunderf00t (Why do people laugh at Creationists).  I looked at many others, including George Carlin before he died and it just all made sense to me.  There was no God.

Also during the time Ben Stein movie came to my attention and I didn’t research on it (without watching it) and I learned who Richard Dawkins was.  So I thank Ben Stein for helping me on my path for introducing Richard Dawkins.  I often talked to my Mother about all of this and what I was going through, and she bought 2 copies of The God Delusion, one for her and one for me.  It was in this book I read of the 1 – 7 scale of Faith and that he was a 6.

I adopted this scale for myself and made it 1 – 100.  At the time I recongized I was an Atheist, I put myself at 90 (which Dawkins would be 91 – 95).  Watching all the videos and talking to a lot of people I came to a couple of conclusions.  So I will now give an overall conclusion of my path and where I started as an Agnostic Theist to where I am now:

30 – Agnostic Theist

I strongly believe there is a God, but I know the Bible to be mostly wrong.

90 – Atheism

I cannot support any evidence that God exists, or any universal consciousness exists, and it is likely it doesn’t exist.

85 – Agnostic Atheism

God is supernatural, and thus not a physical entity of the Universe.  Scientific Understanding is that of testing the phsyical realm.  Since God is not of the physical realm, this concludes no evidence of God can exist.  This gives the conclusion that if God exists, there is no evidence.  But no evidence does not give way that there is a God.  My conclusion at this time is the simpliest explination, there is no God.

80 – Agnostic Atheism

In philosophy, there is always a mover.  If we see an object, turn our back, and then look at the object again to see it in a different place, then we conclude there someone or something caused the object move, which there was someone or something to cause that unknown to act.  We can go back and back and back to where we reach the ultimate unknown, which gives rise to God.  If the Big Bang happened, then something set it into place.

83 – Agnostic Atheism

But if there is a God, and God created everything, then what created God?  If God is complex, then he arrived through his own method of evolution.

As you can see, I still set that there is no God, but I give rise to the oppurtunity that there might be a God, but it is likely not the Christian God.  If anyone is interested, I will be happy to post my scale from 1 to 100 that identifies where you fit in with your beliefs and understandings (or lack there of).  It is comprehensive, but I think it is a nice tool to help people identify themselves.  I urge anyone to ask me questions.  I plan on someday soon posting videos on YouTube to discuss various aspects of the Bible, for the purpose to prove that Atheist do read it, and to gain understanding/clarity of the Bible.  Perhaps one day I will believe in God again, but I do not see myself going any higher than Agnostic Theism.

I am proud to admit, I am an Atheist.

Related posts:

1. Testimony of a Mad Atheist
2. A Black Atheist Speaks Out
3. What kind of (atheist/theist) are YOU?

Atheists discuss their outlook, relationships

Image by Atilla1000 via Flickr

For 35 years, Terry McDonald was a devout Catholic, going to Catholic schools and participating in the parish council. Now he’s recognized as something that confuses and even frightens some – he’s an atheist.

“When you tell someone you’re not a theist, it’s like saying I’m taking the issue that is closest to them and discrediting it,” said McDonald, chairman of Metroplex Atheists.

The stigma attached to atheism, be it perceived or real, is part of what McDonald is trying to quell.

“We’d like to show Christians we don’t have horns and a tail,” McDonald said. “We’re just normal people.”

This week, the Metroplex Atheists, along with other nonreligious groups, erected billboards in Dallas and Fort Worth to let other nonbelievers know they have company.

“Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” the billboards read.

According to a survey by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 1.6 percent of respondents classified themselves as atheists, and 16.1 percent were “unaffiliated.”

McDonald said he’s studied world religions extensively and still has strong Christian friends.

“I find it interesting what people believe. I find it fascinating,” he said.

So do others.

When Pastor Derward Richardson co-founded Grand Prairie’s Summit Baptist Church about two years ago, he envisioned a church that was small enough to be intimate but open enough to listen to differing beliefs.

He invited McDonald to speak at a public atheist/Christian dialogue. About 75 people turned out one Saturday night to hear the discussion.

Lifelong Baptist Judy Helms said she was “very apprehensive” before attending the forum.

“I didn’t know what to expect, like everybody else,” she said. “When you say the word ‘atheist,’ I don’t put it with a human. I put it with a monster. I found out, no, they’re human. They’re people who are different from me. It’s like when kids talk about the boogeyman and realize he’s not real.”

[It’s easier for religious theists to picture atheists as unfeeling monsters stomping on their beliefs, until they look us in the eyes. It’s easier to demonize a personal stereotype than an actual human being. But how are atheists not supposed to be offended by the idea that many people picture us as monsters, as not even human?]

McDonald told the crowd that he rejected Catholicism in his late 30s because “when I looked for God, he wasn’t there.”

Helms said that although she still disagrees with McDonald, she’s glad to hear his beliefs.

“I want people to know that my pastor has an atheist friend … and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Helms said.

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do – get along with each other? The whole world can take a lesson from that.”

Clark Vinson, a Baptist-turned-atheist who grew up in Irving, said he believes he has been discriminated against in the Bible Belt because of his lack of religion.

“I was on the verge of sealing a contract for $105,000 a year for a school district in the area for counseling services,” said Vinson, who was a therapist at the time. “I lost the contract suddenly.”

He said a friend who worked for the district told him a school official was disturbed after seeing a Darwin fish on his car.

[What was the school official supposedly “disturbed” by? The fact that Vinson accepts the scientific theory of evolution? I’d be more disturbed by trusting six figure contracts in the hands of someone who rejects reality in favor of young earth absurdities, ID, and who knows what else.]

But Vinson, like other members of Metroplex Atheists, said he and theists can still have good relationships.

“My secretary is very Christian, and she said she’s going to convert me,” Vinson said. “We laugh about it. We still have a good time and get along well.”

Atheists and Christians can do more than just get along: They can be happily married.

Randy and Dana Word have been married for more than 40 years. The couple lives with their daughter, Kelly Word, and Dana’s parents. Everyone in the house is a devout Christian except Randy Word. He’s vice chairman of Metroplex Atheists.

Though the family gets along most of the time, an evening discussing beliefs can get quite heated.

“We get into it about once a week,” said Kelly Word, 27. “It’s never a dull moment.”

On one particular evening, Randy Word noted that he had no problem with his wife taking their children to church when they were young. But now he regrets not exposing them to other beliefs – or lack of beliefs – as well.

“At any given time, there’s a thousand gods people worship to,” he said.

“But that would lead to more confusion for the child,” his daughter replied. “If you give them all these options, that’d be overwhelming.”

Randy Word countered: “It’d be more like, ‘Kelly, remember, this isn’t the only religion. Always question everything.’ ”

The volume of their argument increased.

“So you’re saying be untrusting?” his daughter said.

“Maybe you trust too much,” he replied.

“I can decipher between what’s really ridiculous and what’s not,” Kelly Word said.

Despite such contentious debates among family members, their religious disagreement pales in comparison with the strength of the family, the Words say.

“I know how he feels. I feel very sad he feels that way, but I don’t say it to him,” said Dana Word. “He’s an honest, good man. He’s one of the fairest people I know. My mother and father live with us. There’s not a much nicer man who would invite the in-laws and be so kind to them.”

Randy Word said the family works well because it shares positive morals and values. “I believe in the Golden Rule,” he said. “I believe in tolerance and compassion. I don’t need religion to give me that.”

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